[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Due to a number of reasons, this site will no longer be updated. There are three main reasons for this: Continuous rampant cut and paste copying of our articles onto other sites; the resultant demoralization of our writers after their hours of work is just stolen, and the lack of response to fundraising efforts.
1. Continuous rampant cut and paste copying of our articles onto other sites.
While it is accepted that the Internet is a place of free exchange of ideas and thoughts, the continuous “cut and paste” copying of our original articles has breached all ethical considerations.
It is the norm, when wishing to reproduce an article, to only have a paragraph of the article, and then a back link to the original. This is being blatantly ignored, and then other sites are asking for money for cut-and-pasting the New Observer’s articles.
2. Our articles are all original works and the product of much research, some of which have taken our writers many hours to compile. To have these hours of work just cut-and-pasted has made our writers ask “what is the point” if someone else is just going to steal the work.
3. Despite appeals, we have been unable to pay our writers for their hours of work, and therefore funding has become a critical issue.
Some readers have suggested erecting a Paywall and charging to read the site. However, given that the cut-and-paste copiers have already bypassed anti-copy software on the website, we are sure that installing a Paywall will not stop the content copying. This will in turn only anger those who might have paid to view the content.
I am not being paid for anything either and am working steadily to defend the interests of European peoples - in view of our emergency circumstances, I have suspended protocols at times and in ways; though I was perhaps narcissistic to presume that I was in a way supporting The New Observer with a form of endorsement by republishing some of its articles; furthermore, I presumed that they did have some financial wherewithal and shared my priority for our defense and advancement above all.
However, I can certainly abide by this norm:
It is the norm, when wishing to reproduce an article, to only have a paragraph of the article, and then a back link to the original.
If TNO resumes operations, I will certainly pledge to do that; with apologies and in the hopes that after enjoying a fishing trip that the staff of The New Observer will resume their excellent work: For heaven’s sake people, get them some financial support. These cheap damned White people! - isn’t it Jews who are supposed to be cheap?
Should we go to “The Daily Stormer” for news from a perspective of White/European interests? Perhaps we can go to “Red Ice” for the latest right-wing nut conspiracy theory? To “The Political Cesspool” for that good old religion and bragging about who knows what? People, give us a break!
If The TNO won’t resume operations that would be big loss, because they most closely approximate a competent news service from the perspective of White/European interests - it was a great help to MR to be able to rely on them for that because we are not primarily a news site; we run news articles for the sake of topical orientation and to keep information running through our system.
Of course I appreciate TNO’s need for financial support. However, if they will not resume operations and any of them are concerned enough for European interests, have the capacity to survive financially and the will to contribute, then please feel free to contact us here; you might contribute to whatever extent that you feel comfortable. Of course I am not against people making money and being paid for what they do - you deserve it; and if you want to think about making that happen through Majorityrights, we’ll consider that as well; though MR has not been pursued as a gainful enterprise, it is, and has been, rather a labor of deeply felt need.
Cockneys are becoming a dying breed in one east London borough, according to a new BBC documentary.
The film, the Last Whites of the East End, claims that white British people are leaving the borough in such numbers that 73 per cent of the local population is now made up of black and minority ethnic people.
The borough, in the shadow of the Olympic Park was historically almost all white working class, home mostly to dockworkers who moved in during the 1800s.
However, according to the documentary, more than half of the white population has left Newham in the past 15 years alone, resettling in places like Essex.
While in the same period, seventy thousand immigrants have moved into the borough, meaning it now has the lowest percentage of white British residents of anywhere in London.
Newham is now the most multicultural place in the UK, with 147 languages spoken across the borough.
One man says in the documentary: “It’s hard to find somebody who speaks English in Newham.
“We’ve always been a country where immigration plays a part, but not on the scale you find now.
“You go from Aldgate to Barking and there is very few English people left.”
Of course, none of the coverage is untainted by pee-cee. Even Breitbart London can’t put aside its Jewish outlook long enough to speak truthfully. It presents the tragedy of English race-replacement as an issue involving the cultural switch of the East End’s cockneys for Muslims.
