Sophie Koch’s Facebook banner Photo: Sophie Koch on Facebook, 16 June 2023
Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has once again disappointed conservative voters—this time by appointing a radical-left activist from the SPD as the government’s new “Queer Commissioner,” in a move critics are calling a gift to the woke wing of German politics.
Sophie Koch, 31, replaces Green politician Sven Lehmann in the post, but instead of downsizing the role or scrapping it altogether, Merz has expanded it—creating a new, additional post within his government. The CDU leader who once vowed to bring order to immigration policy and push back against progressive excess has instead handed more power to someone known for insulting his own party and promoting extremist slogans.
Koch, who until recently worked for a taxpayer-funded LGBT NGO in Saxony, has made headlines for openly mocking the CDU and celebrating their declining support in eastern Germany. “Never again CDU,” she beamed in a now-viral video, reacting to falling poll numbers for the party in Saxony. She has also accused the CDU of abandoning “the democratic centre” over migration policy.
Her social media goes further still: her Facebook profile displays the far-left slogan “Antifascism is manual work,” widely understood in Germany as a veiled call to violence against right-leaning opponents. The quote appears with an image of crochet work—an apparent attempt to soften its tone.
Koch has also declared she will not engage with AfD members in the Bundestag, telling a youth publication: “I don’t shake hands with the Nazis of the AfD.”
All this makes her appointment not only a baffling decision for a supposedly centre-right government—but yet another example of Merz bending to the cultural agenda of the Left. It follows a string of betrayals on migration, where Merz backtracked on a promised “de facto entry ban” and now aims merely to reduce asylum numbers below 100,000, far above levels many voters find acceptable.
Despite serious recent crimes committed by failed asylum seekers—including the murders of a toddler and a police officer—Merz has refused to cooperate with the anti-immigration AfD, even as his own policies were originally closer to theirs—in rhetoric, at least.
In appointing Koch, Merz has shown once again that he would rather win applause from Germany’s activist class than deliver the conservative course correction voters were promised.
Areas of Britain face running out of drinking water within ten years due to mass immigration, ministers have warned.
The Government has admitted that rapid population growth, crumbling infrastructure and climate pressure are pushing the country towards a water supply crisis.
Defra Minister Emma Hardy said: “Britain is running out of drinking water.
“In fact, because of years of underinvestment under the Conservatives, areas of the country will run out of drinking water by the middle of the next decade.”
Fears over shortages have forced Environment Secretary Steve Reed to seize control of the planning system and force through two new giant reservoirs.
The emergency projects in East Anglia and Lincolnshire have been declared “nationally significant”, and local authorities have been stripped of the power to stop them.
New laws will also fast-track all future reservoirs as the Government pushes to secure a stable supply of water.
Hardy said the Government is “taking these unprecedented steps to get reservoirs built and secure our drinking water supplies for the decades to come.”
The Lincolnshire reservoir, south of Sleaford, will pump out 166 million litres a day, enough for 500,000 homes or 664 million cups of tea.
The Fens reservoir, near Chatteris and March in Cambridgeshire, will supply 87 million litres to 250,000 homes in Britain’s driest region.
Both projects are entering consultation.
Lincolnshire’s reservoir is expected to be completed by 2040 and Cambridgeshire’s by 2036.
The two new reservoirs are part of a wider plan to create nine new sites, supplying an extra 670 million litres of water a day across England.
But Shadow Environment Secretary Victoria Atkins accused Labour of using the reservoirs to cover up its “failures” on migration and farming.
“With Labour’s shambolic farming policy and failure to grip immigration, it’s no wonder they’re making a panicked announcement about water supplies running low,” Atkins blasted.
It’s that time of the month again. A time when public officials the world over hop on their Zoom calls at a local office building to discuss how to cut back to save the planet. Just kidding, they’re all flying to the French Riviera instead.
The nobility. The sacrifice. The hypocrisy.
The third U.N. Ocean Conference aims to unite governments, scientists, businesses and civil society to take action and raise money to address these and other crises facing the oceans and the people who rely on them for their survival.
So lobster is on the menu?
