Month: April 2025

Following the trial that resulted in Marine Le Pen and her party, the Rassemblement National (RN), receiving a severe sentence for misuse of public funds in the European parliamentary assistants affair, the European Parliament is demanding that the French party pay €3.5 million in damages. This demand places the party, which is in a fragile financial position and subject to banking restrictions, in a very delicate situation ahead of the upcoming presidential election.

For Marine Le Pen, the conviction clearly has two objectives: to prevent her from standing and to suffocate her political party. According to her, the financial sentence “jeopardises the future” of her party. “It’s not just about eliminating the presidential candidate. If we can kill the party at the same time, then of course we’re in a good position,” she said ironically when the verdict was handed down.

According to information from BFM TV, the European Parliament, which joined the French judicial investigation as a civil party, is claiming €3.5 million in damages from France’s leading right-wing party. The total damage has been estimated at €4.5 million, but the RN has already paid €1 million during the proceedings. The claimed amount includes legal fees (€80,000), compensation for moral damage (€200,000), and compensation for economic damage (approximately €3.250 million).

In a statement, the European Parliament explained that the amounts claimed for “misuse of public funds” had been wrongfully taken from European taxpayers: “In this sense, European citizens and French taxpayers are just as much victims in this case as the European Parliament.”

Now that the judges have ruled in favour of immediate enforcement of the sentence, the appeal filed by Marine Le Pen does not suspend payment of the amounts claimed. The party has nevertheless requested that the payments be spread out over time.

These payments are in addition to the fines owed to the Treasury at the end of the trial, amounting to €1 million.

The sum to be raised is colossal for a party experiencing significant structural financial difficulties.

Under French electoral law, the RN can count on a significant portion of public funds for its financing, allocated proportional to its results in the first round of legislative elections. However, in the past, this contribution has not always been sufficient to cover all its expenses, and the party has had to resort to borrowing. For many years, however, the RN has faced almost systematic obstruction from French banks in obtaining loans, sometimes forcing it to resort to loans from foreign banks—something for which the French media subsequently criticised it heavily, with a certain degree of bad faith. In September 2023, after ten years, the RN finally managed to pay off a loan from a Czech-Russian bank, which cost it dearly in terms of its political image.

Today, the RN’s financial situation is more stable but remains tense. The party’s current finances allow it to pay the sums demanded, but will obviously hamper its ability to finance its presidential campaign from its own resources.

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/if-you-cant-beat-it-fine-it-eu-orders-le-pens-rn-to-pay-e3-5m/

by Giulio Meotti

The left loved Pope Francis when he denigrated capitalism, globalization, inequalities between rich and poor as well as Muslim migrants, and when he put theoretical Catholic violence and very real Islamic violence on the same level. The left loved the Pope when Francis willingly submitted to the dictates of political correctness and seemed to have adopted Chesterton’s famous “crazy Christian virtues”.

Now his admirers and faithful remember him as the Pope of the peripheries, of mercy, of inclusion, of openness to others, of the solitary mass in St. Peter’s during the pandemic, of the “people” (his best moment was instead when he went to visit what remains of the Christians in Iraq). They mourn this Pope for his funny anecdotes and that mischievous look, as well as for his reputation for being “in step with the times.”

For Bergoglio (before he became Pope Francis, he was known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio), Europe was the past. He did not understand it and did not want to understand it. He did not like Europe. And he said it every day for twelve very long years.

The Pope who did not go to Notre Dame for the reopening.

The Pope of “human brotherhood” with Imam Al Tayeeb, who called on Islam to unite against Israel, who legitimized terrorism on the basis of the Koran and called for the death of “apostates,” meaning those who convert to Christianity.

The Pope who said on October 7 “they killed someone” and brought relations with the Jewish world to the lowest point in a strange convergence between Christian anti-Judaism and Muslim anti-Jewish hatred. While Benedict XVI took a stand in defense of Western culture and pledged to strengthen “collaboration with the sons and daughters of the Jewish people,” his successor expressed distrust of the West and support for Israel’s declared enemies.

The Pope who “punch-punched” the (dead) cartoonists after the Charlie Hebdo massacre (“it’s normal, it’s normal”). Why did Francis speak in a way that would make him identifiable as the guardian of the self-defense of the “dignity of religions” (only Islam is violent) rather than the guardian of the sacredness of life and the right to freedom of expression?

