On today’s #NCFNewspeak, NCF Director Peter Whittle, Senior Fellow Rafe Heydel-Mankoo and Amy Gallagher of Stand up to Woke discuss the Southport scandal and Trump’s first days in office.
Month: January 2025
Syrian trio arrested for attempted murder after Romanian teen stabbed in Germany
A teenager is fighting for his life in Germany after being brutally stabbed multiple times by a Syrian gang in Schwerte, North Rhine-Westphalia, on Thursday evening.
Bild reported on Friday how Ahmad Al T. (26), Sulaiman A. (24), and 15-year-old Mahmoud A. were arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after targeting 18-year-old Laurentju O., a Romanian national, and stabbing him repeatedly in the back until he collapsed.
The suspects, all Syrian nationals, reportedly grinned as they were arrested by armed police.
Investigators suspect the knife attack was an act of revenge. Earlier that evening, the 15-year-old suspect had allegedly been involved in an altercation, in which he was attacked. The police have opened a separate investigation into that incident on charges of bodily harm.
Authorities believe the three Syrians deliberately sought out the Romanian teenager and launched a violent retaliation, which quickly escalated into a near-fatal stabbing.
Following the attack, a rescue helicopter rushed the critically wounded Laurentju O. to a specialized clinic in Bochum.
A homicide commission has been assigned to the case to determine which of the three suspects initiated the stabbing and who will face attempted murder charges.
The incident comes two days after a multiple fatal stabbing in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg by a failed Afghan asylum seeker who targeted a group of kindergarten children.
A 2-year-old boy was stabbed to death, as was a 41-year-old male passerby who attempted to intervene. Another child was seriously injured and remains hospitalized, while one of the daycare workers accompanying the young children broke her arm trying to fend off the assailant, who was described as being in a “bloody frenzy.”
The immigration status of the three Syrian suspects in Thursday’s attack is currently unknown; however, the Afghan national arrested in Aschaffenburg had been earmarked for deportation, but due to an “administrative error” in which he had told authorities he would voluntarily leave but didn’t, he remained free to roam the country and target the group.
The latest spate of attacks by foreigners has led the opposition CDU and AfD parties — expected to become the two largest parties in the Bundestag after next month’s elections — to call for immediate parliamentary debates on implementing hardline immigration and asylum policies, ensuring swift large-scale deportations of foreign criminals and rejected asylum seekers.
The CDU announced on Thursday its intention to table the motions next week after AfD co-leader Alice Weidel insisted the “price is too high” to wait until after the elections.
2/3 of Sweden’s Convicted Rapists are Migrants. 1/4 of UK Child Sex Offences Don’t Record Race
NCF Senior Fellow Dr. Philip Kiszely joined Talk TV to discuss Home Office policy not to report nationality of criminals and police suppressing ethnicity of criminals.
Southport Child Slayings Reignites Debate on UK’s Abolition of The Death Penalty
The jailing of Axel Rudakubana (photo)— who rushed into a children’s party and tried to kill everyone inside, ultimately murdering three young girls — but not even for a full-life sentence has triggered a debate on legal reform.
Prominent Reform UK party Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe responded to the sentencing of 18-year-old Axel Rudakubana on Thursday to say the killings call for a national debate about the United Kingdom having abolished the death penalty. Rudakubana was sentenced to a minimum of 52 years for the murder of three young children, the attempted murder of eight young children, the attempted murder of two adults, and possession of a knife, the creation of a biotoxin, and possession of an Al-Qaeda manual.
Rudakubana stormed into a children’s party and attempted to murder those inside with extreme violence just days before his 18th birthday. Had he been 18 at the time of the attack, he would have been legally liable for, and would almost certainly have been sentenced to, what is called in the United Kingdom a whole life order. This extremely rare order distinguishes a sentence ordering the inmate to actually spend his whole life in prison from the misleadingly named life sentence, where the criminal could spend their whole life in prison but would actually be liable for release after a set number of years, if they can persuade a parole board.
GRUESOME INJUSTICE: Southport killer Axel Rudakubana does NOT get a life sentence because the knife attack was days shy of his 18th birthday.
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) January 23, 2025
With his sentencing, we have now learned Rudakubana, the son of Rwandan immigrants, told police "I’m so glad the children are dead" and… pic.twitter.com/VMSMKl5sNG
In Rudakubana’s case, because he was not quite an adult by a few days, he was sentenced to a minimum term of 52 years. This contrasts to the United States, for instance, where in some cases 17-year-olds who commit particularly abhorrent crimes can be tried as full adults, and where in some states attempting to murder an entire class of young children would invite the death penalty.
