Italy’s left-wing Democratic Party has urged the conservative government to offer citizenship to over 500,000 migrant children over the next three years.
The proposal would see any foreign national who has attended school in Italy for at least five years and is over the age of 10 to be automatically eligible for citizenship – a move the education portal Tuttoscuola calculated would affect 560,000 pupils or 60 percent of the current immigrant student population.
Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has repeatedly rejected the proposal but left-wing lawmakers are expected to table an opposition bill in parliament next month.
More than 80 percent of migrant students who would be eligible for citizenship under the plan live in the northern regions of the country with fewer than 15 percent resident in the south.
If the Parliament voted in favor of citizenship for migrant children attending school, more than 300,000 pupils could benefit from the law in the first year with a further 260,000 doing so over the next four years.
The foreign-born Italian athletes who took part in the Paris Olympics have been used as an example by the opposition Democratic Party (PD), which has been pushing for citizenship for immigrant children and young people who come to Italy with their families or were born in the country since mid-August.
Children must have completed five years of lower primary school or three years of upper secondary school if they arrived in Italy after the age of 12.
The proposal has been firmly rejected by the right-wing governing party, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (FdI) on several occasions in recent days, saying that the issue is not a priority for the country and is not on the government’s agenda.
Matteo Salvini, the leader of the right-wing League, reiterated on Thursday on his social networking site that he would not accept citizenship for children born in Italy and attending Italian schools.
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction”—Ronald Reagan
When I grew up, Great Britain was exotic. There were the red telephone booths, Buckingham Palace, black cabs, and, of course, the Bobbies (police) and the Beefeaters. England was the land of Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth I, and Henry IV. For me, Britain was history incarnate.
Obviously, part of that comes from the fact that, as Americans, we share a great deal of history with the British. Not only did we split from Britain in 1776, but our history continued to stay close until modern times…from the US joining Britain in the fight to end slavery to fighting two world wars together to the British Invasion in the 1960s that brought us the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Kinks.
Image by Vince Coyner
Modern England largely dates back to 1066, when William the Conqueror crossed the English Channel and put the finishing touches on a unification that had been evolving since the Romans abandoned the island in 410 AD. (For clarity, as the terms are often used interchangeably, the United Kingdom (UK) is a sovereign nation comprising England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. “Great Britain” is the largest island in the British Isles, containing England, Scotland, and Wales, but not Northern Ireland.)
The 1,000-year span since has seen Britain, like the rest of the world, evolve—always, however haltingly, in the direction of freedom. This journey began with the Magna Carta, agreed to by King John in 1215. A watershed event in Western culture, it limited the King’s powers and declared he was subject to the law, guaranteed church rights, access to an impartial system of justice, and limited taxes.
Although the Magna Carta would have a rough beginning, it was an enormous step in the drive towards liberty. The document would set the stage for Parliament to evolve from councils that advised the King into a representative body that began taking a more active and powerful role in governing.
It was just the first in a line of steps that would make Britain the freest nation on the planet for centuries. The Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 would guarantee the right to trial and demand the state show cause for holding someone. A decade later, the English Bill of Rights would set out Parliamentary rights, the right to petition the king, and the freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. Over subsequent centuries, the British commitment to freedom would expand, eventually including all her citizens, not just the barons who first held King John’s feet to the fire.
Over that march to freedom, England would produce an extraordinary array of freedom advocates, some of whom inspired our Founding Fathers. Men such as John Locke, Edmund Burke and, later, William Wilberforce, the man who led the fight against the slave trade.
It is this incessant march towards freedom that has always given England an aura of consequence that few other nations share. And that’s what makes today’s Britain so sad.
The genesis of today’s dystopia began almost three decades ago when immigration took off in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The number of non-EU immigrants averaged over 200,000 per year for a decade and then skyrocketed after 2020. A nation of 55 million in 2000 is today over 65 million, with almost all of that growth coming from immigration, a majority from non-EU nations, particularly from the Middle East and Africa, countries that don’t share British culture or, importantly, religion. (It’s also likely that many of the ostensibly EU immigrants originated in non-EU countries.)
The result of this transformation of Britain from a largely British nation to something else has been monstrous. Possibly the single most despicable example is the 20-plus-year Rotherham child rape scandal that saw hundreds of Pakistani Muslims rape over a thousand British girls right under the noses of police who did nothing for fear of being called racists. As if that wasn’t bad enough, those who dared report on the various trials—see, e.g., here and here—found themselves jailed for doing so.