The source of the story being the BBC, the broad media also retail the usual deceptions about integration and the “positives” of racially alien immigration. But today several million English people who don’t have to live with the consequences of race-replacement have had some truth, at least, served up to them. It’s an advance on the usual blanket omerta or downright lies.
Now we await the story being picked up tomorrow by the “broadsheet” feature writers and treated with searching, intellectual honesty. It’s long overdue - three years, in fact, since the last pro-white MSM piece. Perhaps Trevor Phillips’ recent adumbrations will give them some courage and motivation.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan called last year for the “conquest” of Europe by Islam “through emigration” into Europe and announced that the “conquest is to have the courage, tenacity, and sagacity to defy the entire world even at the hardest times.”
The speech, delivered in Istanbul on May 30, 2015, at a public meeting celebrating the 562nd anniversary of the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire’s Muslim armies, has just been translated into English for the first time.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his hijab-wearing wife, photographed at the 562nd anniversary of the fall of Constantinople to the Muslim armies.
The translation, made by a Turkish journalist now living in Washington DC, was published by the Gatestone Institute, a Jewish neocon “think thank” based in New York, which specializes in anti-Muslim propaganda in support of Israel.
This fact aside, the translation of Erdogan’s speech is of great importance to anyone wishing to understand Turkey’s intentions in Europe—and of the critical dangers which admitting that nation holds for the future of European civilization.
“The conquest is Hijrah [expansion of Islam through emigration, following the example of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and his followers from Mecca to Medina]. The conquest is Mecca. It is to cleanse the Kaaba, the house of Allah on earth, of all the icons. The conquest is Jerusalem. It is when the prophet Omar stamped the seal of Islam on Al-Aqsa Mosque, our first Qibla [the direction to face when a Muslim prays during the five times daily prayers] while respecting all faiths including [those of] Christians and Jews.
“The conquest is Al-Andalus [Muslim Spain]. It is to build the most beautiful architecture, literature, and culture of the world such as in Córdoba and Granada.
“The conquest is Samarkand [a city in present-day Uzbekistan and once a capital of the ancient Sogdian civilization whose main religion was Zoroastrianism].
“The conquest is Bukhara [also in present-day Uzbekistan. It was a diverse city with Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Jewish, and Nestorian Christian communities]. It is to establish one of the greatest civilizations of history in the steppes of Central Asia.
“The conquest is Salah al-Din al-Ayubbi [Saladin, who in 1187 invaded Jerusalem]. It is to hoist the flag of Islam in Jerusalem again.
“The conquest is Alp Arslan [the second Sultan of the medieval Muslim Seljuk Empire, who conquered Anatolia].
“The conquest is to open the doors of Anatolia up to Vienna for this blessed nation. The conquest is Osman Ghazi [the first Ottoman Sultan]. It is to make the sycamore [the Ottoman Empire] meet with the ground that would cover three continents and seven climates through the enlightenment inspired by Sheikh Edebali who said, ‘Make the human live so that the state can live.’
“The conquest is preparation. The conquest is when the Sultan Murad II abdicated the throne to his 12-year-old son, Mehmed II. And of course, the conquest is the Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror. It is, at age 21, to embrace Istanbul, the most favorite city of the world, after destroying the millennial Byzantium.
“Mehmed the Conqueror conquered Istanbul in 1453. But the conquests always continued before and after that. They continued with Sultan Selim I the Grim, Sultan Suleiman the Lawgiver, Sultan Murad IV, and Sultan Abdul Hamid II.
“The conquest is to have the courage, tenacity, and sagacity to defy the entire world even at the hardest times.
“The conquest is 1994 [when Erdogan was elected mayor of Istanbul]. It is to serve Istanbul and the legacy of the Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror. The conquest is to make Turkey stand up on its feet again.”
The crowd shouted, “Here is the army; here is the commander.”
Erdogan could not have made his position any clearer: he seeks the reestablishment of the Ottoman Empire and the expansion of Islam back to the borders reached by the Muslim invasion of Europe.