Conference Secretary-General Li Junhua told reporters on Tuesday he hopes it will not be another routine meeting but “the pivotal opportunity” to accelerate action and mobilize people in all sectors and across the world.
Li is the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of China to Italy. China is primarily noted for its environmentalism. It recycles political prisoners after and sometimes before it kills them.
Also, its dams are the single biggest environmental disaster since Chernobyl because Communists really kill the whole environment thing.
The conference, co-sponsored by France and Costa Rica, takes place in Nice on the French Riviera from June 7 to June 13. It is expected to bring together more than 60 world leaders, dozens of ministers, about 4,000 government officials and 6,000 members of civil society, Li told The Associated Press.
So 10,000 officials and other useless people traveling to a tourism hotspot just in time for summer… to save the planet.
The latest save the planet conference will be held at the Quai Amiral Infernet which boasts “breathtaking views and a romantic atmosphere” and “authentic dining experiences” where environmentalists can enjoy “an enriching experience that captures the essence of the French Riviera.”
The good news is that moonbattery is not a sustainable ideology. Europe will be free of feminists, communists, and their woke worshipers. The bad news is that we might not like what replaces them.
The Ribera neighbourhood in Barcelona woke up with dismay [last] Thursday. The recently painted feminist mural in Carrer de la Bòria was vandalised in a way that disturbed residents. Under the motto Free, feminist and rebellious, the artist Mariel Soria had painted the portraits of eight women (including Simone de Beauvoir, Maria Aurèlia Campmany, Àngela Davis and Malala Yousafzai) together with a sentence from each of them. This morning, all the faces were covered with an Islamic veil, a niqab to be precise, which covers the entire head except for the eyes and nose, apparently painted on with spray paint.
The Catalan parliament has rejected a motion by far-right pro-independence party Aliança Catalana for a ban on the different forms of Islamic veil in public spaces.
It would take more than a ban on Islamic veils to save Spain at this point.
Spain subsisted under the heel of Islam for 800 years before kicking the colonizers out. It went on to become one of the greatest cultures in history, producing men like Hernan Cortes.
Maybe it has the character to do it again. Or maybe Spain will just die and be absorbed into the Ummah like many formerly great cultures before it.
Al carrer de la Bòria a Barcelona hi ha aquest mural d’homenatge a les dones. L’ha dibuixat i dissenyat la Mariel Soria, però en la realització hi ha treballat la gent del barri. Avui l’hem trobat vandalitzat d’aquesta manera. No calen paraules. pic.twitter.com/fEiSogeJ9y
— Manel Barceló Serrano (@serran_manel) May 22, 2025
Last week, Lucy Connolly failed in her attempt to have her 31-month sentence for inciting racial hatred overturned, following Axel Rudakubana’s senseless attack on a Taylor-Swift themed dance class in Southport on July 29, which killed three young girls.
Despite widespread support for her imprisonment among the commentariat, I believe she is a political prisoner, subjected to a two-tier justice system. She was targeted in a brutal response by the state, which, in a frantic attempt to suppress the riots and ‘far right thuggery’ that erupted in various towns and cities across England last August, aimed to set an example with her case.
When news of this shocking event broke, there was a notable lack of details. Only a small amount of information was made available to the public. With online rumours suggesting that the perpetrator was an immigrant and comments highlighting the escalating expenses of accommodating asylum seekers in hotels, Connolly, like many others, felt emotional and chose to express herself on social media. She posted a tweet to her 10,000 followers saying:
“Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government and politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it.”
The post was live for less than fours before she decided to delete it. By this point, her message had been viewed 310,000 times, re-shared by hundreds and others had taken screenshots of her message. On the August 6th, 2024, she was arrested and charged with distributing material intended to stir up racial hatred.
The tweet was posted a few hours after Rudakubana’s brutal act. At that time, the riots hadn’t started yet, and the appalling attacks on migrant hotels didn’t commence until the following weekend. However, on October 17th, Judge Melbourne Inman sentenced Connolly to 31 months for “inciting serious violence.”
