Berlin: The EDGE East Side Tower (also known as the Amazon Tower).Wikimedia Commons, Chainwit., CC-BY-4.0
There have never been as many vacant office spaces in Germany as there are now, writes NIUS, bemoaning that these spaces could be used to solve a major crisis: the lack of affordable housing across Germany.
Around 152,000 additional apartments with an average size of 70 square meters could be created in Germany’s seven most important cities if offices were redesigned accordingly, claims a study by the real estate consultant Bulwiengesa on behalf of Berlin Hyp.
Due to the Covid crisis that impacted businesses, followed by general economic stagnation, office vacancy rates have been spiking. Meanwhile, Germany faces a shortage of some 800,000 apartments.
As pointed out by NIUS, there is the issue of converting offices into residential spaces. Germany currently has some 20,000 building regulations. “These, along with rising interest rates and construction and material costs, are responsible for making construction comparatively expensive,” says Alexander Fieback of Bulwiengesa.
New permits, complex retrofitting of plumbing and balconies, different fire and sound insulation requirements, and new staircases are just some of the things that must have to be addressed — not to mention converting the normally grandiose entrances of office buildings into ground-floor apartments. All the above often also mandates structural retrofits.
Nevertheless, money is being spent to overcome these challenges in the name of housing more migrants, at taxpayers’ expense.
The Berlin Senate, for example, is planning large-scale accommodations for asylum seekers to live permanently in one building where the owner had offered offices for €25.80 per square meter; according to the Berliner Morgenpost, the State Office for Refugees is paying €40 per square meter.
Other examples include €165 million in Kreuzberg (1,500 people, 10-year lease); €143 million in Lichtenberg (1,200 people, rental period 10 years); and €118 million in Westend (950 people, rental period 10 years).
Italy is bracing for antisemitic violence on Friday as pro-Palestine protesters attempt to rewrite history, misappropriating the 80th Festa della Liberazione—or, Liberation Day, marking the end of Nazi Germany’s occupation of the country—as their own day of Palestinian Resistance.
In Rome, protesters are “threatening” Jewish people, and are even prepared for “guerrilla warfare against the Jewish community” at Porta San Paolo, according to Il Giornale. The paper accuses the Left of bending the celebrations to “political ends,” turning the day into “just another parade to march against the government and Israel.”
In Milan, too, activists from The Young Palestinians group will meet early to fulfil their “strong demand to lead the procession”—in other words, to completely take over the march and divert it from its actual meaning. The entitled demonstrators stressed:
We want and need to be at the front, as a living and current expression of the Resistance.
Any other position, they say, “would be an attempt to silence the true meaning of this day.”
The Young Palestinians—or, Giovani Palestinesi—last year took to the streets in Rome to ‘reaffirm’ that “October 7th, 2023, is the date of a revolution,” which gives a flavour of their moral compasses.
I giovani palestinesi scenderanno in piazza a Roma per ribadire che «il 7 ottobre 2023 è la data di una rivoluzione». Tutto normale? pic.twitter.com/k2fUPH6W1P
The group is reportedly made up of Palestinian students and Italian sympathisers who have been linked to antisemitic attacks as well as violence against the police.
Gaza activists are also expected to launch demonstrations in other cities across Europe.
ScreenshoIt’s hard to believe what was projected onto the wall at the Ramadan festival under the official logo of the City of Vienna in City Hall. Photo: Screenshot / ServusTV Ont
‘There is no God but Allah’ – this was projected onto the wall under the official logo of the City of Vienna at the Ramadan festival in Vienna City Hall. In the front row: Vienna’s SPÖ Mayor Michael Ludwig with senior representatives of the Islamic faith community.
What could be read on the wall had nothing to do with the tolerance discussed in the evening’s speeches, analysed the presenter of the ‘Blickwechsel’ programme on ServusTV. SPÖ Mayor Ludwig accepted this sentence unchallenged. After all, almost a quarter of a million Muslims live in Vienna – and the socialist does not want to upset them ahead of the Vienna elections on April 27. He also accepts that the Vienna City Hall will advertise that there is no other God than Alla
In an interview with ServusTV, Ludwig commented on the Allah advert in City Hall:
‘It is the aim of all religious communities to advertise their own faith. And that’s why my goal is for this to be practised in a spirit of togetherness, which is also successful in Vienna.
