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Category: News
May 15, 2023
Jake Welch
News

REPORT: COVID Vaccines Are Causing SEVERE Neurological Complications Including Bell’s Palsy and Strokes.

The COVID-19 vaccines – including Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson – have been causing a number of severe, life-changing neurological complications and syndromes, according to a review conducted by the European Journal of Medical Research (EJMR).

These revelations come soon after studies discovered the vaccines, among other things, “increase menstrual disturbance chances by up to 41 percent” and have a strong link to post-vaccination tinnitus.

According to the EJMR, which relied upon research, case reports, and articles related to “adverse effects” to conduct their review, “the short-term outcome of COVID-19 vaccination is promising, but in the medium and long-term, especially with some vaccines, side effects have been reported that are worrisome.”

The study states explicitly that “[e]ach type of vaccine can play a different role in increasing the risk” of the manifestation of the following disorders:

“COVID-19 vaccination can sometimes have severe side effects on [the] nervous system, including the brain, spinal cord, cranial nerves, and peripheral nerves, and has been shown to have adverse vascular, metabolic, inflammatory, and functional effects on the brain.”

Neurological Complications.

Adenovirus vaccines, which allow fragments of mRNA or genomes to enter the human body, including AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson, and Sputnik, have been especially linked to complications such as thrombocytopenia, cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, ischemic stroke and intracerebral hemorrhage in the brain.

Whereas mRNA vaccines, such as Pfizer and Moderna, are more generally linked to demyelinating syndromes such as transverse myelitis, first manifestation of MS, and neuromyelitis optica, states the EJMR report.

Who is Affected?

The vaccines have “several local and systemic neurological complications that occur in different people, from mild to severe, depending on age, sex, history of the disease, and pre-existing immunity,” states the report.

An Austrian case study conducted by Josef Finsterer, from which the EJMR report draws, suggests that complications usually occur within one day to one month after vaccination, and are often acute, transient, and self-limiting. However, severe cases have led to hospitalization, intensive care, and, as the EJMR states in the report’s abstract, death.

The frequency of neurological disorders following vaccination is higher for women. Women “induce a stronger immune response against foreign antigens, which can lead to the targeting of self-antigens and lead to autoimmune disorders,” per the Journal of Neuroimmunology.

The report adds: “Because COVID-19 vaccines [were] urgently approved, meaning they [did] not complete the standard clinical trials, the adverse effects of each vaccine should be closely monitored. It is necessary to pay attention to the fact that in mass vaccination, due to different races, disease history, age, lifestyle, and other effective factors, the incidence of adverse effects of vaccination is higher.”

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The COVID-19 vaccines – including Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson – have been causing a number of severe, life-changing neurological complications and syndromes, according to a review conducted by the European Journal of Medical Research (EJMR). show more
May 15, 2023
Jack Montgomery
News

MIT’s Woke VR Game Lets You Experience ‘Racism as a Muslim on a Plane’.

Video game developers including a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are developing Virtual Reality (VR) games which simulate black people and Muslims suffering discrimination.

Developed by MIT researchers, On the Plane is designed to simulate the supposed horrors of being Muslim while airborne, enabling gamers to “confront prejudice, such as racism and xenophobia, and potentially develop a more inclusive perspective about others.”

“This project is part of our efforts to harness the power of virtual reality and artificial intelligence to address social ills, such as discrimination and xenophobia,” declared Caglar Yildirim, an MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) research scientist.

“Through the exchange between the two passengers, players experience how one passenger’s xenophobia manifests itself and how it affects the other passenger. The simulation engages players in critical reflection and seeks to foster empathy for the passenger who was ‘othered’ due to her outfit being not so ‘prototypical’ of what an American should look like,” he added.

“Experience a Virtual World of Segregation”

Meanwhile, Barnstormers VR is designed to let gamers “experience the triumphs and discrimination of a Negro League-era baseball player,” according to an Axios report.

