After a man was beaten to death in the Austrian capital of Vienna, police have now managed to arrest a Pakistani suspect on Sunday, with police saying the random attack appeared to have been conducted out of “bloodlust.”
The 27-year-old man was found severely beaten with head injuries in Vienna’s tenth district in Grenzackerstrasse in the Favoriten neighborhood. He was transported to the hospital but died shortly afterwards.
Now a 21-year-old Pakistani man has been arrested who police say has already confessed. Police said the man “felt persecuted” and attacked his victim out of “bloodlust.” The victim, a native of Bangladesh, was reportedly in the wrong place at the wrong time, with investigators telling Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung they believe it was a random attack.
Not only has the Pakistani man confessed, but police recovered a video from the suspect’s phone which allegedly showed him beating the victim to death.
The 21-year-old Pakistani man was already known to police for various crimes, including two violent crimes, which he had been arrested for.
According to the State Criminal Police Office, the suspect was arrested in his apartment on May 19 following an appeal for witnesses.
Do attacks on Poland’s media and judiciary by PM Donald Tusk constitute a “creeping coup”? The Brussels Signal ‘Deep Dive’ team talks to those who have been on the receiving end of Poland’s EU-supported “reform” and hear allegations that the PM’s opponents are living in fear as Tusk purges the ranks of the old guard and those who might criticise his administration.
It took a while for the penny to drop but finally, UK prime minister Keir Starmer has acknowledged the scale of the problem posed by mass migration. He did not quite go far enough. He said that Britain risked becoming “an island of strangers.” In reality, it is already a nation where people feel like strangers in their own home.
According to an opinion poll, published this month by pollsters at More In Common, close to half of the people surveyed indicated that they feel like ‘strangers’ in their own country.
The feeling of estrangement from your own country speaks to a sense of cultural loss. For many people, the sensibility of loss is highlighted by the appearance of millions of people with whom you have no linguistic or cultural connection in your community.
The sense of loss is emphasized by the perception that the state-sanctioned regime of multiculturalism does not assign any special status to the culture that you inherited from your family. Britishness is frequently demonized in the media, and those who take seriously the customs and symbols of their nation are often ridiculed by that same media.
Mass migration, the institutionalization of multiculturalism, and the devaluation of people’s national identity and culture reinforce one another to the point of fostering a climate of estrangement. But the problem is made far worse by the fact that Britain is not simply an Island of Strangers but also an Island Without A Story.
Societies require a unifying story and a widely accepted system of morality. Such a unifying story is the precondition for the emergence of solidarity. The bond of solidarity provides people with a sense of belonging and the feeling that they have a home. It also helps people to develop a sense of meaning regarding their place in the world. In this way, people can go about their lives knowing that something important ties them to others.
Solidarity is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve without a story that binds people together. Yet, for some time now, societies have struggled to provide their members with a story that offers them the sense that they belong to a common world.
The failure to find an answer to the question of ‘What Does It Mean To be British?’ is symptomatic of a society that cannot account for itself. Why? Because decade by decade, Britishness has been devalued and demonised by the nation’s institutions of culture and education. These institutions have become devoted to the de-nationalization of people’s identity. At a time when the doctrine of diversity demands the sacralisation of every other form of identity, that of Britishness has been systematically devalued. Is it any surprise that people who feel British have become strangers in their own land?
Britain’s main public institutions now seem embarrassed by any display of patriotism. The arrogant imperial attitudes of the past have given way to a sense of shame about Britain’s history and its present. Those still given to displays of patriotism are marginalised as relics or, worse still, condemned as racists and xenophobes.
An incident involving Emily Thornberry, Labour MP for Islington South, in November 2014 captures well the contempt that significant sections of the British political class have towards displays of patriotism. During a by-election campaign in Rochester, she tweeted a photo of a house displaying three St. George’s flags, with a white van parked outside, and accompanied it with the arch caption, ‘Image from #Rochester.’ The snobbery was too much for many and, following a public backlash, she was forced to resign from the shadow cabinet. Few believed Labour leader Ed Miliband’s subsequent claims that ‘people should fly the England flag with pride.’
The campaign to turn Britishness into a story of shame
For some time now, sections of the Establishment have turned their back on their nation and have encouraged its institutions to distance themselves from Britain’s past. The cumulative effect of this has been to strip Britishness of any trace of moral authority. All this has accelerated at a tremendous pace during the past decade.
I remember that almost a decade ago—in August of 2015—during the course of an interview with The Times, I noted that there were very few moments in British history that were allowed to serve as a source of pride. At the time I stated that there was one exception:
The Second World War was the last time Britain had a story about its accomplishments about which it could feel unambiguously proud. It is also one of the few historical experiences which is not very divisive—it does not divide people left and right.
