Germany’s domestic intelligence agency could soon be authorised to secretly alter digital data, hack into private computers and mobile phones, enter homes without occupants’ knowledge, recruit 16- and 17-year-olds as informants, and never inform citizens that they had been subjected to surveillance.
The draft law, prepared by Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, would dramatically expand the powers of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.
The plans have already triggered fierce criticism from opposition politicians and commentators, who warn they would hand Germany’s domestic intelligence agency unprecedented powers.
Under the proposals, the domestic intelligence agency would no longer be limited to collecting information, but could actively intervene in communications and IT systems, including interrupting, redirecting, or altering data transmissions. Stored digital information could also be deleted or manipulated.
The interior ministry argues that the reforms are necessary because of an increasing domestic and international security threat.
The draft would also considerably expand the agency’s surveillance powers by permitting access to private IT systems and, under certain conditions, the covert entry of private homes.
While most operations would require approval from an independent oversight body, urgent cases could be authorised immediately by the agency’s leadership.
Telecommunications companies and digital service providers could be required to assist intelligence operations. Individuals affected by surveillance may never learn that the state accessed their communications, personal data or even their homes.
One proposal that has attracted particular criticism would allow the BfV, in exceptional circumstances, to recruit 16- and 17-year-olds as confidential informants. The government justifies the measure by pointing to the increasingly young age of some extremist groups.
The plans have triggered strong criticism.
The leader of the liberal FDP, Wolfgang Kubicki, argued that the proposal crossed “moral and ethical boundaries.” He questioned how a state that considers minors insufficiently mature to use social media could at the same time recruit them as “paid spies.”
Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel also condemned the draft, writing on X that the intelligence service would soon be officially permitted to “lie, forge, and use deepfakes.” She warned that if state authorities began falsifying information, “the rule of law is finished.”
Verfassungsschutz darf bald ganz offiziell lügen, fälschen und Deepfakes nutzen. Wenn weisungsgebundene Behörden anfangen, Informationen zu fälschen, ist der Rechtsstaat am Ende. Wir müssen den totalitären Staatsumbau stoppen, bevor es zu spät ist! https://t.co/BrnV3j8B5L
Conservative commentator and publisher Roland Tichy likewise criticised the proposals, arguing that they would introduce “the methods of a brutal secret service” into Germany and could enable innocent people to become suspects through covert digital manipulation.
The draft legislation must first be approved by the government before being submitted to the Bundestag.
It is widely believed that Pakistanis are largely responsible for grooming gang crimes. Official data disputes that conclusion, while a documented pattern of concealing perpetrators’ ethnicity has fueled continued debate over the accuracy of those figures. Photo: West Yorkshire Police
On June 22, 2026, three brothers, Amar, Kamar, and Kamran Ilyas, of Sheffield, were sentenced to a combined 40 years in prison for the rape and sexual abuse of five girls between 2004 and 2008, when the victims were as young as 12. One victim was abused by all three brothers. Amar Ilyas, who fled to Pakistan while on bail and was sentenced in absentia, was convicted of 20 offences against the five victims.
The case was not officially described as a grooming gang by prosecutors or investigators, although it shared several characteristics with cases that carry that label. It involved multiple offenders acting against multiple underage victims over a prolonged period, repeated sexual exploitation, and familial coordination, with one victim abused by all three brothers. The perpetrators were Pakistani, the ethnicity most commonly associated with such cases.
Grooming gang crimes typically involve children coerced or deceived into sex through gifts, alcohol, drugs, or a claimed relationship, and then passed to other men for further abuse. Other ethnicities associated with these cases include Iraqi, Bangladeshi, Indian, Iranian, and Turkish.
Political correctness has enabled these gangs because the police and the liberal media are avoiding attributing the crimes to migrants or Pakistanis. In fact, many on the left claim that the grooming gangs are a right-wing conspiracy theory or that most of the perpetrators are white.
However, the 2018 Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, case illustrates how British authorities have prevented the public from learning that most of the defendants were Pakistani. In October 2018, 20 men were convicted of more than 120 offences against 15 girls as young as 11, committed over a seven-year period from 2004 to 2011.
Ringleader Amere Singh Dhaliwal was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 18 years, while the other sentences ranged from five to 18 years. The court heard that many perpetrators in the case were never identified.
Details of the convictions, including the offenders’ ethnicity, could not be published until reporting restrictions on a series of linked trials were partially lifted. Former English Defence League leader Tommy Robinson was arrested in May 2018 for reporting on the case via livestream while the restrictions were in effect and was jailed for contempt of court.
