UK counterterror police target mother over support for Israel

GROK

A report in The Telegraph tells a disturbing story of counterterrorism policing targeting a British mother for her support of Israel.

According to the report, police visited the home of Holly Passmore, 44, of County Durham in northeast England, on July 4, 2025, after an anonymous referral to the government’s Prevent program flagged her support for Israel following an educational trip organized by Israel’s embassy in London.

Prevent is Britain’s government counter-extremism program. Referrals are assessed for potential security threats or concerns that someone vulnerable could be drawn into radicalization. Police say support offered through the program is voluntary.

The report cited records Passmore subsequently obtained showing that the referral characterized her involvement with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as excessive, citing her decision to travel to Israel. It also alleged mental health issues and susceptibility to harmful influence.

However, a police intelligence report reviewed by The Telegraph explicitly acknowledged that supporting Israel or traveling there did not constitute a counterterrorism concern.

Passmore, who is not Jewish, told the newspaper that officers questioned her connections to Israel, future travel plans, interest in Jewish matters, and whether she had visited Auschwitz.

“When they came to the door, they didn’t discuss my health. They only asked about Israel.”

Passmore cares for her nine-year-old son, who has severe autism, and is pursuing a master’s degree in Holocaust studies at the University of Haifa. She disputed the referral’s characterization of her health and vulnerability.

According to the report, after she complained, two other officers, including a superintendent, visited and assured her she was not regarded as a terrorist or extremist. She alleges the superintendent also encouraged her to stop discussing the incident online.

The newspaper also reported that Passmore discovered her medical records had designated her a vulnerable adult shortly after her Israel trip. The designation was subsequently removed. She said neither change was explained to her and questioned whether it was connected to the referral.

Counter Terrorism Policing North East declined to discuss her case. The Telegraph said Durham Constabulary and the regional health board had been approached for comment.

israelnationalnews

Nero Fiddles: Macron Faces Backlash over Attending Celine Dion Concert on Eve of Fiery Riots

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Comfortably smug leftist French President Emmanuel Macron drew a massive public backlash after attending a Céline Dion concert in Paris with his wife Brigitte on Friday night as fiery riots continue to roil the country.

Critics called the leader aloof, out-of-touch, and disengaged as he and his wife sang and clapped along to the Canadian singer in Paris at the Plénitude Arena.

They enjoyed a private box on the occasion while seemingly oblivious to the chaos unfolding across France as fury with his impotent government spilled onto the streets.

Meanwhile the country was going up in flames, as Breitbart London reported, with organised mass looting, widespread clashes with police, and vandalism a feature of the mass unrest along with arson of government buildings.

One furious demonstrator likened Macron, 48, and Brigitte, 78 to Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, the French king and his wife who were executed in the 1789 revolution.

Christina Aguayo News

Lina Bernard, an organiser of a protest rally in Paris, told the Mail on Sunday the couple “were acting like Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette” – both of whom were executed in the 1789 revolution with brought down the French monarchy.

She added: “They appear to think that there is no problem with anything.”

As of Saturday night, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said some 400 people were arrested nationwide over the previous 48 hours.

Nuñez said 110 marches drew about 550,000 people across the country. Organizers, including the CGT labor union and students’ organizations, said about 800,000 demonstrators took to the streets.

AP reports Nuñez described troublemakers as “extremely violent, radical far-left groups” whom, he said, “sought confrontations with police and targeted public buildings, including city halls and local government offices.”

He said those groups have been joined by offenders willing to loot shops. Most of those arrested are adults, he added.

In Paris, police fired tear gas and water cannons to push back people wearing hoods and masks and throwing fireworks, paving stones and other objects at officers in the Place de la République, northeast of the Paris city center.

Macron will leave office next year and polls suggest April’s presidential election could come down to a fight between the leader of the National Rally, Marine Le Pen, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the hard-left La France Insoumise party.

breitbart

From Milan to Tirana: Europe’s Student Riots Reach Italy and Albania

The protests that started in France have spread to Italy, Albania and other countries as more groups have joined. Organizers have called for continued action through the end of the month.