Designed by Derek Ham, an Associate Professor at North Carolina State’s College of Design, Barnstormers allows people to play simulated Negro League baseball games — and then, perhaps more importantly, “experience a virtual world of segregation and the baseball players try[ing] to navigate it” once the game is over.

“Players talk about their struggles, and users can see poverty and inequality in the urban areas around them,” according to Axios’s description of the experience.

References to potential applications for “educators” in the Axios report will raise concerns among parents already sensitive to the rapid spread of s0-called Critical Race Theory (CRT) through schools and colleges, with it not being difficult to envision a future in which white students are made to take on the role of minorities enduring brutal oppression in a virtual world, to better understand their alleged “privilege”.

The National Pulse can be found on Facebook, Gettr, Telegram, and Twitter. 

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Video game developers including a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are developing Virtual Reality (VR) games which simulate black people and Muslims suffering discrimination. show more
May 15, 2023
Jack Montgomery
News

Soros Shredded in Replies After Tweeting About Heart Attack.

Billionaire open borders activist George Soros has confirmed he is in good health and has not suffered a heart attack – but not everyone greeted the good news with enthusiasm.

“Rumors that I had a heart attack are completely false,” tweeted the 92-year-old plutocrat and convicted insider trader on Monday.

“I am alive and healthy,” he added.

The Hungarian-born financier, notorious for using his vast fortune to fund, directly or indirectly, efforts to overturn Brexit, facilitate mass migration, and elect progressive prosecutors such as Alvin Bragg — currently dragging Donald Trump through the courts in New York City — did not find his update greeted with universal relief, however.

“You would have to have a heart for that to have been true,” remarked one another — a quip repeated by many others in the tweet’s heavily ratioed reply thread.

“The world couldn’t get this lucky,” added another.

The thread can be viewed in full here. 

The National Pulse can be found on Facebook, Gettr, Telegram, and Twitter. 

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Billionaire open borders activist George Soros has confirmed he is in good health and has not suffered a heart attack – but not everyone greeted the good news with enthusiasm. show more
May 14, 2023
News

It’s Mother’s Day. So of Course These 7 Corporate Brands Are Promoting Dudes in Dresses.

It’s Mother’s Day in the United States. Which has led a plethora of corporations and consumer brands to advertise their products to the most important women in our lives: our moms. Unfortunately, some of these brands have decided that your dad can now be your mom. Or that some random dude in a dress can be your mom.

That’s why Woke Alerts, powered by Consumer Research, put together the following short list of companies who are continuing the far-left’s war on women this Mother’s Day. Check out their research and calls to action, below. And follow Woke Alerts for more.

Calvin Klein, Estée Lauder, and Anthropologie are just a few companies that appreciate a great deal of business from women, but recently have gone woke by replacing women with men in their company advertisements for women’s clothing and products. Some companies, like Woke Washed Levi’s have gone so far as to attempt to erase women by making “genderless” clothing lines.

1. Calvin Klein

This fashion brand launched an ad campaign featuring a pregnant transgender woman and her transgender partner. This campaign said it was in “support of women and mothers all over the world.”

You can contact Calvin Klein customer service by calling 866-513-0513 or emailing them here. To read more, click here.

2. Pantene

Hair care brand Pantene featured an adult man dressed up as a teenage girl for an “emotional” ad celebrating “her” quinceañera.

Photo credit: AdWeek

You can reach Pantene by calling1-800-945-7768 or emailing them here. To read more, click here.

3. Rent the Runway

Transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney teamed up with the women’s clothing rental brand for an advertisement which gave followers a discount code. Mulvaney, who most recently partnered with Bud Light, causing immense backlash, has many corporate partners ranging from KitchenAid to Olay.

You can contact Rent the Runway by using their Customer Service line: 1-800-509-0842 or online here.

4. Anthropologie

Clothing brand Anthropologie used a man to advertise an array women’s clothing. The comments on the Instagram post were quickly censored due to immediate backlash.