Today, this statement no longer corresponds to reality. The past decade has seen a systematic attempt to blemish Britain’s role in World War Two, and young people’s pride in what their nation achieved at the time has severely diminished.
Pride in Britain’s important role in defeating Nazi Germany during World War Two is now countered by claims that downsize this nation’s contribution to the Allies victory. ‘Britain has built a national myth on winning the Second World War, but it’s distorting our politics,’ argues one commentator in Labour house journal The New Statesman. There is a veritable industry devoted to dispelling the conviction that Britain played a unique and historically significant role during World War Two. David Edgerton, in his The Nationalisation of British History: Historians, Nationalism and the Myths of 1940, decries the idea that Britain ‘stood alone.’ He seems to suggest that a version of history that has served as a source of pride in the post-Second World War era is more or less a myth.
If these critics are to be believed, just about everything associated with the pre-existing social memory of this War is a myth, and there is very little left in this story that can serve as a source of national pride.
The project of corroding people’s pride in their nation’s past has serious implications for everyday life. If people are dispossessed of their nation’s story it becomes difficult for them—especially the young—to answer the question of who they are. At present, Britain is fast becoming an island without a story, and for that reason—even if it were not subjected to the difficulties posed by mass migration—it would still be an island of strangers.
Of course, people’s sense of spiritual homelessness and a politicised regime of mass migration are connected. The ideologues of multiculturalism have sought to undermine the consciousness of belonging to a nation and the identity attached to it. Which is why it is not too soon to unapologetically promote pride in Britishness.
February 14, 2025. U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance delivers remarks in Germany, at the Munich Security Conference. The audience expects him to talk about foreign policy, geopolitics, and threats facing the world.
Instead, he says that the most worrying threat today is “the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.” He adds that European countries and institutions are undermining democracy and freedom of speech — and gives examples.
“A former European commissioner,” Vance states, “went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election.”
In fact, Thierry Breton, the European Union’s former internal market commissioner, admitted in a French television interview that the Romanian Constitutional Court had bowed to EU pressure and annulled the country’s presidential elections because right-wing candidate, Călin Georgescu, had a good chance of winning. “We did it in Romania,” Breton said, “and of course we will have to do it, if necessary, in Germany.”
On February 26, when Georgescu went to register as a candidate for the presidential election re-run organized a few months after the annulled election, he was arrested by the police and charged with “attempting to overthrow the constitutional order.” To date, the Romanian authorities have provided no evidence to substantiate that allegation.
“The very same thing could happen in Germany, too,” Vance said in his Munich speech.
The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party which participated in the German parliamentary elections of February 23, came in second place with 20.8%. The center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which won the plurality of votes (28.5%), however, chose to boycott the AfD and instead chose to form a government with the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — which formed the previous government and which the Germans had just rejected, giving it only 16.4% of the vote.
Germany’s new chancellor, CDU leader Friedrich Merz, had declared during the election campaign, “We will not work with the party that calls itself Alternative for Germany — not before [the election], not after, never.”
Merz stuck to his word. Just after the election, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency designated the AfD an “extremist organization” and a “threat to democracy”. The reason given was that the AfD is “anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim”. The AfD could be banned by the government.
Vance continued:
“I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest, the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be ‘hateful content.'”
Indeed, in 2022, the European Union adopted the Digital Services Act (DSA), which is supposed to “protect the rights of social media users” and “provide a safer online environment” by “limiting the spread of illegal and harmful content.” What constitutes “illegal and harmful content” was not defined and could be anything the European Commission defines as such, along with the right to impose fines and shut the websites down.
Although Vance’s claims were indisputable, the officials present immediately expressed shock. Statements from European political leaders exploded:
Germany’s Former Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that Vance’s remarks were “not appropriate,” adding:
“Never again fascism, never again racism, never again aggressive war… Today’s democracies in Germany and Europe are founded on the historic awareness and realization that democracies can be destroyed by radical anti-democrats… we’ve created institutions that ensure that our democracies can defend themselves against their enemies, and rules that do not restrict or limit our freedom but protect it.”
France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot stated that “Freedom of speech is guaranteed in Europe.”
“We’ve had free speech for a very, very long time in the United Kingdom, and it will last for a very, very long time… in relation to free speech in the UK, I’m really proud of that—our history there.”
Christoph Heusgen, chairman of the Munich Security Conference Chairman, at the end of the conference, said that Vance’s remarks had made it “a European nightmare…. We have to fear that our common basis of values is not common anymore.” He then broke down in tears.
It is quite possible that the “common basis of values” that once bound Europe and the United States is no longer common. If that is true, however, it is for the reasons listed by Vance: that European leaders and governments have moved away from what once bound Europe and the United States, such as freedom of speech and free and fair elections, the results of which are actually enacted.