During her appeal, Connolly conveyed feeling “angry, upset and distraught” over the death of young children and expressed her inability to comprehend how such a horrific event could happen. Connolly knew about the pain of losing a child as she and her husband Ray, a Conservative local councillor, had lost their 19-month-old son, Harry, in 2011. This experience had left them feeling betrayed by the systemic failings of the NHS, resulting in a deep-seated mistrust of governmental institutions. Her feelings of distress and anger were justified. For many years, numerous towns and cities that experienced riots—including Rotherham, Hull, Blackpool—were torn apart by the evil of grooming gangs. These are deprived areas that have undergone rapid demographic and cultural change, due to uncontrolled immigration.
We have all sent fired-up messages when feeling annoyed and frustrated, only later to realise they might have been excessive. For example, during the appeal, she admitted, “I’d calmed down—I knew it wasn’t an acceptable thing to say or the right thing to say.” Though her words were harsh, that’s the nature of free expression. Freedom involves living in a world where individuals can say things that might upset you. It should go without saying but we shouldn’t imprison people for holding views that others consider offensive.
Free speech is in a terrible state in Britain. According to The Times of London, police are arresting over thirty people per day for offensive posts on social media platforms. This largely stems from section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, which criminalises the spread of “grossly offensive” messages online.
We are witnessing the anarcho-tyranny of the British state. Kurdish immigrant Brwa Shorsh received a life sentence for pushing a man in front of a moving train, even though he had previously been convicted twelve times for twenty-one offences, including multiple assaults and public indecency. In Britain we often show leniency to habitual criminals, while cracking down on those who violate progressive shibboleths and our draconian speech laws. Indeed, Lucy will serve more time in prison than some individuals convicted in the Telford grooming gang scandal.
Connolly is not the only person to have been imprisoned over a trivial reason. During the riots, Peter Lynch shouted racist remarks at a protest in Rotherham that subsequently escalated into violence. The 61-year-old grandfather was sentenced to two years and eight months for violent disorder in August 2024. In October, he was found hanging in his prison cell.
I believe Connolly is imprisoned because of her political views. Both Connolly and Lynch embody an ideology, particularly nationalism, which poses a threat to the stability of elite power. It seems the state may overlook certain beliefs—Islamism, Gaza activism and radical environmentalism—while excessively policing and restricting right-wing ones. Take Adam Smith-Connor, the army veteran convicted and given a two-year suspended sentence for silently praying outside an abortion clinic in 2022. Those who speak are dealt with more heavily than those who resort to violence. For instance, when Mike Amesbury, a Labour politician, was caught on camera punching a constituent, he was given a ten-week suspended sentence.
In an era when we are releasing prisoners because of extreme overcrowding, including those guilty of serious violent offences, this is shameful. That a 42-year-old mother has been jailed for the crime of typing a foolish and remorseful post is a condemnation of our ideologically-biased, hypocritical legal system. As of now, Connolly has spent 288 days unable to be with her husband and 12-year-old daughter. That is the real crime.
The German train network, Deutsche Bahn, is investigating allegations of racism after a train employee allegedly insulted passengers over an intercom during a stop. Reportedly, a group of people were blocking the doors, thus preventing the train from moving.
The incident happened at a stop in Darmstadt on a regional express train running between Mannheim to Frankfurt.
Witnesses said they heard a number of terms, including “illiterates,” “idiot,” and the most controversial of all, “headscarf squadron,” an apparent slur against Muslims.
However, on this train, there happened to be an “anti-racism coach,” Moaad B., who took the alleged comments public on his Instagram account, according to Welt newspaper.
Deutsche Bahn released a statement saying the alleged behavior does not align with the company’s standards.
If the case turns out to be confirmed, the employee will receive the appropriate employment law consequences, according to a Deutsche Bahn spokeswoman.
The incident has sparked a national debate, with social media users warring over the details of the case.
The passenger who went public with the complaint said that the train was delayed and that people blocking the doors further delayed the train from moving on.
The details of this case remain unclear, but there is no doubt that mass immigration has made Germany’s public transport less safe, with sexual assaults and violent incidents soaring in recent years. For example, foreigners commit 59 percent of all sexual assaults in trains and train stations, with sexual crimes doubling since 2019.