The student unrest that began in France has crossed into Italy and Albania. In France, more than 6,500 people, most of them minors, had been arrested by October 7. In Belgium, rioters destroyed buses and fought police in Brussels. Now protesters in Milan and Tirana are throwing stones at police under the same banner of education and the cost of living.

Italy’s wave began on October 5, when students occupied high schools in Turin and Rome under the slogan “Let’s do as in France.” By October 15, dozens of schools were occupied from Milan to Naples. In Turin, about 40 masked youths raided three schools, and a 17-year-old was arrested after a carabiniere was injured. Torino Cronaca reported that a 20-year-old detained in Turin belonged to “Seconda generazione,” a collective whose members describe themselves as born and raised in Italy to migrant parents. It also reported that a minor arrested by carabinieri was not a student.

During the national “No Meloni Day” strike on October 16, the left-wing collective Osa claimed 400,000 students marched nationwide. In Turin, protesters threw stones and bottles at police. The Questura reported three minors arrested for aggravated resistance, two of them carrying pepper spray and one carrying stones, and said more than 50 protesters had been identified. In Rome, hooded protesters threw firecrackers and paper bombs at the Education Ministry, and high school students burned U.S. and Israeli flags. Investigators are examining the involvement of organized antagonists from outside the student movement who allegedly provoked the clashes. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni asked the opposition to condemn the violence.

On October 17, the violence reached the center of Milan. A cost-of-living march of about 5,000 participants, nearly all very young, turned into riots around Piazza del Duomo. Rioters threw stones, café tables and chairs at police, set a portable toilet on fire, and attacked and looted shops. Police used tear gas and water cannons and arrested 50 people. Il Giornale reported the rioters were not black bloc but kids from the city’s outskirts, some waving the Albanian flag in support of the uprising in Tirana. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini called them cowards and criminals. In Bologna, police used a water cannon and made seven arrests. Local reports described the masked group that broke away toward the train station as “maranza,” Italian slang for street youths, often of migrant background.

In Albania itself, thousands of student-led protesters clashed with riot police in Tirana for a third consecutive day on October 15, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama. Protesters threw rocks and bricks, smashed windows and set fires, including a blaze at the Education Ministry. Police responded with tear gas and water cannons. Demonstrations spread to other cities, and parliament canceled its session as violence erupted nearby. State Police Director General Skënder Hita said 71 officers had been injured in 72 hours, including the Shkodra police chief, who was seriously hurt and is now stable. The Health Ministry reported 89 injured, including 61 police officers, in the October 14 riots alone. Police reported 65 arrests by that point. The protests continued for a fourth day on October 16.

The students have joined the broader Flamingo movement, which began in opposition to a luxury coastal development linked to Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Reuters found no evidence of wrongdoing by Kushner. The protests have grown to include anger over alleged government corruption, education costs and poor job prospects. Rama told Reuters he would not resign and was ready to discuss education, adding that Albania is tackling corruption as never before and that he would not let violence derail its European future. On October 16, he blamed foreign hands, saying this was not a student phenomenon. The EU delegation in Tirana called for a proportionate response from authorities and described constructive dialogue as the only way forward.

The unrest has also reached Germany. On October 12, about 150 students barricaded the entrances of Berlin’s French Gymnasium with pallets and bicycle locks, and police pushed them back when they tried to block a third entrance. Police said they considered it a planned action, not a spontaneous one. On October 16, blockades spread to the Andreas Gymnasium and the Leibniz Gymnasium. According to police, about 50 students blocked the entrances at the Andreas Gymnasium, demanding more money for education and opposing military conscription. A second group of about 50 young people gathered behind the school, most of whom did not attend the school. The Tagesspiegel reported that left-wing activists from outside the school took part, some of them masked.

A 67-year-old resident was injured when she tried to stop youths from taking garbage bins from a waste area. Police detained a 17-year-old who was not a student at the school and opened investigations for breach of the peace, assault, attacks on officers and property damage. Berlin’s education senator criticized the protesters for instrumentalizing students. The German outlet NIUS reported that groups on social media are calling for nationwide riots on October 31.