Even Britain’s politically milquetoast parties at least conceded the case suggested the United Kingdom’s legal system might need some reform in the face of such violence, which despite its familiar characteristics and the presence of a terrorism conviction the nation’s prosecutor absolutely refuses to call terrorism.
Labour MP Patrick Hurley called the sentence “unduly lenient” and said he had referred the matter to the Attorney General for review. The UK AG can overrule a judge in such cases, and the present incumbent Lord Hermer has been battered by successive waves of bad press in recent weeks over allegations that he is deeply partisan and possibly unfit for office, so intervening in this case could be perceived as a easy means to buy himself a good news cycle.
The Times of London states the Conservatives have also suggested the case might presage change, with party leader Kemi Badenoch saying there was a “strong case” to consider a whole life order for Rudakubana.
But these vague assertions were handily drowned out by calls from Reform’s Rupert Lowe, who questioned whether in such a case a return to hanging wasn’t worth discussing. He wrote: “It is my opinion that now is the time for a national debate on the use of the death penalty in exceptional circumstances. This is an exceptional circumstance.”
A previous Labour government abolished the death penalty in functionally all cases in the 1960s and the last people hung by the state were in 1964. Yet public opinion wasn’t in favour of abolishing hanging then, and a majority supported bringing it back for decades afterwards.
Although polling on this matter is not frequently undertaken — given it is something politicians very rarely wish to talk about — what research there is suggests in the 21st century it is still the case more Britons want to bring back hanging then keep it banned.
There are shades of opinion on the matter of execution. Reform leader Nigel Farage has previously said he is against capital punishment, stating in 2014 “I have my reservations about the state having the power to end someone’s life”. Farage’s position appears to flow from the notion, common among many that would support capital punishment otherwise, that the state and legal system is too incompetent to be trusted to get it right every time.
Southport Child Killer Reignites Debate on UK’s Abolition of Death Penalty
Macron Promotes Himself Chatting on TikTok With Islamist Influencer
Always keen to appear on unexpected media to boost his flagging popularity, French president Emmanuel Macron happened to chat on TikTok with a ‘private individual’ about a trivial administrative matter—without realising that the person he was talking to was a notorious Islamist influencer.
It all started a few days ago with a video posted on Tiktok by a man complaining that he had been fined at a motorway toll booth for using his phone to pay at the terminal. Facing the camera, he recounted his experience a few days earlier near Tours: having just paid his toll with his phone, he learnt that he had been fined €90 and had three points taken off his driving licence because he had violated highway code which forbids holding your phone in your hand at toll booths or red lights.
The video, viewed hundreds of thousands of times, went so viral that it eventually reached the ears of Macron, who took the time to respond to it in the same tone, on TikTok, in a short video taken in selfie mode. “I think that by 2025, you should be able to pay tolls using your phone. I’ve passed the file on to the interior minister and we’re going to sort it out collectively. Thank you for the alert,” said the head of state in simplistic French, in a tone intended to be ‘cool’ and relaxed.
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau has since confirmed that he has received the order and intends to respond positively to the president’s request.
This is not the first time that the president has played this little game of using social media to boost his image among young people—with varying degrees of success. The anecdote would be insignificant if observers had not looked at the profile of Macron’s interlocutor. Far from being just another young person, the TikTok user is in fact an Islamist influencer of the type that Bruno Retailleau has been trying to hunt down and even expel for several weeks.
Paul Sugy, a journalist at Le Figaro, reveals that the influencer, known as S4iintt on Tiktok, has no fewer than 250,000 followers to whom he preaches a version of Islam close to that advocated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
In his videos, he explains that he wants to “bash heads” when he sees women dressed too lightly. To this Tiktoker, with whom the President wastes time talking because of his obsession with communication, France is an “Islamophobic state.” He promotes the niqab (full veil) and goes so far as to defend the wearing of the veil by young girls from the age of seven.
And this is not happening in an isolated video. His recurring videos have all the hallmarks of radical preaching. He attacks Muslims who listen to music because it makes them guilty of “billions of sins.” In another video, he extols the merits of polygamy—with the caveat that it might sometimes be expensive to support several wives.
In this case, the scandalous amateurism of the president and his communication unit can only dismay. No one in Macron’s entourage saw fit to curb his enthusiasm, to dissuade him from posting his little video, or to learn more about a man who, in another of his TikTok videos, describes Macron as “a dwarf who is married to his French teacher and who runs a country the size of a crisp.” The embarrassment is total. Now that Macron has compromised himself with this man, how can he back down without losing face? What credibility can his interior minister have—he who has also plunged headlong into this pitiful ambush?