Photo credit: Anthropologie Instagram

You can contact Anthropologie by using their Customer Service line: 1-800-732-2306 or online here. To read more, click here.

5. Estée Lauder

The makeup and skincare brand launched an ad campaign featuring a transgender man explaining that his “favorite part of being a woman is living in full color.”

Photo credit: Evie Magazine

You can contact Estée Lauder by using their Customer Service line: 1-877-311-3883 or by using their online form here. To read more, click here.

6. Levi’s.

The woke denim brand recently announced they would be building out their gender-neutral options because Levi’s CEO said, “We know that some women buy some men’s products and some men buy women’s products.” This comes after they released a “genderless” and “size inclusive” collection which featured transgender “women” and “genderless” models for Pride Month last year.

Photo credit: Pink News

You can contact Levi’s using their Customer Service line: 1-800-872-5384 or online here. To read more, click here.

7. CoverGirl 

For some companies going woke happened a long time ago, in 2016, CoverGirl replaced women with their first male “CoverGirl” on their magazine.

Photo credit: Allure. You can contact CoverGirl using their Customer Service line: 1-800-998-4573 or by using their online form here. To read more click here.

This list was compiled by Consumer Research and Woke Alerts, which you can subscribe to for free, here.

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It's Mother's Day in the United States. Which has led a plethora of corporations and consumer brands to advertise their products to the most important women in our lives: our moms. Unfortunately, some of these brands have decided that your dad can now be your mom. Or that some random dude in a dress can be your mom. show more
May 14, 2023
Jake Welch
News

Twitter’s CEO Yaccarino Lobbied Elon Musk to Kowtow to Corporate Advertisers.

Twitter’s new CEO Linda Yaccarino suggested to Elon Musk in April this that he should consider re-establishing a Twitter “Influence Council” and further “de-risk” the platform to appease corporate advertisers.

Yaccarino interviewed Musk in Miami in front of an audience of advertisers and campaign managers, arguing: “…freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of reach. What does it mean to the advertisers in this room? Have you de-risked the opportunity or chance of their campaigns landing in these awful, hateful places?”

Yaccarino also suggested there is a necessity for advertisers to be involved in defining what’s suitable on Twitter. According to Musk’s new hire, advertisers “need to feel that there is an opportunity for them to influence what [Musk is] building.”

Elon’s Tweets.

During the conversation, Yaccarino brought up Musk’s own tweets on two occasions. She suggested he was “too provocative,” and that he should not tweet late at night to avoid offending potential advertisers and risk losing investment in the company:

“Most news organizations have a co-dependent relationship with Twitter, and I can speak on behalf of the industry but I’ll speak on behalf of my own company. We have a big partnership with your company – [a] big distribution partnership –  [there are] days where I see some of your tweets and I say… I wish I could say: stop helping the situation. But should you be held to a different or higher a standard that you’re the owner but you also have the most followers and a lot of people think you might be too provocative?”

Moreover, she added:

“You probably shouldn’t tweet after three am… will you commit to be a little more specific and not tweet after three am… people in this room would like to see that.”

Musk, however, was quick to counter the assertions.

“If I were to say yes, you could influence me that would be wrong,” replied Musk, “that would be very wrong because that would be a diminishment of freedom of speech.”

Yaccarino interjected again, “I wanna be specific about influencing: it’s more of an open feedback loop for the advertising experts in this room to help develop Twitter into a place where they will be excited about investing money – product development, ad safety, content moderation, that’s what the influence is.”

Influence Council.

According to Yaccarino, a potential solution for de-risking Twitter would be to re-establish, what she refers to as, the “populated, much-loved Influence Council,” which previously dictated would could or could not be said on the website:

“So Twitter 1.0 had a very well-populated, much-loved influence council. I think we need to change the name – Elon doesn’t want to be influenced – but it was really a recurring feedback loop from your key stakeholders – your advertisers – where they have recurring access… to you. Would you commit from this stage today to reinstate that council? To be named later?”

