Sierra Leone First Lady Fatima Bio, Sierra Leone President Julius Maada Bio, United States President Joe Biden, and United States First Lady Jill Biden in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House at the U.S.-Africa Leader Summit, Wednesday, December 14, 2022. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz, Wikimedia Commons, PD US Government)
Sierra Leone’s First Lady, Fatima Jabbe-Bio, has retained tenancy of a subsidised council flat in Southwark, south London, despite living in a presidential mansion in Freetown, the Sierra Leonean capital, and being linked to a substantial property portfolio in West Africa.
The two-bedroom property, in one of London’s most deprived boroughs, has had the same tenant since December 2007, according to Southwark Council records. The average monthly council rent for a two-bedroom flat in the borough is about £560 (€660), roughly a third of local market rates.
Electoral registers show Jabbe-Bio registered to vote there as early as 2009, with her daughter also listed in 2023. A company was also registered to the address in 2008. Neighbours and visitors have reported post addressed to the presidential couple at the block.
Council homes in the UK are a form of social housing provided at below-market rents to those meeting eligibility criteria, typically based on low income or need. Southwark has more than 18,000 households on its waiting list, including over 4,000 in temporary accommodation, while London as a whole had over 336,000 in 2024, the highest figure in more than a decade.
Jabbe-Bio, a former actress and model, moved to the UK as an asylum seeker in the late 1990s after reportedly escaping an arranged child marriage in Sierra Leone amid the civil war.
She lived in the Southwark flat with her children before marrying Julius Maada Bio, whom she met in London around 2012 while he was fundraising for his first presidential bid. He became president in 2018 and was re-elected in 2023.
In a BBC interview, part of the Global Women series, she defended keeping the tenancy, stating, “My children are all British citizens. I’m paying for my council house myself. I have not committed any crime.” She noted that her children continue to live there.
Southwark Council said in response to media queries that it does not comment on individual cases but carries out checks where there is doubt about compliance with tenancy rules, which generally require the property to be the tenant’s main or sole residence.
Investigative reporting by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and others has highlighted the African assets of the presidential couple, though Jabbe-Bio has declined to confirm or deny details when questioned.
Sale records and other documents obtained by OCCRP show that between May 2022 and February 2024, Jabbe-Bio acquired two villas, an apartment building and a flat in the Gambia. Her mother is also listed as the owner of a luxury villa that was purchased for $500,000 (€460,000) during that period, while Jabbe-Bio’s two half-brothers also saw their real estate portfolio grow, including with a large hotel development.
When he gained power, Bio promised to make the fight against corruption one of his top priorities.
Earlier, Jabbe-Bio also shared a video on social media with Dutch drug lord Jos Leijdekkers present at a family party. He is the most wanted criminal in the Netherlands for cocaine smuggling and is hiding in Sierra Leone. He is reportedly married to the daughter of the presidential couple, said by OCCRP and Dutch media to be a Sierra Leonean diplomat.
Leijdekkers has been sentenced to 24 years in prison for a series of drug shipments and for ordering a hit that was never carried out. He must also pay €96 million to the Dutch State in respect of his profits from the cocaine trade. In Belgium, he was also sentenced to a total of 50 years in prison in a series of high-profile trials.
A Maltese Christian preacher said Catholic priests privately supported his criticism of Islam but were allegedly prevented from speaking publicly by Archbishop Charles Scicluna.
On May 12, Christian preacher Jesrit Angel Camilleri stated in a video published on Facebook by the Maltese conservative party, Ahwa Maltin, that several local Catholic priests had contacted him privately to praise his public defense of Christianity and criticism of Islam. At the same time, he claimed they were unable to speak openly, because Scicluna had allegedly forbidden such interventions. Camilleri’s remarks were later highlighted in an article published on May 16 by a local blog, which linked the allegations to previous controversies surrounding Scicluna’s open support for Islamic religious education in Malta’s schools.
“Numerous Catholic priests have privately contacted me,” Camilleri said in the video. He added that these priests “wanted to speak publicly but were allegedly prevented from doing so by the archbishop.”
No independent evidence has yet been publicly produced to substantiate the claim that priests were formally instructed not to speak publicly against Islam. LifeSiteNews contacted the Archdiocese of Malta for clarification, but received no response before publication.
In April of 2017, Scicluna expressed openness to Muslim religious instruction in state and Church schools for Muslim students. At the time, Imam Mohammed El Sadi had proposed that Muslim pupils in government schools should be able to receive Islamic religious education in a manner comparable to Catholic religious instruction.
