Amsterdam attempting to reverse course
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Amsterdam mayor pushes for ban on marijuana-loving tourists
visiting coffee shops
8 Jan 2021 17:45
A coffee shop is seen in the red light district of Amsterdam. © Reuters / Yves Herman
Tourists could soon be barred from Amsterdam’s famous cannabis-dealing coffee shops as Mayor Femke Halsema, continues her battle to rid the city of its image as a drug and prostitution haven.
The patronage of coffee shops would be limited to Dutch residents only, according to the plan submitted by Halsema to Amsterdam’s city council on Friday.
“The residence condition is far-reaching, but I see no alternative,” the mayor told Bloomberg in an email. The move is aimed at tackling organized crime and hard drugs attracted by the marijuana trade, she pointed out.
“The cannabis market is too big and overheated. I want to shrink the cannabis market and make it manageable,” Halsema said.
The ban on foreigners is going to be a heavy blow for the industry, with the city head acknowledging that “coffee shops, especially in the center, largely run on tourists.”
There are currently some 166 coffee shops in Amsterdam, with a government survey finding that just 68 would suffice for satisfying the local demand in marijuana.
Halsema’s plan will now be debated in the council, with a transition deal with shop owners also on the agenda.
“We can be an open, hospitable and tolerant city, but also a city that makes life difficult for criminals and slows down mass tourism,” the mayor said, adding that she expects the restrictions to take effect next year at the earliest.
Before the pandemic put a serious damper on international travel, Amsterdam was often overwhelmed by tourists, with the city accepting around a million guests every month – about a fifth more than its permanent population. Visitors were drawn not just for the canals and museums, but also for accessible drugs and sex services in the Red-Light District.
Earlier this year, the mayor announced she would ban the display of prostitutes in brothel windows, saying that the practice was “humiliating” to women. In 2018, authorities also introduced on-the-spot fines for public urination, littering and other offences committed by tourists in the Red-Light District.
No place for truth or common sense on the road to Sodom. But as more people begin to speak out against the #PCMadness of gender fluidity, could we possibly walk-back some of the insanity?
UK professor who received OBE refuses to bend the knee after 600 academics sign letter denouncing her ‘transphobic’ views
8 Jan 2021 14:10
A philosophy professor who was honoured by the British government for her advocacy for academic freedom has scoffed at her critics after being targeted by an open letter accusing her of transphobia.
Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her services to higher education as part of the UK government’s annual ‘New Year Honours’.
The citation for the award commended her for her “defense of free speech” and commitment to academic freedom.
In 2018 she said in an interview that trans women should not be allowed in female bathrooms and other gender-specific areas, noting that many of them are “still males with male genitalia” and are “sexually attracted to females.”
However, she insisted that she was not transphobic and stressed that trans women should be “free of violence and discrimination.”
More recently, the philosophy professor has criticised how transgender issues are discussed in academia. She said that she wanted to use her OBE award to highlight how LGBT charity Stonewall is a threat to freedom of speech and that the organisation had partnered with universities to silence open debate about trans issues.
Most UK Universities are Stonewall Diversity Champions.
Translation: effectively they’re now trans activist institutions.
This significantly limits free thought and free speech of gender-critical academics.
Kathleen Stock
Stonewall Diversity Champions
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it wasn’t long before Stock found herself in the crosshairs of transgender activists. In an open letter signed by over 600 academics, the professor was denounced for her “trans-exclusionary public and academic discourse on sex and gender.” The document went on to accuse the British government of “mistak[ing] transphobic fearmongering for valuable scholarship” and stressed that the signatories “stand against prominent members of our profession using their academic status to further gender oppression.”
The letter has received support from around the world, with the original signatories hailing from a range of prestigious institutions, including the London School of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Georgetown University.
In a series of tweets, Stock shrugged off the academic protest and vowed to never stop challenging the central tenets of trans activism.
“I won't be stopping, and neither will the thousands of others who are now galvanising to examine the cost of pretending – not just at an understandable personal level, but also at an institutional and policy and educational level – that people can change sex,” she wrote.
Stock also pointed out that the letter actually misrepresented her position on the Gender Recognition Act. The letter’s authors later acknowledged the error.
The professor is hardly the first public intellectual to take heat from academics for her unpopular views on trans issues. In November, Grace Lavery, an associate professor of English at UC Berkeley, encouraged her Twitter followers to steal and burn copies of ‘Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters’ by Abigail Shrier. The book has faced censorship and has been branded transphobic for its opposition to transgender treatment for young girls. Lavery, who admitted that she’s never actually read the book, later insisted that she was joking.
Sussex, UK
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