Reform Party Deputy Leader Ben Habib speaks to the New Culture Forum’s local group in Wellingborough, where Ben is standing to become an MP in the 2024 general election. To join a New Culture Forum local group in your area, please email: Locals@NewCultureForum.org.uk. Our events are free of charge.
Month: June 2024
Bloody attack on European Championship fans in Stuttgart, Germany: Syrian stabs three fans!
A fight broke out at a public viewing event in the fan area in Stuttgart on Wednesday evening, which resulted in a stabbing. It was around 10.45 pm when the man pulled out a knife during the match between the Czech Republic and Turkey and stabbed three people. All three were injured and had to be taken to hospital by the ambulance service.
A suspect was arrested later that night. The police told NIUS that the man was a Syrian national. The police cordoned off Stuttgart’s Schlossplatz and criminal investigation specialists secured evidence.
The police announced on the X platform on Thursday night: “The Schlossplatz is now largely empty and there is no current danger situation here”. A tip-off website has been set up where witnesses can upload their pictures, videos and tips. The public viewing on the Schlossplatz in Stuttgart offers space for up to 30,000 fans.
Bluttat in der EM-Fanzone in Stuttgart: Syrer sticht drei Fans nieder! | Exxpress
JK Rowling refuses to vote Labour over trans row despite being lifelong supporter
JK Rowling has not voted for the Labour Party as a result of her opposition to its position on trans issues, despite having been a lifelong party supporter and donor.
The Harry Potter author cast her postal vote yesterday. Posting on social media, she said she voted for an independent candidate, despite wanting “an end to this long stretch of Tory insanity”.
She accused Starmer of saying “men can be women” in last night’s leaders debate against Rishi Sunak.
Taking to social media, Rowling said: “It’s very important that we protect women’s spaces… but men can also be women, says the Labour leader.
“My postal vote is literally lying next to me. I wanted to wait to hear what Keir Starmer said tonight to fill it in.”
She added: “Old habits die hard. I’ve been Labour all my life.
“I wanted a clear statement from Starmer because I really want an end to this long stretch of Tory insanity, but here I am, voting independent for the first time in my life.”
Speaking in last night’s BBC debate, the Labour leader agreed it was important to protect women’s spaces but would not amend legislation to do so. He argued that current laws already do so.
Addressing Sunak, he said: “Don’t just use this as a political football to divide people.
“What I will also say is that I do recognise that there are a small number of people who are born into a gender that they don’t identify with, and I will treat them, as I treat all human beings, with dignity and respect.
“I’ll tell you why, because if you don’t, we end up with the prime minister of the United Kingdom standing in Parliament making an anti-trans joke in front of the mother of a murdered trans teenager.”
Sunak replied: “That’s not what I did. I was pointing out that you’ve changed your mind on this question multiple times.”
Earlier this week, Rowling agreed to meet with the Labour Party but laid out a number of conditions ahead of doing so.
The Harry Potter author said she would only meet with the party’s leadership if Angela Rayner revokes her endorsement of a charter that described two organisations, Woman’s Place and the LGB Alliance, as “hate groups”.
She said: “I’ll be happy to meet after Keep Prisons Single Sex, Lesbian Labour, Women’s Rights Network, Woman’s Place and the LGB Alliance have been given in-person meetings with the Labour leadership.
“I’d also like to know whether Angela Rayner still considers the last two organisations hate groups – asking on behalf of female survivors of domestic violence and gay people who don’t subscribe to gender identity ideology.”
Over the weekend, the author accused the party of “abandoning” women concerned about transgender rights.
Writing in the Times, Rowling said she would find it hard to vote for Sir Keir Starmer, saying she has a “poor opinion” of his character.