This includes all of Spain and Portugal, and the Balkan states, reaching all the way back to Vienna—where the Ottomans were only halted in the great battle of 1683.
Erdogan’s unguarded remarks—made at an event celebrating a major European defeat at the hands of Islam—reveal his—and Turkey’s—true intentions with regard to Europe.
There cannot be any doubt that Turkish admission to the EU will open the borders to Europe to the millions of Turks who still fanatically believe in the reconquest of the former lands of the Ottoman Empire—and the Islamification of Europe.
Today’s “Victory Day” parade in Moscow is an exercise in hypocrisy—because it ignores the fact that the Soviet Union was allied to the Nazis for nearly two years of World War II—and invaded five neighboring states itself before the war with Germany broke out.
The Russian “celebrations” ignore the fact that the Soviet Union helped Nazi Germany with the invasion of Poland in 1939, invaded Finland in November 1939, and invaded Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in June 1940.
The Soviet invasion of Poland started without a formal declaration of war on September 17, 1939. The invasion took place in line with a treaty between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, signed by Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop on August 23, 1939.
The agreement—known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, contained a public and a secret clause.
The public clause was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union—but the secret clause, never made public until 1946, contained an agreement to divide the territories of Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland into German and Soviet “spheres of influence,” anticipating potential “territorial and political rearrangements” of these countries.
Stalin and Ribbentrop after the signing of the Soviet–Nazi German pact. August 23, 1939.
The last page of the Additional Secret Protocol, bearing Ribbentrop’s and Molotov’s signature, dealing with the division of Poland and other Eastern European nations between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
It was on this basis that the Soviet Union invaded Poland on September 17, 1939—sixteen days after the Nazi invasion—and ended up occupying the eastern part of the Polish state.
The Western Allies—so quick to declare war on Nazi Germany for invading Poland—simply ignored the Soviet Union’s invasion of Poland. Soviet and German soldiers in Lublin, Poland, 1939.
German and Soviet soldiers meet in jointly occupied Brest. German and Soviet officers shaking hands following the invasion of Poland by the Soviet Union.
Soviet parade in Lviv, 1939. At the joint victory parade held by the Wehrmacht and Red Army in Brest, September 22, 1939, at the end of the invasion of Poland.At the center Major General Heinz Guderian and Soviet Brigadier Semyon Krivoshein.
Video below: Wehrmacht and Red army parade, Brest, Poland, September 22, 1939:
The only memorable public comment on the double invasion of Poland was a cartoon by David Low which appeared in a British newspaper, showing Hitler and Stalin greeting each other over the corpse of Poland
The German copy of the secret clause was discovered after the war, and first published in the United States by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on May 22, 1946, and in Britain by the Manchester Guardian.
It was also part of an official US State Department publication, Nazi–Soviet Relations 1939–1941, published in January 1948.
Despite this, it remained the official policy of the Soviet Union to deny the existence of the secret clause. It was only acknowledged as a fact in 1989, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and was finally published in its Russian format in 1992.
Putin even went on to question the existence of the secret clause, saying that “people still argue about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.”
The invasion of Poland was only the first Soviet military aggression of World War II.
In September and October 1939, the Soviet Union compelled the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to agree to “mutual assistance pacts” which allowed for the establishment of Soviet military bases in those countries.
On June 15, 1940, while the Western Allies were distracted by the German offensive against France, the Soviet Union militarily occupied Lithuania.
The next day, Latvia and Estonia also received Soviet ultimatums, which were quickly followed by military occupation.
Lithuania was formally incorporated into the Soviet Union on August 3, Latvia on August 5, and Estonia on August 6. The deposed presidents of Estonia (Konstantin Päts) and Latvia (Karlis Ulmanis) were imprisoned and deported to the USSR and died later in Soviet gulags.
While all this was going on, the Soviet Union also invaded the neutral nation of Finland on November 30, 1939.