The Pope who, faced with the most significant episode of intolerance towards Christians that has occurred in Europe since the Second World War, the slaughter of Father Hamel in Normandy, said that Islamists are looking for “money” and that if one must speak of “Islamic violence” he also wants to speak of “Catholic violence”.

The Pope who said that “there is an Arab invasion of Europe, a social fact, but how many invasions has Europe known in the course of its history and has always known how to overcome itself and move forward to finally find itself as if enlarged by the exchange between cultures”.

The Pope who managed to explain that “the idea of ​​conquest” is an integral part of Islam as a religion, but also of Christianity.

The Pope who met Greta, fueling a ridiculous and anti-Western environmentalism.

The Pope who said that “I don’t feel like calling China anti-democratic”.

The Pope who called the migratory upheaval “alarmist propaganda”.

The Pope who, contrary to all the facts, said that “poverty fuels terrorism”.

The Pope who compared migrants in Europe to Jesus and the Jews that Herod was hunting.

The Pope who attacked politicians who defend the Christian roots of Europe.

The Pope who said that Europe has a “multicultural” identity.

The Pope who called the West “a civilization of barbed wire and slavery”.

The Pope who equated migrant centers to “concentration camps” and “lagers”. And this was the most serious lie.

It does not matter that, once the comparison was cleared, even Erdogan approached the Jews under Nazism – or that, if Hitler exterminated 6 million Jews, in 2020 in Europe there were 87 million migrants (alive and well).

In his writings and speeches, Francis always presented only one truth. That of the gentile migrant denied entry to a rich and despicable Western country. He rejected the idea that these influxes of migrants could also be a source of problems for the receiving countries. He saw only the advantages of “diversity.” But Islam has not yet produced civil societies, states, institutions, and a culture of rights that are equal to those of the West and as desirable to millions of people.

“John Paul II remains the Pope of freedom, who played a decisive role in the fall of the Soviet Union and the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War,” writes Nicholas Baverez, a student of the philosopher Raymond Aron. “Benedict XVI was the Pope of reconciliation between faith and reason, which he sought to erect as a barrier against the return of religious fanaticism. Francis is the Pope of resentment toward Europe and the West.”

I don’t know if Michel Houellebecq is right when he writes that “the Church is engaged in suicide”. But a certain cultural dhimmitude is the great blind side of the Bergoglian pontificate, whose aspiration for peace met with the will to power of his interlocutors. Satisfying all the requirements of the “South of the world”, decolonial and destroyer of the “privileged whites”, did not Bergoglio follow in the footsteps of the worst autocrats who manipulate this new mobilizing ideological figure, the “West”?

Benedict XVI discovered that the price of conviction is unpopularity. Francis discovered that the price of compromise is disorder.

History remembers the expression “better the turban than the tiara” by Gennadio Scolario, leader of the powerful Latinophobic and Turcophile Byzantine party, who preferred to hand the Byzantines over to the Turks and to the definitive yoke of dhimmitude rather than ally himself with Rome, rival of Constantinople.

I don’t know if history will remember Francis as “better the turban than the West,” but if Wojtyla went to Warsaw during communism and Ratzinger to Regensburg during the clash of civilizations, I struggle to find light in Bergoglio where he, in the West, saw only shadows.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/407250

One of the accused ran a restaurant in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. Another one was a taxi driver. Inconspicuous, friendly – seemingly integrated.

The discovery of a USB stick made the investigators sit up and take notice. What they found on it was highly explosive: coordinates, photos, clues to possible targets in Germany. Several locations were spied on: the Israeli embassy in Berlin, the US military airport in Ramstein and Tempelhofer Feld, one of Berlin’s most popular parks.

Terrorism expert Hans-Jakob Schindler warns in the newspaper NZZ: ‘The fact that the group targeted the well-frequented park suggests that they may have been toying with the idea of committing a mass murder.

The trial not only reveals plans – it shows a strategic U-turn. Europe is clearly no longer a place of retreat for Hamas – but a target for attack.

It is not only Israel that is hated at the protests – the German state has also become an enemy.

Particularly explosive: Hamas – which is at the focus of the trial in Berlin – is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. What was planned in Berlin has the backing of the highest religious authority – and a clear global mandate to use violence.

