Antisemitism, Antizionism, Jihadism and the Reunited Germany. News by Fred Alan Medforth
On Monday, September 30, at around 8.45 am, a fire broke out at a barricade set up by pupils blocking the ‘Jean-Geiler-de-Kaysersberg’ grammar school in Strasbourg. This barricade had been erected against the façade of the Church of Sainte-Madeleine.
In the videos posted by witnesses on social media, the fire appears to have been extinguished before it spread to the church. Only the façade appears to have been damaged.
The man accused of brutally murdering former British government minister Ann Widdecombe has been charged with preparing acts of terrorism, including against Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.
Joshua Kerry, 28, of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, was charged Friday with one count of preparation of terrorist acts under the Terrorism Act 2006.
Counter Terrorism Policing said the alleged activity took place between May 31, 2024, and July 8, 2026, and included conduct directed against Farage.
Kerry is already awaiting trial for the murder of Widdecombe, the former Conservative minister who later joined the Brexit Party and became friend and ally of Farage.
Widdecombe, 78, was found dead at her home in Haytor on Dartmoor in July.
Prosecutors previously told a court that she had been struck in the head 21 times with a hammer. Kerry was subsequently charged with her murder and remanded in custody.
Police have not publicly disclosed precisely what Kerry is alleged to have planned against Farage.
“We have been running a hugely intensive and complex investigation for some time,” Deputy Assistant Commissioner Vicki Evans, the senior national coordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing, said.
Evans said detectives, analysts and forensic specialists had pursued “multiple lines of enquiry” before the latest charge was authorized.
The development raises fresh concerns about the security of Farage and other high-profile British politicians.
Farage has previously spoken publicly about the volume of threats directed against him and has faced several security incidents during his political career.
Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice described the latest development as “terrifying.”
“This is why he needs money for security,” Tice said.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood expressed her “sympathies” with Farage.
“My profound sympathies are with Nigel Farage and his family,” Mahmood said, adding that “an attack on anyone in politics is an attack on us all.”
She also said the case raised “serious questions” about protections afforded to people in public life and promised an update to Parliament on efforts to strengthen security.
Kerry is scheduled to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, October 7.
Polish President Karol Nawrocki has used the UN General Assembly to make an unfashionable argument: that falling birth rates are a cultural problem as well as an economic one.
In 1968, Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb warned that hundreds of millions would starve as population growth outstripped food production. For decades, the fear of too many people shaped international population policy. At the UN’s International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994, the UN formally moved away from demographic targets and adopted a new language of “reproductive health” and “reproductive rights”. The fear faded; the vocabulary did not.
On September 23, Nawrocki took the podium at the General Assembly and set out the opposite problem. “Ageing societies, falling fertility and the erosion of social bonds are weakening the foundations of our states,” he said. Then came the line that made headlines in Warsaw: “Let us do everything, ladies and gentlemen, so that culture and the media promote births rather than abortions.”
The population bomb, it turns out, is ticking in the other direction.
It would be tempting to call this a first. It would also be wrong. On September 24, 2019, Donald Trump told the same General Assembly that “Americans will also never tire of defending innocent life”. He accused “many United Nations projects” of trying “to assert a global right to taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, right up until the moment of delivery”, and declared that “every child – born and unborn – is a sacred gift from God”.
The dispute predates Trump. At Cairo itself, the Holy See lodged a formal reservation against any reading of “reproductive rights” that included abortion. The Cairo programme did not create a right to abortion: it said abortion should “in no case” be promoted as a method of family planning and left abortion law to national governments. On September 24, 2025, in his first address to the General Assembly, Nawrocki himself spoke at the UN of “the right to life of the defenceless, from conception to natural death”.