As for train delays, it is unclear exactly what occurred in this incident that may have delayed the train, but Deutsche Bahn has seen the number of delays and late trains soar, reaching a record high in 2024. The train network also paid a record amount of compensation to passengers due to late trains.
Deutsche Bahn cited poor train infrastructure as the reason behind 80 percent of cases. However, other incidents, such as police operations against perpetrators, weather-related delays, and accidents, also consistently lead to late train service.
The body of a mother of nine was found in a flat in Gelsenkirchen. Her husband confesses to the murder. What he says is shocking.
The paramedics were confronted with a horrific scene: almost six months ago, the body of a mother of nine was found in a flat in Gelsenkirchen. Her skull and jaw had been shattered and her incisors had been broken out. Everything was covered in blood. Her husband has been on trial for murder since Tuesday – and blames her entirely.
‘She showed me no respect and didn’t care about me,’ said the 53-year-old Iraqi at the start of the trial at Essen’s jury court. She also contradicted him. Once she even said these words to him: ‘I can dress the way I want. I can say what I want.’ And she did not fulfil his sexual wishes either. ‘That was the greatest disrespect.’
The accused came to Germany in the summer of 2015. His wife and seven of their children followed two years later. ‘That’s when the problems started,’ says the 53-year-old. ‘She was no longer the woman I knew from Iraq.’ There were only arguments. ‘There is an exaggerated sense of freedom in Germany.’
The family lived on Bismarckstraße in Gelsenkirchen. The accused did not work. According to his own statements, he suffers from Parkinson’s disease. His wife only ever complained and reproached him for not having enough money. ‘She threw away food every day and then told me that we didn’t have enough to eat.’
It was 3 December last year when the situation finally escalated completely. The four children, who were still living in the same household at the time, had already left the flat to attend school. The 46-year-old woman then apparently lay down again.
The public prosecutor’s office assumes that she was asleep when her husband grabbed an iron bar with which he actually wanted to build a TV table. He repeatedly hit her with it – directly on the head. According to the indictment, he then took a knife and stabbed her six times – in the stomach and neck. The 46-year-old had no chance. Doctors later recorded massive blood loss and craniocerebral trauma as the cause of death.
The accused himself got into his car after the bloody deed and drove to the police to turn himself in. ‘I killed my wife.’ He is said to have said something like this at the time. The 53-year-old will not deny the offence itself in court. But that his wife was asleep.
He himself claims to have gone to a supermarket early in the morning to buy eggs, bread and cheese. However, this was not enough for his wife because there was a Yazidi holiday coming up that needed to be celebrated. She also wanted money for the hairdresser and a trip. ‘She acted as if we were billionaires,’ the defendant told the judges. Yet the family lived from money from the unemployment benefit office. ‘She suddenly started behaving like a madwoman and also insulted our religion,’ said the 53-year-old. All attempts to calm her down failed. He even hugged his wife and reassured her that they wouldn’t starve to death. ‘But then she attacked me. She was like a beast.’ In this situation, he simply couldn’t control his emotions and his whole body was shaking. ‘She hurt me deeply in my masculinity,’ he told the judges. ‘I then hit her with the iron and then did this with the knife – in self-defence.’ From his point of view, there was no other option because of his illness. ‘She was stronger than me.’
However, he did not want to kill his wife. ‘I deeply regret what happened,’ he said. His children are even said to have forgiven him in the meantime. This was learnt on the fringe of the trial.
If convicted of murder, the 53-year-old faces life imprisonment. The judgement is expected to be handed down at the end of July.
Three Norwegian men, two of whom claim to identify as transgender, have been convicted on charges relating to the ongoing sexual assault and rape of a girl while she was between the ages of 12 and 14.
In January, Damien “Damia Scarlet Rose Nesne” Baar, 43, and Even “Eevee” Seberg, 35, were charged with sexual intercourse with a child under the age of 14, and an instance of gang rape in which “the act [was] committed by several people together… in a particularly painful or particularly offensive manner.” Both men claim to be trans women, and committed the sexual abuse alongside a third man, Kenneth Langvatn Aakre.