Musk replied, “I would be worried about that creating a backlash against the public. Because if the public thinks their views are being determined by a small number of CMOs in America they will be… upset about that.”

Linda Yaccarino.

Since taking Twitter over, Elon Musk has insisted he does not see himself remaining the company’s long-term CEO. However, the announcement that Yaccarino would be Musk’s replacement has left many confused and concerned, especially those who trusted in Musk so much they signed up for his $11-a-month “Twitter Blue” subscription.

Before being announced as the new Twitter CEO, Yaccarino spent 11 years as chairwoman of global advertising at NBC Universal as well as operating as an executive chairwoman of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

As a WEF executive, she has been “highly engaged with the Value in Media initiative,” which aimed to reshape online discourse towards “civility” and reduce the chance of politically incorrect speech being tolerated online.

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Twitter's new CEO Linda Yaccarino suggested to Elon Musk in April this that he should consider re-establishing a Twitter "Influence Council" and further "de-risk" the platform to appease corporate advertisers. show more
May 13, 2023
Jake Welch
News

Carjackings Surge in Democrat Cities… So They’re Suing the Car Companies!?

City authorities in Milwaukee, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Seattle – all Democrat-run cities – are suing car makers Kia and Hyundai for “not doing enough to prevent [their] cars being stolen,” amid skyrocketing rates of carjackings.

Baltimore is the most recent city to sue the two car companies, with Democrat Mayor Brandon M. Scott, claiming, “[Kia and Hyundai] have left our residents vulnerable to crime and are significantly burdening our police resources.”

Baltimore follows the city of Milwaukee, which, in March this year, announced its decision to file action against the two car companies. The Wisconsin Attorney General, Democrat Josh Kaul, alongside 22 other state representatives, penned a letter to Kia and Hyundai wherein they demanded that the companies “take swift and comprehensive action to remedy” what the city describes as “ongoing consumer harm and undimmed public safety.”

The letter stated:

“Alarmingly high rates of theft of these vehicles have been sustained over a long period of time. Your consumers continue to be harmed as a result, and worse yet, the thefts contribute to an erosion of public safety as they are frequently accompanied by reckless driving and the commission of other crimes, further endangering our communities. While your companies are reported to have taken some steps to address this crisis, it hasn’t been enough, and it hasn’t been done fast enough.”

The decision to sue the companies has not received the unanimous support city authorities perhaps expected. One Milwaukee resident, Amanda Mattefs, who has had her Hyundai stolen twice, questioned the sense in suing the manufacturers.

Mattefs told Fox 6: “They need to take a deeper look at what was happening then and is happening now, and it still hasn’t changed. They’ve just been talking about change and nothing really has.”

Without Merit.

Unsurprisingly, car manufacturers are denying responsibility for the soaring crime in Democrat cities, with Kia arguing that the lawsuits are “without merit.” The companies even issued steering wheel locks to over 4,000 owners in an effort to counter the trend, but the success has been minimal.

All of the cities suing the manufacturers have defunded or re-oriented local police forces following the Black Lives Matter riots that left dozens dead and cost billions in damages. Milwaukee, for example, has cut over 120 police officers from the force, and Minneapolis slashed $20 million from policing budgets.

TikTok Trend.

In late 2021, a trend involved a group called the “Kia Boyz” began on the Chinese Communist Party’s influence app TikTok.

Originally from Milwaukee, the group posted videos on the social media site demonstrating the ease with which one could steal a Kia or Hyundai. Since then, the trend has gone viral and been copied across the United States.

In the first three months of 2023, 373 Kias and 304 Hyundais were stolen in Milwaukee. Carjackings involving a Kia or Hyundai rose 95 percent, representing 41 percent of all the vehicles stolen in the city.

In Minneapolis, Kia and Hyundai carjackings increased 836 percent in 2022 compared to 2021. St. Louis witnessed a 1,090 percent increase, and in 2022 alone, Chicago reported over 7,000 car thefts involving the two brands.