According to a report published by MaltaToday on April 5, 2017, Scicluna responded favorably to the proposal and said inclusivity formed part of the Catholic Church’s ethos. The newspaper reported that the archbishop’s reaction surprised even El Sadi himself.
“I was surprised by his noble approval of Muslim students’ right to learn Islam at state schools,” El Sadi told MaltaToday at the time. He also said he was “stunned” by Scicluna’s willingness to consider Islamic education for Muslim students attending Church schools.
The proposal generated criticism among some Maltese parents and administrators of Church schools, according to MaltaToday. Critics argued that Catholic educational institutions should remain focused on Christianity rather than facilitating instruction in other religions. The controversy intensified after an online petition calling for Scicluna’s removal reportedly gathered more than 2,000 signatures within eight days.
The same 2017 report stated that Malta’s education minister at the time, Evarist Bartolo, “cautiously welcomed” the proposal while stressing that, “as in the case of Catholic religion or ethics classes, these teachings in Islam would only be for those who specifically asked to attend and would not be compulsory for all students.”
Bartolo also said that any Islamic studies curriculum would require approval from the education ministry and would need to comply with Malta’s constitutional order, human rights standards, and democratic principles.
Following the controversy, Scicluna responded publicly by saying that his proposal “is not about Islam at all.” In an apparent attempt to calm the situation, the Times of Malta reported that Scicluna “would favor having Muslim children receiving religious instruction in Church schools, seeing it both as an issue of religious freedom and also a human right.”
Scicluna has served as archbishop of Malta since 2015. In previous years he became internationally known for his work within the Vatican on clerical abuse investigations before returning to Malta to lead the local Church by the will of Pope Francis. Debates concerning Islam and religious education in Malta intensified during the 2010s as the country experienced demographic changes and an increase in foreign residents, including growth among Muslim communities.
Malta has become subject to massive waves of migration coming from Africa and the Middle East, as an intermediate stop on the way to continental Europe, particularly Italy, Germany, and France.
Salim El Koudri, a Muslim terrorist, rammed his car into a crowd and then attacked people with a knife. Two women are severely injured. Some have lost limbs.
But the usual signal has gone out to insist that El-Koudri is not a Muslim terrorist and that, like nearly every Muslim terrorist, he’s suffering from ‘mental illness’.
‘Foreign rescuers’ have also quickly been invented, much as in the Manchester Arena bombing and the Bondi Beach attack, to displace the actual Italian gentleman who took him down, Luca Signorelli.
Giorgia Meloni may be popular on social media, but she offered a meaningless non-statement. The Modena mayor insisted that it was actually Muslims who had stopped the attack and that diversity is our strength, and that what Italy really needs is more Muslims moving there.
Transport Minister Matteo Salvini said what needed to be said, warning that ‘second generation’ Islamic colonists like El Koudri were even worse than the first generation. “We must pursue with even greater determination the path of revocable residence permits for serious crimes. Certain people are absolutely unintegrable; there’s no point in anyone denying the dramatic evidence for ideological reasons.”
But back to El-Koudri, currently the center of a cover-up, what did he think? “I am bullied, marginalized, and I live in a country of racists.”
Italy gave him a degree in economics. Gave his Moroccan Muslim immigrant parents free housing. Gave them free health care. And in return, El-Koudri couldn’t be bothered to hold down a job, hated Italy and carried out an Islamic terrorist attack.
Sure, why not sign up for more of the same.
Here’s the state of the usual post-terror propaganda
A car crashes into a crowd in Modena. Salim El Koudri’s neighbor says, “He was good, but then he changed. Islam had nothing to do with it.” – Virgil
Modena attack: In addition to Signorelli, the Egyptian and Pakistani heroes who stopped El Koudri – RailNews
Modena, the two Egyptians who helped stop Salim El Koudri: “We’ve lived here for 30 years, but we don’t have citizenship.” – Today.it
Modena responded: 5,000 people gathered in the square following Mayor Mezzetti’s appeal. “United against those who spread hatred.”
Entrepreneur and founder of a women’s-only application has been ordered to pay $20,000, with an additional maximum of $100,000 in court fees, to a trans-identified male after he was denied access to the platform. CEO of Giggle for Girls Proprietary Limited, Sall Grover, was also found to have “discriminated” against Jason “Roxy” Tickle by recognizing him as a male in a selfie he submitted for on-boarding.