Supporters argue that Robinson was acting as a courageous citizen journalist shining a light on a highly sensitive issue (grooming gangs) that they believe the mainstream media and local authorities were deliberately downplaying or covering up due to political correctness. They frame his arrest as an attack on free speech and independent journalism. At the same time, government documents, including child safety training materials, refused to acknowledge that the problem centered on foreign-born perpetrators.
Standardized training materials used across two-thirds of English schools, provided by the platform GovernorHub, presented a hypothetical example describing “men belonging to a particular religion” committing “violent crimes against women” and instructed staff to identify it as “disinformation” and an “online safety risk.”
Chris Philp, a senior Conservative opposition lawmaker who serves as the party’s spokesman on policing and immigration issues, said the training was “propaganda designed to aid the cover-up of these appalling crimes,” and lawmakers and parents described the course as “shocking” and “concerning.” The disclosure came as hundreds of previously closed grooming gang cases were under review by the National Crime Agency, Britain’s equivalent of the FBI.
In 2025, the British government commissioned Baroness Louise Casey, a member of Britain’s unelected House of Lords, to conduct a national audit on child sexual exploitation after years of calls for a wider inquiry. Her report, published June 16, stated that the scale of group-based child sexual exploitation could not be assessed nationally because of inconsistent definitions and incomplete data across police, local authorities, health services, and the criminal justice system, and found that ethnicity was not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators nationally.
A 2017 report by the Quilliam think tank concluded that 84% of group-based child sexual exploitation offenders were of South Asian origin, a euphemism often used in crime reporting to mask the fact that the perpetrators were Pakistani.
The Quilliam finding was widely disputed. Researchers Ella Cockbain and Waqas Tufail, writing in the journal Race & Class, called it “shoddy pseudoscience,” and a 2020 Home Office literature review concluded the report’s methodology was not suitable for drawing conclusions about offender ethnicity.
The official figure, based on National Police Chiefs’ Council data on group-based cases in 2023, put the Pakistani share of suspects with known ethnicity at 6.9%, compared with a 2.7% Pakistani share of the population of England and Wales, an overrepresentation by a factor of roughly 2.5. Comparable breakdowns for other ethnic groups associated with these cases, including Bangladeshi and other South Asian communities, have not been made public in the suspect data.
Casey’s audit stated that “flawed data” had been used to dismiss claims of disproportionality, and disputed the “majority white” framing built on the NPCC figures above: “The system claims there is an overwhelming problem with White perpetrators when that can’t be proved… This does no one any favours at all, and least of all those in the Asian, Pakistani or Muslim communities who needlessly suffer as those with malicious intent use this obfuscation to sow and spread hatred.” The audit also found that some authorities discouraged publicizing convictions to avoid increasing community tensions.
Cases were documented in Rotherham, Rochdale, Oldham, Telford, Oxford, Bradford/Keighley, Derby, and Newcastle. In Rotherham, the 2014 Jay Report found that group-based child sexual exploitation affected an estimated 1,400 girls between 1997 and 2013, abused predominantly by men of Pakistani heritage. Casey’s audit stated that a case file was found in which the word “Pakistani” had been physically removed with correction fluid.
In Oxford, seven men were convicted at the Old Bailey in May 2013 of offences that had taken place from 2004 to 2011, including rape, arranging child prostitution, sexual activity with a child, and trafficking a child within the UK for sexual exploitation. The victims were White British girls and the offenders were mainly of Pakistani heritage. Victims or their families had approached social services and police on several occasions, and accusations had previously been made about some of the offenders.
In Rochdale, nine men were convicted in 2012 under Operation Span. Ringleader Shabir Ahmed worked as a welfare-rights officer for Oldham Council in 2005 despite having already been accused of child sexual abuse; police did not notify the council of the prior allegations, and he was seconded to the Oldham Pakistani Community Centre. Simon Danczuk, a former Member of Parliament for Rochdale, has said senior Labour politicians warned him against discussing the ethnicity of perpetrators in his constituency for fear of losing votes.
In Newcastle in 2017, 17 men from Iraqi, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian, Iranian, and Turkish communities were convicted. Conservative minister Mike Penning asked the attorney general to treat the offences against “young white girls” as racially motivated, but the presiding judge ruled that the girls had not been targeted because of their race.
Labour MP Sarah Champion later wrote in The Sun that “Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls.” Her statement drew criticism from other MPs and the Muslim Council of Britain, and she later apologized.