In July, the 17-year-old son of Rwandan immigrants knifed ten little girls, killing three of them. With the government withholding information on the killer, online posts asserted he was an immigrant. Tensions rose, and, across the UK, Brits protested the unfettered invasion of immigrants, the violence being perpetrated by immigrants and Muslims, and the system’s seeming duplicitous, two-tiered approach to justice when it came to immigrants and Muslims vs. white Brits, all of whom the government and the state-run media invariably characterize as “far right.”
These protests drew the new Labour government’s ire, and it launched a wave of arrests and a propaganda campaign against the “far right” anti-immigration “racists.” People were sentenced to prison for chanting “who the f*** is Allah” (although they were neither violent nor making threats), shouting “You’re not English anymore” at the police, or selling stickers that say “It’s OK to be white.”
Seeking to curtail what it claims is misinformation and incitement, the government warned the British citizenry, “You may be committing a crime if you repost, repeat or amplify a message which is false, threatening, or stirs up racial / religious hatred.” They also warned potential anti-immigration protesters, “We’re watching you.”
So basically, the government decides what’s false, threatening, or hate speech, and if you post anything about it online, you could end up in jail. And if threatening Brits’ freedom of speech wasn’t enough, the government threatened online platforms (and Musk) if they allowed prohibited speech.
Nor did the government stop there. It promised to extradite citizens of other countries if they engage in such prohibited online speech, even if not in Britain at the time. And because there’s not enough room in British jails to hold all of these anti-immigration “racists,” the government plans to release 5,000 criminals from jail to make room for those guilty of “wrongthink.”
While the Tories are responsible for the unfettered immigration over the last three decades, July’s election, which put Labour in power, represented a leap in transforming Britain into a tyranny. A free Britain, which took over 1,000 years to evolve, essentially became a Stalinist police state in less than two months.
While Britain is not the United States, our shared history, language, and similar cultural and political trajectory over the last 20 years suggests that what is happening there could easily happen here. Contrast the kid glove treatment given the 2020 BLM / Antifa rioters with the draconian treatment J6ers received, recall Democrats’ ill-fated Disinformation Governance Board, and look at what’s been done to Donald Trump and you see the writing on the wall as we head down that dark authoritarian path.
Like Turkey and Venezuela before it, Britain demonstrates that a single election can make the difference between freedom and tyranny. As we approach November 5th, we just might want to take note…
There are few cities in the world more associated with socialism than Vienna — or “Red Vienna,” as it has been called by socialists and non-socialists alike. The city has been run by the Socialist Party of Austria since the end of World War One (a fascist-era interregnum notwithstanding), winning every democratic election. The Socialist Party’s power in Vienna is hard to describe in full: the party is practically interwoven into the government itself. The Mein Wien (My Vienna) newspaper, handed out for free by the government to all who live in the city, is ostensibly a nonpartisan news source, informing denizens about happenings in the city. In reality, it is just Socialist Party propaganda, complete with a column by the mayor which lets readers know how hard he is working, and is always written in a patronising tone one usually uses with kindergarteners.
At times the Socialists have had to govern with another party in a coalition, but each time feels akin to a swing dance routine: the partner will change at the end of the song, but the leader will remain the leader. Imagining a party other than the Socialists leading Vienna is like imagining that grass is pink.
But slowly, it seems a change is in the air. In the two previous Viennese elections, held in 2015 and 2021, the Socialists only received about 39 percent and 41 percent of the vote. These were both all-time lows, though because of a fractured opposition, the party was able to continue to run the city. But a new poll has the Socialists at 36 percent which, if continued into next year’s elections, would be their lowest ever result.
The reasons for this are numerous.
Let us start with why the Socialists dropped so precipitously in 2015. That year was the beginning of the populist waves which have successively swept over the Continent, and it was reflected in the results: the second-place slot was taken by the populist-right Freedom Party, which surged to just over 30 percent – the closest any party had come in years to besting the Socialists. This surge partially came from disaffected old-school Socialist voters who were incensed by massive migrant flows.