The ruling comes after more than four years of litigation, with Tickle having first filed a discrimination complaint through the Australian Human Rights Commission in December of 2021. The latest and final ruling, handed down in the Federal Court on Friday afternoon, was a response to an appeal lodged by Tickle in August 2024 to a decision made by Justice Bromwich stating that Grover was guilty of “indirect discrimination.” At the time, Grover was ordered to pay $10,000 in compensation to Tickle and to pay his court costs up to $50,000. Dissatisfied with the outcome, Tickle further pursued litigation seeking a verdict of direct discrimination.
In a shocking new development, Justice Melissa Perry sided with Tickle, doubled the compensation payout from $10,000 to $20,000, found Grover guilty of direct discrimination, and ordered her to pay court costs for Tickle up to $100,000. In her decision, Justice Perry cited the Sex Discrimination Act of 1984, which was significantly amended in 2013 to include explicit protections for “gender identity.”
Under Section 4(1), “gender identity” is defined as: “…the gender-related identity, appearance or mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of a person (whether by way of medical intervention or not), with or without regard to the person’s designated sex at birth.”
Section 5B defines what constitutes discrimination in a legal situation and is divided into two categories: direct discrimination, and indirect discrimination. Direct discrimination “occurs when someone is treated less favorably than a person of a different gender identity would be treated in the same or similar circumstances.” It can be inferred from this definition that the law is suggesting that all individuals possess a “gender identity.”
Indirect discrimination is said to occur “when a condition or requirement is imposed that is the same for everyone but has the effect of disadvantaging people of a particular gender identity, and that condition is not “reasonable” under the circumstances.”
The final ruling stated that Grover had “engaged in unlawful direct discrimination” against trans-identified male Tickle by “excluding Ms Tickle from access to the Giggle App on the basis of her gender-related appearance,” “refusing to restore Ms Tickle’s access to the Giggle App on the basis of her gender-related appearance,” and “thereby treating Ms Tickle, who is a transgender woman, less favourably than a person designated female at birth seeking access to the Giggle App.”
I am absolutely devastated Men who claim to be women have more rights than actual women in Australia. It is women who are being discriminated against, not the men who claim to be us.
But in a sense, nothing has changed: we will all wake up tomorrow & men will still not be women.
The May 15 ruling states that Grover discriminated against Tickle because she recognized him to be male, and in a bizarre reasoning, argues that he qualifies as a woman despite having male features.
“It is apparent that Ms Grover made her decisions in relation to Ms Tickle solely on the basis of viewing the latter’s onboarding selfie and her conviction that that photograph showed a male person… Ms Tickle’s selfie was in evidence and we were taken to it in the course of argument in the appeal. Although the photograph presents Ms Tickle as a woman (eg hair, clothing), there are features of her appearance that may be considered discordant with that presentation. Ms Tickle’s appearance, it may safely be concluded, was the reason why Ms Grover concluded that she was not entitled to remain as a user of the Giggle App; and that appearance had elements (“characteristics”) that generally appertain to, or at least are imputed to, transgender women – namely, for want of a better expression, male facial features.”
Somewhat confusingly, the ruling also acknowledged that “gender identity” is a “multifarious and cryptic” attribute. It also explicitly details how amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (SDA) were designed to remove sex-specific protections, stating: “to the extent that the SDA had previously embodied a concept of sex as involving binary categories fixed at birth, part of the intention of the 2013 amendments was to ensure that the Act would no longer embody or give effect to such a concept… to the extent that the term ‘woman’ appears in the SDA or the concept of womanhood is important to its operation, it is not to be understood by reference to any narrow or rigid conception of femaleness.”
Immediately following the decision, Grover said from her X account: “I am absolutely devastated. Men who claim to be women have more rights than actual women in Australia. It is women who are being discriminated against, not the men who claim to be us. But in a sense, nothing has changed: we will all wake up tomorrow and men will still not be women.”
Grover has signaled her intention to appeal the recent decision in Australia’s High Court.
Tickle, a man who claims to be both intersex and transgender, claimed he attempted to join the female-only app in February 2021 but found that his membership was revoked in September that year. The Giggle app utilizes a screening process which uses AI to determine the sex of an applicant based on a selfie. Tickle was initially granted access to the female-only digital community by the AI.
During an interview with The Australian in April 2022, Grover explained that she took it upon herself to remove Tickle after seeing his photo and identifying him as male. “The person was removed from the Giggle app because they are male, no other reason. The removal was manual. I looked at the onboarding selfie and saw a man. The AI software had let them through, thereby making a mistake that I rectified.” Lawyers defending Grover said that she had been unaware that Tickle identified as transgender during the screening process.