Only Le Figaro and some right-wing commentators on X have taken up the story. The mainstream press has cautiously stuck to the issue of tolls and telephone payments: that’s obviously less dangerous.
Dutch subsidies to fight radical Islam allegedly ‘went to Moroccan cheese factory’
Funds from the city of Rotterdam intended to combat the radicalisation of Islamic youth were allegedly misappropriated and diverted for years to invest in a cheese factory in Morocco.
A confidant of the city’s mayor at the time – apparently more than six years ago – who was a so-called radicalisation official, offered a private loan to the alleged fraudsters, Dutch newspaper NRC claimed on January 11.
In 2015, Rotterdam’s auditor found it was ‘one big deception operation,’ but a majority in the city council chose not to address the case.
Current mayor Carola Schouten, of the centre-left Christian Union Party, told the city council on January 23 that she wanted an external, independent investigation into alleged illegalities regarding municipal grants given between 2014 and 2018 meant to combat radicalisation and promote integration.
Sources close to the investigation said the suspects were three Dutch-Moroccan nationals active in the welfare sector. One was allegedly a city council member for the Socialist PvdA party.
It was claimed they devised a plan to produce Gouda cheese in Morocco and opened a factory to do so with some €100,000 of personal equity invested in the company.
In 2014, a whistle-blower was said to have reported possible illegal activity.
That person alleged that Rotterdam’s largest migrant umbrella organisation Platform Buitenlanders Rijnmond (PBR) was used as a “cash register” for the commercial project in Morocco.
Rotterdam’s auditor said in 2015 there was a possibility of self-enrichment within the organisation due to several significant issues related to administrative practices and financial oversight. The cheese factory was not mentioned in the auditor’s report.
“We had to phrase it carefully, but it came across as one big deception operation,” former Court of Audit head Paul Hofstra told NRC.
“Although PBR did organise activities, only a portion of the subsidies was spent on them. The other part was shuffled around and then, for instance, withdrawn in cash. This way, the money flows disappeared from sight.”
Hofstra said he gave his report to the public prosecutor, calling for action, but a majority in city council chose not to address the case, saying there was no hard proof.
At the time, Rotterdam was seeing many migrant youths head to Syria to fight on the side of the Islamic State.
New organisations with big budgets were created to tackle this problem, including by the three cheese-entrepreneurs. They formed a foundation where they approached parents with a Moroccan background advising them how to keep their children away from Islamic extremism.
They even received a rave review for their work by an evaluation commission and the Dutch king visited the foundation, Attanmia, because it had received money from the Oranje Fund, a charity organisation in the Netherlands that supports social welfare initiatives.
Here further questions arose about Aboutaleb’s apparent right-hand man, reportedly a public official who acted as radicalisation official because he was responsible for where city subsidies went.
According to the Public Prosecution Service, the three cheese entrepreneurs pocketed subsidies between 2010 and 2018. They are said to have maintained a “flawed administration with false invoices”.
The subsidy fraud case was set to be addressed in a criminal trial at the Rotterdam court in December, following a seven-year judicial investigation.
Three days before the hearing, the Public Prosecution Service’s functional division announced it had reached a deal with the three suspects. In exchange for a guilty plea, they accepted community service sentences of up to 140 hours and fines of up to €25,000 per person.
The Public prosecutor had previously said a criminal trial was necessary but then decided the settlement was enough, claiming a trial would take too much time and effort for the court and the prosecutor.
Because of the judicial settlement, the contents of the case remained out of the public eye, while the Municipality of Rotterdam said it has no idea about the fraud case.
“We have not been informed in which organisations and subsidy streams the fraudulent acts took place,” the city said.
Schouten said the city only received limited information from the prosecutor.
The opposition said it had many questions about how former mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb acted in this alleged fraud case.
The official in Rotterdam responsible for the preventive programme under which the training sessions were subsidised was the man who lent money to a suspect. He is allegedly a former politician, also with Moroccan roots and also from the Socialist Party.
This close acquaintance of Aboutaleb has been working for the Directorate of Safety since January 2015. Schouten wrote to the council stating that she currently had “no reason to doubt the integrity of this employee”.
When the right-wing party Leefbaar Rotterdam brought the subject up some years ago, the city council dismissed it, accusing the party of playing political games regarding the Moroccan roots of both suspects.
On January 23, a council member of the left-liberal D66 party apologised to the Leefbaar Rotterdam representatives for that.
Members of the council said they still wanted full clarity on the case, saying, “Nobody knows how much money disappeared” or “how the fraud was carried out”.
At the time of writing it was unclear if the cheese factory in Morocco still existed. Its last communication on social media was in 2018.