The news comes as even the nation’s capital city, Washington, D.C., is experiencing a dramatic escalation in violent carjackings, with Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser ostensibly unfazed by the matter.

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City authorities in Milwaukee, Baltimore, St. Louis, and Seattle – all Democrat-run cities – are suing car makers Kia and Hyundai for "not doing enough to prevent [their] cars being stolen," amid skyrocketing rates of carjackings. show more
May 12, 2023
Jack Montgomery
News

Facebook is Censoring Title 42 Migrant Influx News.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook has blocked The National Pulse from sharing a report on what even Joe Biden admits will be a “chaotic” influx of migrants this week in the United States, as Trump-era immigration controls expire.

While the border crisis may have seemed bad already, Title 42 expulsions authorized by then-President Donald Trump’s invocation of the Public Health Services Act in 2020 have seen off an astonishing three million migrants.

The Biden government, which has been trying to terminate the Title 42 regime since 2022, allowed them to naturally expire on Thursday, May 11th, with the President admitting this will result in a “chaotic” influx and border governors such as Greg Abbott warning a “catastrophic disaster” is looming.

The National Pulse covered the story, seeking to share it with our 425,000 followers on Facebook. But the social media platform blocked our reporting, alleging it violates “Community Standards on hate speech”:

 

The Facebook page for the Pulse was already being interfered with – much like the Facebook page for editor-in-chief Raheem Kassam. But this latest move could have further restricted its reach right as a new migrant crisis looks set to break on the southern border, when American citizens will be seeking news on its development.

Indeed, the site warned that further violations of its “Community Standards” could result in The National Pulse page being disabled altogether, severing a link between conservative journalists and hundreds of thousands of willing readers.

No explanation was provided as to why the likes of even CNN were permitted to speak of “about 155,000 migrants… waiting in shelters and on the streets of northern Mexican states bordering the U.S.” as they wait for Title 42 to expire, citing federal government sources, but the Pulse was not.

Mark Zuckerberg told Congress in 2018 that he could “understand” why people fear Facebook engages in “bias and political censorship” because “Facebook and the tech industry are located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left-leaning place.”

The National Pulse was also the first to report on Zuckerberg’s massive election interference in the 2020 presidential election: a critical node in the left’s election toolbox which some claim flipped the White House for Joe Biden.

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Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook has blocked The National Pulse from sharing a report on what even Joe Biden admits will be a "chaotic" influx of migrants this week in the United States, as Trump-era immigration controls expire. show more
May 12, 2023
Jack Montgomery
News

Who is Linda Yaccarino? The World Economic Forum-Aligned Exec Elon Musk Hired as Twitter CEO.

Elon Musk has reportedly settled on Linda Yaccarino – an advertising executive who has peddled far-left, “woke” ideology, and appears to be entangled with the World Economic Forum – to replace him as CEO of Twitter, or ‘X Corp’ as the company is now known.

Who is Linda Yaccarino?

As Chairman of Comcast NBCUniversal, Yaccarino, 60, interviewed Musk in April about his vision for the social media platform.

Yaccarino’s biography states she is an executive chairman of Klaus Schwab’s notorious World Economic Forum (WEF), which brings together globalist political, corporate, and non-governmental organization elites every year at the Davos resort in Switzerland to push its Great Reset agenda.

She also lists herself as chairman of the WEF’s Taskforce on Future of Work, sits on its Media, Entertainment and Culture Industry Governors Steering Committee, and is “highly engaged with the Value in Media initiative,” which is aimed at reshaping online discourse.

“Common standards would be followed so certain types of content would not exist and would certainly not be monetized through advertising,” one Value in Media report states of the WEF’s agenda for digital speech.

The Future of Work task force, meanwhile, seems as focused on incentivizing illegal immigration by allowing more migrants into host countries’ labor forces and tilting at the “gender gap” windmill as it is on the future of work as such.

