Month: June 2025

President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele said on Sunday that his country is willing to send deported illegal migrants detained at the CECOT mega-prison to France after Mexican-American fashion designer Willy Chavarria held a performance “inspired” by the detainees at the Paris Fashion Week show.

Chavarria, a California-based designer reportedly described as “Chicano and queer and proud of it,” held a fashion show in Paris on Friday titled “Huron” that included 35 male models dressed and styled as CECOT inmates. The models wore white tall tees and sported crew cuts while walking out to José Feliciano’s acoustic version of “California Dreamin’.”

Footage from the event shows the models kneeling on the runway, with their heads bent low in seeming submission. The shirts worn by the models were reportedly made in partnership with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). According to GQ Magazine, Chavarria’s show evoked the “disturbing images” of the 252 Venezuelan illegal migrants suspected of being members of the Tren de Aragua terrorist organization who were deported to El Salvador this year after President Donald Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.

“We’re are [sic] ready to ship them all to Paris whenever we get the green light from the French government,” Bukele said in English on his official Twitter account late Saturday evening. 

Minutes later, the official account of the Salvadoran Press Secretariat of the Presidency translated Bukele’s message to Spanish and stressed the government would take “a firm stance against the attempt to glorify criminality.”

On Sunday afternoon, Bukele published a second message that read, “This is the result of glorifying criminals in Paris. He who spares the wolf sacrifices the sheep.” 

The message was accompanied by a video of an unidentified crying woman denouncing being the repeated target of harassment in Paris and stating she was afraid of doing anything alone in the French capital.

In a separate, third message, Bukele wrote, “People complaining that we had to put 1.5 percent of our population in prison… (By the way, more than half of them are undergoing rehabilitation and will be released in a couple of years).” Bukele accompanied the text with a meme picture from Disney’s 2018 film Avengers: Infinity War.

French authorities have not publicly responded to Bukele’s “offer” at press time.

Since March 2022, El Salvador has been under a “state of exception” emergency decree that allowed Bukele to enact a massive crackdown against the country’s most violent criminal gangs and enact several strict security policies, including the construction of CECOT. Bukele’s policies have successfully curbed violent crime in what was once the homicide capital of the world.

Regional governments in Latin America have expressed their intention to adopt some of El Salvador’s security policies or construct their own CECOT-style prisons to fight crime in their countries. Among those who have explicitly referenced Bukele as an inspiration are Security Minister of Argentina Patricia Bullrich and Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa.

As per the terms of an agreement between Bukele and President Trump, a group of 252 Venezuelan illegal migrants suspected of being Tren de Aragua members were deported to El Salvador and detained at CECOT — drawing the ire of Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro. Maduro, an ardent opponent of the existence of Israel and an Iranian ally, claimed that the deportation of the illegal migrants to El Salvador through the Alien Enemies Act is comparable to the persecution of the Jewish people by Nazi Germany and their imprisonment in concentration camps.

Since then, Maduro and his authoritarian socialist regime have repeatedly accused Bukele of “kidnapping” the illegal migrants, an accusation he reiterated last week, calling Bukele a “lowly monster” and comparing him to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has also been the target of Maduro’s ire in recent days.

“Nayib Bukele has become a low-level monster. He is a monster. He is a Netanyahu, but he is a low-level monster. And he is simply in charge of creating the largest satrapies ever seen in Central America in a long time, in a very long time,” Maduro said during last week’s broadcast of his television show With Maduro Plus.

“And the Salvadoran people know it. The peoples of Central America already know it, in Latin America they know it,” he continued. “Human rights organizations know it full well, but they prefer to remain silent, because those organizations only use them to attack independent, anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist countries, the countries of the global south.”

breitbart

This is what Muhammad, a Syrian Islamist living in Germany, had to say about the church bombing in Syria:

“Christian victims should never be called martyrs, they are infidels.

According to our religion, we are not allowed to mourn infidels.

Christians who survived the bombing… pic.twitter.com/djvJ3Xpicp

— Dr. Maalouf ‏ (@realMaalouf) June 26, 2025

Why should “the best of people” (Qur’an 3:110) mourn “the most vile of created beings” (Qur’an 98:6)?

via jihadwatch.org

After underage girls were sexually assaulted in the Barbarossabad swimming pool in Gelnhausen, the CDU mayor of the area pointed out that “hot weather” makes tempers “fray.”