Unfortunately, however, a corruption scandal following the election involving the Freedom Party’s leader (no one else in the party was involved) damaged their momentum. That, combined with COVID, caused the Freedom Party to fall precipitously in 2021’s elections. But the Socialists only rose by two points, and much of the Freedom Party’s vote either stayed home or went to the centre-right People’s Party.
Why might this be? There are many reasons. Chief among them might be the chief of Vienna, Mayor Michael Ludwig. His predecessor, Michael Häupl, held the job from 1994 to 2018 – a political lifetime. While his last election was the near-disaster of 2015, he himself had managed to stay relatively popular, and that election could be chalked up to migrant-related concerns. But Ludwig’s first outing in 2021 was similarly disappointing.
Since then, he has not continued to impress. In 2022, a poll found that he would receive 53 per cent in a direct election for mayor. But now, that number stands at 28 per cent – a precipitous drop. That is probably because fully 61 per cent of voters believe the city is going in the wrong direction, with 55 per cent saying life is “worse” than it was half a decade ago.
Why could this be? How about the fact that Vienna is now home to gang warfare. While there were always problems with Chechen gangs, the massive importation of migrants has created a new one: Syrian youth gangs, who have taken to fighting in the streets. What is worse is that it turns out that Syrian gangs and Chechen gangs do not get along and have been fighting throughout the city. While the two have recently brokered a temporary truce, it is fragile (as all gang-related truces are), and likely to flare up again soon.
But the problem is not all gang warfare. Plenty of individual instances have also caused problems. In Reumannplatz (in a sad case of irony, named for the first socialist mayor of Vienna, Jakob Reumann), one member of the Austrian military noticed a girl was being threatened by migrants and intervened – only to himself be stabbed by a 20-year-old Syrian. There were other stabbings there this year, including fatal ones. It got so bad that the police instituted a no-knives policy there (which will surely do the trick – if criminals adhere to one thing, it is posted signage). And earlier this year, five women and girls were killed in a 24-hour period, three of which by a single migrant.
But it is not all stabbings. One horror-show of a case involved a group of 17 migrant men, aged 12 to 22, who sexually abused a 12-year-old girl for months before police were finally alerted. And then there is the trio of ISIS-affiliated youths who recently attempted to blow up Taylor Swift’s planned concerts in Vienna.
Vienna always had its slightly sketchy areas, as all cities do, but now these issues are spreading throughout the city. And the Socialists are effectively powerless to stop it: they cannot become anti-migrant, as they were the ones who pushed the arrivals in the first place (not to mention the fact that their younger supporters would likely turn on the party). But they cannot continue to be so pro-migrant and be seen as standing by while the city devolves into chaos.
And this is a problem for the federal Austrian Socialists. Vienna represents about one-fifth of Austria’s entire population (the city has just under two million inhabitants, whilst Austria has just over nine). If the Socialists were to weaken substantially there, it would be, while not a death blow, a grievous wound to the cause of Austrian Socialism.
In a way, this is reflective of problems for Socialists around Europe. Only four out of 27 European Union member states are run by red parties, a significant reduction from before the migrant crisis really took shape. Those parties, like the Austrian socialists, are trapped. On one hand, they have older, working-class voters who want their countries to stay safe and are proud of their cultures. On the other, they have younger voters who believe in diversity at all costs. It is becoming increasingly difficult to hold both sides together.
This is not to say the Socialists are not trying to take action though. In Mayor Ludwig’s most recent Mein Wien column, he finally addressed the most pressing concern Viennese citizens have today: whether they prefer warmer or colder seasons. For his part, he assures readers that he loves taking walks in nature and being outside.
One wonders, then, why he does not take a walk through Reumannplatz at night.
A 27-year-old Afghan migrant was arrested for sexually assaulting a 5-year-old child in Lormont, near Bordeaux, at around 3pm on Thursday, according to a police source.
Police from the CRS Autoroute Aquitaine were called to a fight in the toilets by the manager of the Fontbelleau service station on the N230. They came across a Dutch tourist who was holding up a man to prevent him from escaping, accusing him of touching the genitals of his 5-year-old son, who was alone in the toilets.
The accused, who was legally resident in France with a residence permit application valid until January 17, 2025 and whose name was unknown in the French Criminal Record Office (TAJ), was taken into custody.