She also accused the Labour leadership of a “dismissive and often offensive” approach to women’s concerns.
https://www.gbnews.com/politics/jk-rowling-trans-row-labour-vote
India: Islamist mob brutally assaults Hindu boy for talking to burqa-clad girl, misbehaves with girl
On Tuesday, 25th June, in a bizarre incident, a youth identified as Akash was brutally assaulted by a large Muslim mob comprising of 40-50 persons for talking to a burqa-clad girl in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar. The accused Muslim individuals caught the duo and launched an attack on Akash after threatening and assaulting the girl.
The video of the incident is making rounds on social media in which a girl wearing a burqa can be seen trying to escape from the attack launched by Muslims.
As per the local reports, the incident occured in the Labour colony area of the city when the girl from the specific community was passing by the Shivaji Maharaj Museum. The girl met the Hindu boy there and they were talking.
Meanwhile, around 40-50 individuals from the specific community were keeping an eye on the girl and arrived at the spot after she was seen talking to the Hindu boy. The accused slapped the girl for talking to a Hindu boy and then moved towards Akash to launch an attack on him. In the meantime, 20-30 additional individuals happened to join him.
Seeing this, the girl asked Akash to run away from the spot. However, the mob belonging to the specific community caught the victim. They continued to assault him until some of the local people informed the police.
On being informed, Police officers Nitin Bogate and Nirmala Pardeshi reached the spot and nab the accused. However, the accused persons managed to flee from the spot on seeing police arriving at the location.
As per the police, the victim boy and the girl also escaped from the spot probably to save their lives. “We are looking for them. A formal complaint will be filed based on the testimonies of the girl and the victim boy. If not, a suo-moto complaint will be filed and the accused persons will be identified and punished,” officer Nitin Bogate said.
With the increasing radicalization among Islamists in India, Hindu men are repeatedly being attacked if they even walk with a female Muslim colleagues or classmates. At these times, Hindu men always end up at the mercy of law enforcement authorities.
Several videos have surfaced on social media in the last year wherein a mob of Islamists is seen harassing, abusing, and assaulting Hindu-Muslim couples under the pretext of combating the ‘Bhagwa Love trap.’
OpIndia last year recorded more than 30 cases where the Islamists attacked Hindu men for talking to Muslim girls. The attacks were carried out under the pretext that a sinister plot was underway to convert Muslim women to Hinduism by luring them into a love trap – a conspiracy theory espoused by Sajjad Nomani in multiple videos. The detailed reports regarding this can be read here and here.
Major Poll Predicts Farage’s Reform Party to Pick Up 18 Seats, Win More Votes Than Tories Nationally
A survey of nearly 20,000 Britons put Nigel Farage’s Reform UK ahead of the Conservatives nationally and on course to pick up 18 seats in the House of Commons following next week’s elections, an outcome which would have been seen as impossible just a month ago.
Nigel Farage’s return to frontline politics — after having stepped aside following the withdrawal of the UK from the EU — his rebranded Brexit Party (now Reform UK) has seen a stunning rise in support, as people disaffected from both Westminster establishment parties have found a home in the populist upstart party.
An MRP poll from Find Out Now and Electoral Calculus found that Farage’s Reform party is now on pace to win 17 per cent of the vote nationally, compared to 15 per cent for the governing Conservative Party, which would represent the worst performance since 1900 for the party that has dominated the British political landscape for centuries.
Additionally, the survey also predicted Reform to win 18 seats, with Nigel Farage, deputy leader Richard Tice, and Tory defector Lee Anderson all on pace to have seats in Parliament, The Telegraph reports.
Conversely, much of the leadership of the Conservative government would be kicked out of office, if the polling holds true, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, and Deputy PM Oliver Dowden all on course to lose at the July 4th general election.
Even the party’s bench, such as Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch and Leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt –who many pin their hopes on for taking over leadership after the expected loss — are projected to lose their seats.
Mr Farage has said that his goal for this election will be to establish a “beachhead” in Parliament for the Reform Party from which to compete with the Labour Party in the 2029 general election as the true opposition party against the expected left-wing government.