Counter-terrorism officers investigating the killing of former British minister and Reform UK spokeswoman Ann Widdecombe have reportedly discovered communist literature and other politically themed material at the home of the main suspect, as detectives continue to investigate whether the attack was ideologically motivated.
The 28-year-old suspect was initially arrested on suspicion of murder before being rearrested under terrorism legislation after what police described as “new information and evidence” emerged during the investigation.
Counter Terrorism Policing South East has since taken over the case from Devon and Cornwall Police.
According to the Daily Mail, investigators found communist literature and other material reflecting “varying political ideology”, including Russian-related publications, during searches of the suspect’s home and electronic devices.
The newspaper reported that detectives are examining whether the material provides evidence of a political motive behind the killing.
Police have not publicly confirmed the nature of the literature or whether it is directly linked to the alleged attack.
Counter-terrorism officers have stressed that they are pursuing “multiple lines of enquiry” to establish the suspect’s motivation and have urged the public to avoid speculation while the investigation remains ongoing.
Widdecombe, 78, was found dead with serious injuries at her home in Devon on July 10, although investigators believe she was killed approximately a day earlier.
She served as a Conservative MP between 1987 and 2010, held ministerial office under John Major and later became one of Reform UK’s most prominent spokespeople on immigration and justice.
The decision to hand the investigation to counter-terrorism police marked a significant shift from the initial assessment by Devon and Cornwall Police, who had stated over the weekend that there was no indication the killing was politically motivated or terror-related.
The reversal prompted criticism from some politicians and commentators, who questioned why the possibility of ideological motivation had initially been dismissed.
Robert Jenrick, Reform UK’s Treasury spokesman, said Farage had been vindicated after police upgraded the investigation to a terrorism inquiry.
Farage had earlier said he did not believe Widdecombe’s death was “a burglary that went wrong” and described it as “premeditated murder”, while urging police to investigate every line of inquiry.
Those comments drew criticism from opponents, who accused him of speculating before the facts were known.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told Parliament that the suspect was not previously known to the government’s Prevent counter-extremism programme and confirmed that security arrangements for current and former public figures were under review following the killing.
Police have said there is currently no evidence of a wider threat to the public.
The investigation has also prompted criticism of the police’s public communications.
While officers initially said there was no indication of terrorism or a political motive, they also disclosed the ethnicity of the suspect, information police do not always release in the immediate aftermath of serious crimes.
Critics accused the force of applying inconsistent standards in its handling of suspect descriptions and of reaching early conclusions that later proved premature after the case was transferred to counter-terrorism police.
An incident at a primary school in Hamburg is now before the courts: A former teaching assistant has had to answer before the St. Georg District Court on charges of coercion, making threats, and assault. The 24-year-old was accused of threatening an eleven-year-old pupil with a pocket knife two years ago to make him wipe the blackboard. She is also alleged to have pulled the child’s hair and physically assaulted him.
Europe as we have known it for centuries — a civilisation founded on a native majority population, a common culture, industrial prosperity, and a certain idea of liberty and property — appears destined to disappear.
This will happen not in some spectacular cataclysm, but through a slow, inexorable erosion, made inevitable by structural trends now too powerful to be reversed in the time it would take to stop it.
Even if, in the years ahead, several European countries bring to power so-called “right-wing” coalitions that have never yet governed, this can no longer substantially alter Europe’s collective destiny. The problem is no longer merely political: it is demographic, energetic, economic, and institutional. These four processes interlock and reinforce one another in a sinister yet terribly efficient mechanism.
1. The Collapse of the Native Demographic Base
In 2024, the total fertility rate of the European Union, migrants included, stood at 1.34 children per woman, far below the replacement threshold of 2.1.
In almost every country, native Europeans have even lower fertility rates. The older population is growing rapidly, and the number of working-age people is shrinking while the number of retirees is exploding. This is not a mere “challenge” to be managed with a little more immigration; the very foundation of a society that is collapsing. Fewer European children mean fewer future taxpayers, fewer innovators, fewer soldiers, and fewer parents to raise the next generation. It is a slow, multifactorial, implacable demographic suicide.