Nor is this merely a theological dispute. On December 17, 2025, the European Parliament voted 358 to 202, with 79 abstentions, for a voluntary mechanism to fund access to legal abortion, as sought by the “My Voice, My Choice” citizens’ initiative. On February 26, 2026, the European Commission declined to create one, but confirmed that member states could use the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) for the purpose, including, according to Equality Commissioner Hadja Lahbib, to help women who need to travel. The ESF+, worth €142.7 billion over the 2021-2027 budget period, is funded from the EU budget, to which Poland contributes. Trump’s complaint about taxpayer-funded abortion is no longer abstract in Europe.
Trump’s argument was, at heart, about sovereignty: international bodies should keep out of matters that nations decide for themselves. His point was defensive.
Nawrocki made a different case. His remark about abortion came in the middle of a broader demographic argument. The family, he said, deserves “protection and appreciation”; parenthood must regain its social standing; and “the family, the mother and the father, and recognition of their role, are the starting point for overcoming the demographic crisis”. Then came migration: “Illegal migration cannot be the answer to demographic challenges. It brings misery, tension and anxiety. That is not the way forward.”
Taken together, the point was clear: family, parenthood and births were part of the answer to demographic decline; illegal migration was not. Pro-life arguments are hardly new at the UN. What is less common is a head of state placing abortion so explicitly within a demographic argument during the general debate.
He did not call for tighter abortion laws. His subject was culture and the media, not legislation. And he said “illegal” migration, twice. Poland still hosts roughly a million Ukrainians who fled the war; it can hardly be said to reject refugees as such.
Why would a Polish president, speaking on the same day as Volodymyr Zelensky, Masoud Pezeshkian and Ahmad al-Sharaa, devote part of his limited time to babies? Because the numbers at home make the subject difficult to avoid.
Poland recorded roughly 402,000 births in 2017. In 2025, it recorded 238,300, 5.4 per cent fewer than in 2024 and a fall of about 41 per cent in eight years. This happened despite a large child-benefit scheme introduced in 2016, made universal in 2019 and raised to 800 złoty (€183) a month for each child in 2024. The total fertility rate in 2025 was 1.068, down from 1.099 the year before. Replacement level is about 2.1.
This is the quieter side of Poland’s economic rise. The country has been catching up with western Europe and is building one of the continent’s largest land forces, while births continue to fall. Security can be bought with tanks and howitzers. A new generation cannot.
For a quarter of a century, European and UN policymakers have treated immigration as one tool for cushioning the effects of population decline and labour shortages. In 2000, the UN Population Division devoted a report to the question: Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations? The UN stressed that this was scenario modelling, not a “demographic recipe”. Even so, “replacement migration” entered the policy vocabulary. The European Commission’s demography toolbox now lists legal migration alongside family policy, housing and measures to bring more people into work.
The political appeal is easy to see. Labour migration can change the size of the workforce within a single parliamentary term. A child born this year will not enter the workforce for roughly two decades. The next election may be four years away.
Nawrocki’s speech pushed against that logic. Can a nation be run as a labour market with a flag? Does a country facing chronically low fertility solve the problem with immigration, or merely defer part of it? He also suggested that the UN “can be an organisation in which we work together to find ways of gradually overcoming the demographic crisis”, an unusual sentence to hear in an institution whose population work was long dominated by fears of rapid growth.
The Ehrlichs’ bomb did not go off as advertised. There were famines in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Ethiopia, but not the global catastrophe of food production failing to keep pace with population growth. Food supply per head rose.
The new demographic anxiety is quieter: fewer children, smaller classrooms, villages with a church and no christenings. Poland knows it well. More than half of the world’s countries and territories now have fertility below replacement level.
Europe has no shortage of policies for managing the consequences of low fertility. The harder question is what, if anything, would persuade its citizens to have more children.
In 1968, the Ehrlichs feared the cradle would overflow. They were wrong about the direction. Demography, inconveniently, still matters.
Editor’s note: The following story contains a deeply disturbing video and content. Reader discretion is advised.