While Reform will have a claim to the mantle of the main opposition party if, as the survey predicts, it receives the second-most votes in the country, it will still not likely be enough to become the “official opposition” in the parliament.
Because of Britain’s first-past-the-post voting system, the number of votes received nationally does not always equate to how many seats the party holds in parliament.
Therefore, even if the survey is correct, the fourth-placed Liberal Democrats would actually become the “official opposition” in the Commons with 71 seats.
Meanwhile, even if they fall below Reform in terms of total vote share, the Conservatives are on pace to only secure 60 seats, a decline of 305 from the last general election in 2019.
Nevertheless, the latest polling will likely serve to boost the Farage-led party, which is increasingly controlling the political debate in the country.
Reform candidate for Great Yarmouth, Rupert Lowe said: “Another mega-poll just out. Reform winning in EIGHTEEN seats. Great Yarmouth is one of them.
“A vote for the Tories here is a wasted vote. Only Reform can beat Labour. Vote Reform, get Reform!”
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/06/27/major-poll-predicts-farages-reform-party-to-pick-up-18-seats-win-more-votes-than-tories-nationally/
Every Leftist Cause Begins as Humanitarianism and Ends as Terrorism
Those who care too much will eventually care enough to kill.
“Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; – the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!”
—A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Every leftist cause is founded on empathy.
The quintessential leftist, no matter how much blood eventually spatters his hands, starts off by caring a great deal about other people. His heart bleeds for the oppressed, the workers and the peasants, for racial and sexual minorities, and for all the oppressed peoples of the world.
The ideological fashions may change but the story is always told the same way.
Somewhere there is an oppressed group to be liberated. And he, she or they is the one to fight for their liberation. Along the way that exquisite sensitivity which may lead an upper class Ivy Leaguer to learn all about the customs and suffering of black transgender men in Detroit or Hamas terrorists in Gaza congeals into an equal insensitivity for the suffering of his targets.
And then people die. Sometimes it’s those he considers the oppressed or the oppressors. Usually both. The humanitarians become terrorists and their revolutions lead to tyranny.
The opposite of tyranny isn’t revolution just as the opposite of empathy isn’t a lack of caring. They are both circles. Revolutions make tyrannies and empathy leads to cruelty. While there is a small subset of humanity that genuinely lacks empathy, most of the ideological bloodshed of the last century and this one was committed by men and women who cared far too much.
Those who care too much will eventually care enough to kill.
That is the argument that has been made in defense of every murderous leftist cause and is currently being made for Hamas. If you really care about the suffering in Gaza, you too would set yourself on fire or burn Israeli families alive in their homes. If you really care, you won’t care.
Genuine humanitarians can exhaust themselves caring too much. But those are the types of people who stay up nights helping others. Some of this type can be recruited into leftist movements, but the average leftist is a deeply insincere humanitarian who cares about others only as a vehicle for developing an identity and asserting it on a public stage.
Leftists genuinely do care a lot. They care about rising oceans, polar bears, women in hijabs, men in dresses, drug dealers in the ghetto and eco-terrorists in prison, racist highways and dead terrorists, and if you think of something that they don’t care about yet, they will soon.
As long as it fits the larger agenda of asserting their will over society from a moral high ground.
That is why they also don’t care about the horrifying death toll among young black men from crime, how many Muslims are being killed by Muslim governments or the state of the gay rights movement in Marxist dictatorships. If the state of oppression does not conform to the narrative of external social oppression to be overthrown by a liberation movement it is useless to the political movement and to the individual ego of the aspiring freedom fighter.
To a genuine humanitarian, the oppressed are an end, but to a leftist they are a means. A leftist cares a great deal about a coal miner until he votes for Trump or a black man until he runs as a Republican. Or until, even through no fault of his own, like the coal miners and steelworkers for whom leftists once bled, he is replaced by a new pathway to the ultimate revolution.