Justice Melissa Perry doubled the amount Sall Grover had been ordered to pay, and found her guilty of “direct discrimination”
Tickle was therefore was booted from the community, and then made several attempts to contact Grover to complain. He sent Grover multiple emails and called her at her home in October 2021.
“I believe that I am being discriminated against by being provided with extremely limited functionality of a smartphone app by the app provider compared to that of other users because I am a transgender woman,” Tickle wrote in the complaint. “I am legally permitted to identify as female… I believe that Giggle and Sall Grover have decided in error that I am male.”
In January 2022, I received an Australian Human Rights Commission complaint against both Giggle & me personally, from a trans identified male who wants to use a social networking app for females & for me to be re-educated on sex & gender.
Tickle bizarrely went on to compare Grover to a white supremacist group, saying, “I have been unable to locate a Facebook page or website for the Ku Klux Klan in Australia. Yet groups that favor discrimination against people based on their gender identity appear to have no need to hide their face.” He then went on to list several Australian women’s rights groups which are critical of males being permitted to identify as female, and referred to this position as “bigotry”.
Tickle had, in his first complaint, sought damages from Grover of up to $200,000, alleging that her “persistent misgendering”, or referring to him as male, had prompted “constant anxiety and occasional suicidal thoughts”. He also requested that Grover be made to “seek out education” regarding the concept of gender identity.
In July of 2022, Tickle, being unable to bear the costs of pursuing the matter further, filed a Notice of Discontinuance with the court, and the complaint was dropped. But five months later, Tickle filed another complaint, having received a $50,000 grant from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, and assistance from Barry Nilsson lawyers, who run a multimillion-dollar pro bono program.
In contrast, Grover was left with no other option than to crowdfund an incredible $500,000 in order to defend herself against the discrimination claim.
Australian women’s rights advocate @salltweets has been ordered by a court to pay $10,000 to a man who was denied membership on her female-only social media app.
The Tickle v Giggle ruling suggests that humans can change their biological sex.https://t.co/3aNm5uSjlD
In August 2024, the Federal Court of Australia found Grover had “indirectly discriminated” against Tickle. While reading out the verdict and reasons for his decision at the Federal Court of Australia, Justice Bromwich referred to Tickle with feminine pronouns, and made the bizarre claim that “sex is changeable.”
“Roxanne Tickle is a transgender woman whose female sex is recognized by an official updated Queensland birth certificate… I have found that Ms. Tickle’s claim of direct gender identity discrimination fails but that her claim of indirect gender identity discrimination succeeds.”
The argument made by Grover’s legal team was that Tickle was discriminated against on the basis of his sex, which is not prohibited, rather than on the basis of gender identity, as he claims. Justice Bromwich’s verdict stated that “these arguments failed” due to a “long history of cases decided by courts going back over thirty years” which he said established that, “in its ordinary meaning, sex is changeable.”
Justice Bromwich then ordered Grover to pay Tickle $10,000 compensation, in addition to court costs up to $50,000, within 60 days.
Justice Bromwich went on to say that “that indirect gender identity discrimination did take place” on the basis that “Tickle was excluded from the use of the Giggle app because she did not look sufficiently female according to the respondents.”
As previously reported by Reduxx, Tickle’s behavior has been called into question, with some critics suggesting that he has been behaving in an overtly sexual manner.
In addition to his attempts to access the female-only social networking app, Tickle has been playing field hockey on a women’s team. He has opposed proposed legislation which would have prohibited men from identifying into women’s sports, while boasting of using the women’s change rooms.
On his personal Instagram account, Tickle has also shared photos of his underwear, jokes about sex toys, and several cartoons drawn by Canadian transgender diaper fetishist Sophie Labelle. Recently, Tickle took to X to reveal that the youngest girl he competes with on the field hockey team is just 15 years old.
News of the recent ruling has prompted widespread criticism on X, the social media site primarily used by Grover, with an outpouring of support for her.
The Full Federal Court’s decision in Tickle v Giggle confirms the original finding that the Giggle for Girls app unlawfully discriminated against Roxanne Tickle.
The Coalition’s position remains clear: women and girls have a right to safe, private and fair single-sex spaces.…
— Senator the Hon. Michaelia Cash (@SenatorCash) May 15, 2026
Senator Michaelia Cash, Leader of the Opposition in the Australian Senate, added her thoughts on the ruling by stating that “women and girls have a right to safe, private, and fair single-sex spaces.” Senator Cash played a central role in the evolution of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (SDA), though her position has shifted over the years.
Initially, Cash was a vocal supporter of adding “gender identity” as a protected attribute. Her support was significant because it signaled bipartisan agreement on legally codified “gender identity” policies.
