Author: Alerts CC

France may have just celebrated its 226th anniversary of independence this past July, but the latest scandal surrounding Marine Le Pen, the president of the country’s conservative Front National party (FN), has made it clear that not every French citizen is treated fairly and respectfully.

Le Pen has been accused of spewing racial slurs at a party rally held in Lyon back in 2010. According to The Guardian and the International Business Times, she compared Muslims praying in the street to the Nazi occupation of France in the 1940s.

She had been campaigning to be elected as FN Party President when she mentioned that the number of Muslims praying in the streets of major French cities began increasing as a result of too few mosques in the country.

“I’m sorry, but for those who like talking a lot about World War II, if it comes to talking about the [Nazi] occupation, we can talk about it, because that [Muslims praying in the street] is the occupation of territory,” Le Pen told the crowd gathered in Lyon. “”It is an occupation of part of the territory, suburbs where religious law is applied. Sure, there are no armoured vehicles, no soldiers, but it is an occupation nonetheless and it weighs on residents.”

The French government later made the practice of “street praying” illegal, and Le Pen may have made the remarks five years ago, but the country certainly hasn’t forgotten about it.

According to Yahoo! News, a complaint was registered against Le Pen after her remarks in Lyon. She was investigated for “inciting racial hatred” after French citizens responded to her Islamophobic comments with outrage. The investigation seems to have been dropped without any apparent verdict or explanation, but it was reopened in 2012 after another complaint was filed against Le Pen.

She was recently summoned on Sept. 22 to appear in court and address the allegations and, to use Le Pen’s own words regarding the impending October court summons, “Of course, [she’s] not going to miss such an occasion.”

Le Pen currently heads the far-right leaning FN party — in fact, she ended up winning that election back in 2010 and she succeeded her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2011. Many have speculated that Le Pen’s racist sentiments were instilled by her father, who ironically was prosecuted for Holocaust denial — under the very same restricting legislation on free speech — after he stated that the Nazi gas chambers were just a minor “detail” of the second World War.

The FN party is notorious for its anti-immigrant stance, but it has begun to gain more support from French citizens who are becoming increasingly frustrated with the Socialist Party’s blasé response to the current refugee crisis in Europe.

As an invisible illness, electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) is becoming a bigger issue in today’s society. It doesn’t just stop at headaches — in fact, it goes a lot further.

Journalist Mark White from Stuff.co.nz recently spent a day with Bruce Evans, who is likely the last man one would think suffers from this syndrome by looking at him. He is a 50-year-old web designer and former Australian Army commando, and he has electromagnetic hypersensitivity.

In the world today, we live in a society drowning in technology, which leaves those with the syndrome little-to-no places to hide. The syndrome itself is controversial, only partially recognized by the medical community and still not recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO). It is caused by electromagnetic fields (EMF), which are emitted by power lines, cell phones, laptops, wireless routers and the like.

The symptoms of this disease have a wide range — from small headaches to nausea, migraines, fatigue, tingles, and heart palpitations. Basically, EHS puts a large mental strain on anyone affected by it. This stems from both the actual symptoms of the syndrome and the idea that they are faking it.

The syndrome is controversial because the frequencies at which people are affected tend to be well below what is considered even slightly dangerous. It’s a case where most don’t understand, so it’s written off.

Yet a recent study pointed out that chronic EMF exposure causes cells to experience physiological stress after just 1.5 years of exposure, and in today’s world, it’s impossible to not have chronic EMF exposure.
However, a WHO fact sheet still denies its existence. “The collection of symptoms,” says the organization, “is not part of any recognised syndrome.”

In fact, the WHO says that these issues can be classified with other issues already recognized by the organization — Idiopathic Environmental Intolerance (IEI) and multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS) both closely resemble EHS, according to their fact sheet on electromagnetic sensitivity.

The issue, Evans says, is that many sufferers are made to feel silly, or like refugees within their own countries. They often have to move around a lot to find places where they won’t be as affected.

Evans says that his vision for the future is one where there is a community, set away from EMF zones, for sufferers to come to for sanctuary. With a handful of people around the world wishing for the same thing, his dream may take shape soon.