Read more:

Hamas-Terror in Europa? Prozess in Berlin erschüttert die Geheimdienste! | Exxpress

2025 in Mayence: Holy water font contaminated with faeces. Confessionals destroyed. Easter candles were smeared in Kraichgau. Unknown persons smashed the high altar in Öhringen. A Bible was set on fire in Groß-Gerau. Crosses were desecrated in Eslohe. In Neuss-Erfttal, the police are investigating arson. In Salzgitter-Bad, perpetrators destroyed a statue of the Virgin Mary. Several churches were vandalised in the Odenwald.
Churches have an ‘open day’ every day. Anyone can enter the room of silence. No one checks. This Christian tradition is an expression of trust. Even those who despise Christianity take advantage of it. Figures of saints were stolen from churches as long as 50 years ago. They were later found in second-hand bookshops. But today it is no longer about theft. It is about destruction and deliberate desecration.
Crosses are smashed, statues are knocked off their pedestals and smashed on the floor. Baptismal fonts are damaged. Altars are desecrated. The misguided perpetrators believe that they are serving their religion when they desecrate the Christian house of God. Magdeburg Cathedral was locked when the author tried to enter it in 2019.
A member of the congregation reported that someone had been defecating behind the altar.

According to the OIDAC report, over 2,000 anti-church acts were recorded across Europe in 2023, ranging from vandalism and desecration to threats. In Bavaria alone, the number of church desecrations rose from 219 (2019) to 294 (2022). In Baden-Württemberg, 896 offences against church facilities were reported in 2023. This corresponds to an increase of six per cent. The number of violent offences rose by 56 per cent. In North Rhine-Westphalia: 354 cases in 2019, 440 in 2023. In Berlin, attacks on Christian places of worship have totalled over 1,400 since 2006.

And these are just the official figures. The official statistics only list politically motivated offences. However, many desecrations are classed as ‘vandalism’ and fall under the heading of general crime. Observers speak of unreported offences. On X, users reported over 90 targeted attacks in spring 2025 alone. However, the Ministry of the Interior is playing down.

In some cases, perpetrators shout ‘Allahu Akbar’. The slogans are clear. Islamist groups such as the so-called IS have been calling for the destruction of Christian sites for years. Young men, ideologically incited, act on this appeal. They despise the Christian cross and make it their target. It is a sad country where churches remain open and unprotected.

The parishes are not asking for much, just that their places of worship are safe and that perpetrators are punished. That people take a close look and protect what generations have built up. But there is a lack of cameras. There is a lack of police patrols and a lack of honesty. Instead: Trivialisation. Silence.

Germany must protect its churches before it is too late. A cross is not a piece of wood. An altar is not a piece of furniture. A church is not a public space like any other. It is a sanctuary, a place of refuge and a place of prayer. Anyone who attacks it is attacking us all.

A country that no longer defends its churches has ceased to love itself. The perpetrators feel they are right and continue to destroy.

https://pi-news.net/2025/04/kirchenschaendungen-erschuettern-deutschland/

By Silvio Canto, Jr.

Over in Austria, a country that I’ve always associated with the waltz and beautiful women dancing in elegant gowns, people are a bit shocked to read the news today.  Here it goes:

41% of children in Vienna’s elementary and middle schools are Muslim. Within living memory, Vienna will become a Muslim city.

Yes, it turns out that way.  As someone told me, the last guy standing usually wins the battle.  It’s hard for Austrians to compete if they are old or dead and the last guy standing is young and has lots of kids. It’s a brutal truth, but it is that way.

Austria’s problem didn’t start today. As a good friend from Austria told me years ago when he came to Texas, their birth rates have been below replacement for a while. The latest one is 1.5 per woman and it takes 2.1 per woman to keep future Austrians dancing the waltz.

The problems gets more complicated when mass immigration meets the generous welfare state. Can you say California?

How much longer will Austria survive? I don’t know, but reality does have the last word and I see a big clash coming. It’s also one of those “ghosts of the future” moments. As the ghost told Scrooge, these are images of things that may happen but you can change your ways. I think that the ghost is telling Austrians to start having babies if they want girls in pretty gowns dancing the waltz in the future.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/04/the_last_austrian_standing.html

Historian and broadcaster Rafe Heydel-Mankoo, Senior Fellow at the New Culture Forum, delivers the closing speech at our NCF Locals Conference in Salisbury: “A Celebration of England: Magna Carta and the Making of the English”. He explains the 10 key ways that England made the modern world. Watch other conference speeches here:    • David Starkey: Magna Carta – A Conser…  

By Anthony J. Sadar

The 55th Earth Day has arrived, and with it the usual fervor over “saving the planet.”

In addition to mostly peaceful protests, traditional constructive activities are undertaken such as tree plantings, river cleanups, and wetland preservation.