A video is currently circulating on social media showing a Muslim woman tearing a poster with the words ‘European Lives Matter’ off a wall. Next to it, the same poster can be seen partially torn down. The video was shared on X by a user called Quiles. He wrote: ‘You know what this is about now, don’t you?’ As the news platform The Noticer reports, the posters were created by the activist group Action Radar Europe following the attack in Southport in the UK, in which a 17-year-old whose parents are from Rwanda stabbed three girls to death. They show the names and faces of the victims and the slogan ‘Remigration saves lives’. Spanish nationalists had already put up the posters outside the British embassy in Madrid earlier this month, a week and a half after French activists had done the same in the city of Vannes, the report continues.
Una mujer musulmana pillada rompiendo un cartel en el que pone “European Lives Matter”, las vidas europeas importan.
Hundreds of users reacted to the video on X with angry comments. ‘When a Muslim woman tears down the posters of these murdered young girls, it reveals a profound loss of humanity. This appalling act of cruelty challenges us to reflect on the fragility of compassion in our deeply divided world,’ one comment read. Freelance journalist Klaus Arminius shared the video and wrote: ‘How vile and hateful do you have to be to tear up posters of stabbed children?’ Another user wrote that there was no reason to remove the posters: ‘These are young white girls who lost their lives. This is pure hatred. And this is all happening while Europeans are still in the majority. Things can get much worse’. Many other users are calling for the woman to be deported immediately.
On today’s #NCFDeprogrammed, hosts Harrison Pitt, Fellow of the New Culture Forum, and Connor Tomlinson of Lotus Eaters are joined by media consultant Joseph Robertson, co-host of the “In the National Interest” podcast:
A visually impaired female German athlete who is set to compete in the Paralympics against a trans-identified male athlete has expressed concerns about fairness for women and called on international authorities to determine a “clear position” on the issue.
Katrin Müller-Rottgardt, 42, told BILD that while she believes that “everyone should live in everyday life the way they feel comfortable,” she feels that Italian sprinter Valentina Petrillo, a man previously known as Fabrizio who fathered two children, has “advantages” over female athletes on the basis of his sex.
Using feminine pronouns for Petrillo, Müller-Rottgardt said, “I find it difficult in competitive sport. She lived and trained as a man for a long time, so there is a possibility that the physical requirements are different than for someone who was born a woman. She could therefore have advantages.”
Both sprinters compete in the women’s T12 classification, which is designated for athletes with visual impairments, and are likely to compete against each other in the Paris Paralympics 200m. Last year, in the women’s 200m final at the Para Athletics World Championship, Petrillo displaced Müller-Rottgardt to take a bronze medal while she was relegated to fourth place.
Recalling the 2023 race, Müller-Rottgardt remarked, “I came in ahead of her, but because my guide let go of the wristband that connected us too early, we were disqualified. That’s the only reason Valentina got bronze, as she did in the 400 meters.”
BREAKING: A trans-identified male has taken bronze in the women's 400m T12 at the World Para Athletics Championships.
Valentina Petrillo has several women's athletic titles, but this is his first women's world championship medal.
Petrillo, now 50, had previously had a career competing against men, winning 11 national titles in the male category.
In 2019, while in his mid-forties, Petrillo began claiming a transgender identity and taking feminizing hormones, and in 2020, first began running in the women’s category, despite his legal identification still classifying his sex as male.
Petrillo has not undergone surgery and can clearly be distinguished by his appearance from the female athletes he races against. However, due to Müller-Rottgardt’s visual impairment, she was not aware that she had been competing against a man until she heard about the situation after the 2023 finals.
“It wasn’t a focus for me at all, because it didn’t affect me. I didn’t even notice it, because I couldn’t see her. It was only after the race that people talked about how she looked very masculine. I can’t judge that,” Müller-Rottgardt told BILD.
Petrillo has been diagnosed with Stargardt disease, a disorder of the eye that causes retinal degeneration over time. As previously reported by Reduxx, Petrillo currently holds 8 women’s running championship titles, and has broken several records previously held by women. In September 2020 at the Italian Paralympics Championship, Petrillo won gold in the 100m, 200m and 400m T12 events and therefore qualified to represent Italy at the Tokyo Olympic Games.
However, the Italian government intervened and barred Petrillo from competing against women with disabilities at the Paralympics in 2021. The International Olympics Committee (IOC) had just announced updates to guidelines for trans-identifying competitors stating that male athletes must keep the levels of their testosterone below 10 nanomoles per liter for at least 12 months in order to participate.