This time, there was at least some half-hearted international reaction: the League of Nations passed a resolution condemning the invasion as illegal, and the Soviet Union was expelled from the League on December 14, 1939.
Red Army soldiers display a captured Finnish state flag, 1940.
Initially, the invasion went poorly, and the Finnish army held the Soviet offensive at the border. However, a renewed attack forced the Finns to capitulate in March 1940.
In terms of that treaty, Finland ceded 11 percent of its surface area—and 30 percent of its economy—to the Soviet Union.
Soviet Tupolev SB bombers above Helsinki November 30, 1939.
It was during the Soviet invasion of Finland that the term “Molotov cocktail” was coined. The improvised gasoline “bomb,” usually just a glass bottle, was given its name as an insulting reference to Soviet foreign minister Molotov, who was responsible for the setting of “spheres of interest” in Eastern Europe under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
Molotov had earlier declared on Soviet state radio that Soviet air force’s bombing missions over Finland were actually “airborne humanitarian food deliveries for their starving neighbors.”
As a result, the Finns dubbed the Soviet bombs as “Molotov bread baskets”—and when the hand-held bottle firebomb was developed to attack Soviet tanks, the Finns called it the “Molotov cocktail” as “a drink to go with the food.”
The Nazi-Soviet pact lasted until June 22, 1941, when Hitler launched the invasion of the Soviet Union. That invasion, as is well known, ended in catastrophe for Germany.
Nonetheless, the fact that the Soviet Union was an official ally—and an aggressive invader of five neutral neighbors during the first stage of the Second World War, makes the Russian “Victory Day” parades hollow and hypocritical.
If Russia—or the West, for that matter—were sincere in celebrating the end of the tragic conflict known as the Second World War, they would give equal prominence to the Soviet Union’s role in fermenting that conflict.
But, because the controlled media and the establishment have made an art out of double standards and hypocrisy, the focus remains solely on Germany—and ignores the crimes of communism.
Some people don’t understand the great appeal of sports fanship to males in particular. But in the topsy-turvey of modernity in particular, when tribal affinity is disallowed as a barometer and all else seems to be so unfair - a rigged deck that females don’t tend to care about because it is rigged largely in their favor, sports, the historically coherent and statistically objective, verifiable comfort, persists - particularly when your guys, guys that you can identify with as being not very different from you have proven their objective merit despite rigorous competition.
See? We know that the way of life that we produce is fine enough, if not better, though it is sometimes hard to prove our part in an instant or episode - still, we appreciate the capacity for vicarious identity also because we do not normally have the opportunity for the exhilarating display of taking it to them in instantaneous and episodic action. Still, we can even out-manifest them in an instant and episodically, if not vicariously ..it can be proven ..on balance ..sometimes.. on balance…depending on the sport ..and other things.. oops ..its not so reliably objective… can have an anesthetizing, intoxicating effect ..not a comfort conducive to our interests after all.
Never really was. As disingenuously imposed objective criteria, it was counter productive illusion leading to the phenomenon of White fan cuckoldry. Inadvertently, however, Bonds using steroids to shatter Ruth’s slugging marks did a favor by rendering the crowning criteria of sports statistics, for Americans, anyway, the homerun, 60, 714, 755, whatever, so relative, so corrupted as to be unworthy of admiration.
That may seem obvious to the girls out there, but to the young boys who are looking for a reprieve from their shit tests, sports statistics have provided recourse more than vicarious identity, but assertion of heterosexual identity and indication that one is not shirking competitive proofs, even while not actively in the hunt - attending to the serous, manly criteria of purely objective measures nevertheless.
Any sensible boy who looks at baseball stats now should face the facts, that the criteria of measure of who his heterosexual identity is constructed with needs to take into account, or should take into account, his people, including particularly noting difference from the criteria that females may have regarding selection for our fitness or rejection of our non-fitness; and, in turn, rejection of their criteria when it is not adaptive to the fitness of our kind.