However, local Mayor Christian Litzinge (CDU) appeared to allude that the weather is at least partly to blame for the incident.

In a statement to Welt, he said: “Of course, it’s always high temperatures, and sometimes tempers are frayed.”

His comments were met with backlash and he has already apologized.

Gelnhausen’s FDP parliamentary group leader, Kolja Saß, told Focus magazine that failures on the part of the city should be addressed:

“When Mayor Litzinger now claims that the matter is being addressed and that the staff acted correctly, this is a mockery of the victims of the sexual assaults and must have consequences,” she said.

Saß said that sexual assaults have been occurring at the pool for a long time and no efforts were taken to prevent further assaults.

“For years, there have been regular reports from pool visitors of abusive behavior,” she said. She added that such reports also reached the mayor’s office, but he did nothing.

rmx

A German woman has been fined €1,800 for sharing a photo of former Health Minister Karl Lauterbach with his arm raised—deemed by a court to resemble a Nazi salute. The municipal court of Schweinfurt ruled that the still image, taken during a public appearance in June 2022, constituted a “Hitlergruß” under Germany’s strict laws banning Nazi symbols, even though the woman merely reposted the photo without performing or endorsing the gesture herself.

The image of Lauterbach, taken during a speech in Magdeburg on June 22, 2022, was used on a protest poster she displayed in March 2024. The poster was part of a series titled Zitate der Schande (“Quotes of Shame”) and appeared alongside coverage of a Querdenken rally, a movement critical of COVID-19 restrictions. At that rally, one speaker had been fined €5,000 in an earlier court ruling for allegedly making a Nazi salute while waving in 2020; another had his case dropped in exchange for a fine. The woman wanted to highlight the inconsistency between both cases, using Lauterbach’s image as a visual provocation to spark public debate. But her attempt has cost her dearly.

Ob sie selbst gleich dran dachten, dass es komisch aussieht mit den Gesten? 😉#dd3110 pic.twitter.com/mtBAb6g1Kv

— Catman – @catman2024.bsky.social 📯 🪠 (@katzenklo_DE) October 31, 2020

What is particularly baffling is that the woman did not perform the gesture, imitate it, or promote it. She merely circulated an image of a politician caught at a specific moment. Nevertheless, the prosecution charged her with using symbols of unconstitutional organizations (Section 86a of the German Criminal Code), a provision usually reserved for cases of Nazi glorification or incitement to hatred. The court reduced the original fine from €3,500 to €1,800 but upheld the reasoning that the poster was designed to create the false impression of Nazi sympathy and provoke outrage.

According to statements the woman gave to Apollo News, her goal was to provoke a critical conversation about the unequal treatment public figures receive regarding ambiguous or controversial gestures: “I wanted to draw attention to Lauterbach’s behavior and start a dialogue with people.”

Neither the prosecution nor the judge believed her explanation. The verdict, not yet final, has sparked bewilderment on social media and among legal experts, who see in it a dangerous precedent for freedom of expression and a disproportionate criminalization of political criticism. Instead of punishing those who supposedly perform the banned salute, it is now those who merely document or satirize the gesture—when it comes from a public (and notably Socialist) figure—who are penalized.

Once again, the German judiciary appears more interested in policing dissent than tackling genuine hate crimes—punishing a citizen not for spreading extremist symbols, but for questioning the double standards of those in power. It’s a case that borders on the absurd.

europeanconservative

Roberto Vannacci, a former general and MEP for Italy’s right-wing League Party, has stoked controversy by questioning whether Italy should bother purchasing new weapons, given a lack of young Italians ready to wield them.

“We spend €800 billion to rearm, but then who do we send to die at the front? People from gay pride? You tell me who is ready for this sacrifice”, the MEP said.

The controversy over the value of Italy buying new weapons comes as PM Giorgia Meloni seeks to classify a long-delayed €13.5 billion bridge to Sicily as defence infrastructure.

Spending only 1.49 per cent of its GDP on defence in 2024, Italy lags far behind other NATO allies in military spending, making the alliance’s new goal of 5 per cent by 2035 a steep target.

While NATO has said allies can devote 1 per cent of the new 5 per cent goal to infrastructure, the Strait of Messina falls outside Italy’s NATO military corridor, which goes through Italy’s southern Puglia region rather than Sicily.

Even if Italy raises defence spending, its youth is not prepared for combat and was not raised with values of patriotism and sacrifice, Vannacci told a party rally in Puglia’s town of San Marco in Lamis.