It is not truly the workers and peasants, the transgenders and the terrorists, whom the leftist cares about. They humanize, articulate and personalize the revolutionary mandate whose purpose is not to save, but to destroy everything about a world that doesn’t care as much.
The more the leftist cares, the worse the atrocities he can justify with his boundless caring.
That the caring rarely leads to anything useful is the entire point. Empathy for the leftist is a narrative point. Really fixing anything robs him of his motivation. That is why the standard leftist position is that black people are as oppressed today as they were under segregation. If they were to admit that black people were equal and free, what would they do with their time?
Successful leftist movements seize power. They fix nothing and repair nothing because caring is a means for the individual ego and the collective one. Every leftist is a heroic freedom fighter who wants to be the king. He pretends he wants to save the world when he’s out to rule it.
Leftist violence is not the outcry of the oppressed, but the mandate of the oppressors.
That is why every leftist cause begins as humanitarianism and ends in terrorism. Humanitarianism and terrorism don’t contradict each other, they complement one another. There could be no terrorism without humanitarianism. Terrorism is not an accidental sidetrack, but the next phase of a three step process that then ends with tyranny or defeat.
When a leftist starts caring about something, it will, given enough time, end in mass murder.
It’s not because he can’t feel your pain, it’s because he’s too busy feeling someone else’s pain so he doesn’t feel yours when he comes after you. Much as the best way to drown out a signal is with noise, the best way to drown out empathy is with lots more empathy.
The leftist cares about so many people and things that he can’t feel anything when it comes to his real targets. Human suffering has become so much noise that he picks and chooses which strands to isolate and listen to based on ideological grounds. Leftist empathy doesn’t sensitize, it desensitizes by design. Given a large enough palette, the leftist can vandalize art, bomb events and assault people because he’s trying to save millions, billions and the entire planet.
But the only one he’s really trying to save is himself from his own boring mediocrity.
The upper class leftist revolutionary, unable to accomplish anything of worth or become anyone of note, sets out to subjugate the world. His empathy for people whom he has never met instantly makes him a wiser and deeper person. And before you know it, he’s cheering Hamas.
And it’s all because he cares so much.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/every-leftist-cause-begins-as-humanitarianism-and-ends-as-terrorism
AfD knows eurosceptical voters don’t want ‘nice’ Right, they want real Right
There are currently three groups in the European Parliament on the right side of the political spectrum: the European People’s Party (EPP), a centre-right establishment group, the European Conservatives & Reformists (ECR) a more eurosceptical centre and Right group composed of both nationalists and more establishment-friendly right-populists, and the Identity & Democracy group (ID), who are nationalists and right-wing, and sometimes very right-wing.
But reports have emerged that Germany’s populist-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which Marine Le Pen forced out of ID, is planning on creating yet another right-wing European Parliament group with other anti-establishment Right parties, among them Poland’s Confederation and Slovakia’s Republic Movement.
Such a group could have about 30 members and may be called “The Sovereignists” (though its political enemies keep calling it the Hooligans, which some in marketing may suggest is a street cred name worth keeping).
The new group would be small but would be the fourth on the Right side of the spectrum, the third on the populist-right (after the ECRs and the IDs), and the second openly eurosceptic (after the IDs).
The creation of such a group will pose a problem for European Right, but it will particularly cause heartburn for the IDs. Though it will start small, the Sovereignists could seriously threaten the existence of the ID group in the long term. To ward off the threat, the IDs will need to react quickly.
There is of course a question as to whether the group can even form. To create a group in the parliament, 23 members must agree to join from seven countries. The AfD alone can deliver 14 members, so that moves things along, but until the agreement is made, the Sovereignists remain unofficial. It is likely however it will make the cut.
There are lots of small Eurosceptic-right parties with a handful of seats here and there who could join, plus some who are currently in the IDs could feasibly also join the group. There are also many non-inscrits, parties which are not part of a group, such as Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz and Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico’s Direction – Social Democracy, though it is unclear if they would join.