Though most of us White boys put a mental asterisk by Hank Aaron’s record breaking 715 (in 1974) and new record setting of 755, to note that he accumulated the number in many more games than Ruth, the record and baseball nevertheless lost much of our identification as blacks started to become emblematic among its leaders.
In different times:
“Say it ain’t so, Joe” was the cry for Joe Jackson to defend himself against unfairly puritanical standards to protect baseball’s criteria.
Country bumpkin, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, was one of the greatest hitters of the early part of last century. He was banned from baseball by the baseball commissioner for allegedly being part of the “Blacksox scandal”, in which the Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 World Series in a deal with Jewish Mobster Arnold Rothstein.
Though some of his teammates almost assuredly did throw the series, Jackson’s statistics illustrate that he played hard and well - that he was not a part of throwing the series. But such were the times and such was the concern for the integrity of the game, its statistics and objective criteria - that his merely being associated with players who would cheat was enough to get him unjustly banned from baseball.
Crucially, the game maintained integrity as a White criteria until integration started with Saint Jackie Robinson a little after World War II. The game’s integrity predictably degenerated in a myriad of nasty ways after that. Statistical degeneration culminated with Barry Bonds, who, incensed that “White boy” Mark McGwire had used steroids to hit 70 home runs in a season and shatter Babe Ruth’s one time single season record of 60, went onto a steroids program himself; to not only hit 73 in a season, but to break Babe Ruth‘s single season slugging percentage record and the sine qua non, to become the all time home run king, surpassing Ruth’s legendary mark of 714, for an altogether new, steroid enhanced bar at 762.
Conscientious, talented but troubled Croatian, Roger Maras, compared to Mark McRoids
There was some public shaming; but not so much as an asterisk by the roiders statistical record breaking marks. Its worth mentioning since there was large consternation for Roger Maris - first one to break Babe Ruth’s single season record with 61 in 1961 - meeting resistance for recognition as the record bearer by his generation’s baseball commissioner, who suggested that his new single season record should have an asterisk by it because he did it in 162 games while Ruth did it in 154. That’s how concerned American boys and their fathers were about maintaining the game’s objectivity (and how concerned the commissioner was, who also happened to be Babe Ruth’s biographer).
Now Barry Bonds does steroids, a more destructive example to kids and greater detriment to the game’s objectivity even than gambling against one’s own team, let alone merely being on the same team as others who did it, and Bonds doesn’t get so much as the asterisk that Maris was threatened with, let alone banishment from the game - as he should have been and as Shoeless Joe Jackson should not have been - “Say it ain’t so Joe” was the saying in 1919 when Joe Jackson was accused of participating in throwing the world series. Jackson did maintain his innocence, said it wasn’t so; and his world series statistics in 1919 bear that out.
Babe Ruth taking batting tips from Joe Jackson, the man he modeled his hitting style after because he considered him the best.
So much the standard bearer of the game’s style and grace was Joe Jackson, that Babe Ruth, the all time statistical king and most famous baseball player of all, stated that he modeled his swing after Joe Jackson, because he thought he was the best hitter that he’d ever seen.
I believe that it wasn’t so, Joe, that you should have been banned; but that it is so, Barry, that the way you accomplished your record should have little boys forever look upon baseball statistics, let alone salaries, as sham objective metric of worth, no comfort and no measure worth concern for White men.
Ty Cobb, the all time Batting Average leader at .367, was concerned not only for the integrity of the game and its statistics - lamenting that Ruth had made “the home run king and strategy a deuce” - but for its racial hygiene as well: he referred to Ruth as “that nigger” and “nigger lips” (to say nothing of Ruth’s nose). In truth, he liked Ruth and would let him, his nose and lips slide. However, he did correctly want to maintain the game as a criteria to assess baseball skills relative to Whites and their way of life.
An article about Malia Obama’s choice of college garnered racially charged reader comments on Fox News.