“In Tuscany there was recently Gay Pride. Do we send these gentlemen to die at the front? You tell me,” Vannacci said.

According to the former general, even if Italy purchases newer and more weapons, “there is a lack of people who grew up with ideals such as honour, defence of the homeland and contempt for danger”.

Vannacci: “Ci riarmiamo e poi chi mandiamo in guerra? Quelli del gay pride?” pic.twitter.com/D2AfJithra

— DC News (@DNews10443) June 27, 2025

Vannacci made the comments on Wednesday, June 25, which led to a backlash over the following weekend, particularly from the LGBTQ+ community and his party’s political opponents.

Mario Furore, an MEP from the Movimento 5 Stelle, said Vannacci’s comments were “embarrassing and unacceptable”.

Vannacci was insulting entire communities instead of offering solutions, said Furore.

The 56 year-old former paratrooper commander is no stranger to controversy. He rose to fame with a 2023 book Il mondo al contrario, which attracted a wide readership but led to his 11-month suspension from the army on half pay in February 2024.

In the book, he criticised “rules of inclusion and tolerance” imposed on other Italians by ethnic minorities and immigrants, who benefit from unfair “privileges”.

He also wrote “Dear homosexuals, you are not normal, get over it!”

In June 2024, only three months after his suspension from the army, he was elected to the European Parliament with 186,966 votes, the second-highest total of any candidate in Italy.

brusselssignal

Germany’s Social Democrats are leaning even more towards the Left. At the party convention in Berlin from 27 to 29 June delegates passed several resolutions that showed a large fraction of the SPD foot soldiers are ready to march further away from the political centre.

Party members even voted in favour of striving for a ban on the opposition Alternative for Germany party (AfD) due to its “right-wing extremism”, even though polls show AfD is the most popular party in the country.

Party leader Lars Klingbeil, vice chancellor and finance minister in the recently sworn-in CDU-SPD coalition government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, received a devastatingly bad convention election result. Only 65 per cent of delegates gave him their vote for the party chairmanship. Meanwhile, 95 per cent voted for labour minister Bärbel Bas as the SPD’s new co-chairwoman. Bas is a prominent member of the SPD’s left-wing, while Klingbeil comes from the party’s more “centrist” branch. Bas’ core issue is “social justice”.

Social justice was one of the key talking points at the convention, with many speakers demanding higher pay-outs for the poor and tax rises for the rich. Bas herself said: “There are managers who rake in salaries in the millions. But what happens when things go badly in Germany? Then it’s supposedly due to the lazy workers! That’s what I call class warfare from above – and it has to stop!”

The vote spells ill for Germany’s government’s plans to reform the country’s burgeoning social welfare programme, the so-called citizens’ pay (Bürgergeld). The scheme, introduced under the previous SPD-led left-wing government, is costing the German state more than €50 billion per year. In many cases the pay-outs are so generous that recipients have no inclination to take up work as it would mean they actually get less than by remaining on welfare.

On June 29, Conservative whip Jens Spahn (CDU) told German magazine Spiegel that the costs were “out of control” and that the government would have to talk about changing the system.

However, “social justice” is not the only area where the SPD’s base may cause friction in the coalition. The Social Democrats may now even jeopardise Germany’s plans for ramping up its defence capabilities. Party members voted in favour of a resolution that set tight limits on the new CDU-SPD coalition government’s abilities to reinstitute the military draft. The resolution reads: “We do not want an activatable legal option to call up conscripts before all measures for voluntary increase have been exhausted.”

Previously, German defence minister Boris Pistorius (himself SPD) had wanted to introduce a new conscription law that would introduce mandatory military service step-by-step if there were not enough volunteers.

The SPD’s resolutions received harsh criticism from the German Armed Forces Association. Its president André Wüstner said: “Many in the SPD have apparently still not realised the enormous challenges we face due to our fragile European security architecture, the threat situation and the resulting military and personnel capability goals”.

However, despite the friction between its centrist and leftist wings, the SPD is showing unity when it comes to its political opponents. On the last day party members voted in favour of striving for a ban of the opposition Alternative for Germany party (AfD) due to its “right-wing extremism”.

brusselssignal

When many Americans think of Kazakhstan, they think of Borat singing, “Throw the Jew down the well.” But Kazakhstan has a very small Jewish population: it’s the Christians who face persecution and oppression in the Muslim country. And the numbers tell the troubling story.