‘If it weren’t for the prayers in the town hall, where there is no mention of togetherness,’ said the programme creator in the interview’s closing credits. According to Efgani Dönmez, former Green and ÖVP politician, this and more should be taken more seriously than the Mayor of Vienna does. Conservative Islamic forces are gaining more and more influence in politics. He literally told ServusTV:
The Who’s Who of the Islamist scene is represented at this fast-breaking event.
If the so-called neutrality law is abolished, as the Berlin Greens want, female police officers will be able to do their job in the German capital wearing headscarves. According to a report in the newspaper Berliner Tagesspiegel, the Berlin Green parliamentary group argues in a motion that the Neutrality Act bars women ‘who have decided to wear a headscarf’ from entering the civil service. The Greens’ motion is now to be debated in the Berlin House of Representatives. Until now, the Neutrality Act has prohibited the wearing of religious symbols and clothing by ‘civil servants employed in the administration of justice, the penal system or the police’ while on duty. Following a number of lawsuits and a judgement by the Federal Constitutional Court, the ban no longer applies to teachers in Berlin, reports the newspaper Die Welt.
Mobile phone footage has surfaced showing the moments before a violent attack on a German mother holding her 12-day-old infant by another woman, reportedly of Syrian origin, following a children’s dispute on a playground in Kronach, Upper Franconia.
The incident, which occurred on Easter Sunday, has sparked a police investigation involving allegations of dangerous bodily harm and incitement to hatred.
The 20-second video, obtained by NIUS and shared briefly on social media by the father of one of the children at the playground before being taken down, shows the Syrian woman approaching the German mother, who is holding her newborn.
Seconds later, chaos erupts. According to the injured woman and her husband, the confrontation escalated into a physical assault involving multiple family members, leaving several people injured.
A Syrian woman attacks a German mother holding her 12-day-old baby following a dispute at a playground on Easter Sunday. pic.twitter.com/zinOILcUAO
The incident is believed to have been triggered by an earlier argument between two children — reportedly a 10-year-old German girl and a 12- to 13-year-old Syrian girl — which then drew in their families. According to police, three mothers and their children became involved in the subsequent altercation. A 36-year-old bystander who tried to intervene was also injured.
“As a result, there was a verbal and then a physical altercation between a total of three mothers and their children. In addition to those involved, a 36-year-old woman also suffered injuries, who intervened to mediate between the families of German and Syrian origin,” the police stated.
Police confirmed that the mother of the 6-year-old boy involved in the initial playground dispute suffered injuries during the clash, as did her newborn, who was taken to the hospital with a suspected concussion.
The father later published the footage on Facebook, writing: “We wish you a happy Easter. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a nice one.” The video went viral and received a number of comments that could be classed in Germany as hate speech, leading to its removal and a statement from the father which read, “We have nothing against foreigners.”
Investigators from the Coburg Criminal Investigation Department seized the father’s phone and launched a probe into possible incitement to hatred under German law. Authorities cited both the content of the video and online reactions as grounds for the investigation.
“Comments and contributions by the account owner are being investigated for incitement to hatred,” said a spokesperson for the Upper Franconia police.
Meanwhile, the broader altercation remains under active investigation by the Kronach Police and Coburg CID, with multiple individuals facing scrutiny for suspected dangerous bodily harm and insult.
[R] Donald Trump during a campaign rally in 2016. Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore
A transgender inmate in Illinois has filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump, among others, after allegedly being raped in prison. Autumn Cordellioné, born Jonathan Richardson, is claiming that Trump’s “transphobic” rhetoric is responsible for the attack.
Richardson is currently serving 55 years in prison for the brutal 2001 murder of his 11-month-old stepdaughter. As previously reported by Reduxx, Richardson murdered the child while she was in his care while her mother was at work. He was visited by friends the night of the killing who observed he was “acting strangely” and refused to invite them in the house as he normally would.