The sexual abuse of the child first came to the attention of authorities on the night of June 3, 2024, after Aakre was seen kissing the victim on the mouth and grabbing her genital area while on public transport. Aakre and Baar had plied the victim with alcohol, and the three were leaving a Pride festival in Bergen. Charges laid in the indictment included the procurement of alcohol for a minor.
Kenneth Langvatn Aakre
Three women provided witness testimony describing seeing Aakre and Baar with the victim on the bus. One woman said she had immediately estimated her age as “no more than thirteen years old,” and when Aakre, Baar and the victim got off the bus to go to Baar’s residence – the women followed.
They eventually entered the apartment building and proceeded to knock on doors until they learned where Aakre, Baar and the victim were staying. They then called the police, and Baar led authorities to Seberg during interrogation.
According to the verdict, handed down last Wednesday at the Hordaland Court, attorneys were instructed to refer to the two trans-identified men as “women.”
“Two of the defendants, Baar and Seberg, are transgender and identify as women,” reads the judgement. “The court therefore uses the pronoun ‘she’ for Baar and Seberg.”
During a police interrogation, Baar admitted to having raped the girl “several times” on the night of May 31, 2024, when she was thirteen years old. Baar was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison, and has been ordered to pay a 350,000 Norwegian kroner ($34,600 USD) fine.
🚨EXCLUSIVE DETAILS🚨
Two trans-identified males have been charged with the repeated rape and gang rape of a young girl in Bergen, Norway.
The abuses first came to light after witnesses saw the girl be groped while leaving a Pride event.https://t.co/d4bav7cmc9
Baar appears to have been granted a degree of leniency on the basis that “the court assumes that Baar was not aware that the victim was under 14 years of age at the time of the act,” though the judgement added that it had been “proven beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant acted negligently with respect to the victim’s age.”
During questioning, Baar admitted to having had a history of abusing the victim, noting another incident of sexual abuse had taken place during a weekend in September 2023.
On June 1, 2024, Baar and the girl met Seberg in Losjehaven, where they attended the Pride Festival, before returning to Baar’s apartment. Between June 1 and 3 both men sexually abused and raped the girl on multiple occasions, with the court noting that they had used “sex toys” on the victim. Baar photographed one incident as Seberg sexually abused the child. The men then urinated on the girl while she was taking a shower.
According to the judgement, Seberg’s attempts to penetrate the girl had failed because “she [Seberg] lost her erection.” Seberg was therefore given a reduced sentence of one year and six months on the charge of aggravated sexual conduct, as attorneys had maintained that he was unable to maintain an erection when attempting to rape the young girl. He was also ordered to pay a fine of 200,00 Norwegian kroner.
While Aakre was also charged with sexual activity with a child, he has not been accused of participating in the rape or gang rape of the girl. Aakre was sentenced to sixty days imprisonment with a reduction for time detained, and was ordered to pay a fine of 30,000 Norwegian kroner.
Baar and Seberg were additionally charged and found guilty of producing images of child sexual abuse involving the victim.
—Can she really be said to have had sexual intercourse [with the child] with a penis that was not erect, and, as mentioned, she suffers from erection issues?
I attended district court yesterday in Bergen, Norway.
The case involves 3 alleged child molesters. 2 identify as women.
Hordaland court records reviewed by Reduxx state that the victim was an at-risk youth due to “life challenges,” and that the three men “exploited her vulnerable situation.” Sentencing documents further reveal that the victim had been struggling with an eating disorder and had recently been reported as missing from a child welfare institution.
Defense attorneys attempted to argue for leniency for their clients by pointing to a news report published by Reduxx in January which named the men and shared their photos. However, the court disagreed with the contention that this constituted a mitigating circumstance.
“The defense has argued that media coverage and harassment on social media should be given weight as mitigating factors. However, the court finds that the extent has been limited and largely anonymized. Although the defendants have been named in some ‘alternative’ media, this is within the scope of what might be expected,” states the judgement.
Defense counsel also unsuccessfully attempted to argue that “Baar’s status as a transgender person should hold weight, as this could make the sentence more burdensome.”