Scholz’s argument about fascism, racism and the threat to democracy is simply unfounded, if not an inversion of the facts. Georgescu made no fascist or racist statements and has never threatened democracy. On the contrary, he has affirmed his desire to defend national sovereignty and Western civilization and has declared himself close to the positions of the Trump administration, which are neither fascist nor racist.
In 2018, AfD politician Alexander Gauland said that “Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird poop in more than 1,000 years of successful German history.”
In 2017, Björn Höcke, the leader of the AfD in the German state of Thuringia, called the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin a “memorial of shame.”
But the words of Gauland and Höcke do not represent the AfD party line. Gauland clarified his remarks only days later, saying:
“Many saw the expression as an inappropriate trivialization… nothing could be further from me than to allow such an impression to arise…. I regret the resulting impression. It was never my intention to trivialize or deride the victims of this criminal system.
The reason given by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency for designating AfD an “extremist organization” is neither fascism nor racism. In fact, not a single AfD leader advocates fascist or racist positions, and, what actually may be objectionable to many Europeans, is that AfD is “the most pro-Israel and philo-Semitic” party in Germany.
“That’s not democracy,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said about the German domestic intelligence agency’s decision, “it’s tyranny in disguise.”
Ironically, in the United States, Democratic National Committee (DNC) this month voided the election of David Hogg and Malcolm Kenyatta as DNC vice-chairmen, ostensibly on “procedural grounds.” Following his election, Hogg had said he planned to raise funds to support challengers in the primaries of incumbent Democrat officeholders. In June, the DNC will be considering a re-do of the election, presumably in the hope of get a pre-determined outcome. Meanwhile, many Democrats endlessly criticize the Republican Party for “destroying democracy.”
Contrary to what the French foreign minister claimed, freedom of speech is declining in Europe, particularly in France. Former journalist and presidential candidate Éric Zemmour has been convictedcountless times and handed heavy fines simply for criticizing Islam and Muslim immigration. His most recent sentencing took place on March 26, 2025. After the murder of a young Frenchman by a gang of Muslims, Zemmour spoke of the presence in France of criminals who are “Arab-Muslim scum.” He was found guilty of delivering a “racist insult.”
Novelist Renaud Camus was convicted in 2014 of incitement to hatred for saying that France was being “invaded” by Muslim immigrants.
The French television channel C8 was shut down by the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (Arcom), for “lack of diversity and pluralism.” CNews, another French television channel, was fined heavily by Arcom for the same “crime” and remains at risk of being shut down. Any television station similar to America’s Fox News would not be allowed to exist in France.
Freedom of speech in the United Kingdom, contrary to what Starmer said, is very much in danger. In recent months, British citizens have been sentenced to prison for posting messages critical of Islam on social media, and for even praying near an abortion clinic.
This anti-democratic drift has taken hold in several European countries. Politicians and parties who disagree with the worldview of the officials in power are increasingly being excluded from any possibility of running for an official position:
In Germany, as mentioned, Merz chose to shut out the AfD.
In France, Marine Le Pen, who polls show is in first place for the 2027 presidential election, was sentenced to five years of election ineligibility and four years in prison for allegedly embezzling public funds. The sentence was supposed to go into effect immediately, without a temporary suspension of the conviction pending appeal. After that decision caused a scandal, the Paris Court of Appeal said it would examine the case and issue a final judgment in the summer of 2026.
Le Pen did not embezzle public funds. The judge defined as a crime that assistants to the National Rally’s Members of European Parliament who worked in Strasbourg also worked in Paris for the party. The Democratic Movement, a centrist party led by French Prime Minister François Bayrou, did exactly the same thing as the National Rally with its MEPs’ assistants, but Bayrou was acquitted by a judge.
In the Netherlands, when the Party for Freedom (PVV) won a plurality of the votes in November 2023 parliamentary elections and its leader, Geert Wilders, attempted to form a government, all the other political parties joined forces to prevent him from doing so until he was forced to withdraw.
In Austria, in September 2024, the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) won a plurality of the votes in the parliamentary elections, and its leader, Herbert Kickl, was prevented from forming a government.
In Italy, on the other hand, when Brothers of Italy (FdI) — a party with policies similar to those of the French National Rally, the Dutch PVV, and the Austrian FPÖ — won the 2022 Italian parliamentary elections, its leader, Giorgia Meloni, was able to form a government and is now prime minister. The reason? Fdl happened to be part of an alliance with other right-of-center parties. Now, Meloni is the only politician disparagingly labeled by the European mainstream media as “far right” and able actually to enjoy the result of her election.