Two young vandals on the French island of Corsica were arrested after destroying a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary late Wednesday night into Thursday morning, with dozens gathering later that day to protest and make reparation for the incident.
Uncensored video of the crime shows two unidentified males desecrating the statue, located at the southern exit of Port-Vecchio, that they later destroyed. Several locals quickly denounced the sacrilegious incident, with several gathering to protest the desecration at the vandalism site on Thursday afternoon.
“It’s outrageous because they’re desecrating what is most sacred,” Don Thibault Lambert, the priest of the parish that owns the statue, told French media. The priest also said he had filed a formal complaint.
“SHAME!” Porto-Vecchio Mayor Jean-Christophe Angelini declared in a Facebook post while denouncing the desecration. The politician had himself played a role in the erection of the statue near the town’s exit.
“At the start of our first term, at the request of Father Constant, we installed a statue of the Virgin Mary under the arch at the Stabiacciu roundabout,” the mayor said.
“This symbol, to which the people of Porto-Vecchio are deeply attached, was vandalized and destroyed last night by one or more irresponsible individuals,” he added. “On behalf of the City, as well as on my own behalf, I strongly condemn this unspeakable act.”
He further called for “a firm and swift response” from local authorities.
According to the French press, the Ajaccio District Attorney’s Office confirmed an investigation of the incident was proceeding amid strong reactions to the circulating video of the incident, evoking reactions of outrage and calls to manifest the community’s indignation.
The local outlet reported that two young men who are suspected of committing the crime were arrested by local law enforcement with apparent video of the arrests appearing on social media.
The French press also said that several dozen people came to the police station in order to protest the crime in the vicinity of the suspects, with one outlet reporting over 100 demonstrators. They provided video of protesters bringing an empty coffin to the gate of the facility and affixing the names of the suspects on it as a warning, expressing the collective outrage of the community over the incident.
In the aftermath of the desecration, the local Catholic parish, which owns the statue, called for calm and invited locals to gather at the Stabiacciu roundabout on Thursday evening to celebrate the beginning of the Month of the Holy Rosary, which had been scheduled to be held in the local church but was moved following the vandalism.
Large crowds gathered in sorrow due to the desecration but also consoled by the opportunity to make reparation to the Blessed Virgin Mary for such an awful offense.
Posting several pictures of the event on Facebook, the local parish acknowledged that “Tonight, our hearts are heavy but also comforted: we were able to tell our Santa Maria once again how much we love her! This moment of prayer and unity did credit to the parish and the town of Porto-Vecchio. Evviva Maria!”
For his part, Mayor Angelini assured, “the destroyed statue will be replaced as soon as possible, in accordance with our traditions, the wishes of the people of Porto-Vecchio, and our political will.”
Are you a Briton? Are you working class? Are you unhappy? That’s not because of any failings on the part of the failed Labour government, currently on its second puppet prime minister, but because of Russian disinformation.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham delivered his address at the UN, and spent most of his time blasting Russia and Israel, and claiming that the only reason people were unhappy was Russian disinformation, and enlisting everyone in some sort of ‘information war’ likely to involve mass censorship.
Ironically this is exactly the kind of argument Russia has been making for the last century or so.
“There is no national security without a strong, cohesive society,” Burnham told the UN. “Russian agencies have used every means at their disposal to spread lies and disinformation and prey on people’s fears. They’ve used bots and fake websites. Falsified newspaper articles.”
And just in case you might have thought that PM Burnham wasn’t exploiting this to launch a purge of the opposition, the leftist politician added, “They’ve amplified far right narratives.”
“We also know that they have tried to stoke tensions and unrest in the wake of horrific events,” PM Burnham, who helped cover up Muslim sex grooming gangs as Manchester mayor, argued, referring to the Muslim terrorist attacks that his government is covering up.
“Over the last decade we have given too much ground to those who want to run a negative, corrosive narrative about life in Britain, which bears no resemblance to reality. Well, no more. We are going to face the new decade in a different way – with our eyes wide open,” he claimed.