Take the Dutch example. Here is a country that, in the name of preserving nature, has forbidden building almost everywhere on its territory. At the same time, the Netherlands has opened the floodgates to mass immigration from the Third World. The result is that the a half-derelict bungalow trades for a million euros. This cost makes home ownership — and often even decent renting — strictly impossible for the overwhelming majority of young native Dutch people, even though it is presumably a condition for having children. One does not have children at 30 while still living with one’s parents, or in an overpriced studio apartment. In the Netherlands, a study by the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute attributes up to a quarter of the decline in the birth rate to this housing crisis, itself aggravated by mass immigration and environmental restrictions on construction.
2. Demographic Third-Worldization
At the same time, mass immigration from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia “compensates,” as the left likes to say, for the low native brithrates — though only partially. In 2023, nearly 6 million people immigrated to the EU, 4.9 million of them from Third World countries.
In 2025, approximately 64 million people born outside the EU resided there, or about 14% of the total population.
In 2024, 24% of births in the EU were to foreign-born mothers. This figure exceeds 30% in Germany, Belgium, Spain, Austria and others, and reaches 68% in Luxembourg.
Assimilation of immigrants has not taken place. On the contrary, in several countries we observe phenomena of segregation, parallel identity claims (mainly Islamist, although not only that) and rising cultural and security tensions. Europe is not only failing to “renew” itself: it is transforming, mutating, metamorphosing into something radically different, less European, less productive in the long run, and less coherent.
The number of rapes in Europe is exploding. Where crime statistics by national origin are available, they all show a massive overrepresentation of certain populations from the Third World among rape perpetrators. When one imports the Third World, one becomes the Third World.
3. An Insane Energy Policy
Under the influence of green ideology and European policy commitments such as the Green Deal and carbon taxes, Europe has voluntarily sabotaged its energy markets. The clearest example remains Germany and its Energiewende: the closure of nuclear power plants, the diktat of solar and wind power, the explosion in electricity prices and accelerated deindustrialization. Energy prices will therefore remain structurally higher in Europe than in Asia or most of the United States. One cannot maintain and pay for two parallel electricity-generation networks with impunity: an intermittent one to please the ideologues, and a real one for the people to be able to have light and heat in their homes.
Heavy industry — chemicals, steel, automobiles, glassmaking — has lost its competitiveness. Companies are relocating or shutting down. This policy is not merely costly; it is basically ideological and self-destructive. It weakens the productive base that finances the entire system. The United States invents, China copies, Europe legislates: a truism, but so terribly accurate. Unfortunately, that truism has a price: the relative collapse of the European economy in a growing world.
In Belgium, for example, electricity is three times more expensive than the US average, and natural gas five times more expensive. There is not a single industrial sector that can successfully compete in global markets while dragging such a ball and chain. Cheap energy conditions everything. In Europe, we forgot this. Now it may be too late.
4. Economic Collapse
Public debt is already no longer under control in several major countries, including France. The costs of government pensions for an aging population, universal healthcare and welfare benefits for migrants are exploding and will continue to explode over the coming decades. IMF reports underline that budgetary pressures linked to aging will considerably burden public finances.
The pay-as-you-go pension system, which rests on the ratio between workers and retirees, becomes mathematically untenable with the collapse of the native demographic base and the burden of immigrants who receive government payments and services but fail to help grow the economy. Do the math. Governments face an impossible choice: drastically cut pensions, or massively increase taxes and social security contributions, thereby confiscating more private property. This is the “solution” advocated by so-called “economists” in the style of Thomas Piketty, and it is always and everywhere in economic history the prelude to collective collapse. Capitalism without capital is one of those illusions of fanciful French theory.
5. The EU, the Ultimate Lock
The European Union is not a common market: it is an unelected, untransparent and unaccountable supranational system that locks national policies in place. The “common market” is partial, shaky, riddled with exceptions. A Belgian entrepreneur seeking to develop his business in France will have to go through a thousand legal and administrative vexations that will deter him; that, indeed, is the very reason they exist: to prevent private success. In reality, the European market is not “common”; only the million European regulations are.
The rules on migration, asylum, energy, climate, competition, and state aid severely limit the margin for manoeuvre of member states. Even a national government determined to regain control of its borders, relaunch nuclear power, or drastically reduce social spending will run up against the treaties, directives, the Court of Justice of the EU, and the threat of financial sanctions.
The EU thus acts as a permanent blocking mechanism against the radical reforms that are so urgently needed.
What “Right-Wing” Victories Will — and Will Not — Change
In the coming years, we will see electoral victories by parties that are tougher on immigration and more sceptical of the forced ecological transition. These victories are already under way in several countries. But what will such parties actually be able to do when faced with millions of additional retirees to finance from a shrinking contribution base? Or debt commitments already contracted? Or European rules that prohibit many solutions?