If the Sovereignists does manage to form, the problems for the Right will become immediately apparent. The wider Right, as discussed above, is already split in three. This split has been a longstanding problem, but it has been somewhat unavoidable due to the nature of the European political system.
A spectrum of right-wing views is normal. The exact same splits (establishment-friendly moderates, populist-right conservatives, and extreme sceptics) exist in the American Right, for example. But there the entire spectrum is located within the Republican Party, meaning once primaries are over, the party usually comes together to work as one.
In the European Union, with different groupings, each is ultimately forced to compete with one another in general elections and, once elected, in national and European parliaments.
This is a shame, as – though numbers are still in flux – the entire right-of-centre spectrum could feasibly have close to a majority in the European Parliament (or even a tiny majority). But being forced into political warfare has hardened differences between the Right blocs which otherwise would not need to exist.
Why these differences exist is something of a blame game. It is partially due to the EPP’s intransigence when it comes to actually conserving things which do not help big banks. Many in the EPP are also desperate to remain in the good graces of centrists and centre-leftists. After the rise of Green politics in 2019, the EPP was desperate to prove its Green bona fides as much as their centrist and centre-left friends.
But it is also partially due to the nature of different types of nationalism. Some in the ECR have taken a European or Western nationalist approach, like Italy’s Giorgia Meloni.
Many in the ID grouping, by contrast, have taken a “small” nationalist approach, focusing on their own countries — which has been extremely helpful for them, as many ID members have made large strides. Austria’s Freedom Party is set to win their parliamentary elections in September, and France’s National Rally is on cusp of securing control of that country’s parliament.
The problem for the IDs is that they are, slowly, trying to be just a bit more friendly to establishment, which is why Marine Le Pen of the National Rally was chiefly responsible for kicking the AfD out of the ID group.
Plus, as many of the ID parties are getting close to governing for the first time (no ID-affiliated party has yet run a country) they will have to moderate, even a bit. Many will have to be in coalitions to have power, and even those who can govern without coalitions – as President of France, Le Pen would have a lot of power on her own accord – will still have to moderate in order to make policy.
And this is a problem because of the nature of the hypothetical new Sovereignists grouping. None of them are remotely close to holding power, and all are hyper-focused on euroscepticism. This will squeeze the IDs, who were once the “bad boys” of the European Right. If Eurosceptical voters are presented with ultra-Eurosceptics and Eurosceptics who are sort of “nicer,” they will likely not go with the latter.
The Tea Party movement, an early 2010s populist movement in the Republican Party, learned this the hard way in 2016. Two of their champions, Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, were easily pushed aside by then-political newcomer Donald Trump.
Though Cruz and Rubio had worked for populist Tea Party movement policies for years, Trump, bursting onto the scene right before the presidential election, was far more willing to overthrow the status quo. Voters quickly moved to Trump, who moved from 3% in the polls to winning the party’s nomination and the presidency.
The IDs should make no mistake: if they allow themselves to be outmanoeuvred by a further-right grouping, the same could happen to them.
Because should a new group appear, it is clear where they would fit on the European Right of the political spectrum. The EPP are the centre/centre-right. The ECRs are the right-populists looking to build power in Brussels. The Sovereigntists would be the ones who want to tear it all down.
That leaves the ID boxed out and requires them to act quickly; once they are “out-right-ed,” it will be difficult for them to reverse the damage. Major political successes could help, but that requires actually winning elections, not just getting close. The Sovereignists could also of course fall flat on their faces. The AfD particularly has a history of doing so.
But it is never politically astute to simply hope your opponent makes a mistake. The smarter move for the IDs would be to come forward with a clear plan for what they want Europe to look like. As opposed to the Left and centre, which is happy to leave things vague, they should clearly delineate where Brussels’ power starts and where it should end. They want to be the real conservatives: voters should be made to understand exactly what it is they want to conserve.