More recently, while acting as Attorney-General, Cash called for limitations on the enforcement of “gender identity” policies and became an advocate for establishing exemptions which intrude on the personal lives of individuals.
Today, the Federal Court handed down its decision in the Giggle v Tickle appeal.
The judges made clear that under Australia’s current laws, “gender identity” is treated as legally equivalent to biological sex. That means Sall Grover lost this case.
Similarly, Leah Blyth, Senator for South Australia and representing the Liberal Party shared her views on the ruling.
“The judges made clear that under Australia’s current laws, ‘gender identity’ is treated as legally equivalent to biological sex. That means Sall Grover lost this case. I believe the Court applied the law as it currently stands. Which means the law itself must change. Women and girls deserve clear, protected sex-based rights in law, including the right to single-sex spaces, services and protections based on biological reality.”
One particularly egregious result of the subjective sense of “gender identity” being codified into law is the transfer of violent male sex offenders into women’s prisons.
AUSTRALIA: A transgender pedophile is set to sue the government of Victoria over alleged "human rights abuses" he has suffered while housed in a women's prison.
Autumn Tulip Harper is serving a 4-year sentence for sexually abusing his 5-year-old daughter.https://t.co/YGiot2UHSw
In March, Reduxx revealed that a transgender pedophile is attempting to sue the Australian state of Victoria over alleged “human rights violations” he has experienced while housed in a women’s prison. Autumn Tulip Harper, also known as Hilary Maloney, sentenced to just under 5 years in prison for the horrific sexual abuse of his own 5-year-old daughter.
Police determined that Harper had directly sexually abused the girl on at least 19 separate occasions in the course of just one month – yet despite this, Maloney was sent to a women’s prison, on the basis of claiming to identify as a woman, to serve his sentence.
Primary schoolchildren are being told to be mindful of their “white privilege” under an anti-racism drive.
A coalition of Sheffield schools has developed lesson plans teaching pupils as young as seven that white people benefit from inherent privilege because of their skin colour and have a responsibility to challenge racism.
In one lesson plan aimed at children aged seven to 11, pupils are given designated time for “empathy building” and says: “In Britain, white people are likely to be privileged by the colour of their skin.
“This privilege arises because they are much less likely to be affected by racist behaviour, including bias, discrimination and verbal and physical abuse.
“Privileged people have a responsibility to reduce racism by: being aware of it; improving their own language and behaviour; challenging their friends’ language and behaviour; reporting incidents of racism; providing support to those who have been harmed by discrimination.”
The teaching materials also tell older students that while black people can hold prejudice against white people, this does not amount to racism.
According to the guidance, racism can only be exercised by those with “cultural power” – such as white people over black people.
The programme is intended to “empower” students and teachers to examine how race education can challenge “the unequal systems that surround us in society”.
Another handout for older teenagers urges students to “think critically” about the role of race in Britain’s criminal justice system, citing that black people are 10 times more likely to stopped and searched by police.
Students are probed: “What is happening? Why is this an example of racism? If race isn’t real, how do you explain this? Has the concept of race led some people to believe that some groups of people are different to others?
“Are certain racial groups being treated differently? Are there other possible explanations for this?”
The teaching school alliance behind the materials is led by Notre Dame High School, a Government-designated national teaching school tasked with supporting educators and school leaders.
Defending the resources, the group said: “Our standalone unit by no means ‘does the job’ of interrupting systemic racism, but we believe it provides an exciting, impactful first step for schools with strong social justice values.”
The initiative has sparked fierce criticism from Conservatives, who have accused schools of stoking divisions and enforcing a political agenda on pupils.
Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott said: “It is deeply alarming that children as young as seven are being exposed to divisive identity politics in schools under the banner of ‘anti-racism education’.”
She added: “These materials teach children that black prejudice against white people cannot be described as racism, present contested concepts like ‘white privilege’ as unquestionable fact and encourage pupils to see themselves primarily through the lens of race.
“It is hugely damaging and exactly the kind of Left-wing ideological nonsense that should be nowhere near our classrooms.”
Shadow minister Neil O’Brien also vowed the Conservatives would crack down on such teaching if returned to power.
He said: “Kemi Badenoch and the Conservatives are going to come down like a tonne of bricks on this kind of political indoctrination in our schools.
“We will start enforcing the law and rooting out this kind of thing.”
Juanma Moreno has celebrated the “important victory” of the PP-A in the Andalusian elections this Sunday, in which it has achieved 53 seats and has been two short of an absolute majority. The popular candidate has guaranteed “four more years of stability” for Andalusia and has summarized the result with a phrase: “We have not got top marks, but we have got a very good grade”.