Kazakhstan’s 2009 census showed a Christian population of 4.2 million. By 2021, that number had dropped to 3.3 million. The disappearance of nearly 1 million Christians occasioned no interest or commentary from the UN, whose agencies filed it as mere data, from the same international communities that agonize over the plight of invasive Muslim populations in India, Myanmar and Israel, and claim that every Islamic displacement is a form of genocide.

Had 900,000 Muslims disappeared from a non-Muslim country, we would find them conveniently squatting in refugee camps, appearing on CNN and being the subject of UN interventions.

But the Christians of even the most oppressive Muslim nations, like Pakistan, are ignored. There are no Christian refugee camps, no Christian terror groups, if they survive, they move on. If they don’t, not the UN or the State Department or the world pays any attention to their plight.

The vanishing Christians of Kazakhstan are yet another example.

Within a decade, Christians went from a quarter of Kazakhstan to 17%. The next census is likely to show an even further decrease as Muslims tighten their grip on power in the Central Asian nation where Christians are disappearing as they are throughout the Muslim world.

Pew noted that “Kazakhstan experienced the biggest increase in the Muslim share of its population… partially driven by the departure of some Christians… Kazakhstan is a Muslim-majority country that tightly restricts religious activity.” Nothing more than that. The displacement of a few hundred thousand Rohingya was seen as a global human rights crisis, but a drastic drop in the number of Christians in a Muslim country remains a minor footnote.

Aside from Christian groups like Open Doors, which listed Kazakhstan as number 38 on its list of countries where Christians are persecuted, there’s been little interest from human rights organizations. Even the State Department’s annual religious freedom report focuses more on how Kazakhstan is ‘violating the rights’ of Muslim terrorists through religious restrictions than Christians. The 2023 report spends more time defending Jihadis and hijabs than Christians.

Where did 900,000 Kazakh Christians go? And why did they disappear?

Two years after the 2009 census, Kazakhstan passed its ‘Religion Law’  and began cracking down on the Catholic Church and various Protestant groups. This is not unusual in the region, including in Russia, where ‘recognized’ religions are integrated into the state, and churches, especially American ones, are denounced as ‘cults’, but the decline in the number of Christians suggests an especially onerous situation that has led to a massive population shift.

Some Christians may not have actually disappeared, but may be hiding in plain sight. The number of those refusing to disclose their religious identity jumped from 81,000 to over 2 million. And while Kazakhstan may have some ‘unbelievers’, as they tend to be listed in government surveys, the Central Asian county is not exactly an ideal hotbed for atheists and the ‘none-of-the-aboves’ who proliferate in the censuses of western nations. It’s possible that some of those 2 million who won’t discuss their religion are Christians from persecuted denominations trying to avoid government scrutiny. And that is one way to make Christians disappear.

But multiple sources also document a migration of Christians out of Kazakhstan for various destinations. Some ethnic Russians may have gone to Russia. But the high point of Kazakhstan’s persecution of Russians took place a while back and the Russian Orthodox church has been largely spared the persecution experienced by other religious organizations.

The most persecuted Christians in Kazakhstan are indigenous and would not simply be able to move to Russia. Some Christians from Kazakhstan have come to America as refugees, but the Biden administration spent more time touting LGBTQ refugee admissions from Kazakhstan than Christians. It has also reportedly provided refugee status to Muslims from Kazakhstan. That is something that the Trump administration ought to change. Refugee admission slots from Pakistan ought to be reserved for Christians and not for Muslims. As the oppressive majority, Muslims in Kazakhstan cannot and should not be exploiting the privileges of refugees.

Kazakhstan is certainly not the part of the Muslim world where Christians face the most persecution, yet it’s revealing that a massive drop in the number of Christians in a Muslim country sets off no alarms for human rights activists. The double standard for Muslims and non-Muslims takes place in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries, it persists whether Muslims are the minority or the majority, the victims or the oppressed, and it pervades everything.

Muslims have been able to commit genocide against non-Muslims. Actual ethnic cleansing in the Muslim world gets no attention. There are no marches or rallies for the Hindus of Bangladesh, the Jews of Northern Israel or the Christians of Kazakhstan.

And that ought to change.

The Trump administration broke ideological ground by speaking, for the first time, about the mistreatment of South Africa’s white minority. It has the opportunity to bring real change by talking about the persecution inflicted on Christians in the Muslim world.

And then holding Muslim governments accountable.