The answer is simple: they will be forced, like the others, to increase the fiscal pressure on those who still work and save – through income taxes, wealth taxes, inheritance taxes, miscellaneous levies and creeping inflation. Look at the trend on capital gains in the stock market: first, the stock-market transaction is taxed. Then realised capital gains. Finally, unrealised capital gains — that is, gains that do not even exist and might end up as losses (see Belgium, and Holland). In the end, all that remains is a taxpayer who, to salvage what can still be salvaged, leaves. He then discovers the joys of the exit tax, which will let him go, but only after first taking all his property.
These new “right wing” parties might also, one hopes, fast-track simplifying paperwork, eliminating unnecessary regulations, lowering taxes and providing incentives for economic growth.
Until then, all of this amounts to a form of progressive confiscation of private property, the only adjustment variable left when one refuses to touch the demographic, migratory, and energy taboos.
The Classical Roman Precedent
Classical Roman civilisation did not collapse in a spectacular cataclysm: it dissolved slowly, invisibly through exhaustion. From the second century onward, native Romans saw their fertility collapse — late marriages, abortions, infanticide, and celibacy among the elites — despite the desperate natalist laws of Augustus and his successors.
While the demographic heart emptied out, the Roman Empire threw open its gates to outside people, first invited as allies, settlers, or soldiers, then installed by entire tribes with their own chiefs and laws. Assimilation, partial at first, ultimately failed; the newcomers preserved their identities, irreversibly fragmenting the cultural and ethnic fabric of the Roman West.
At the same time, the production machine began to seize up: relative “deindustrialisation“, massive deforestation, rising energy costs, villas emptying, competitiveness lost to the peripheries. To finance pensions, the army, grain distributions, and the upkeep of newcomers, Rome chose the classic path of empires in decline: crushing taxes, monetary debasement, requisitions, and binding laws that tied man to the land.
Thus, without a single great decisive battle — apart from a few symbolic episodes such as 476 — the Roman West was not conquered: it slowly mutated from within into a mosaic of Romano-barbarian kingdoms. Classical civilisation died, replaced by something else. The Early Middle Ages were not the continuation of Rome, but its successor on the ruins. Feudalism had nothing Roman about it, except for the rubble on which it was born.
Europe as we have known it — that civilisation from which America was born —at this point does not look as if it will pull through. It is giving way to something else: a society more fragmented, poorer, more dependent on the government, less free, and less European. Then plausibly surrounding powers will not resist the temptation to come for the spoils: the Maghreb, which already has a virtual army on European soil; imperialist Islamist Turkey; Russia, imperialist for a thousand years; and finally the United States, which will not be able to allow fallen countries that nevertheless possess nuclear weapons — France and the United Kingdom — to fall into the hands of Islamist leaders. Houellebecq’s nightmare — an Islamist president in France — will most likely come true; it is only a matter of time.
This is less a prediction than an observation. The trends are there, documented, and the institutional blocking mechanisms are in place. The rest is mere political theatre.
Europe in the twenty-first century increasingly looks as if it will be what Belgium was in the nineteenth: the battlefield of the powers that surround it.
U.K. Equalities Minister Olivia Bailey has affirmed that the government’s proposed Conversion Practices bill will not exempt conversations with parents about gender identity or sexuality – and that the consequences for violating the law could be dire.
After successive governments – both Conservative and Labour – promised to ban so-called “conversion therapy,” the Labour government is moving to make good on the commitment. LGBT groups have been thrilled at the expansive approach the government appears to be taking. “Conversion practices are abuse, and the government will deliver the manifesto commitment to bring forward a trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices,” the government’s addendum stated.
In June, the government published their draft Conversion Practices Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny, including the criminalization of “abusive” practices causing “serious harm,” unlimited fines and up to five years in prison for those found violating the law, and broad applicability, including not just therapists but also parents and religious leaders. The exemption for health care and “non-abusive” conversations have not quelled concerns.
Bailey has made it crystal clear that there would be no carve-out for parents. In a conversation with The House magazine, Bailey was asked about the concerns expressed by both religious Britons and “gender-critical campaigners” about the bill deliberately undermining parental autonomy.
Many parents disagree, of course, with the fundamental premise of the bill – that children can be born in the wrong body or change their sex.
“This is about abuse; it is about a very specific form of abuse,” Bailey stated. “It is not about policing opinions, it is not about policing how parents parent, and it is for the courts to determine, not politicians, but – rightly – for the courts to determine what meets that threshold of abuse.”