‘I hate the French and France’ – Algerian man sentenced to 5 years in prison after vandalizing memorial to terror victims
A Franco-Algerian man has been sentenced to five years in prison for vandalizing a memorial to the two young victims of a terror attack conducted by a Tunisian migrant in 2017.
The memorial, located at the St. Charles train station in Marseille, was attacked on Nov. 10, 2024, by the 43-year-old homeless man Maamar Ifrah. The man attacked the plaque commemorating the terror attack on Oct. 1, 2017, at the St. Charles train station, which saw Mauranne Harel and Laura Paumier stabbed to death by a Tunisian national. Ifrah tore the plaque off, burned the base supporting it, and ripped down the French flag. The event sparked outrage in Marseille.
The plaque was erected close to a larger memorial commemorating the armistice of the First World War.
Following his arrest just a few hours later, Ifrah told police, “I hate the French and France because they invaded my country.” He was born in Algiers in 1980 and obtained French citizenship in 1992, according to a report from French media outlet Valuers Actuelles.
In an interview with BFMTV, the mother of Laura Paumier, said the vandalized memorial “is a scandal, it’s a shock.”
Ifrah’s lawyer attempted to delay the trial with psychiatric and psychological assessments. Psychologists did not diagnose Ifrah with a mental illness, and he was deemed fit to stand trial, but they noted that the defendant “wants to go to a psychiatric hospital to get treatment.”
Ifrah said during his trial, “I don’t know what happened to me. I heard voices. I regret having done that and I apologize.” He said he was unaware “it was a plaque for the victims of attacks,” and added, “I had been sleeping outside for a long time. I heard voices, insults. I was afraid of sleeping outside.”
Police also found on his phone search history terms like “explosives,” “gay,” “Marseille,” and “Paris.”
“I typed in ‘explosive material’ to look, that’s all,” he said. “I’m not interested anymore. It’s not that I was interested, but I heard voices.”
The jurors also noted that Maamar Ifrah had made numerous trips back and forth over three-day periods to Paris in the months leading up to the events but he said he was looking for work and not planning an attack.
The prosecutor demanded five years in prison “because she does not want Mr. Ifra to be outside with the acts he committed and the personality he has.”
The judge agreed and hit Ifrah with a five-year sentence, two years of which are suspended. He is also required to seek mental health treatment and pay a fine of €500.
Germany’s Baerbock: ‘I can handle Trump’s trade chief Rubio – I lived in Florida’
Germany’s outgoing foreign minister Annalena Baerbock has insisted she had an advantage when dealing with US President Donald Trump and his administration – because she used to live in Florida.
Baerbock, a member of the Greens party, insisted in an interview with Bild on January 23 that her single year at an Orlando high school in the late 1990s gave her unique qualifications when it came to managing German-US relations.
“I once lived in Florida, that should not be underestimated,” she said when commenting on her strategy regarding how to deal with Florida Senator turned Trump Trade Secretary Marco Rubio.
“When I was 16, 17, I spent a year of high school in Orlando.”
The minister admitted she had yet to be given Rubio’s work phone number.
“The Americans are very reticent about that,” she said.
Baerbock emphasised that was normal, saying it took her more than three months to get the number of Rubio’s predecessor in the ex-US president Joe Biden administration, Antony Blinken.
She added that, while she had not met any members of the new Trump administration yet, members of her ministry had been in Washington for months preparing for the change in power.
“My officials are either already there or are currently travelling there,” she claimed, adding that she and her colleagues had “intensively prepared for the various situations”.
Tensions between Berlin and Trump have grown in recent weeks.
Members of the German left-wing “traffic light” coalition have repeatedly attacked newly appointed US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk for his pro-AfD interventions.
Baerbock continued the trend by accusing the X-owner of supporting a party with a platform that was “not compatible” with her country’s Constitution.
German minister insists she can deal with Trump as she once lived in Florida
Sánchez Calls To End Online Anonymity To ‘Save Democracy’ From Tech CEOs
Self-aggrandizing Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez badly wants to be the face of the ‘global resistance’ to technology billionaires. In peak Orwellian doublespeak, he accused CEOs like Musk and Zuckerberg of using their social media platforms to concentrate “power and wealth in the hands of just a few … at the cost of our democracies.” The comments came in Davos, in front of the wealthiest and most powerful audience possible.
Social media has become “a tool of oppression” that drives the far-right’s “reactionary agenda,” Sánchez said in his speech at the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Wednesday, January 22nd. He called for the European Union to “make social media great again” by beefing up censorship, expanding government control, and punishing CEOs who wouldn’t budge under the pressure.