Moreno appeared before the regional headquarters of the PP-A, on San Fernando street in Seville, accompanied by his wife, Manuela Villena, members of his Government and party leaders. The attendees received him with shouts of “president”, while Kilómetro sur, the campaign song he himself performs, played.
The popular candidate has highlighted that the PP-A has met its objectives by winning the elections and doing so in all eight Andalusian provinces. According to him, his party has obtained “150,000 more votes” than in 2022, almost 20 points ahead of the PSOE-A and about 30 ahead of Vox.
Moreno has admitted that the absolute majority depended on the final distribution of seats and the D’Hondt Law, which “sometimes favors and sometimes harms”. Despite not regaining the absolute majority of 2022, he has defended that the result represents a “very good grade”.
Moreno has thanked the support of more than 1.7 million Andalusians, a figure he has described as “unreachable and unthinkable” seven and a half years ago, when the PP-A began its project of “reform and change” in Andalusia.
The popular leader has interpreted the result as a “clear and definitive mandate” to continue transforming Andalusia into a community “more prosperous, with greater well-being” and with a vocation for leadership in Spain.
Vox candidate Manuel Gavira celebrated the PP’s loss of its absolute majority in Andalusia and urged them to “listen” to the Andalusian people, who want “national priority.” Amidst an atmosphere of euphoria over gaining a seat, bringing their total to 15, and especially over the opportunity to influence the PP, Gavira was the first of the candidates to speak. The far-right leader, Santiago Abascal, boasted that his party “is once again decisive” after the elections, in which, with 99% of the votes counted, the People’s Party (PP) won with 53 seats, still three short of an absolute majority. A PP would reach 15 seats by combining its seats with those of Vox, which gained one seat.
The slogan did not appear on an AfD poster, but on the front page of Die Zeit, the most respected German weekly newspaper.
Maximilian Probst speaks about the “post-heroic society,” an expression coined by scholar Herfried Münkler:
“Low demographic reproduction rates mean that parents invest a great deal of emotional capital in each individual child and that no one is prepared to take risks. We succumb to self-delusion.” Probst outlines a utopia “made up of jobs and hobbies interrupted only by the minimal effort of going to the polling station.”
Now, Probst warns, “dark stains have spread across this uplifting watercolor: post-heroic society is not sustainable.”
One need only observe the saga of the most important and only lethal aircraft carrier we have, which I could have used for my new book “Titanic Europa”.
The Charles de Gaulle is the only nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in all of Western Europe. No other country has anything similar, not even the British. The other European countries are not even in the game, and Sánchez’s Spain, the traitor in chief, will buy weapons even from Erdoğan’s Turkey.
On March 1, Emmanuel Macron announced the deployment of the Charles de Gaulle to the Gulf after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. After all, the moderate Arab countries targeted by Tehran have done a lot of business with France, and friends should be helped when they are under attack, right?
On March 11, Macron boarded the Charles de Gaulle and launched into one of his uplifting speeches:
“France is present to protect its citizens, to stand by allies and friends who have been struck, and to be able to participate in such essential missions.”
Two months later, the Charles de Gaulle still has to cross the Suez Canal. Did it stop in Sharm el-Sheikh for a weekend?
Then Iran threatened Paris:
“Immediate response with ships at Hormuz.”
Macron’s retreat was not long in coming: France had “never considered” a “deployment” of forces to Hormuz, but rather a security mission “coordinated with Iran.”
“Coordinated with Tehran”? The same Macron who likes to say that “to be free one must be strong, and to be strong one must be feared”?
If it were not tragic, it would be laughable.
I still remember a Wall Street Journal article from January 8, 2015, the day after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris:
“When France sends its nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle through the Persian Gulf in the coming weeks, it will be a demonstration of force against the Islamic State and its aspirations for a caliphate extending from the Middle East to the Atlantic Ocean.”
“A demonstration of force”?
Ten months later came the Bataclan massacre in Paris. Apparently none of ISIS felt intimidated by the Charles de Gaulle.
Let us return to the Journal:
“There is no doubt about the name of the enemy, while the French army is also fighting the African manifestations of the same Islamic fundamentalism in Mali and Niger. President François Hollande addressed the nation after the Islamist fundamentalist attack against Charlie Hebdo, a newspaper that often satirized Islam, which caused 12 deaths and shook the country, but the president avoided confronting the harsh reality. Instead, he described the newspaper as having long been targeted by ‘obscurantism.’ Obscurantism?”