FILE- In this April 8, 2016, file photo, President Barack Obama and his daughter Malia walk from Marine One toward Air Force One at Los Angeles International Airport. Malia is taking a year off after graduating from high school before attending Harvard University as part of an expanding program for students known as a “gap year.” (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)(Credit: AP)
After posting a news story about Malia Obama’s decision to take a gap year before beginning Harvard, Fox News was forced to remove the comment section from the article, after an avalanche of racism by readers, according to reverbpress.
Although the comments are now hidden, Addicting Info managed to take several screenshots of the hatefulness posted some on the news site. Typos and grammatical errors have been included as per the original:
I wonder if she applied as a muDslime..or a foreign student..or just a N—–
According to the screenshot, this comment garnered the most likes from other users, managing to combine three different groups of people into one racist sentence.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 09 April 2016 09:21.
Pardon the source, but this article not only well explains the draconian anti-abortion law that Poland’s PiS party is set to pass, but also prompts the question as to what other insane laws the new Polish government will institute.
An additional danger for White Nationalists is to be anticipated by Jewish commandeering of the inevitable popular backlash.
Poland’s Catholic Church and conservative government may have figured a draconian new “pro-life” law would have general acceptance. They were wrong.
When Catholic priests issued decrees during morning mass last Sunday calling for the country to institute a complete ban on abortions, Poland erupted in protests. The initiative was not unexpected, but the surge of opposition caught many by surprise as men and women took to the streets waving wire coat hangers, symbols of the deadly “back room” abortions that take place when all legal means to terminate a pregnancy are exhausted.
The purpose of the priests’ coordinated speeches was to launch a petition and gather churchgoers’ signatures that could then be used to begin a legislative campaign in the country’s parliament, the Sejm. A “pro-life” organization called Fundacja Pro quickly gathered the required 1,000 signatures. But when the group made its intentions known during the course of the previous week, many Poles started organizing opposition on Facebook.
In just two days, they drew together over 65,000 concerned activists and laid the groundwork for Sunday’s protests, but stopping the momentum of the draconian legislation is going to be a long, tough fight.
Current law in Poland allows abortions only in three drastic situations: when the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest; when the life of the pregnant woman is in danger; or when the fetus is severely damaged. This is already one of the most restrictive abortion laws in all of Europe, forcing many women to seek out underground abortions or travel outside of Poland to countries like Slovakia. But in the eyes of Poland’s Catholic Church, this policy is too lackadaisical.
The draft of the new legislation was written by an organization called Ordo Iuris (Rule of Law), whose stated aim is to “promote a legal culture based on respect for human dignity and rights.” The draft was promptly endorsed by the Polish Episcopal Conference, which acts as the central organ of the Catholic Church in Poland. The conference’s widely disseminated notice on the new law explained that it supports it because the 5th Commandment specifically states “Thou shalt not kill,” and thus life must be protected from beginning—from the moment the sperm fertilizes the egg—to its natural end.
The wording of the law itself is simple but the implications are sweeping: “Every human being has the inherent right to life from the moment of conception,” reads its article I. “The life and health of the child from conception remain under protection of the law.”
On April 4, the Polish television network TVN reported that the law would lead to prison terms of up to three years for causing the death of a child once conceived. The same would apply to anyone who assists with or encourages the termination.
Critics looking at the possible legal ramifications were appalled. Pawel Kalisz of the Polish website Natemat wrote that the wording of the law could include as accomplices the woman or girl’s doctor; the friend driving her to the clinic; the dad who wrote her the sick note for the day off from school; the friend who brought her medication from abroad. Everyone.
Others noted that, in theory at least, rape survivors and children will be forced to give birth; women who might die due to their pregnancy will have no way to terminate it legally; a miscarriage might be punished with a sentence, as fetal murder will enter the criminal code;
Also, the state will have the right to bypass a person’s constitutional rights in order to protect unborn children; since prenatal testing is connected to a very small risk of miscarriage, it will be banned and doctors performing it might face criminal charges; and the morning-after pill will be categorized as an early abortion tool and thus completely banned (as will IUDs).
As one protester pointed out as well, women who discovered early on that their fetus had zero chance of surviving the pregnancy would be forced to live with the misery of carrying the baby for months and months until the inevitable conclusion.