Most European leaders today refer to the parties and politicians they wish to exclude as “far right.” The term is used to refer to racist, xenophobic and authoritarian parties. None of the parties mentioned above shows the slightest tendency toward racism, xenophobia and authoritarianism half as much as their opponents do. The parties being elbowed out, according to historian and author Daniel Pipes, are not “nationalist,”, but patriotic, “defensive, not aggressive.” Pipes describes them as “civilizationist”:
“They cherish Europe’s and the West’s traditional culture and want to defend it from assault by immigrants aided by the left…. Civilizationalist parties are populist, anti-immigration, and anti-Islamization. Populist means nursing grievances against the system and a suspicion of an elite that ignores or denigrates those concerns.”
The attacks on freedom of speech target statements warning that mass, unvetted migration might bring about a demographic “great replacement” of native Europeans, whose values are Judeo-Christian, by migrants from the Middle East, whose values are basically Islamic. The general apprehension about Islamic values eventually overwhelming European ones is a view condemned by most politicians, the media and the judiciary in Europe, even though the Muslim birthrate is vastly higher than the European one. This apprehension also stems from the fact that the majority of Muslims living in Europe neither integrates nor seems to wish to, and that the proportion of Muslims among criminals in Europe today is far higher than their share of the general population.
Many European leaders today appear blind to the consequences of ever-increasing immigration, and a growing Muslim presence in Europe. They are dismissive of the Muslims’ continuing mass-migration, enthusiastic birthrate, and they remain stubbornly deaf to the concerns shouted by their non-Muslim citizenry.
These leaders seem to refuse to see that a serious demographic shift is taking place, even though it is highly visible. They also seem to refuse to see that this demographic shift is swiftly eroding Europe’s traditional cultures.
Out-of-control immigration from the Muslim world continues year after year throughout Western Europe, while Germany’s birthrate is 1.35 per woman. The figure for Austria is 1.58. For Italy, it is 1.31. For Spain, it is 1.41. The figure for France is 1.85. All of these are significantly far from replacement level, which is 2.1 per woman.
In every country in Western Europe, the birthrate of Muslims is significantly higher than that of the general population.
Even if many Europeans are not aware of the statistical data, they can see with their eyes that a population change is taking place, along with the corrosive destruction of their values and traditions. Voting for “civilizationist” parties, Zemmour has said, is the “reaction of people who do not want to die.”
The key question for the future of Europe seems to be: Will “civilizationist” parties remain excluded from any access to power, or will they succeed in overcoming the barriers being put up in their path?
In Romania, George Simion, a presidential candidate whose ideas are close to those of Georgescu, won more than 40% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election and had a strong chance of being elected on May 18. Unexpectedly, he lost. The winner, who had the full support of the European Union, went from 21% in the first round to 53.6% in the second round, an extraordinary performance that probably needs to be analyzed.
In Germany, the AfD has now become the country’s most popular party. The German intelligence agency mysteriously decided to walk back AfD’s extremist label. In France, polls show that if Marine Le Pen cannot run, Jordan Bardella, the president of the National Rally, has a good chance of being elected in 2027 despite being only 29 years old. In the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party recently made large gains in English local elections. If Britain’s general elections were held soon, would likely win.
The question at the heart of these issues is: Can the anti-democratic drift that has gripped several large European countries be stopped?
“European elites,” wrote the American columnist Michael Barone, “seem to have convinced themselves that they must destroy democracy in order to save it.”
Will it be possible to save democracy in Europe?
In a recent article, Manhattan Institute fellow Heather Mac Donald wrote:
“Across the West, citizens are rebelling against demographic replacement. A battle is under way between their will and the will of the elites. If Germany’s leaders continue to tell a quarter of the German population—decent, law-abiding individuals—that they are at best Hitler-adjacent and at worst Hitler-worshippers for wanting Germany’s cultural identity preserved, if those leaders continue to suppress voices and votes, either there will be a massive upset in the halls of power and the people will be liberated, or the mechanisms of repression will grow more sweeping.
French President Emmanuel Macron has attempted to downplay the significance of the explosive report from his own government detailing the infiltration of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in France and throughout Europe, warning against the spread of so-called conspiracy theories.
Last week, an intelligence report published by the French Interior Ministry quite literally alleged a decades-long conspiracy by the Muslim Brotherhood to develop an effective fifth column across Europe by entering EU institutions and gaining sway over Islamic associations and Muslim migrant communities with the explicit aim of instituting Sharia law in the West.
However, on Monday, President Macron attempted to downplay the scale of the issues raised by the report, which sent shockwaves throughout the continent.
In comments reported by Le Figaro, Macron acknowledged that the Muslim Brotherhood infiltration has been identified in “some neighbourhoods”, but said that the public “shouldn’t think that they are everywhere, because that can make you conspiratorial or paranoid.”