Despite claiming the little girl was sleeping, Richardson had loud music playing in the home, and his guests noted that he appeared to have a fresh, bleeding tattoo of the child’s name carved into his arm.
Later that night, after his friends left, Richardson went to his neighbor and asked him to call 911, claiming the child was unresponsive. When emergency personnel arrived, they were briefly able to resuscitate the girl, but she died shortly after being rushed to the hospital.
Jonathan C. Richardson. Photo Courtesy of the Indiana Department of Corrections.
Richardson was interviewed by police, who noted he was “calm and unemotional” during questioning, and his story about what happened to the baby changed dramatically over the course of the two interviews conducted.
At first, Richardson claimed he found the baby unresponsive after doing some household chores. But in the next interview, Richardson said the child was being “fussier than usual” and he attempted to throw her up in the air repeatedly in an effort to calm her down. He said her “head bopped forward and back up in a rough type of a manner,” and that the child continued to cry so he proceeded to shake her aggressively in an effort to calm her down.
During a failed appeals hearing, detectives from the case recounted how Richardson “physically showed” how he had manhandled the girl, getting up out of his chair and demonstrating the action in a rough manner. An autopsy subsequently found that the baby had died of asphyxiation by manual strangulation.
Richardson was booked awaiting a court hearing, and would later tell a prison official “all I know is I killed the little fucking bitch.” He was found guilty of her murder the next year, and sentenced to 55 years in prison, and began identifying as transgender in 2020.
In August of 2023, the American Civil Liberties Union announced they were representing Richardson in a lawsuit demanding that the state of Illinois pay for his desired “gender affirming” cosmetic surgeries. The suit was challenging a recently adopted Illinois state bill which prohibited the spending of state funds on “gender affirming” surgeries for inmates.
“The total ban on gender-affirming surgery violates [his] right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment,” the civil rights group argued in their complaint.
In September of last year, the ACLU won the suit, with federal Judge Richard Young demanding that the Illinois Department of Corrections arrange his taxpayer-funded orchiectomy and a penile inversion as soon as possible, a decision he held up in March this year, even after a clinical psychologist concluded that Richardson was not suffering from gender dysphoria but instead had “attention seeking” personality disorders.
But Richardson’s crusade against the state has not stopped, and Reduxx has now obtained a new lawsuit filed by Richardson in the Southern District of Indiana targeting President Donald Trump and multiple individiauls affiliated with the Indiana Department of Corrections.
In the suit, filed on April 1, Richardson argues that his civil rights have been violated since he was transferred from New Castle Correctional Facility (NCN) to Westville Correctional Facility (WCA), which he describes as being insufficient to his needs. Richardson claims that WCA is “a facility with no security cameras, with no doors on the cells, understaffed, and populated with mostly gang-affiliated prisoners who traffic with correctional staff in the form of drugs, sex and money.”
Richardson alleges that the Department of Correction’s Director of Classification “knowingly” moved him to Westville from New Castle in order to make him a target for abuse, noting the fact that he was a prominent transgender prisoner in the media.
In a number of bizarre recollected quotes, Richardson details that he was allegedly assaulted and raped multiple times over a four day period by 12 gang-affiliated offenders after his transfer. Richardson also alleges that during one rape, the offenders claimed they had been motivated by Trump’s “transphobia.”
“We saw your shit on Fox and Trump was talking about you fagass, dicksucking trannies, he said your [sic] messing up our kids in school with your sex change shit… Trumps [sic] president now and we won’t even get in trouble for fucking you trannies up, we’re patriots and even if you tell on us, Trump will pardon us and probably give us a medal,” Richardson quotes one of the offenders as telling him.
From the April 1 suit filed by Richardson.
In the complaint, Richardson also quoted his unit team manager and case manager, who are also named defendants in the case, who spoke in a very similar manner to the inmates.
“I’ve seen your case on the news, and I personally don’t think us tax payers should have to pay for your surgery,” said the case manager. “God doesn’t approve of transgenders and gays, so what do you expect to happen, when you dress like a woman and have tits in a male facility?”
Richardson continues by claiming his case manager similarly invoked Trump in a transphobic rant towards him.