Again, ofcourse it is about “policing opinions.” If parents do not believe a child can be born in the wrong body or can change their sex through social transitioning, drugs, or surgeries, they are at odds with the ideological framework of the government’s bill.
When Bailey was asked whether parents could be imprisoned under the Conversion Practices Bill, she was vague. “I think that anybody committing abuse, no matter where you find it, no matter in what walk of life – there are not carve-outs for abuse by parents in any other legal environment,” she said. “So I think it is completely right that we just say very clearly in this legislation: We want to stop abuse, we want to stop abuse wherever it happens. Full stop. End of story.”
However, the legislation “defines a conversion practice as ‘any conduct’ carried out with the intention of causing another person to have or not to have, or to believe they have or do not have, a particular sexuality or transgender identity.” It also does not merely include conversations that are “violent or threatening” or “controlling or coercive,” but even pressure that could be vaguely termed as “psychological or emotional” or even “economic.”
“The Government claims its bill targets abuse, but it’s now clear that parents are going to find themselves having to answer to police officers and the courts for conversations with their children,” stated Simon Calvert of The Christian Institute. “It will be easy to allege that a parent who doesn’t go along with a child’s wish to ‘transition’ and does their best to keep them away from the influence of trans activists could be accused of using emotional or financial pressure to ‘stop them being trans.’”
As Christian Action Research & Education (CARE) put it: “Someone hearing a sermon in a church on human sexuality which they disagreed with could cause them distress and therefore come under the terms of this proposed bill. Parents who talk to their children about gender or sexuality, and who do not agree with decisions they have taken, could also be liable for prosecution.”
Non-Christian groups agree. “We fear that this open-ended and subjective definition will lead to parents, teachers, therapists, youth workers, pastoral leaders and others being investigated by the police and possibly submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service for assessment and prosecution, and also being vulnerable to private prosecution,” concluded Sex Matters, a gender-critical feminist group.
The Red Cross will no longer deploy aid workers to the main asylum seeker registration in the Netherlands out of concern for their safety in the wake of multiple stabbings and other crimes in the area.
The Ter Apel asylum seeker registration and application centre, which serves as the principal venue for initiating asylum requests in the Netherlands, has become so dangerous that the Red Cross said “safety can no longer be guaranteed” for its employees seeking to provide aid to migrants at the location.
“This is a very drastic decision. We realise what this means for the people we help. But we have no other choice, because a small group of troublemakers is causing insecurity for both our aid workers and those seeking help. Therefore, a structural solution is now needed,” local Red Cross director Harm Goossens said.
The charity organisation said that in recent weeks, its workers, including emergency responders, had been “harassed by a small group of men” at the asylum reception centre. This made them feel that the site was unsafe and that the situation at Ter Apel could potentially get out of control.
Goossens said that there was a need for additional space to place the alleged asylum seekers, saying, “That is the only solution. We have been providing assistance for seven weeks now on the grounds in front of the registration centre. People are moving from place to place, spending hours on the grass, even in extreme weather conditions such as heat or heavy rain. This has to change.”
“I want to make an urgent appeal to all municipalities in the Netherlands: step forward and provide an emergency shelter location. Such a location offers breathing space for Ter Apel and ensures that people have a safe place during the day as well. We are talking about several dozen people per day, in a country with 18 million inhabitants,” he added.
According to the Telegraaf newspaper, the centre at Ter Apel has been so overcrowded since around mid-May that dozens of asylum seekers are forced to stay outside during the day and had previously relied on the Red Cross for food, water, and blankets.
An asylum seeker from Nigeria told the paper that he was unsure how people would survive without the aid organisation, but acknowledged that there were many problems with people at the centre.
“Every day there is a fight. People with severe mental problems are placed among ordinary people. When you say hello to someone, you don’t even know how they will react. And before you know it, there’s a fight,” he explained.
Indeed, just over the past week, there had been multiple stabbings at the asylum centre, including one before a planned visit from the Minister of Asylum Bart van den Brink, whose visit to the centre was delayed as a result.
A former security guard at the centre said that his stint working at Ter Apel changed his view on asylum seekers, saying that “the first week you work there, you feel sorry for the people walking around… After fourteen days, you start to scratch your head. And after about five or six weeks, you think: this doesn’t belong here.”