The statement from the French president, who reportedly urged against the publication of the bombshell report, appears to be more in line with those made by the Islamist-aligned far-left than those from his own government.
Indeed, the leader of the leftist La France Insoumise (France in Revolt/LFI) party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, has branded the report itself as being “Islamophobic” and full of “conspiracy theories” from the so-called far-right. The report had noted that the Muslim Brotherhood explicitly uses campaigns against “Islamophobia” to marshal support and gain legitimacy in the public sphere, including by garnering support from the left.
Undeterred, Mélenchon went on to compare the warnings about radical Islam’s influence on European politics to antisemitism in the lead up to the Second World War, writing that “after ‘the Jewish plot’ of the 1930s, here is the ‘Muslim plot’.”
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, whose department released the report, responded by saying: “Jean-Luc Mélenchon and LFI are the accomplices and useful idiots of Islamism.”
“The progression of Islamist entryism is profound; few saw it coming. It is at the heart of a Republican fight. We cannot respond to taqiyya, to dissimulation, with omerta, that is to say, silence,” he added.
Retailleau has vowed to use government power to target the financial assets of Muslim associations with links to the Brotherhood movement, and to use intelligence services to target local “Islamist ecosystems” with the aim of preventing them from infiltrating government institutions down to the municipal level.
While some, including the populist National Rally party of Marine Le Pen, have called for the government to ban the Muslim Brotherhood as a proscribed terrorist organisation, the Interior Minister argued that such a move would be ineffective as it is “not so much a mass organisation as a school of thought.”
The ramifications of the report have not been confined to France, with the government of Sweden, after being identified by the French intel as a hotspot for the Muslim Brotherhood, announcing last week that it will launch an investigation into Islamist infiltration in its society.
There have also been calls for accountability at the EU level, given that the report found that the Muslim Brotherhood was not only permeating throughout European Union institutions but also being funded by various Brussels bureaucracies.
On Monday, a group of 50 Members of the European Parliament, led by French MEP and Le Pen dynasty scion Marion Maréchal, demanded that EU chief Ursula von der Leyen “explain the relationship between Brussels and the Muslim Brotherhood.”
They demanded information on EU subsidies being funnelled to Muslim Brotherhood-tied groups and on the infiltration of EU institutions. Finally, the group also called for Brussels to ban the Islamist network within Europe, saying: “The Muslim Brotherhood is a danger to Europe, the European Commission must fight it rather than finance it!”
EU Commission Promotes Islamic Youth Org with Alleged Ties to Muslim Brotherhoodhttps://t.co/yCghloZo1M
— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) May 26, 2025
During the parade to celebrate Liverpool FC’s Premier League title victory, which saw thousands of fans flood into the city centre of the English city, several pedestrians were ploughed down by a man driving a car. It is so far unclear how many were injured during the incident or if any have died.
Merseyside Police said that they have arrested a “53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area” in connection with the incident. The police have not yet released any information on whether it was the result of an accident or was premeditated.
A spokesperson for the force said per Sky News: “We would ask people not to speculate on the circumstances surrounding tonight’s incident on Water Street in Liverpool city centre.
“Extensive enquiries are ongoing to establish the circumstances leading up to the collision.”
Responding to the incident, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: “The scenes in Liverpool are appalling — my thoughts are with all those injured or affected.
“I want to thank the police and emergency services for their swift and ongoing response to this shocking incident.
“I’m being kept updated on developments and ask that we give the police the space they need to investigate.”
Shocking footage shows the moment the driver sped toward pedestrians in Liverpool. pic.twitter.com/pwKWFhkdMc
This is the moment the suspected terrorist in Liverpool is taken away by police, the crowds had a different justice waiting. pic.twitter.com/G7sKKSDcrg
— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) May 26, 2025
Is the president of France his wife’s puppet? Is she like, maybe, a super-charged Jill Biden, commanding her commands from behind the scenes … or else?
Or is Emmanuel Macron in a spousal abuse situation, the way Kamala Harris appeared to be, given the reports out there about her hubby, Doug Emhoff, and the credible accusations of against him by a past girlfriend who said he hit her so hard she spun around.
Brigitte Macron was caught on camera actually beating her husband:
Brigitte Macron slaps her husband in the face, as he exits aircraft.
The French President’s office branded the incident ‘couples teasing.’
LONDON — French President Emmanuel Macron played down an apparent spat with his wife Brigette, after a video emerged of what appeared to be the French first lady shoving her husband in the face after they arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam, for an official visit.
The video showed Macron appearing inside the door of his aircraft shortly after touching down in the northern Vietnamese city late on Sunday. A hand and arm — with the person not fully visible but dressed in red — could then be seen appearing to shove the president’s face from his right hand side.