The trans-identified male’s participation in the women’s category has generated significant controversy. Responding to critics earlier this week, Petrillo told Spanish outlet Relevo he was hopeful that “there will be much more affection for me than I can imagine” at the Paris Games. During the 2023 Paralympic Championships, Petrillo had displaced Spanish female athlete Melani Bergés Gámez, who lost out on an opportunity to compete by eight-hundredths of a second.
“I learned to let go of what I can’t control. I am now psychologically stronger than I have been for some time and this is also due to the support of my psychologist. People always criticize, for whatever reason, and that’s why in my case they’re even more likely to do so,” Petrillo said.
Petrillo has been supported in his efforts to compete against women by Italian trans activist organization Gruppo Trans, for which he also acts as a representative. He has spoken for Gruppo Trans on several occasions, and the organization is backing a documentary film about Petrillo’s life.
In addition to partnering with Petrillo to campaign for males in women’s athletics events, Gruppo Trans also discusses “trans adolescents” and offers a variety of “training” programs through their website. Corporate diversity management training, courses for health care workers, and gender identity workshops for teachers are all available, as are lessons for children intended to be provided by instructors at schools. The website has a section dedicated to outreach for crossdressers, and offers as a main point of contact a man who runs a sex shop, where he sells lingerie and sex toys.
After being awarded three gold medals at the Paralympics qualifiers in 2020, Petrillo thanked the trans activist group. “I dedicated to them my victory in my favorite race,” Petrillo told OutSports. “Gruppo Trans supported me in my darkest hour, and they helped me find the answers I needed when I was questioning my identity and my life.”
A number of female athletes and professional experts have been highlighting concerns about Petrillo’s participation in the women’s category. At the Master’s Athletics Championships in Arezzo in October 2020, Petrillo outpaced Sanulli and Denise Neumann, both of whom had previously won world and European Masters titles and have been regarded as the best in their events.
The athletes took the podium with Petrillo at the time to avoid becoming embroiled in controversy, but later stated that they felt that Petrillo had an unfair advantage.
“I didn’t feel like I competed as an equal. It was my race, my goal for the season. I had been preparing it for a long time and I wanted to win,” Sanulli said at the time.
Sanulli and Neumann were among more than 30 female Master athletes who signed a petition in 2021 opposing men being permitted to identify into women’s sports.
The women were represented by Italian lawyer and athletics champion Mariuccia Fausta Quilleri, who claimed that the admission of male athletes in women’s competitions constitutes a violation of Article 1 of the Code of Equal Opportunities between Men and Women.
The petition was sent to the president of the Italian Athletics Federation, Stefano Mei, the Minister for Equal Opportunities, Elena Bonetti, and the undersecretary of state for sport, Valentina Vezzali. According to women’s rights group RadFem Italia, their efforts were not acknowledged by the government officials.
Mauerpark, Berlin Traktorminze, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Climate change is to blame for rising violence in one of Berlin’s most famous parks, according to a major German newspaper.
The Mauerpark has already seen 108 reported offences in the first half of 2024, making it one of the German capital’s crime hotspots. However, liberal Der Tagesspiegelquotes an activist who takes the term ‘hotspot’ one step further.
“Above 26 degrees, many people reach their energy limits and literally have problems staying cool,” says Chaska Stern, the honorary spokesperson for the Federal Network for Civil Courage.
This is a problem, because “it is getting hotter and hotter worldwide” because of climate change.
And when it is hot, “‘the fuse gets shorter,” Stern adds. This makes people “more prone to violence, and you should take into account that you could find yourself in at least one verbal altercation.”
This is not the only problem hot weather creates. Since “there are simply more people meeting outside, many men have a sexualised view, are hormonally charged and cannot keep themselves under control. Then there is more catcalling.”
Authorities should therefore “create cooling places for civilians in public” to help prevent violence.
As Apollo Newspoints out, Stern does not mention—nor does Der Tagesspiegel ask him—who the people committing this violence actually are. Nor does the paper ask why violence is growing in some areas but not others.
On the same day that the paper published the article, the German federal police released a report showing that last year, the number of crimes committed in Germany rose to its highest rate since 2012.