The ridiculous odyssey of the Charles de Gaulle is emblematic of Europe’s impotence even in naming the enemy.
The most powerful nuclear ship in Europe reduced to a pleasure boat for a power that still believes itself to be one.
Just like the saga of the British flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Queen Elizabeth. It was supposed to lead a NATO exercise off the Norwegian coast to demonstrate the power of London’s military. Its driveshaft broke.
The British historian David Olusoga explains in The Telegraph:
“The British army numbered four and a half million men at the end of the First World War, a generation of men familiar with the Lee-Enfield rifle, who knew how to disassemble it, how to remove the magazine, for whom it was a familiar piece of technology just as an iPhone is today. My generation and my mother’s generation did not have to do that. I am not sure that good fortune will be passed on to our children. The world into which I was born, the world in which we have all lived, it seems, has come to an end.”
Europe is a continent transformed into a gigantic retirement residence with intellectual pretensions, stupid twenty-four-hour talk shows, trade union marches, Airbnb on every corner, and armed forces reduced to peacekeeping bodies refurbishing their camouflage uniforms and struggling to find young recruits.
This is contemporary Europe: capable of producing regulations on the diameter of bananas but incapable of producing a will to power. We have replaced courage with “governance,” sacrifice with “resilience,” virility with “care.” The European male has become a hybrid being: half influencer, half therapist, forever genuflecting before the newest idol-whether climate, gender, multiculturalism, or Gaza-provided no one asks him to fight for something and against someone.
A continent obese with rights and anorexic with duties. A society that cries over a Palestinian terrorist on Instagram but cannot protect borders, allies, and interests.
Twenty years ago America called the French “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” I liked that America that laughed in our faces and put itself on the line, boot after boot.
But in the current twilight of the West, America and Europe are still different, but only in this: they have taken different roads toward the same destination.
What happens if the United States also becomes like Europe, chatterboxes who lose the will to fight and prevail?
Edward Luttwak writes about this in UnHerd in a dramatic article: “America lost the will to fight and I fear the answer is the arrival in the United States of what I have defined as the ‘post-heroic syndrome.’ It is the historically unprecedented but now widespread refusal to accept the risk of casualties, even very few, even when justified by the most important interests”.
I have always thought Donald Trump was the United States’ last attempt to still matter before sinking into the quicksand of Obamaism, which I increasingly see as the most realistic scenario after the exit of the orange anarchist.
Surely connected to this is the fact that Americans today no longer think their country has anything special, no mission or task to fulfill; on the contrary, they think the West is damned, far from being an “indispensable nation.”
There is also what Foreign Affairs calls the “geriatric peace,” which Luttwak connects to.
Median age rises, young people become scarce, budgets are emptied by pensions and healthcare, collective will evaporates, public squares fill with idiots invoking “peace” while draped in terrorist insignia.
In 2038, the French will commission a new aircraft carrier. It will be called “France Libre”. For what purpose?
To ferry flotilla activists on excursions to Gaza?
Beyond military gadgets and naval aviation equipment, the new ship will include a mosque capable of hosting up to one thousand worshippers. The cafeteria will be halal. Female soldiers will wear the abaya.
If it were not tragic, the joke would sound plausible.
There is only one Western people that still resists: the Israeli Jews. Something older, harsher, more alive.
While Europe closed its bases to the war against Iran, Israel was building a clandestine base in the Iraqi desert and sending Mossad agents to guarantee security at the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, where two years ago Islamist terrorists were about to carry out a massacre at a Taylor Swift concert.
Neither Mars nor Venus, but “one who struggles with God.” In other words, Israel.
New tenants have only just moved into the clubhouse restaurant of the Rot-Weiß Tennis Club in Gießen. Following renovation work, Bayram and Isabell Dalkilic had only been open for a few days – now they have been given notice to leave without notice by the club, reports the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The reason: the new tenants refuse to serve alcohol in the clubhouse restaurant.
They are reportedly required to give up the premises and vacate the flat they rented as part of the lease. The tenants and their three children would then be left homeless. “We can’t explain it,” Isabell Dalkilic told the newspaper. In several discussions with club representatives, they had explained that they did not wish to sell alcohol.
Moslemische Pächter in Tennisclub-Gaststätte weigern sich, Alkohol auszuschenken https://t.co/DzCIROnRxU
The couple, who run the restaurant, want to stick to their tried-and-tested concept and serve East Anatolian dishes – alcohol simply does not go with this cuisine, unlike with Italian dishes, for example. Furthermore, many sports enthusiasts bring their own drinks and, in some cases, food with them.