This year, though, a new planet-saving opportunity has presented itself: Saving a Tesla.

Before Elon Musk became Public Enemy #2 to leftist activists (right behind President Trump as Public Enemy #1), Mr. Musk was an earth savior with his “non-polluting” electric vehicles. He immediately fell out of favor when he became President Trump’s friend. Then, he dared to drift out of his lane to sideswipe the enormous national debt by trimming the fat from bloated bureaucratic programs.

Many of those programs contained huge financial lifelines for leftist projects, thus the extreme angst.

But are reputed environmentalists missing the revered forest because of the one knotty tree?

The forest, other plant life, and people survive best in a healthy environment. Air, water, and land quality are essential to a thriving ecosystem. Yet, by burning Teslas and charging stations, the Musk haters are producing some of the most toxic air emissions, water effluents, and solid refuse.

The production of electric vehicles and associated chargers requires a large variety of raw materials that, when incinerated, discharge harmful fumes such as hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen chloride, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and a variety of metals related to battery chemistry like lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese. Nasty stuff.

The dispersion of the toxic gases leads to unhealthy chemical concentrations in the ambient air. The potential for increased heart and respiratory ailments surely is a result.

Other biosphere impacts can occur from runoff of fire retardants and dissolved charred material that end up in surface water and groundwater. Removing not just the electric carnage but also the disposable equipment connected with firefighting presents more problems with respect to solid waste.

Assaults continue. Besides the usual professional hazards of firefighting, arson endangers unintended property and personnel.

Keying cars is also not nice. People and the planet suffer under the burdens associated with vehicle repair. Bodywork requires paint jobs. Painting fumes and shop waste are not typically friendly to the environment.

Whatever happened to praising one of the most perceptive, productive people on the planet, Elon Musk, for his efforts to reduce greenhouse gases (besides all his accomplishments in rocketry, satellites, robotics, neurotechnology, and software)? Some on the eco-conscious left crave Mr. Musk’s deportation, as if he were a dangerous transplant or invasive species from South Africa.

Since when is it a negative when a successful, patriotic intellectual, acting for free, focuses on streamlining government and tackling the waste, fraud, and abuse of public funds? Rather, positives abound from such a service, even for the environment. More monies earmarked for ecological improvements can actually go toward those improvements and not so much toward more raucous, ineffective remonstrating.

As usual, unrighteous anger accomplishes unreasonable destruction and is counterproductive.

So, here’s beneficent advice, at least on Earth Day, the holiest day of the environmentalist year: Save the planet by saving a Tesla.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/04/celebrate_earth_day_by_not_burning_a_tesla.html

The Swedish Government has said it planned to criminalise virginity checks, virginity certificates and virginity interventions.

The Conservative administration has also proposed that failure to disclose forced and child marriages be criminalised.

The planned moves aimed to strengthen the protection of girls and women who lived in a so-called “honour context”, it said.

“Honour norms limit the freedom and life chances of girls and women, but also boys and men. It is often about power and control. And for those who try to defy control, the consequences can be devastating – in the worst case, fatal,” Minister for Justice Gunnar Strömmer said.

“By criminalising these serious abuses, we are strengthening the protection of the personal integrity of girls and women who live in an honour context in a very concrete way.

“A woman’s right to decide over her own body and sexuality is a fundamental human right. Violating it is unacceptable and it is therefore extremely important that the protection of these rights is now strengthened,” he said.

Minister for Gender Equality and Working Life, Nina Larsson, added: “Virginity checks and virginity procedures must stop.”

In recent years, the number of virginity checks in Sweden has reportedly increased, particularly within certain immigrant communities where honour-related cultural norms — often linked to Islamic traditions from the Middle East and North Africa — have remained influential.

These tests have been frequently requested by strongly religious families, despite being medically unfounded and illegal in Sweden since 2022.

Examinations of a woman’s virginity may take place ahead of marriage and conducted by accommodating healthcare professionals, relatives, religious leaders, or other individuals with authority or influence within their communities.

They occurred both within healthcare settings and in private spheres. In some cases, girls and women residing in Sweden have been subjected to virginity checks or procedures while abroad.

Mainstream medical professionals have long maintained that it was impossible to determine, through physical examination, whether a girl or woman had engaged in sexual intercourse.

Nevertheless, the possible results of such “investigations” can be severe, ranging from social ostracism to physical punishment and honour-based violence.