Or rather closed by government order in a country the police arrest thousands of people over online speech.
And here’s where it gets really into 1984 territory.
“And we are going to help our people to strengthen their resilience – because faced with this information warfare, security starts in every home. If you’re struggling with the cost of living and your life is not improving – or if you’re a young person not in employment, education or training – then you are going to be much more vulnerable to this kind of influence,” Burnham claimed, and then announced “a new 10-year Plan for Britain”.
Orwell was not supposed to be a manual, but it seems to be the only manual that the Labour Party has.
Two Iranians who arrived in Britain via small boat have been charged with plotting a terror attack in the UK.
Salam Ahmadyan, 36, from Liverpool, and Rahman Salehi, 34, from Salford, were arrested in Manchester.
The two individuals charged are Iranian nationals who arrived via small boat in 2020 and 2023.
One of those charged was granted asylum, while the other has a live asylum claim.
The Home Office has confirmed it will closely monitor the criminal proceedings. They said they will take any appropriate immigration action once they have concluded.
They being charged with engaging in conduct in preparation for terrorist acts against Section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006.
It is alleged the pair were in contact with an overseas third-party who may be in Iran in relation to the plot.
Both men will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court tomorrow.
Following the charges, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: “These recent events are a stark reminder of the threats posed against this country from both terrorists and foreign state actors.
“Two suspects have been charged with planning a terrorist attack against Jewish communities in Manchester.
“This news will be deeply distressing for our Jewish communities, coming so soon after Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
“I know this will be especially true in Manchester, as we mark one year since the terrorist attack at Heaton Park Synagogue.
“The fact both suspects arrived by small boat several years ago is a reminder of the importance of our relentless work to tackle illegal migration into this country. While numbers are down, I know there is more we must do.
“It would be inappropriate to comment further on this case. But I can say that we will be unrelenting in our efforts to protect our Jewish communities, root out antisemitism in this country, and maintain our border security.
“It is no secret that this country faces a range of serious threats from the Iranian regime. They target our Jewish communities and try to silence their critics overseas, often through proxies and criminal networks to hide their involvement.
“The Prime Minister has been clear there are strong indications of Iran’s involvement in the events near RAF Fairford.
“We are responding to these threats with new powers and record funding to disrupt hostile activity. I’m grateful to our police and intelligence agencies for the exceptional work they do every day to keep us safe.”
The arrests were made in relation to offences ahead of the Jewish festival, Yom Kippur, Counter Terrorism Policing confirmed.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Vicki Evans, senior national coordinator for Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP), said: “These are extremely serious charges and allegations.
“This investigation has led to the disruption of what we believe to have been a plot targeting the Jewish community in Manchester.
“I would like to reiterate that we do not believe there to be any ongoing threat to the public in relation to this matter, but as always, we would ask that people remain vigilant and contact police with any concerns.”
by Silvio Canto, Jr.
Last Sunday, the Dallas Cowboys lost to Baltimore in Rio. The game was settled by a field goal with one second on the clock.
Next Sunday, a presidential vote in Brazil may come down to the last second, too. It will be close and controversial, as we are hearing from the Guardian:
Sunday’s election in Brazil could hardly be a clearer-cut choice — nor a closer call. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, is neck and neck in the polls with Flávio Bolsonaro, the son and champion of the jailed far-right former president Jair. Mr Bolsonaro senior is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup to “annihilate” democracy after losing the last election.
Brazil is Latin America’s largest democracy, but military dictatorship is in its recent past. Mr Bolsonaro wants to free his father and those who rioted in his support in 2023. The senator has campaigned as a less crass and temperamental version of his father, but he is no less extreme. For many on both sides, this is a vote against a man they detest more than an endorsement of their own candidate. Most voters disapprove of both men.