Macron appeared startled but quickly turned to wave through the open door. Brigette — wearing a red jacket — then appeared from the president’s right, with the couple then walking down the plane’s staircase together to the tarmac.
What kind of a person does that? This is playful bickering? Really?
Already we know there’s something weird about that couple — their relationship beginning as a teacher-student affair, with Brigitte nearly 25 years older than Macron is, taking her young schoolboy under her wing.
Macron has described it as “a love often clandestine, often hidden, misunderstood by many before imposing itself.”
No, it’s pervert stuff, the kind of thing we see that lands public school teachers in jail in this country, and deservedly so.
Now he’s 47, she’s 72, and she’s still beating him after all these years.
Which isn’t a good look for a president of France.
It had to have been profoundly embarrassing, as the pair were making their first trip to Vietnam, a politically sensitive country for France given that the Vietnamese whupped their keisters out of there in 1954, while France itself served as a petri dish for the communist virus that would eventually take those countries over, hosting Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot in the Paris intellectual fever swamps of the early 20th century where the two latched on to the fashionable communism of the Parisian intellectuals.
Lot of good that did the Vietnamese. /s
All the same Vietnam is a smart country, recognizing that they have an even more communist neighbor to their north, who views their country approximately the same way Vladimir Putin’s Russia views Ukraine, so it helps to have big, burly, friends out there should worst come to worst. They aren’t a hostile country anymore, but they have their heritage.
The Macrons were coming in fact to pay tribute to Ho Chi Minh, which probably won’t sit well with French military families whose men fought and died in the Indochina wars. He already would seem to be raring to offer an apology on behalf of France … and then the publicly visible beating from his woman came into view.
Which was not only seen by the Vietnamese … but by the Chinese, and the Russians, too.
That would explain why Macron’s spokesmen were so eager to deny the whole thing that we saw on camera.
First, they claimed it never happened, it was probably an AI-generated image.
Then they said the Russians did it — I found this in Le Monde and ran it through Google Translate:
Early in the afternoon, while announcing the signing of contracts in Vietnam, discussing the war in Ukraine, and revisiting the report on Muslim Brotherhood infiltration, Emmanuel Macron himself addressed the now-viral video in front of journalists, saying, “Everyone needs to calm down.” “My wife and I were joking, as we often do (…). For three weeks, people have been watching videos and thinking I shared a bag of cocaine, that I had a fight with a Turkish president, and that now I’m having a domestic dispute with my wife, he said. None of that is true. Yet, these three videos are true, so everyone needs to calm down and, above all, pay attention to the real story.
Then, oh, yes, it happened, but it was just playful bickering.
That wasn’t terribly evident in the aftermath, when the two strolled down the airplane stairs, grimacing, Brigitte refusing to take his outstretched arm, clutching the handrail tightly instead, while Macron’s other fist remained clenched.
It’s a bad look for any head of state, especially a leading NATO state at open odds with Russia over Ukraine.
While that war is getting seemingly worse, as Trump has condemned Russia’s seemingly pointless assaults on Ukraine’s cities while the Russian side says Ukraine tried to bring down President Putin’s helicopter to assassinate him, it’s also disturbing for the questions it raises.
The Russian propaganda press took plenty of interest in this incident, raising the possibility that the Russian secret services have already got a lot of dirt on him, meaning, he could potentially be their puppet, too. Could this relationship be sadomasochistic or is it just persistent yelling and screaming? Could there be more damaging material that they could release, the better to reduce his political power or prestige at home? It almost sounds like a security risk to NATO, given what the Russians may know and have not released.
Maybe he should come clean about this then, instead of coming up with fake excuses. And it probably wouldn’t hurt to get some marriage therapy, though I doubt they’re within the range of help at this point. Maybe he just needs to leave his wife home and step aside from any power at all. Powerlessness seems to be what he likes and France doesn’t need that.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has now authorized the use of German missiles for strikes against Russian territory, in a move that signals a dramatic escalation against Moscow.
He also signaled that this will not only apply to German weapons, but also other weapons systems from countries like France and the United States.
Posting to X, Merz wrote: “We will do everything in our power to continue supporting Ukraine. This also means no longer having any range restrictions on the weapons we supply. Ukraine can now also defend itself by attacking military positions in Russia.”
Wir werden alles tun, was in unseren Kräften steht, um die Ukraine weiter zu unterstützen. Das bedeutet auch keinerlei Reichweitenbeschränkungen mehr für Waffen, die wir liefern. Die Ukraine kann sich jetzt auch verteidigen, indem sie militärische Stellungen in Russland angreift.
— Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz (@bundeskanzler) May 26, 2025
Previously, Kyiv was permitted to use these weapons only against Russian forces in occupied Ukrainian territories.