One woman who attended the hearing, Rianne Vogels, spoke to Reduxx and expressed her outrage with the court and media for referring to the convicted sex offenders as women.
“This grotesque case demonstrates how the Norwegian legal system and media are unable or unwilling to grapple with the societal impact of self-determined gender identity. Norway is sometimes held up as an example where self-ID is unproblematic. This is simply untrue,” Vogels said.
“There is a real fear of speaking up about any negative effects resulting from gender politics, and this permeates everything from politics, public services including schools and the healthcare sector, non-government entities, private corporations, and society at large,” she added. Vogels learned this herself after she was fired from her job in an apparent retaliation against her for opposing the medical “transitioning” of young women.
“Most people aren’t aware of the extent of the issues. They don’t know that there are violent males in women’s prisons. They aren’t aware that victims have to cope with their rapists being referred to as women in the media and the courtroom,” Vogels explained.
Reduxx previously reported on the case, and was able to locate social media profiles belonging to the three men, most of which have since been hastily deleted.
On X, Seberg describes himself as “trans fem,” and “pansexual,” and frequently interacts with transgender and hentai pornography accounts. In one disturbing post dated October 2024, Seberg said he “prefer[s] to get raped by girldick.” On Facebook he refers to himself as “a bit odd, but kind.”
Baar and Seberg are mutual contacts on the world’s leading fetish network FetLife, where Seberg describes himself as a “trans woman” with a “perverted stream of consciousness.”
Among the fetishes listed on Seberg’s profile are bondage, BDSM, and abduction play. He participates in multiple crossdresser and trans-related groups on the fetish site, as well as one group dedicated to “gang bangs.”
“Eevee appears deceptively norm-core, but within harbors a mind corrupted by 2000’s internet content, hentai, games, comics, and their own creative ability to turn anything NSFW / NSFL [not safe for work, not safe for life],” reads Seberg’s profile.
“This creature is shy and hesitant at first, but that changes rapidly when Eevee grows more familiar and feels more at ease, accepted and wanted. Then the true force of personality will emerge… When I get hormones, I’m gonna go full-on kinky bitch mode.” Seberg named himself after a popular character from the Japanese Pokemon franchise, and describes his genitals as a “grower sub-type.”
In a journal entry posted to FetLife in October last year, just four months after he and Baar allegedly raped the young girl, Seberg wrote, “Have you ever seen a girl and thought not just that she is pretty, but that you wish you could be her? Well, most of us that have that experience are trans girls, but not everyone arrives at the realization at the same time.”
Baar is similarly active in BDSM-themed groups on FetLife, and claims that he “came out as trans” in February 2021.
“I guess I’m more Finic than Lesbian,” reads Baar’s profile. “Finic is a term for people on the multisexual spectrum who have a preference towards people who are feminine in nature (FIN). This can refer to people who are attracted to feminine or woman-aligned genders, such as people who are fingender or fiaspec. It can refer to people who are attracted to a feminine gender presentation (regardless of the person’s actual gender).”
Baar describes himself as a voyeur, exhibitionist, sadist, and “brat tamer,” and lists “group sex” as one of his fetishes. Other fetishes listed by Baar include “pain,” “screaming,” and “tearing off clothing.” On Instagram, Baar has shared photos of himself edited with FaceApp to resemble a young girl.
Poland’s internal security service (ABW) spokesman has gone on the record to state that several years ago the service investigated opposition Conservative (PiS) presidential election candidate Karol Nawrocki over the purchase of an apartment in Gdańsk.
The ABW spokesman said that one of the investigating operatives recommended that the PiS candidate not be granted security clearance.
On May 27, interior ministry spokesman Jacek Dobrzyński issued a statement in which he “confirmed that the ABW collected documentation regarding the sources of funding for the purchase of an apartment”.
He was referring to the fact that Nawrocki acquired a previously local-government owned apartment from a senior citizen on the basis of an agreement of due care and had since been accused of having failed to carry out his side of the bargain.
Dobrzyński then claimed that ABW officials from the previous PiS government had taken a decision to give Nawrocki, who heads up the National Institute of Remembrance (IPN), a body responsible for investigating German Nazi and Communist-era crimes, security clearance despite opposition from one of the investigators.