The PM even called for linking the social media accounts of all Europeans to the EU’s upcoming Digital Identity Wallet, in order to effectively end online anonymity once and for all.
It takes some audacity to say things like this and expect people to believe you, especially given that allegations of past government censorship on both Twitter and Facebook were established as facts. The Trump-aligned tech companies are now merely trying to rectify these mistakes, by reinstating freedom of speech on their platforms. Arguing for more government censorship that serves the interests of global political and financial elites while pretending not to be one of them and that it’s for the good of democracy—peak Orwellian doublespeak.
Still, we should be grateful that Sánchez has no awareness of irony because he perfectly described why we actually need online free speech. “What truly limits democracy is the power of the elites,” he said. “It is the power of those who think that because they are rich, they are above the law and can do anything.” Spot on. With his frequent abuses of power and blatant corruption scandals, Sánchez certainly behaves like he’s above the law.
Lacking self-awareness, he truly seems to believe that he is the living counterpoint to elite manipulation: “That is why, my friends, the tech billionaires want to overthrow democracy.” Never mind that there was no problem with social media companies while they were serving Democrat interests: there’s a problem only now that they are ending censorship to cozy up to Trump.
Earlier this week, the European Commission promised the panicking leftists in the European Parliament that it will significantly expand its legal toolbox to enforce social media companies’ compliance with anti-hate speech laws, but Sánchez thinks that’s not enough.
The socialist PM unveiled his three-point action plan to save democracy from Silicon Valley. It includes placing the oversight of social media algorithms under the control of specialized EU agencies, holding tech CEOs “personally accountable” for non-compliance with EU censorship laws, and—most importantly—ending online anonymity by linking all social media accounts to the European Digital Identity Wallet.
Not so fast, Elon Musk quipped after Sánchez’s speech. “This platform [X] will do whatever it takes to protect the rights of users to remain anonymous,” he promised.
Sánchez Calls To End Online Anonymity To ‘Save Democracy’ From Tech CEOs ━ The European Conservative
Aschaffenburg knife attack suspect vowed to leave Germany voluntarily last year, was known to police for violence
The Afghan national arrested for stabbing to death a two-year-old boy and the 41-year-old man who came to his aid in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg on Wednesday was an asylum seeker who was legally obliged to leave the country and had a known history of criminality and mental instability.
As Bild reported, the suspect has been identified as Enamullah O., a 28-year-old Afghan national who entered Germany in November 2022 and claimed asylum.
He was accommodated in a former inn in Alzenau, Lower Franconia. However, investigations reveal he had already traveled through Bulgaria, Austria, and France before arriving in Germany, taking advantage of the European Union’s open-border policies. Fingerprint evaluations confirmed his movements across multiple European countries before settling in Germany.
Despite being flagged by authorities, O. remained in Germany. Reports indicate he was involved in multiple offenses, including drug possession in 2023, and was implicated in at least three violent incidents. He was subsequently admitted to a psychiatric facility, raising further questions about why he had not been deported.
Instead, he remained in the country which facilitated his attack on a daycare group taking a stroll through Schöntal Park with their teachers at around 11:45 a.m. on Wednesday.
Reports indicated he specifically targeted the group, stabbing at least two very young children, killing one and hospitalizing another. A 41-year-old passerby who sought to intervene in the attack was stabbed to death. A teacher was also harmed and required medical treatment.
Legally, he was required to leave Germany and was scheduled for deportation to Bulgaria by the end of 2024. However, this did not happen. On Dec. 4, Enamullah O. claimed in a letter to the immigration authorities that he would voluntarily leave, yet he failed to attend necessary interrogation appointments and remained in the country.
Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) stated there was no immediate evidence of an Islamist motive. However, the attack — the latest in a long line of high-profile mass murders by immigrants — has led to intense scrutiny of Germany’s immigration and asylum policies.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz sought to condemn the attack, acknowledging it as a possible “terrorist act.”
“I am tired of seeing such acts of violence here every few weeks by perpetrators who came to us to find protection here,” Scholz said, stressing that words alone were not enough.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser echoed similar sentiments, expressing her “deep shock” at the incident, using the same phrase she had employed after previous attacks by foreign nationals, including the December 2024 Magdeburg Christmas Market attack, which killed six people and injured 200, and the August 2024 Solingen Festival stabbing that left three dead.
CDU chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz was also “deeply shocked” and claimed that “things cannot continue like this.”
AfD co-leader Alice Weidel, however, took a harder stance, calling for immediate “remigration.”
The attack comes just weeks before Germany’s federal parliamentary elections on Feb. 23.