In her role as a former chairman and current executive board member of the Ad Council, Yaccarino also partnered with the Biden government and its agencies “to create a COVID-19 vaccination campaign, featuring Pope Francis and reaching over 200 million Americans” from 2021 to 2022.

She served on President Trump’s Council on Sports Fitness and Nutrition from 2018 to 2021 as well.

Linda Woke-arino.

The WEF-linked activist appears to be committed to the far-left’s vision of diversity, inclusion, and equality, praising initiatives to make news teams “50 per cent women and 50 per cent people of color.”

As a board member of another WEF-linked organization called The Female Quotient, Yaccarino has pushed initiatives to “foster gender and economic equality” and “racial justice” in partnership with the likes of Google, Instagram, and Twitter’s pre-Musk iteration. She is also a believer in the so-called “gender gap”.

All in all, Yaccarino’s resume is unlikely to inspire much confidence in conservative and right-leaning voices – a theme clearly identified by Musk and his allies just a few hours after he announced a new CEO and Yaccarino’s name was floated:

At the time of publication, Musk had neither confirmed nor denied Yaccarino is replacing him, but he appears to be alive to people’s concerns that she would usher in a full-scale return to business as usual, claiming his “commitment to open source transparency and accepting a wide range of viewpoints remains unchanged”.

This is at odds with Yaccarino’s comments to Musk during their aforementioned interview, however, when she told him advertisers need to know they can “influence what you’re building” and urged him to stop tweeting after 3 a.m. because advertisers “would like to see that”.

She disagreed with the South African entrepreneur when he argued that advertiser influence of the sort she described would be “very wrong” and a “diminishment of free speech”.

“It’s more of an open feedback loop for [advertisers] to help develop Twitter into a place where they will be excited about investing more money. Product development, ad safety, content moderation — that’s what the influence is,” she suggested.

Musk’s awkward potential appointment revives the words of caution expressed by National Pulse editor Raheem Kassam in April 2022, when he warned: “There is no telling what Musk – a man who has attended a number of Chinese Communist-backed artificial intelligence conferences in recent years – will do next… We must remain on our guard, and we must not abandon the alternative platforms that have been built in recent years. We’re likely to regret it if we do.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Elon Musk has reportedly settled on Linda Yaccarino – an advertising executive who has peddled far-left, "woke" ideology, and appears to be entangled with the World Economic Forum – to replace him as CEO of Twitter, or 'X Corp' as the company is now known. show more
May 11, 2023
Jack Montgomery
News

‘Border Policy Good Lately’ – TikTok Teaches Chinese Migrants to Invade the U.S. Border.

Illegal Chinese migrants are being guided through Latin America and into the United States by the Chinese Communist Party-linked app TikTok, reports suggest.

Douyin, the markedly less degenerate version of TikTok that parent firm ByteDance serves to mainland China, is awash with migrant influencers and hashtags offering detailed instructions on how to illegally enter the United States via a route known as the ‘Big Beautiful’, according to Reuters.

The news comes as an invasion mounts of the border, with Trump-era Title 42 arrangements set to expire, and the Biden government refusing to intervene at any significant level.

Reuters reports “hundreds of Chinese migrants crossing into the United States” via just one stretch of the Mexican frontier in south-east Texas, and “interviewed more than two dozen in Mandarin.”

They found that “all” of them were inspired to make the journey by social media, and drew on it heavily to facilitate their travels — but ByteDance ignored requests for comment on the issue.

No Mo

Many of those interviewed by Reuters claimed they had headed for the United States because COVID lockdowns had destroyed their businesses — although it is all but impossible to prove motivations of illegal border crossers, as Europe found out to its cost at the height of its own migrant crisis in 2015-16.

One illegal said they “initially thought about getting a U.S. tourist visa and overstaying” but plumped for an old-fashioned illegal border crossing because the pandemic resulted in an increase in visa refusals.

Both visa holders and border crossers are eligible to claim asylum once they reach American soil, and are more likely than not to be successful, with U.S. Justice Department data indicating that almost 60 per cent of Chinese asylum claims are accepted.