“Your [sic] that trans that won a lawsuit, and now us hard working taxpayers have to foot the bill, well there are only two sexes, male and female, and God made you a man, Trump’s putting a stop to all that fag shit,” stated his case manager. “I can’t help you, you reap what you sow,” she allegedly continued.
The actions of the above were “motivated and propagated due to their religious and political views and hatred,” argued Richardson, who suggests they have both violated tort law with their “gross negligence” and disregarded his safety, along with violating his 14th Amendment rights, as they discriminated against him due to his transgender status.
Richardson claimed that because President Trump “has on numerous occasions both as president and as former president spoken about his extremist rhetoric and transphobic hate speech,” he has “emboldened the Defendants and the assailants that brutally assaulted and raped plaintiff, not once, but multiple times, to act on their hate and prejudices, constituting the cause in action and his liability in this case. Therefore, President Trump was negligent due to his alleged knowledge that others may act on his words,” Richardson continued.
The inmate is looking for compensatory damage from the named defendants to the tune of $3.5 million, with punitive damages to be awarded by a jury. This is not the first complaint that Richardson has launched on the grounds of alleged human rights violations.
Last year, he converted to non-denominational Islam and was allegedly denied access to a hijab, and filed a complaint against the prison’s chaplain, Tony Gray, as a result.
Following the trial that resulted in Marine Le Pen and her party, the Rassemblement National (RN), receiving a severe sentence for misuse of public funds in the European parliamentary assistants affair, the European Parliament is demanding that the French party pay €3.5 million in damages. This demand places the party, which is in a fragile financial position and subject to banking restrictions, in a very delicate situation ahead of the upcoming presidential election.
For Marine Le Pen, the conviction clearly has two objectives: to prevent her from standing and to suffocate her political party. According to her, the financial sentence “jeopardises the future” of her party. “It’s not just about eliminating the presidential candidate. If we can kill the party at the same time, then of course we’re in a good position,” she said ironically when the verdict was handed down.
According to information from BFM TV, the European Parliament, which joined the French judicial investigation as a civil party, is claiming €3.5 million in damages from France’s leading right-wing party. The total damage has been estimated at €4.5 million, but the RN has already paid €1 million during the proceedings. The claimed amount includes legal fees (€80,000), compensation for moral damage (€200,000), and compensation for economic damage (approximately €3.250 million).
In a statement, the European Parliament explained that the amounts claimed for “misuse of public funds” had been wrongfully taken from European taxpayers: “In this sense, European citizens and French taxpayers are just as much victims in this case as the European Parliament.”
Now that the judges have ruled in favour of immediate enforcement of the sentence, the appeal filed by Marine Le Pen does not suspend payment of the amounts claimed. The party has nevertheless requested that the payments be spread out over time.
The sum to be raised is colossal for a party experiencing significant structural financial difficulties.
Under French electoral law, the RN can count on a significant portion of public funds for its financing, allocated proportional to its results in the first round of legislative elections. However, in the past, this contribution has not always been sufficient to cover all its expenses, and the party has had to resort to borrowing. For many years, however, the RN has faced almost systematic obstruction from French banks in obtaining loans, sometimes forcing it to resort to loans from foreign banks—something for which the French media subsequently criticised it heavily, with a certain degree of bad faith. In September 2023, after ten years, the RN finally managed to pay off a loan from a Czech-Russian bank, which cost it dearly in terms of its political image.
Today, the RN’s financial situation is more stable but remains tense. The party’s current finances allow it to pay the sums demanded, but will obviously hamper its ability to finance its presidential campaign from its own resources.
The left loved Pope Francis when he denigrated capitalism, globalization, inequalities between rich and poor as well as Muslim migrants, and when he put theoretical Catholic violence and very real Islamic violence on the same level. The left loved the Pope when Francis willingly submitted to the dictates of political correctness and seemed to have adopted Chesterton’s famous “crazy Christian virtues”.
Now his admirers and faithful remember him as the Pope of the peripheries, of mercy, of inclusion, of openness to others, of the solitary mass in St. Peter’s during the pandemic, of the “people” (his best moment was instead when he went to visit what remains of the Christians in Iraq). They mourn this Pope for his funny anecdotes and that mischievous look, as well as for his reputation for being “in step with the times.”