Dobrzyński did not mention that Nawrocki had been checked by the security services in order to obtain a certificate entitling him to have access to sensitive information as early as 2009 and then in 2014, a period when Poland was governed by current Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
He also failed to explain why the security services and the ministry of interior had not taken any action against Nawrocki in the past 18 months when Tusk had returned as PM at the head of the present ruling centre-left coalition.
Tusk reacted immediately to Dobrzyński’s remarks by posting on X that “an investigator from Gdańsk who had looked into Nawrocki’s situation had issued a negative opinion and for no good reason the PiS’s people chose to disregard that”.
“I note that the ABW head at the time now works as an adviser of [PiS-aligned] President Andrzej Duda”.
MP Roman Giertych of Tusk’s Civic Coalition (KO) party, who is also the PM’s family lawyer, then announced that a group he chaired inside the ruling party would file a case with the prosecutor against the ABW officials involved for allegedly “certifying access to secret information to a person who has connections to the underworld”.
He was referring to allegations that Nawrocki had contacts with criminals at a boxing club he attended and that later he was involved in fights between rival football fans.
Historian Sławomir Cenckiewicz, who has researched the work of the security services, told Brussels Signal he had previously warned that the services would become involved in the election campaign.
“These revelations by Dobrzyński merely confirm what I said nearly two months ago that the security services are interfering in this election by leaking information against Nawrocki,” he said.
“It’s a scandal, and Dobrzyński is contradicting himself as a few days ago he had told reporters that the ABW had not attempted to revoke the PiS candidate’s security clearance.”
Duda’s security adviser Stanisław Żaryn reacted to Tusk’s X post by alluding to the fact that, on May 26, the PM had on TV relied on the testimony of an MMA fighter and felon who had cited rumours about Nawrocki.
“Yesterday, Tusk put his trust in a convicted felon rather than the ABW. Today he involves the ABW in the election campaign,” Żaryn said on May 27.
Bartosz Lewandowski, an attorney who has defended several PiS politicians indicted by the Tusk government, mocked the situation, saying: “All that is missing now is for the authorities to detain the PiS presidential candidate so the curtain falls on democracy in our pleasant land.”
A dance performance featuring near-naked performers and raw chicken carcasses inside Paderborn Cathedral has sparked outrage among German Catholics and drawn demands for a public apology.
What was meant to be a solemn commemoration of Westphalia’s 1,250th anniversary quickly turned into a scandal that shocked many Christians. At the heart of the region’s religious life, the majestic Paderborn Cathedral—one of Germany’s best-known churches—became the stage for a controversial performance during the official state ceremony.
Panoramic view of Paderborn Cathedral Arne Hückelheim, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Semi-nude dancers performed a routine involving plucked chicken carcasses wrapped in diapers, while a song titled “Fleisch ist Fleisch” (“Flesh is Flesh”) played in the background. For many, the symbolism was unmistakably a direct mockery of the Eucharist and the dignity of Christian worship. The scene, staged in a church built for the glory of God, sparked widespread outrage among Catholics.
Within hours, nearly 20,000 people signed a petition demanding a public apology for what they described as a “desecration” of the Paderborn Cathedral. The petition condemned the act as a “mockery of the central contents of the Christian faith” and a violation of a sacred space. The organizers point the finger directly at Archbishop Udo Markus Bentz, accusing him of failing in his duty to safeguard both the cathedral and the Church’s moral authority.
The archdiocese released a statement expressing “regret that religious feelings were hurt,” claiming that this had “never been intended.” Yet, these words have done little to quell the indignation. For many Catholics, this episode is not an isolated accident but a symptom of a broader trend in which the sacred is increasingly pushed aside in the name of so-called artistic freedom.
The contrast between the setting and content of the performance is especially painful. In a place where, for centuries, the mystery of faith has been celebrated, a spectacle many consider not just irreverent but outright offensive was allowed to take place. Political reactions have followed swiftly: the regional branch of the right-wing AfD in Westphalia-Lippe has released a video denouncing the event, standing in solidarity with those demanding accountability.