The actual security regime at the border also appears to have become laxer per the migrants themselves, with one social media user going by ‘Lee Gaga’ tracked down by Reuters saying they were at large in New York City after a very brief detention.

“I was released only after three days and three nights. I got lucky because the border policy has been good lately,” they boasted.

Whether said border policy is also “good” from the perspective of American citizens is another matter.

All in all, Chinese migrants account for a relatively small fraction of the enormous illegal immigration waves into the United States, accounting for some 6,500 entrants in the six months from October 2022.

Nevertheless, Chinese migration looks to be a major growth industry for traffickers, with that 6,500 figure being fifteen times the comparable figure for the same period in 2021.

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Illegal Chinese migrants are being guided through Latin America and into the United States by the Chinese Communist Party-linked app TikTok, reports suggest. show more
May 11, 2023
Jack Montgomery
News

French Prez Macron Defends Pedo Painting Showing Child Being Orally Raped.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron has defended artwork which appears to depict a child being orally raped by an adult after protestors threw paint on it.

The graphic painting titled fuck abstraction! depicts an entirely nude, muscular adult forcing what appears to be a naked, slightly built male child kneeling with his hands bound behind his back to fellate him.

Someone who objected to its pedophilic content splashed it with purple paint at the Palais de Tokyo modern art museum in Paris, prompting France’s increasingly unpopular globalist president to leap to its defense.

“Targeting a work of art is an attack on our values,” Macron complained.

“In France, art is always free and respect for artistic creation is guaranteed,” he added.

Hypocrisy. 

Miriam Cahn, a Swiss artist in her seventies, has claimed that the work, supposedly a tribute of sorts to victims of alleged war crimes in Bucha, Ukraine, does not depict a man and a child. She claims the victim’s childlike size and physique is intended to represent “the corporeal power of the oppressor, and the fragility of the oppressed” — but many are unconvinced.

Indeed, the Association Juristes Pour l’Enfance (Lawyers for Childhood) appealed to the courts and the State Council to have the painting removed under child protections laws, but were unsuccessful.

Lawyers for the Palais de Tokyo hailed judges’ refusal to intervene, like Macron, as victory over “attempts at circumventing the right to freedom of expression by way of so-called child protection”.

Such references to “freedom of expression” will be risible to observers familiar with just how weak free speech protections are in France, with a woman in her fifties who referred to Macron as “filth” currently due to appear in court for the crime of “insulting the President of the Republic” in June.

Neither the United Kingdom nor the European Union have anything resembling America’s First Amendment to protect free speech.

Unlike the First Amendment, which tells the state what it cannot do with respect to abridging people’s civil liberties, Europe’s so-called freedom of speech protections derive from the European Convention on Human Rights, which tells citizens what they can do.

The British, infamously, can be charged for making “grossly offensive” remarks or jokes on Facebook, Twitter, or even in private WhatsApp groups, while laws like the one being used to prosecute a woman for insulting President Macron are fairly common across Continental Europe.

In Germany it can be a crime to insult any public official, with a lockdown and vaccine sceptic being fined  €16,500 (~$18,175) for calling two politicians “mendacious, corrupt, power-hungry, characterless and dishonorable creatures” in an email.

These German speech restrictions even extend to foreign officials, with the authorities controversially pursuing a case against a man who wrote a rude poem about the Turkish president quite far, until public backlash forced a climbdown.

More recently, people have found themselves being arrested for having the “wrong” opinions on the war in Ukraine, with a German recently fined €4,000 (~$4,400) for having a Russian ‘Z’ symbol on his car and a Polish woman being put on trial for accusing the Ukrainian government of a “lack of integrity” and saying she “believe[d] in Russia’s victory and help for us Slavs” in a social media post.

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France's President Emmanuel Macron has defended artwork which appears to depict a child being orally raped by an adult after protestors threw paint on it. show more