For Bergoglio (before he became Pope Francis, he was known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio), Europe was the past. He did not understand it and did not want to understand it. He did not like Europe. And he said it every day for twelve very long years.
The Pope who did not go to Notre Dame for the reopening.
The Pope of “human brotherhood” with Imam Al Tayeeb, who called on Islam to unite against Israel, who legitimized terrorism on the basis of the Koran and called for the death of “apostates,” meaning those who convert to Christianity.
The Pope who said on October 7 “they killed someone” and brought relations with the Jewish world to the lowest point in a strange convergence between Christian anti-Judaism and Muslim anti-Jewish hatred. While Benedict XVI took a stand in defense of Western culture and pledged to strengthen “collaboration with the sons and daughters of the Jewish people,” his successor expressed distrust of the West and support for Israel’s declared enemies.
The Pope who “punch-punched” the (dead) cartoonists after the Charlie Hebdo massacre (“it’s normal, it’s normal”). Why did Francis speak in a way that would make him identifiable as the guardian of the self-defense of the “dignity of religions” (only Islam is violent) rather than the guardian of the sacredness of life and the right to freedom of expression?
The Pope who, faced with the most significant episode of intolerance towards Christians that has occurred in Europe since the Second World War, the slaughter of Father Hamel in Normandy, said that Islamists are looking for “money” and that if one must speak of “Islamic violence” he also wants to speak of “Catholic violence”.
The Pope who said that “there is an Arab invasion of Europe, a social fact, but how many invasions has Europe known in the course of its history and has always known how to overcome itself and move forward to finally find itself as if enlarged by the exchange between cultures”.
The Pope who managed to explain that “the idea of conquest” is an integral part of Islam as a religion, but also of Christianity.
The Pope who met Greta, fueling a ridiculous and anti-Western environmentalism.
The Pope who said that “I don’t feel like calling China anti-democratic”.
The Pope who called the migratory upheaval “alarmist propaganda”.
The Pope who, contrary to all the facts, said that “poverty fuels terrorism”.
The Pope who compared migrants in Europe to Jesus and the Jews that Herod was hunting.
The Pope who attacked politicians who defend the Christian roots of Europe.
The Pope who said that Europe has a “multicultural” identity.
The Pope who called the West “a civilization of barbed wire and slavery”.
The Pope who equated migrant centers to “concentration camps” and “lagers”. And this was the most serious lie.
It does not matter that, once the comparison was cleared, even Erdogan approached the Jews under Nazism – or that, if Hitler exterminated 6 million Jews, in 2020 in Europe there were 87 million migrants (alive and well).
In his writings and speeches, Francis always presented only one truth. That of the gentile migrant denied entry to a rich and despicable Western country. He rejected the idea that these influxes of migrants could also be a source of problems for the receiving countries. He saw only the advantages of “diversity.” But Islam has not yet produced civil societies, states, institutions, and a culture of rights that are equal to those of the West and as desirable to millions of people.
“John Paul II remains the Pope of freedom, who played a decisive role in the fall of the Soviet Union and the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War,” writes Nicholas Baverez, a student of the philosopher Raymond Aron. “Benedict XVI was the Pope of reconciliation between faith and reason, which he sought to erect as a barrier against the return of religious fanaticism. Francis is the Pope of resentment toward Europe and the West.”
I don’t know if Michel Houellebecq is right when he writes that “the Church is engaged in suicide”. But a certain cultural dhimmitude is the great blind side of the Bergoglian pontificate, whose aspiration for peace met with the will to power of his interlocutors. Satisfying all the requirements of the “South of the world”, decolonial and destroyer of the “privileged whites”, did not Bergoglio follow in the footsteps of the worst autocrats who manipulate this new mobilizing ideological figure, the “West”?
Benedict XVI discovered that the price of conviction is unpopularity. Francis discovered that the price of compromise is disorder.
History remembers the expression “better the turban than the tiara” by Gennadio Scolario, leader of the powerful Latinophobic and Turcophile Byzantine party, who preferred to hand the Byzantines over to the Turks and to the definitive yoke of dhimmitude rather than ally himself with Rome, rival of Constantinople.