Who will win? I don’t know. My hope is that Mr. Bolsonaro wins, but our southern neighbor is polarized as never before. In many ways, their politics is like ours, with families arguing about the candidates and young women making dating selections based on where you stand on the election. As a Brazilian said on a recent TV interview, we argue about politics these days like we used to fight over “futbol.”
Beyond Brazilian politics, a Bolsonaro victory would confirm the Latin American movement toward center-right leaders. In other words, a Bolsonaro presidency would align much closer to Trump-Rubio policies in fighting cartels and promoting free-market economies. It won’t end the infighting in Brazil, but the White House is cheering for Bolsonaro rather than Lula.
So get ready for an exciting finish down in the land of “futbol” and pretty ladies walking on the beach.
The waters of Ceuta’s El Trampolín beach present unsafe levels of fecal contamination, posing a serious sanitary risk for the embattled and invaded city, local outlets warned on Friday morning.
The Spanish exclave has now marked two months since tens of thousands of migrants invaded its territory. Since then, a large amount of the remaining invading migrants settled in the Trampolín beach, turning the once pristine shores into a makeshift shanty town full of tents, dumping trash all over the coastline, and “relieving” and bathing themselves in the beach’s waters.
Several Ceuta-based outlets informed on Friday that they obtained a copy of a new report from the city’s local health authorities warning of the presence of “highly elevated” amounts of fecal bacteria in the invaded beach’s waters.
El Faro de Ceuta detailed that report’s findings are based on three rounds of microbiological analyses of the Trampolín’s waters conducted between September 23-28.
All of the tests found dangerous concentrations of Intestinal Enterococci and Escherichia Coli far beyond the safety level thresholds outlined in Spain’s existing water quality regulation guidelines.
Per El Faro, the Ceuta Health Council stressed that although Trampolín is not a formal bathing zone, frequent or prolonged exposure to its waters in its current state represents a potential sanitary risk linked to direct contact with contaminated water.
Unnamed Ceuta government sources affirmed to El Faro and other local outlets that the report and its findings have already been forwarded to the Spanish central government’s Health and Migration Ministries.
El Periodico de Ceuta, a local newspaper, pointed out that the deterioration of the beach’s waters drastically occurred in a manner of “weeks.” The newspaper noted that prior testing conducted in August showed that the waters remained in “good” quality despite the beach having been occupied by the invading migrants — but, by early September, the quality classification was downgraded to “enough,” leading to the much worse and concerning contamination levels documented across the late September tests.
Ceuta’s health authorities reportedly called for urgent and immediate measures to stop the sanitary risks posed by the contamination of the beach’s waters — which can affect the city’s residents and invading migrants alike.
The systematic deterioration of the beach has become one of the most glaring consequences of the ongoing migrant invasion of Ceuta in the past eight weeks, as repeated efforts to clear the migrant camp and clean the area has so far been unsuccessful. The remaining invading migrants have turned Trampolín and its surrounding areas into what is now being locally described as the zone with the “highest level of criminal activity in all of Ceuta.”
An animal-rescue group has refused to let a Lower Saxony AfD deputy adopt a setter from Italy, telling her the decision was based on her party membership.
Vanessa Behrendt, family-policy spokeswoman for the AfD group in the state parliament, contacted Fortuna Animali about a dog the association is offering for rehoming.
In a WhatsApp exchange seen by Apollo News, she wrote that she and her family were very interested in “the pretty setter bitch Seta”, meaning Setia, and asked for a call if the dog had not already found a home.
The reply came about 15 minutes later. “You are certainly aware that we do foreign animal protection. Because of your political affiliation we are declining to place a foreign dog with you,” the contact wrote.
Behrendt replied that she knew the association worked abroad, that this would not have been the first dog she had taken from outside Germany, and that she had herself worked in animal protection for many years.
“Animal protection, like child protection, should have no political colour, since it should always and exclusively be about the matter itself,” she wrote.