Federal police chief Dieter Romann said that “non-Germans are statistically six times more likely to resort to knives in an attack than German citizens. And in sexual crimes, it is seven times more likely.”
Meanwhile, the interior minister of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia last month said police should announce the nationality of criminal suspects as a matter of principle.
Herbert Reul said the move would create a greater sense of transparency. It would also save the police time since their press officers often have to deal with questions from journalists about suspects’ nationalities.
By publishing the nationality of offenders, the police want to “create fact-based transparency,” a spokesman for the regional interior ministry said. “In addition, the [North Rhine-Westphalia] police want to anticipate speculation and counter the accusation of wanting to conceal something.”
Earlier this year, Reul made headlines when he said: “We have a problem with non-German criminals.”
“If we look at what is happening in Belgium there is reason to fear the emergence of an emirate in the heart of a contrite Europe, blinded by guilt and cowardice”, the Algerian novelist Kamel Daoud has just denounced in the weekly Le Point.
And even Jean Quatremer, the historic Brussels correspondent of Libération, goes so far as to say: “Belgium capitulates and has truly become the advanced base of political Islam”.
Now comes a scoop to confirm it.
The Journal du Dimanche reveals that the European Commission has financed the NGO Al Sharq for a total of 110,279 euros. On August 2, the international organization Al Sharq in Hagia Sophia in Istanbul paid a “last homage” to “martyr Ismaïl Haniyeh,” the leader of Hamas. Al Sharq presents itself as an NGO that aims to “consolidate the values of pluralism and justice.”
Are they stupid? Are they reckless people who give away public money to any Islamic NGO that asks for it, as blackmail? Are they colluding?
“There is a democratic taqiya in Western countries, the Muslim Brotherhood propagates Islam through political, associative and non-violent means,” denounces France’s most famous anti-terrorism judge, Marc Trévidic.
Belgium’s Minister of Justice, Paul Van Tigchelt, put it in black and white: Hamas is active in Belgium (and elsewhere in Europe) through “humanitarian” societies. Islamist tentacles also extend into the heart of old Europe.
One of the major Dutch novelists and intellectuals, Leon de Winter, has just written an essay in the Swiss magazine Neue Zürcher Zeitung:
“What is the central message of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran? Permanent war: there will be peace only when all non-believers on earth have been killed or have submitted to Islam. Many Iranians do not share this view, but in Iran there is no room for public dissent.
“According to the guardians of Shia political Islam, the Jewish state and all Jews in the rest of the earth must be subdued or killed in the name of Allah. The mandate has no expiration date nor does it include anything as anti-Islamic as the goal of a ‘two-state solution’. The leaders of the Iranian auxiliary armies Hamas, Houthis and Hezbollah are fanatical believers who think in the same time frame as the leaders of Tehran: Judgment Day is the inevitable end point.
“Shia leaders are the servants of Allah in a battle much bigger than the State of Israel: the apocalypse must be near. These fanatics think in terms and images that radically surpass the imagination of the materialist Western world. Average Western politicians and journalists, all children of thought since the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, have no idea who they are dealing with in Tehran, Gaza, Lebanon or Yemen. They can only imagine the struggle of the religious elites in Tehran.
“It is not about the land. The Shiite revolution of 1979 was the first step towards the complete end of the Western world. So for these extremist believers Israel is a shame. But temporary. What took place in Israeli border villages on October 7 were ritual massacres by murderers in a religious frenzy, triggered in part by stimulants such as Captagon, made in Syria and composed mostly of amphetamines.
“Hamas wanted to convince young people that the massacre of Jews was not a crime, but a consecration of the Prophet and that robbery and rape were permitted means of struggle. Hamas wanted to show the Jews what they would expect if they remained in Israel: mutilations, rapes, burnings.
“But our enlightened leaders and useful idiots in the media cling to the suicidal idea that the conflict is over the land. This is a deception. Political Islam in Tehran is not just waging a war against Israel. The West is an even greater enemy than the Jews. An appeaser is someone who feeds a crocodile in the hope that the crocodile will eat him last, Winston Churchill once said.
“The US and the EU lead these peacemakers. Ursula von der Leyen, Kamala Harris: I fear that they too, deluding themselves that they can stay out of danger, will betray the Jews and deliver them to the fire.”
Meanwhile, as Quatremer writes, the Belgian and EU capital is the pinnacle of appeasement, as demonstrated by the funding of Islamic NGOs.