I don’t know if history will remember Francis as “better the turban than the West,” but if Wojtyla went to Warsaw during communism and Ratzinger to Regensburg during the clash of civilizations, I struggle to find light in Bergoglio where he, in the West, saw only shadows.
One of the accused ran a restaurant in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. Another one was a taxi driver. Inconspicuous, friendly – seemingly integrated.
The discovery of a USB stick made the investigators sit up and take notice. What they found on it was highly explosive: coordinates, photos, clues to possible targets in Germany. Several locations were spied on: the Israeli embassy in Berlin, the US military airport in Ramstein and Tempelhofer Feld, one of Berlin’s most popular parks.
Terrorism expert Hans-Jakob Schindler warns in the newspaper NZZ: ‘The fact that the group targeted the well-frequented park suggests that they may have been toying with the idea of committing a mass murder.
The trial not only reveals plans – it shows a strategic U-turn. Europe is clearly no longer a place of retreat for Hamas – but a target for attack.
It is not only Israel that is hated at the protests – the German state has also become an enemy.
Particularly explosive: Hamas – which is at the focus of the trial in Berlin – is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. What was planned in Berlin has the backing of the highest religious authority – and a clear global mandate to use violence.
2025 in Mayence: Holy water font contaminated with faeces. Confessionals destroyed. Easter candles were smeared in Kraichgau. Unknown persons smashed the high altar in Öhringen. A Bible was set on fire in Groß-Gerau. Crosses were desecrated in Eslohe. In Neuss-Erfttal, the police are investigating arson. In Salzgitter-Bad, perpetrators destroyed a statue of the Virgin Mary. Several churches were vandalised in the Odenwald. Churches have an ‘open day’ every day. Anyone can enter the room of silence. No one checks. This Christian tradition is an expression of trust. Even those who despise Christianity take advantage of it. Figures of saints were stolen from churches as long as 50 years ago. They were later found in second-hand bookshops. But today it is no longer about theft. It is about destruction and deliberate desecration. Crosses are smashed, statues are knocked off their pedestals and smashed on the floor. Baptismal fonts are damaged. Altars are desecrated. The misguided perpetrators believe that they are serving their religion when they desecrate the Christian house of God. Magdeburg Cathedral was locked when the author tried to enter it in 2019. A member of the congregation reported that someone had been defecating behind the altar.
According to the OIDAC report, over 2,000 anti-church acts were recorded across Europe in 2023, ranging from vandalism and desecration to threats. In Bavaria alone, the number of church desecrations rose from 219 (2019) to 294 (2022). In Baden-Württemberg, 896 offences against church facilities were reported in 2023. This corresponds to an increase of six per cent. The number of violent offences rose by 56 per cent. In North Rhine-Westphalia: 354 cases in 2019, 440 in 2023. In Berlin, attacks on Christian places of worship have totalled over 1,400 since 2006.
And these are just the official figures. The official statistics only list politically motivated offences. However, many desecrations are classed as ‘vandalism’ and fall under the heading of general crime. Observers speak of unreported offences. On X, users reported over 90 targeted attacks in spring 2025 alone. However, the Ministry of the Interior is playing down.
In some cases, perpetrators shout ‘Allahu Akbar’. The slogans are clear. Islamist groups such as the so-called IS have been calling for the destruction of Christian sites for years. Young men, ideologically incited, act on this appeal. They despise the Christian cross and make it their target. It is a sad country where churches remain open and unprotected.
The parishes are not asking for much, just that their places of worship are safe and that perpetrators are punished. That people take a close look and protect what generations have built up. But there is a lack of cameras. There is a lack of police patrols and a lack of honesty. Instead: Trivialisation. Silence.
Germany must protect its churches before it is too late. A cross is not a piece of wood. An altar is not a piece of furniture. A church is not a public space like any other. It is a sanctuary, a place of refuge and a place of prayer. Anyone who attacks it is attacking us all.
A country that no longer defends its churches has ceased to love itself. The perpetrators feel they are right and continue to destroy.