This sentiment was shared by Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV) leader Geert Wilders, who said that all Asylum Seekers’ Centres in the country should be shut down and deport all “asylum profiteers” back to their homelands. Wilders added that there should be “no whining about laws, treaties or judges, JUST DO IT! Necessity breaks the law!”
AfD’s lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund. Ulrich Siegmund on Facebook, 14 March 2026
During its state party congress in Saxony-Anhalt over the weekend, AfD unveiled its government program for the first hundred days after the September election, with polls suggesting that it could form a single-party government at the state level for the first time.
In line with voter expectations, migration is among the most important points that AfD wants to tackle head-on. The 100-day program includes “deportations from minute one,” and pledges that “all available options” will be used to deport as many illegal migrants as possible, something that both the CDU’s local and federal governments have failed to deliver on for years.
AfD also promised to require unemployed asylum seekers to perform community service in exchange for access to social benefits, and to put an end to the widespread benefit fraud across the state.
“While other parties are only concerned with the AfD, we are addressing the real problems of this country and tackling them,” lead candidate and Saxony-Anhalt’s likely next Minister-President Ulrich Siegmund said.
Da ist es – unser 100 Tage Programm. Während sich andere Parteien nur noch mit der AfD beschäftigen, kümmern wir uns um die wirklichen Probleme dieses Landes und packen es an! Grüße aus Magdeburg! pic.twitter.com/22YHBznFX3
Another major point is significantly cutting state funds for party foundations and NGOs, especially those that promote cultural and gender diversity. Likewise, the party wants to shift public schools’ focus on promoting the traditional family image in the future, in an effort to raise birth rates. The AfD government will also deploy security guards in schools with a history of violence, and plans to co-finance driver’s licenses to help young people get them more easily.
But even before these, the AfD pledged to quit the state from the Interstate Broadcasting Treaty as its “first official act” and create a “genuine pressure for reform” in the state’s public broadcasting to put an end to the federally administered “woke, anti-German, and manipulative propaganda.”
Furthermore, AfD wants to reduce the number of ministries to make governance more efficient, remove gender pronouns from state-employed authorities such as the police, and establish a COVID-19 investigation committee to uncover any fraud, neglect, corruption, and coverups linked to pandemic procurement and vaccination programs.
What’s more, the party will end Saxony-Anhalt’s image campaign #moderndenken (‘modern thinking’) that highlighted its innovative cultural heritage as the birthplace of the Bauhaus architectural school—and replace it with #deutschdenken to promote historical cultural heritage instead.
For the first time ever, the national conservative party does have a real chance of trying its hand at governance and implementing all these plans, using the state level as a trial run before it can eventually come to power at the federal level.
According to the latest INSA poll, conducted on the last week of June, AfD stands at 41%, close to being able to form a government alone, depending on how many parties get into the parliament. In contrast, the combined support of the current ruling coalition barely reaches 33%, spread across CDU (23%), SPD (6%), and FDP (4%).
As we wrote before, the mainstream parties are so afraid of AfD being elected in Saxony-Anhalt that they began making preparations to remove the state from federal intelligence sharing structures and thereby keep the local justice minister in the blind regarding federal investigations, like the one against AfD itself, which is likely illegal in the first place.
Another plan to entirely ban the party across the country is also gaining traction, although such a move—banning Germany’s most popular party—might provoke unprecedented unrest, as it would rightly be seen as the end of German democracy.
The University of Aberdeen was forced to distance itself from a staff member who posted online hoping former Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe suffered “an extremely painful death” following news of her murder.
Heather Herbert, a web developer at the university, a transgender activist and a former Labour candidate, went on her Bluesky account to celebrate Widdecombe’s death, hoping she died in agony.
Herbert reacted on the reports of Widdecombe’s murder, “Some good news for once.”
“I hope it was an extremely painful death.”
She added: “I hope she was handcuffed to the bed as she screamed in agony.”
The posts were made shortly after reports of the 78-year-old’s killing at her Dartmoor home, before police confirmed they were treating the death as murder.
The university issued a statement on Sunday saying the comments “are entirely the individual’s own and do not represent the views of the University of Aberdeen.”
The University is aware of social media posts made by a member of staff regarding the death of Ann Widdecombe and is reviewing this as a matter of priority. The comments that have been shared are entirely the individual’s own and do not represent the views of the University of… pic.twitter.com/DIySwIo4e2
— University of Aberdeen (@aberdeenuni) July 12, 2026
It confirmed the matter is being reviewed “as a matter of priority” through established staff processes.