The result could be gaining votes not based on anger over leftist failures, but on being inspired by the ID’s vision of the future.
AfD knows eurosceptical voters don’t want ‘nice’ Right, they want real Right – Brussels Signal
Germany: The Bad Oeynhausen killer is a Syrian known to the police
The 18-year-old who the police and public prosecutor’s office have labelled the “main perpetrator” of the Bad Oeynhausen attack is Syrian. This is reported by the newspaper Die Welt, while the authorities still do not want to reveal his nationality. According to the Bild newspaper, he lives in an asylum centre in Bad Oeynhausen.
The arrested man is said to have beaten and kicked Philippos T. so severely on Sunday morning that the 20-year-old succumbed to his severe head injuries on Monday. He lives in a home for asylum seekers in the centre of the spa town.
The Syrian arrived in Germany in 2018 as a so-called “protection seeker” with his family. He is known to the police for several property and drug offences.
The suspect will be brought before a judge today, who will decide whether the 18-year-old will be remanded in custody.
Der Killer von Bad Oeynhausen ist polizeibekannter Syrer (jungefreiheit.de)
What do you get when you combine the French and activism? Poop
By Andrea Widburg
The Palace of Versailles was famously filthy because it had over 2,200 rooms and several times that many people but no toilets. Instead, every dark corner was a toilet. Paris itself was famous for its pissoirs, public urinals with walls, but no toilet other than the pavement (which might have a small drain). Even now, Paris remains famous for combining sidewalks and toilets. Once activists get involved, you end up with a promise to fill Paris’s Seine River with fecal matter before the Olympics.
I won’t unpack the Versailles and pissoir stuff. You can read about Versailles’ famous sanitary problems here and about pissoirs here. This post will focus, instead, on the modern Parisian sanitary problem and on the leftist fixation with fecal matter—all of which is heading for the Seine.
When it comes to uncontrolled urine, freed even from pissoirs and public restrooms, Paris is troubled:
While urine is stinky, it’s not the biggest problem (although it will dissolve ancient buildings).
The big problem is that unrestrained fecal contamination is a health hazard, and Paris has it. Indeed, it may even be as bad as in San Francisco. While San Franciscans offer homeless-people poop, Parisians have a lot of dog poop. Indeed, not that long ago, Paris was unofficially the “dog poop on the street” capital of the world.
I’m also willing to bet, although I can’t find authority one way or another to support this sense, that France’s large North African and Middle Eastern population isn’t overwhelmingly finicky about public defecation. After all, in Canada, the government had to put up posters reminding immigrants from Ghana not to poop on public beaches:
You can’t tell that this isn’t happening in France, too, with its ballooning population of sub-Saharan Africans. That’s especially true because Paris, like all modern cities, has a sizable homeless population, more than half of whom are not French natives.
With all the urine and fecal matter floating around on Paris streets, it’s no surprise the Seine has a high level of contaminants with fecal origin.
So, that’s Paris and the French when it comes to poop.
Now let’s speak briefly about activism and poop. While Tea Partiers cleaned up after themselves, activists with a leftist bent are invariably obsessed with poop, something I believe comes because they never emotionally outgrew the toddler stage. They throw tantrums, make up science as they go along because they believe that nothing existed before they did (especially constant changes to the earth’s climate), want other people’s things while insisting on keeping their own, believe in magic (such as magically changing sexes), and so much more. And, like every toddler, poop fascinates them.
Here are just a few leftist poop stories stretching back decades:
- June 2006: A Democratic activist left dog poop at the campaign headquarters of U.S. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R. Co.).
- September 2008: A well-known photographer for The Atlantic showed an ape defecating on John McCain’s head.
- November 2008: An activist group asked San Francisco voters to rename a sewage treatment plant after George W. Bush. (The initiative failed.)
- October 2011: Occupy Wall Street was an orgy of fecal matter.
- March 2013: An Occupy Wall Street protestor dumped at Chase Bank.