Some members of the club suspect that the decision not to serve alcohol is linked to the new tenants’ Muslim faith. The tenants deny this. Rather, they wanted to create a place for families, and serving alcohol simply does not fit in with that.
Both sides signed the lease agreement nonetheless. The club even covered the cost of a new bar counter. The chairman of the tennis club, however, told the newspaper ‘FAZ’ that he had left no doubt during the discussions that there was an expectation of freedom of choice between alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.
He also invokes customary law – even though this obligation is not expressly stipulated in the lease agreement. In Germany, he argues, it is customary to be able to drink alcoholic beer and wine in such establishments. The club has also rejected a compromise proposal from the tenants that beer and wine could be served in a kiosk outside the restaurant.
According to the regional manager for Central Hesse at the German Hotel and Restaurant Association, no similar case has been reported in a sports club to date. It is clear that more and more people are choosing not to drink alcohol, particularly younger people. This also applies to athletes, although many still like to celebrate a victory with a beer.
Furthermore, the taste of non-alcoholic beers, wines and sparkling wines has improved significantly in recent years. According to the ‘FAZ’, the association believes that guests must therefore have the choice of whether or not to drink alcohol.
Meanwhile, the club chairman no longer sees any chance of an amicable settlement: “There is no going back; the relationship of trust has been destroyed.”
If the tenants do not vacate the premises and the adjoining flat, an eviction order will be sought. As there is no precedent, the dispute could go all the way to the Federal Court of Justice.
Emma Trimble speaks with comedian and Triggernometry co-host Francis Foster about his new book (Un)educated: My Life as a Teacher, and Why You Should Never Become One
This Sunday, May 17, 2026, the people of Andalusia will decide the future of the regional government. Juanma Moreno (PP) has called early elections and hopes to retain power, but final polls place him just shy of an absolute majority (55 seats).
Vox consolidates its space with an unapologetic discourse, the PSOE records its worst historical result and Alvise Pérez’s Se Acabó la Fiesta (SALF) bursts onto the scene as a fragmenting factor.
Vox: patriotic consistency and defense of what is ours
Vox, led by Manuel Gavira, presents itself as the clearest and most courageous option on the right. Its core proposals, supported by the 14-17 seats it is projected to win according to polls, include:
National priority in housing, social assistance and employment for Spaniards.
A determined fight against illegal immigration and insecurity in neighborhoods.
Defending the countryside, hunting, bullfighting and the primary sector against the impositions of Brussels.
I reject radical feminism, ideological laws, and the squandering of public resources.
Tax cuts and a reduction in the administrative apparatus.
Vox demands that any support for the PP be contingent upon implementing “common sense” measures such as prioritizing the national interest. It refuses to be merely a decorative crutch.
PP: aiming for an absolute majority… but without ties to the right
Juanma Moreno leads the polls with 42-43% of the vote and between 52 and 57 seats. However, an absolute majority (55 seats) is hanging by a thread, according to several final surveys. Moreno has been emphatic: “I have no interest in governing with Vox.” He prefers a single-party government or even a minority government to agreements with the right wing. His administration has brought stability and economic growth, but also a continuation of some patronage networks without completely dismantling the socialist legacy.
PSOE: sunk in its worst historical result
María Jesús Montero’s PSOE is projected to garner around 21-23% of the vote and 26-29 seats. After decades of governments that left behind structural unemployment, rural depopulation, and dependence on subsidies, the Socialists are offering more of the same: public spending, alliances with the far left, and playing the victim. Andalusia wants to prosper, not return to the past.
The Party’s Over: The anti-establishment movement that is splitting the right-wing vote
SALF, led by Alvise Pérez, is making a strong showing in the polls (6-9%, potentially winning several seats). It proposes disruptive measures such as privatizing Canal Sur (saving over €160 million annually) and eliminating inheritance taxes.
His rhetoric against corruption, subsidized media, and the establishment appeals to the disillusioned, although Alvise canceled part of his public schedule in May. Vox warns that he is taking votes away from the right; others see him as a mouthpiece for discontent. The candidate for President of the Regional Government is Adrián Yacar.
Time for truth: Andalusia decides
May 17th involves choosing between:
Moderate continuity of the PP (with risk of lukewarmness).
Socialist setback for the PSOE.
Patriotic consistency of Vox.
SALF’s anti-system disruption.
Andalusia deserves governments that lower taxes, guarantee security, defend its identity, and prioritize its citizens. The wasteful spending spree driven by ideology must truly end.
Andalusians, to the polls. The future is decided this Sunday.