Speaking at the “WDR Europaforum 2025” at the re:publica digital conference in Berlin, Merz stated, “There are no longer any range restrictions for weapons that have been delivered to Ukraine, neither by the British, nor by the French, nor by us, nor by the Americans.”
Two years ago, Remix News ran a video from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, outlining how the conflict started with countries sending helmets and then tanks to illustrate how deeply the West was involving itself in the war.
The conflict appears to only be escalating more and more since Orbán issued his warning.
As the war has progressed, nations like Great Britain and France supplied advanced weapons systems, including Storm Shadow and Scalp cruise missiles. Germany has been debating the delivery of its Taurus cruise missiles, which have a 500-kilometer range, a move Moscow has warned would make Germany a direct party to the conflict.
Merz did not explicitly mention Taurus missiles in his statement, but his predecessor, Olaf Scholz, refused to provide Ukraine with such weapons, fearing a sharp escalation of the war.
This policy change comes against a backdrop of continued Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities and stalled peace efforts. While Merz emphasized that Ukraine does not target civilian areas — and should maintain that distinction — he stressed that a country unable to retaliate within the aggressor’s territory cannot adequately defend itself.
However, it appears that Western countries are already actively targeting Russian forces. Reports from November indicated that Ukraine had already used long-range ATACMS missiles from the U.S. and British Storm Shadow cruise missiles against military targets in Russia.
Merz also cautioned that the West must prepare for a prolonged war, even as diplomatic channels remain open. He suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin views Western offers of dialogue as a sign of weakness, asserting that “Nobody can now seriously blame us for not having exhausted all the diplomatic means that exist.”
At the same time, President Donald Trump has reportedly become increasingly disillusioned with Putin following Russia’s recent attacks on Ukraine. Trump recently launched an unusually sharp criticism of Putin on his Truth Social platform, describing the Kremlin chief as “absolutely crazy.”
Costa, Starmer, von der Leyen, with the British PM. Screengrab youtube
The Labour government’s “reset deal” with the EU has dominated British news past this week. It has reopened the wounds of Brexit and re-ignited the arguments. It is more than a simple reboot of relations: it is, in embryo anyway, a significant step back towards the EU by a country that has just chosen to leave it. Why?
The simple answer is that we have a Labour government that believed its own propaganda on the trade deal that I, as British chief negotiator and subsequently minister, drew up with Michel Barnier back in 2020. The agreement has in fact been working perfectly well. With the partial exception of Northern Ireland, it has delivered free trade for both sides. It has given Britain back control of its domestic regulations and allowed gradual (perhaps too gradual) innovation. And it has enabled us to reach new trade agreements with others: Australia and New Zealand in 2023, a full free trade agreement with India — a deal that has eluded the EU for the best part of twenty years — and a first-step trade agreement with the Americans. Britain’s economic growth, while sadly anaemic, has not suffered in relation to the rest of the EU, and indeed has been faster than France, Germany, and the whole Eurozone since the trade agreement came into force.
Our Labour government believed, despite all the evidence, this was a bad deal for Britain. They soon discovered the truth – and realised that it wasn’t actually possible to “improve” it, in their terms, except by going back into parts of the EU’s single market. So that is what they have done. Britain will once again be bound by EU agrifood laws, by its emissions trading scheme, by its carbon border tariffs, and, eventually, by its energy trading rules. Add to that the abandonment of the right to fish our own fishing waters for another 12 years.
In return, we have agreed a defence and security agreement, a risible document which essentially allows Britain, still the continent’s primary foreign policy and defence power, the right to attend a series of EU talking shops. If anything this document is a British concession, not a benefit. It certainly shouldn’t have been accompanied by give-aways on anything else.
In 2018, one member of the EU negotiating team was famously caught on camera by the BBC describing the provisional agreement just reached with Theresa May’s government as making Britain “our first colony”. Fortunately, and rightly, the deal failed to pass the British parliament, and I and Boris Johnson were able to put in place the current trade arrangements. Sadly, this week’s deal repeats all the British negotiating mistakes of 2018. It brings us back towards EU norms again. That’s bad for us – but it is also bad for supporters of the nation state in the EU, too.
Most Europeans, reading this week’s news, if they paid attention, will probably have thought “good if Britain’s working with us a bit more closely again” and then moved on. But obviously there is more than that to it.
If you are sitting in the European Commission, if you are in the entourages of Emmanuel Macron or Friedrich Merz or Donald Tusk, you are going to be actively delighted. For nothing, Britain has agreed not to be a competitor in important areas. We’ve agreed not to innovate in our food and agriculture sector, but instead to go along with whatever the EU wants. We’ve agreed, explicitly, not to have less “ambitious” net zero laws than the EU. And we’ve agreed we’ll import the EU’s (50 per cent higher) carbon price without any say in how it works.