She called the decision “very regrettable” and asked whether the point was really to give the animal a loving home. Her husband, she added, is Italian.
She later posted the exchange on X.
“So one would rather let a fully grown dog languish in an Italian shelter than place it with an AfD politician, with whom it would have had a loving home together with other animals,” she wrote.
It was “sad when political conviction becomes more important than actual animal protection”.
“You’d rather let a dog rot in a foreign animal shelter than give it a loving home, just because the political stance doesn’t fit.”
She then asked supporters not to attack or boycott the association, saying the animals would suffer and that she assumed the volunteers generally wanted the best for them.
Behrendt has sat for the AfD in the Lower Saxony Landtag since 2022.
Before entering parliament she worked as a self-employed dog therapist.
Apollo News asked Fortuna Animali why party membership was decisive. No reply had arrived by the time of publication.
Setia is still listed for adoption. The association describes her as a neutered English setter, born in January 2025, found abandoned and now living with other dogs at a refuge in Cori, Italy.
It calls her sunny and attached to people, and says she needs a family able to cope with a setter’s need for exercise.
Fortuna Animali’s published adoption process asks about experience with dogs, housing and how long an animal would be left alone.
Political views and party membership are not listed as criteria.
The association, a registered charity since 2019, says it supports partners in Italy and places dogs found there with families in Germany.
Two shocking incidents reveal how White women are also being targeted in the French school riots. In one incident, a woman who tried to stop vandalism on the edge of a high school protest was struck in the face by flames from an aerosol can used as a makeshift flamethrower. In another video shared online, a White female school supervisor was surrounded and punched during a blockade in Seynod, as student unrest over school conditions spread across France this week.
The Marseille attack with the homemade flamethrower occurred Thursday afternoon near Place of the 4th of September in the city’s 7th arrondissement, according to police sources. Images authenticated by BFMTV network show a White Frenchwoman attempting to stop students from smashing the bus stop with an iron bar.
An individual dressed entirely in black, with a hood over his head, then “used a spray can with a lighter to turn it into a flamethrower, directed at the head of his victim,” BFMTV reported. The flames hit the woman’s face as the crowd screamed in the video.
She filed a complaint Friday in Marseille, but the extent of any injuries remain unknown.
A separate video shows a White female supervisor at Baudelaire High School in Seynod, near Annecy, during a blockade. The woman is completely surrounded when a Black male punches her in the face multiple times.
The incidents come amid days of blockades and clashes at French high schools that serve students roughly ages 15 to 18. While the protests were presumably about poor teaching conditions and poorly maintained schools, they have since expanded into mass rioting, arson attacks, and attempted murder cases, including another incident in Marseille where gasoline was splashed onto a principal and vice principal during an attempted arson outside a high school administrative office.
The Interior Ministry said 1,027 high schools had been affected by demonstrations, with blockades at 222 of them. On Thursday alone, authorities recorded 1,949 arrests and 305 injured police officers, the ministry said.
Education Minister Édouard Geffray said 65 education staff members had been injured, including 40 headteachers, and that there had been “significant damage” to school facilities. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said 625 people, mostly young, were detained Wednesday and that 83 officers were hurt that day. Government figures put student and staff injuries over the days of protest at 159, including one student who lost part of the use of a hand after setting off a firework.
Other attacks on staff have been reported. In La Ciotat, a principal was doused with gasoline and beaten, and in Belfort a police commander was thrown to the ground and beaten unconscious, which Remix News also reported on. That case is also being treated as an attempted murder investigation.
The Education Ministry said 564 schools had been disrupted since Friday morning. More than 400 high schools were closed preventively that day. Prime Minister’s office officials, after a crisis meeting Thursday, described the movement as “a maneuver organized by France Unbowed and its ultra-left proxies.”
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the party, urged young people to use “only methods of nonviolent struggle.” However, intelligence reports cited by French government allege the party is backing the violence covertly.