Under the proposed legislation, performing a virginity check or procedure could carry a penalty of up to one year’s imprisonment. Issuing a certificate of sexual “innocence” would be punishable by either a fine or up to six months in jail.

The government also proposed to tighten child-marriage legislation by criminalising a failure to report knowledge of an impending forced or underage marriage — potentially implicating wedding guests or other bystanders who remained silent.

The ruling coalition parties argued that a conviction should be possible even where the girl or woman appeared to have given consent. They cited the high likelihood that such consent may be given under pressure or fear of the consequences of refusal to do so.

Authorities noted that such honour-based crimes were often veiled in silence, making them particularly difficult to detect and address.

Sweden’s Government said it aimed for the legislative amendments to come into force on 1 December 2025.

https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/04/swedish-government-wants-to-criminalise-virginity-checks

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) has hit a historic watermark, and is now the most popular party in Germany for the first time ever, reaching 26 percent. The poll, from Forsa, shows the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in second place with 25 percent.

If the vote were held today, the two parties set to enter government, the Social Democrats (SPD) and the CDU, would not have enough votes to enter government. The SPD is at 15 percent, giving the two parties a combined total of 40 percent. The poll showed that support for the Greens dropped a point to 11 percent and the Left Party also dropped a point to 9 percent.

BREAKING: 🇩🇪The AfD party is now the most popular party in Germany for the first time ever, soaring to 26%.

The main German parties are working to ban the AfD, and a vote on a ban is expected in the coming months in the new Bundestag.

Follow: @RMXnews pic.twitter.com/Czf0gJcNgs

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) April 22, 2025

The news comes at a time when the left is racing to vote on a ban on the AfD in the German parliament, the Bundestag, a topic covered in detail by Remix News. However, despite inital reports that the CDU would back such a ban, the picture is becoming muddier.

For one, there are more and more voices in the CDU and its sister party, the CSU, who are calling for “more calm” towards the AfD, including from the influential vice-chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Jens Spahn. Spahn even said that the AfD should be able to lead some of the committee in the Bundestag, which would give the party more say and power. Given that it received the second-most votes during the German election, it should, like all other parties, have access to these committees, but many want to shut it out completely, especially from intelligence committees.

The issue could lead to a major split in the coalition between the CDU and SPD. SPD Bundestag member Ralf Stegner told Welt his party has “absolutely no sense of humor” on any attempt to go easy on the AfD.

He said any kind of rapprochement would represent a “maximum stress test” for the new coalition govenrment.

“Anyone who wants to form a coalition with the SPD cannot join forces with right-wing radicals. And joining forces also means voting for enemies of democracy,” he said. The MP, known for his left-wing views, instead is calling for a ban on the AfD if the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) classifies the party as “confirmed right-wing extremist.”

“If the Office for the Protection of the Constitution upgrades its classification, then we also have a duty to work towards initiating a ban on the party,” Stegner said.

However, Welt reports that CDU is rejecting an “automoatic” approach to banning the AfD.

The CDU/CSU, in turn, rejects this automatic approach: “To derive an obligation to initiate ban proceedings from an upgrade by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution clearly ignores the legal situation,” said Günter Krings, legal policy spokesman for the CDU-CSU parliamentary group. He instead wants to “fight the AfD politically by exposing its extremism…The best recipe against the AfD is concrete successes by the new federal government, especially in migration, security, and the economy.”

He also claims that initiating proceedings “would only make the AfD rub its hands together and use it as free support for its victim myth.”

Meanwhile, the AfD is slamming calls for a ban. “The renewed call for an AfD ban is completely unfounded and would be completely hopeless,” said Alice Weidel, the co-leader of the AfD. “Instead of engaging in absurd and anti-democratic ban fantasies, Mr. Stegner should be thinking about why his party has been losing voters in droves for years.”

Sahra Wagenknecht, who is the leader of the left-wing BSW, told Welt: “First gigantic electoral fraud, then the ban debate: could it get any more stupid? The fact that such proposals are now coming from the self-proclaimed ‘democratic center,’ of all places, is disgraceful and will further strengthen the AfD.”

She went so far as to say it was a purely autocratic move.

“No question, in an autocracy, the ‘problem’ would be solved in exactly the same way.”

Even in the SPD, there is debate about a ban.

SPD Minister President of Saxony Stephan Weil (SPD) warned a ban could also fail, which would be “a feast for the AfD.”

https://rmx.news/trending/the-afd-is-now-the-most-popular-party-in-germany-for-the-first-time-ever-all-while-debate-rages-over-an-the-party/