The punishment would escalate to up to eight years of jail time for abortions undertaken without the consent of the woman. Furthermore, prison sentences of up to 10 years would be on the table for abortions undertaken while the fetus has the capacity for life outside the womb.
There are some loopholes, but they are narrow and unreliable. The draft law would not make it a crime for a doctor to end the life of a conceived child during the course of a procedure essential to saving the life of the mother. Furthermore, in exceptional cases the court would be able to reduce the jail sentence of a mother who had deliberately caused the death of a conceived child, or waive it altogether.
Although Polish values generally are Catholic and conservative, many Poles marched out of mass on Sunday in disgust when priests read the decree. A video of a woman openly admonishing her pastor went viral across the country. In it, the priest interrupts the woman’s tirade to ask if she has finished with her “political statement.” The irony of this remark was not lost on social media users, with one woman commenting, “Well, yes, because in church, political statements can only be made from the priest’s pulpit.”
The country’s right-wing media, meanwhile, called these protests a provocation against the state.
Although, formally, nothing has yet been codified, the wheels of change have been put into motion says Polish journalist Michał Szułdrzyński. “Now that Fundacja Pro have done their initial signature gathering, they will take it to the Sejm, which will verify the 1,000 signatures and then give the group three months to collect another 100,000 signatures. If successful, this next step would force the Sejm into taking a serious look.”
That’s not nearly as difficult as it sounds.
In 2011, a civic initiative to ban abortion gathered nearly 500,000 signatures and was introduced into the Sejm. At that time however, the lower house was run by the more left-leaning Civic Platform, which rejected the idea. When it was put to a vote, the more liberal Civic Platform party held 208 seats while Law and Justice (known by its Polish acronym PiS) controlled 157. The result of the vote was 178 for and 206 against.
Now, however, the PiS controls 235 seats against the Civic Platform party’s 157, and has embarked on a systematic campaign to stifle and marginalize opposition. PiS could pass the bill on its own, and it’s also got a parliamentary ally, with the third biggest party Kukiz’15, run by musician turned right-wing populist Pawel Kukiz. The Kukiz party holds 40 seats in Sejm, and its leader has also been an outspoken opponent of abortion in the past. With these numbers, the bill will almost assuredly pass.
All of this poses a very real and terrifying prospect for women across the country who fear that the coat hangers they’ve been holding as symbols of resistance might soon become their only recourse against unwanted and unsafe births.
When asked why he believes this is happening again, Szułdrzyński says it’s quite simple. “In the opinion of the Catholic Church abortion is wrong in every circumstance and they feel that as a Catholic country, Poland should pass a law to reflect the church’s position.”
Earlier in the week, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo was asked on public radio what she thought about this issue, and she said that as a Catholic she supports the proposal. Her remarks sparked outrage and she has now backtracked a bit to say that she was merely giving her opinion as a private person and not making a statement as prime minister.
Her flip-flop sparked ridicule online, with many women questioning why the PM was so personally interested in the wombs of Polish women. Several went on Szydlo’s Facebook page. One, Malina Prześluga-Delimata, decided to notify her, sarcastically, that she wasn’t pregnant: “Madam Beato, I write to inform you that my cycle runs fine. I received my period on time (the cycle lasts 31 days).” She went on to thank the PM for being so interested in her and in her reproductive potential. “It is fantastic to know that for the moment I will be able to shift responsibility for my breeding to someone else. I will keep you up to date.”
The greatest display of anger, however, was on Poland’s streets, in what might be called the coat hanger rebellion.
Szułdrzyński believes that the ruling PiS party was caught off guard by the backlash. “This has driven great controversy because if you look at recent polls, although most people are against abortion, the overwhelming majority supports the three exceptions as they stand now,” he said.
Here is the organization behind this. Aren’t Abrahamic religions so nice? If some Arab or African converts to Catholicism, he can rape your daughter, be forgiven in confessional, while she is forced to bear the beast soon to be baptized into your biological people’s replacement.