- November 2013: Martin Bashir said on MSNBC that someone should defecate in Sarah Palin’s mouth.
- September 2014: The hard-left San Francisco Chronicle raved about a German movie that was all about bodily fluids.
- September 2019: The New York Times wrote an entire article about women pooping.
I stopped tracking poop stories after that last one. I felt that there was nowhere left to go.
However, in Paris, there is still one place left to go: The Seine itself.
People angry at the expense of cleaning up the river [for the Olympics] have rallied under the hashtag #JeChieDansLaSeineLe23Juin, which translates as “I shit in the Seine on 23 June”.
Sunday was supposed to be the date Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo would swim in the Seine to prove the water was clean enough for Olympic athletes – but she delayed the dip until after the French elections in July.
President Emmanuel Macron has also promised to swim in the Seine before the Games, but has not said when.
[snip]
People are frustrated so much money has been invested in the clean-up operation when other social issues have been neglected.
Aspects of the Olympics have proved controversial. Parisians face hiked transport costs during the Games; homeless encampments have been cleared, prompting accusations of France trying to “hide poverty”; and students have been moved to make way for Olympics workers.
While the protest isn’t explicitly leftist, it just has that vibe because conservatives, unless they’re farmers fighting plans to shut down their farms, don’t use their own poop for protests.
As of today, the pooping Parisians have temporarily delayed their plan because they can’t currently score a political point, but it’s still all there: France, activism, poop. There’s nothing more to say.
Spain’s Transport Ministry Manipulated Media Coverage of ‘Delcygate’ Scandal
Spain’s transportation ministry had a plan to limit government advertising to media willing to report along its guidelines on the ‘Delcygate’ scandal—a clandestine meeting in Spain between then-transport minister José Luis Ábalos and the vice president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, who was prohibited from setting foot on European soil.
The document, entitled ‘Delcygate Communication Strategy,’ was, in its own words, a response to the “deteriorating” image of the ministry in light of the scandal. The ministry handles all the advertising for the state-backed train companies Renfe and Adif, among many other public transport services.
The three-page strategy paper came to light last week through Spanish media when it was incorporated into documents related to the investigation of the Kaldo Case, a multi-million-euro crony corruption scandal—initially involving the purchase of face masks—of which Ábalos and his circle are once again the center. The document was extracted from the email of Isabel Pardo de Vera, then-director of Adif.
“Those who use defamation to deteriorate the image of the department head” cannot be rewarded, ministry officials said in writing, specifying that the “the Prisa Group and Atresmedia” were “especially relevant” among those allegedly acting against the ministry.
The meeting between Ábalaos and Rodriguez took place in January 2020, when the Venezuelan vice president made a stop in Spain on a trip to Turkey. She is prohibited from entering the Schengen Zone because of her role in the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro. Rodriguez spent the night in an area of the airport that can be regarded as Spanish territory as it is beyond the limits of passport control. That night, Ábalos met with her and allegedly facilitated a call between her and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. Most curiously, she had forty suitcases on the plane that remained in Spain, the contents of which have never been revealed. At the time, the ministry was attempting to recover a $200 million debt that the Venezuelan government owed Air Europa. The airline had contracted Víctor de Aldama as intermediary and he was also in contact with the ministry of transport. Aldama is a primary suspect in the Koldo Case as well.
To counteract the political fiasco that the meeting caused, the document contemplated the “conditioning of advertising resources” of the entire “Mitma Group” (acronyms of the Ministry of Transport and the linked public companies) in the media based on the “treatment of information” that they gave to the matter. The roadmap also suggested selecting “opinion makers / columnists / commentators,” naming three specific journalists who often appear on political talk shows in Spanish media, to invite to meet with Ábalos so they could transmit his version of the meeting in their appearances on Spanish television.
Ábalos has denied any knowledge of the document. Pardo de Vera has told Spanish media she didn’t remember it and was not its author.