“The University is aware of social media posts made by a member of staff regarding the death of Ann Widdecombe and is reviewing this as a matter of priority.
Police Scotland have stated no criminality was established in relation to the posts.
Gaudie, a student newspaper contacted Herbert on Saturday after she made her controversial posts.
She replied: “I don’t want to see anyone murdered, but I’m still glad she is dead.”
“I’m not a hypocrite. I posted that before the murder investigation was launched,” she continued.
“I’m a nobody. I have no power to do anything. Ann Widdecombe was able to and made the lives of ordinary people hell.”
She also added: “Nobody appears to care – I also celebrated the death of the leader of Iran.”
Herbert’s statements caused a lot of reactions, with many people demanding disciplinary action or dismissal.
One user wrote to Herbert: “I was never a fan of the woman and I certainly didn’t agree with her politics, but saying that about a fellow human is awful. There’s enough hatred in this world.”
In response, Herbert wrote: “I’m done with being nice to pieces of human garbage like her.”
Critics see her comments as a disturbing normalisation of violent rhetoric against political opponents within parts of academia and the public sector.
Widdecombe, a prominent Eurosceptic and social conservative known for her forthright views on issues including immigration, wokery and traditional values, was a frequent target of left-wing criticism and intense personal attacks during her political career.
She was a veteran British politician, author, and media personality.
Widdecombe was violently murdered on July 8 at her home in Haytor, Dartmoor.
A 28-year-old man from Rotherham has been arrested on suspicion of the killing.
The investigation into her murder is being led by Counter Terrorism Police after “new information and evidence has come to light”.
The British Channel Island of Jersey has legalized assisted suicide.
A law that allows adults who are terminally ill to commit suicide with the assistance of a doctor has been granted Royal Assent after the bill was approved by the island’s self-governing legislature in February.
The autonomous island under the British Crown, located 14 miles off the Cotentin Peninsula of northwest France in the English Channel, will become the first of the British Isles and the first British territory to legalize assisted suicide.
Minister of Health and Social Services Tom Binet expressed his delight over the Royal Assent being granted: “Our focus now is on continuing our work to get the service set up and running.”
The so-called “Assisted Dying Law” will come into force once it is registered at the Jersey Royal Court. It is expected to come into effect next year.
In November 2021, Jersey’s States Assembly decided that “assisted dying” should be allowed “in principle.” In May 2024, it voted in favor of drawing up laws for assisted suicide after the government announced its plan to introduce the practice. In February this year, the law was passed in a 32-to-16 vote.
Binet said at the time that “Jersey would have one of the safest and most transparent assisted dying laws in the world.”
The law requires someone who wishes to commit suicide to be at least 18 years old. They must have been a resident in Jersey for at least one year and have a “voluntary, settled and informed wish” to end their life. They must also be terminally ill with a life expectancy of a maximum of six months or 12 months if they suffer from a neurodegenerative disease.
While these measures appear restrictive, examples of other countries that have legalized assisted suicide or euthanasia, like Belgium, the Netherlands, or Canada, have shown that suchrestrictions can quickly be taken away, leading to children and those with mental illnesses opting for “assisted dying.”
The pro-life campaign group Care Not Killing expressed its “deep disappointment“ after the Royal Assent was granted to the Assisted Dying Law. The group argued the legislation violated the European Convention of Human Rights and “highlighted that the law fails to adequately test for coercion, duress or undue influence – particularly in the case of disabled people – by relying on an assessing doctor simply asking the individual if anyone has coerced them.”
Care Not Killing Representative Gordon Macdonald said:
This legislation will fundamentally alter health and palliative care on Jersey and put the lives of vulnerable people at risk, exactly as we have seen in those places that have introduced assisted suicide or euthanasia.
It fails on a number of fronts, including: lack of legal protections for doctors and nurses who do not want to be involved, protections for the elderly and disabled people at risk of being coerced, will see money taken out of palliative care and has been sold to the public as a way to end suffering.
Medical doctor and pro-life advocate Cajetan Niall wrote on X: “The last time doctors in Jersey were legally able to poison their patients, it was under Nazi occupation. A shameful day.”
While the Isle of Man became the first of the British Isles to pass a bill allowing assisted suicide in March 2025, it has not yet been granted Royal Assent, due to the lack of key safeguards.
As LifeSiteNews reported, in April, the attempt to pass assisted suicide in England and Wales failed because “The Terminally Ill Adults Bill” ran out of time before it could be voted on by the House of Lords before its deadline.