In June, the football match between Belgium and Israel scheduled for September 6 in Brussels was cancelled. The mayor of the Belgian capital, Philippe Close, had decided this, according to which it would be “simply impossible” to guarantee safety. Now Israeli Frisbee athletes are declared personae non grata in Belgium after authorities in Ghent barred them from an international tournament due to “security concerns.”
The European Ultimate Federation, organizers of the 2024 European Youth Championship in Ghent, announced that the Israeli team has been banned from the event. The reason given was an action by anti-Israel activists who wrote slogans on the tournament venue in the village of De Pinte near Ghent. The Federation stated that the municipality of Ghent “prohibits the participation of the Israeli delegation” and “the presence of the Israeli delegation”, as well as “any reference relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”. A Ghent municipal decree states that “there is a high risk of disturbing public order due to the presence of an Israeli team” and that some “frisbee organizations oppose Israel’s participation in the tournament due to the ongoing conflict in Gaza ”.
In Le Figaro the former Belgian senator and head of Doctors Without Borders, Alain Destexhe, writes:
“The Brussels police are used to high-risk situations. European summits and NATO, violent demonstrations by farmers and trade unions that sometimes end in scuffles: never has an international event been canceled under the pretext of not being able to guarantee security.
“The explanation therefore lies elsewhere. The north of Brussels, where the majority of the population lives and where the Heysel national stadium is located, has a high concentration of Muslim population which is probably already a majority or on the verge of becoming one in municipalities such as Molenbeek, Anderlecht, Schaerbeek or the city of Brussels. 61 percent of Brussels’ population is now of non-European origin. Since October 7, almost weekly demonstrations have taken place in the streets of Brussels, some of which brought together tens of thousands of people, during which anti-Semitic slogans are often chanted.
“Most municipalities and the regional parliament passed resolutions hostile to the Jewish state and calling for immediate recognition of a Palestinian state without demanding the release of the hostages. The only large-scale demonstration against anti-Semitism brought together only a few hundred people. Arabic, Turkish and Urdu were widely used in election leaflets. A deplorable image of the ‘capital of Europe’”.
A tour to Brussels was enough for Charles Baudelaire to gain the vision of Belgium as the rotten nucleus of the European continent, as it is promptly demonstrating today. His “Pauvre Belgique!” is a corrosive book. But also prophetic.
Baudelaire writes that “the stupidity of Belgian people resembles the stupidity of all peoples”. Baudelaire saw the Belgians as a people who were easy to oppress but impossible to crush, thanks precisely to their mellifluous stupidity of being everywhere and with everyone and never anywhere.
Baudelaire visited Liège, Bruges, Namur, Malines, Antwerp, Ghent and concluded that it is a harlequinade, as well as a bâton merdeux, but also a spongy experiment that acts as the decline of the West, but without flags, and of a continent that today it pretends to be united by virtue of a simple numerical sum: the more we are, the more we count.
And the city that finances those who mourn Hamas and ban their Israeli victims shows us the Baudelairean theater of European self-destruction as a common future.
A Turkish national has been arrested in Germany after a man was shot three times in the head in an execution-style killing in Frankfurt Central Station on Tuesday evening.
A 27-year-old man from Turkey was shot and killed on the platform of the main train station for the German city of Frankfurt at around 9 pm local time on Tuesday night. The man, who was shot three times in the head, died at the scene.
On Wednesday, German authorities said that a 54-year-old man, also from Turkey, has been arrested and brought before a local magistrate.
“We have applied for an arrest warrant to be issued against the suspect on the urgent suspicion of murder,” said Frankfurt prosecutor’s office spokesman Dominik Mies, according to German broadcaster NTV.
It is currently being investigated whether the two men knew each other, Mies said, adding that investigations are “still at the very beginning”.
The prosecutor’s office did reveal that the 54-year-old was seen approaching the victim and allegedly shooting him in the back of the head.
After the 27-year-old fell to the floor of the platform, the suspected assailant is said to have shot him twice more in the head before fleeing the scene.
However, Federal Police officers tracked the Turkish national down before he was able to board a train and escape, detaining him near the location of the killing.
The prosecutor’s office said that they recovered the suspected murder weapon and have determined that the suspect is registered in the German state of Baden-Württemberg.