You will also be very well aware that one thing leads to another. Starmer has sold his deal in Britain by saying there will now be barrier-free trade on food with the EU. Yet Britain’s tariffs on many food imports are now a lot lower than the EU’s. Unless Britain is to become a back way into the EU’s customs union, EU customs controls are going to have to bite and mean something. It won’t be long before von der Leyen is sweetly saying, “You’ve already agreed to operate our carbon border tariffs. Why don’t you just join the customs union for food too?” And bit by bit we will slide back into EU rules – just without any say in them. If you’re a Euro-federalist it is the perfect way of neutralising the Brits.
But what if you are a European national conservative, perhaps sitting in Meloni’s or Orban’s teams? Maybe you are thinking that, while you can see the problem, it’s not a priority issue for you. You have your own arguments with the Commission. If the Brits are coming back, well maybe that helps a bit?
If so, I urge you to think again. For one thing, from your point of view, the British rapprochement is entirely defanged. We don’t get any say in laws or outcomes. We can’t help those who don’t like the direction of the EU’s travel. We just get locked in to others’ laws. Moreover, if you hope that British reforms, innovation, or experimentation might make something similar happen in the EU – forget it.
For another, European national conservatives have an interest in preserving and strengthening the nation state, and ideally in weakening supranational policy-making too. But this deal will be seen by its advocates to weaken any argument that nation states can sensibly make their own policies in important areas of national interest. If even Britain can’t sustain national decision-making outside the EU, they will say, how are you going to be able to sustain it within it?
This reset damages British freedom and national independence. But not only ours. John Donne, the great English poet, famously wrote “No man is an island”. Nor is any European nation state, for any weakening of the nation state diminishes all our nations. European conservatives, real conservatives that is, should take heed of the poem’s final words: “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
David Frost
The Rt Hon Lord Frost of Allerton CMG was Britain’s chief negotiator for exiting the European Union.
Brussels is not what it once was. A major survey, reviewed by the Flemish public broadcaster VRT, shows that nearly one in five residents feels unsafe in their respective neighborhood, a figure twice as high as the national baseline.
The survey—done by Security Monitor, using a giant representative sample of 150,000 Belgian citizens—showed that around 10% of all Belgians often or always feel unsafe in the area where they live. Flanders (with its right-wing government) seems to be the safest, with only 7% reporting being concerned, contrasted with 13% in the socialist-led Wallonia saying the same.
Brussels, however, is taking the crown with 19% of residents feeling unsafe in their neighborhoods, up from 16% since the last Security Monitor survey was published in 2021. Mostly, the reason for residents feeling unsafe is the steady increase in drug-related crimes,
This three-point increase has not only the local, but also the federal authorities worried, with Interior Minister Bernard Quintin arguing that crime has become a systemic problem that needs a systemic response.
“In some Brussels neighborhoods, [there are] a lot of problems on top of each other: nuisance caused by drugs, intimidation on the streets, damage to vehicles, fly-tipping,” Quintin commented on the findings.
“We need a structural response to that,” he added, once again calling for integrating all six of the city’s police precincts into one joint structure, capable of addressing the problem with “one vision, one strategy.”
But, to be honest, “nuisance caused by drugs” does not really reflect the reality of Brussels’ streets that are being dominated by rival drug gangs, mostly of North African origin.
Shoot-outs between these gangs happen almost weekly, often in broad daylight and sometimes even using military-grade rifles. Bombing each other’s headquarters with makeshift explosives is not uncommon either, and neither is seeing ‘civilians’ get caught in the crossfire.
Despite the alarming trends, the police seem to be helpless. Every few months, you see them cordon off a whole block and conduct a major raid with a hundred officers, arresting a dozen or so gangsters, but others take their place as soon as they leave.
While the federal government believes the police merger could be a viable solution, it’s merely a technical response that doesn’t take into account the city’s rapidly changing ethnic makeup.
It turns out diversity is not a strength, at least not in the EU capital, and it might get a lot worse before it gets better. Right now, 46% of Brussels is foreign-born, while around 80% of minors under 18 come from an immigrant background. Before long, Brussels will no longer be Belgian, and no amount of waffles and beer can help with that.
2de dag op rij rellen 'jongeren' in Brussel. Wie houden ze voor de gek dat het zogezegd te wijten is aan 'racistische' Clubfans?
Waar dit werkelijk over gaat is het vestigen van de wet door allochtone straatbendes, het intimideren van onze mensen en het verdrijven van de… pic.twitter.com/ieIHPUkqbx
— Tom Vandendriessche (@TomVandendriese) May 6, 2025