Finally, Kazakhstan is one of a litany of lessons for America, Europe and the West about what happens when Christianity and Islam meet. Every country with a Muslim majority also has a shrinking historical Christian population with a high degree of migration. Christianity and Islam, like Islam and any minority group, are not compatible in the long term. Kazakhstan is as benign as it gets with the Muslim majority growing, taking power and repressing Christians under various pretexts, but a true Muslim country run under Sharia Islamic law would do worse.

What then does the future of America, Europe and the rest of the West look like?

Unless we fundamentally reform immigration and citizenship, Kazakhstan will be our best case scenario. The worst ones, from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan, are not hard to find.

If we do not change our immigration system, we will one day be the Christians of Kazakhstan.

frontpagemag

The head of the party La France insoumise explained that the veil in Islam is a sign of submission to God and not to men, unlike in Christianity, he said.

In 2015, he also objected to the use of the term ‘Islamophobia’ and insisted that the veil was ‘a sign of submission’. And until 2017, during his campaign for the presidential elections, the head of La France insoumise declared with his usual choice of words: ‘I don’t see why God should be interested in a rag on the head’.

Article Le Figaro

Jean-Luc Mélenchon explique son changement de position concernant le voile et l'Islam : "J'ai posé la question à des copines"pic.twitter.com/y76lqlzNJW

— Fdesouche.com est une revue de presse (@F_Desouche) June 27, 2025

Another Keir Starmer appointment gone bad.

The liberal festivities surrounding the appointment of MI6’s first female chief have fizzled out, as it’s revealed that she is the granddaughter of a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator so brutal that he earned the nickname ‘The Butcher’.

Blaise Metreweli comes with a family secret that’s brewing into a scandal.

Her grandfather, Constantine Dobrowolski, was a spy and enforcer during Hitler’s occupation of Ukraine.

Dobrowolski reportedly boasted of ‘helping exterminate Jews’ and executing hundreds of Ukrainian resistance fighters.

Not to let such a juicy revelation go without comment, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested  that ‘someone’ seems to be ‘deliberately and consciously placing descendants of Nazis in leadership positions in the countries of the ´collective West´’.

So, now, MI6 is attempting to distance its new chief from Dobrowolski.

BBC reported:

“Blaise Metreweli was announced as the incoming head of the Secret Intelligence Service earlier this month. She will be its first female ‘C’ in its 116-year history.

With little known about her wider backstory, several newspapers reported on Friday that her grandfather was Constantine Dobrowolski, who defected from Soviet Russia’s Red Army to become the Nazis’ chief informant in Chernihiv, Ukraine.”

The British Foreign Office stated that Metreweli ‘neither knew nor met her paternal grandfather. Blaise’s ancestry is characterized by conflict and division and, as is the case for many with eastern European heritage, only partially understood’.

“It is precisely this complex heritage which has contributed to her commitment to prevent conflict and protect the British public from modern threats from today’s hostile states, as the next chief of MI6.”

Daily Mail reports that hundreds of pages of documents in Freiburg, Germany, show Dobrowolski was known as ‘The Butcher’ or ‘Agent No 30’ by Wehrmacht commanders.

He signed off letters to his Nazi superiors with ‘Heil Hitler’ and boasted to ‘personally’ have taken part in ‘the extermination’ of the Jews.

“The archive documents are said to suggest Mr. Dobrowolski looted the bodies of Holocaust victims, was involved in the murdering of local Jews, and laughed while watching the sexual assault of female prisoners.”

thegatewaypundit

The man was arrested at his home in Vénissieux on April 16 after posting statements of hatred on social networks. Weapons were found in his home, yet the man is a member of the Lyon police sport shooting club (Association sportive de la Police lyonnaise, section tir). He was sentenced to a heavy penalty by the Lyon Criminal Court on Wednesday.

On Wednesday June 25, 26-year-old Mohamed Redjem stood trial before the criminal court in Lyon for glorifying acts of terrorism and inciting hatred based on sexual orientation by posting online. In 2024, the French-Algerian exchange student used an anonymous account on the social network X to glorify terrorism, mention the attacks at the Bataclan and the murder of Professor Samuel Paty and post homophobic messages.

On the witness stand, the young man expressed his regret: “Most of my posts were reactions to comments that hurt me, that stigmatised the inhabitants of the neighbourhoods. I thought that my posts would have no consequences, that this was the norm on these platforms. I couldn’t imagine such repercussions.

[…]

Le Progrès