The unrest is likely to expand. In Italy, Osa has announced it will join a general strike on October 30 and a European student strike on November 20.

thegatewaypundit

The most terrifying image out of France (and it’s not what you think it is)

X screen grab.

by Andrea Widburg

Currently, my X feed is awash in images of the raging protests across France—the collapsing Limoges town hall, the looted stores, the ascendant Palestinian flags—even as mainstream outlets just fold the news from France into their other stories of the day, just one report among many. This dichotomy makes it hard to tell whether what’s happening is, as the media subliminally suggest, the French being French, as they’ve been periodically over the centuries, or whether we’re seeing the first domino fall, truly presaging the end of once-Christian Europe.

However, I saw one photo that was so stunning that I’m inclined to believe the latter view of events, no matter how much the media suggest that France is simply having its version of our 2020 George Floyd summer—something disruptive, costly, and (for some) deadly, but really just a blip in the life of an otherwise viable country.

Here’s the photo that stopped me in my tracks:

Google translates this as:

For me, this is the most horrifying image of this October 17:

An elderly couple stripped of everything, right in the middle of the street, left half-naked.

As if the pillaged Rolexes, Vuitton, Hermès, Dior, Sephora weren’t enough for resale.

The image that should be a wake-up call for the entire West.

The image of a so-called president who has lost control. Who has utterly failed his people.

The image of a radical left that has sacrificed your own identity to turn your country into a war zone, with cultural backdrops that have nothing to do with yours.

This image is terrifying!

Yes, this image is terrifying. Why? Because it’s about ritually humiliating the population.

While we civilized people may decry it, we all understand what could be termed “routine mob violence,” whether it’s smashing windows, looting (inevitably), setting things on fire, even killing those caught in the mob’s frenzy, etc. (Please note: Understanding does not mean condoning.)

These are the acts of people in a destructive frenzy. Someone or something has activated their limbic system, and they have reverted to purely savage behavior. The point is destruction, with a little profit on the side if you find a nice store or house to loot. Morality, decency, humanity…all have been swept aside in the frenzy of mob-driven insanity.

But stripping ordinary people of their clothes…that’s not mob madness. That is, instead, a very calculated act by which those in power ritually humiliate those whom they intend to destroy. The Nazis routinely did it to those whom they rounded up. People’s clothes are their armor. Strip them of them, whether getting them fully naked or just down to their undergarments, and you have made them emotionally helpless. (Just look at how the Dems humiliated Roger Stone and his wife: No clothes and a conveniently nearby CNN news crew.)

And that gets me to a famous 1941 photo from Lviv (then in Poland; now, in Ukraine). It was taken when Nazis and the local antisemites joined together for the infamous Lviv pogrom. Look at this photo (content warning), and then look at the photo above, and tell me how different they are:

Public domain.

What happened in Lviv began with ritual humiliation; it ended with 4,000-8,000 Jews slaughtered in less than a month. Eventually, the Nazis slaughtered 99% of the Jewish population, which accounted for as much 45% of Lviv’s total population.

Islam and leftism are both conquest-based faiths. Both begin by using Western norms to lever themselves into a base for violence, and then they destroy the societies that incubated them. However, Muslims, wiser than the leftist foot soldiers in the mob, don’t view leftists as their allies. They view them as their useful idiots.

Muslims spout leftist shibboleths while cautioning each other against making themselves impure by breeding with kafirs (unbelievers)—which is essentially what Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed effectively said, albeit cloaked in carefully scientific terms. In France, Muslims rode leftism to population density, used leftist values (school protests) to activate the mob, and then waved the real flag:

Whether events in France are “merely” scattered but violent protests across a large country, or the first domino falling across Western Europe, is just a matter of degree: the Muslims have staked their claim. It’s not about schools. It’s not about Israel. It is about civilizational conquest, and unless Macron does more than spout banal platitudes, Europe’s end is near.

americanthinker

Italy’s Muslim-friendly schools swapping prosciutto with curry for children’s meals

Schools across the Italian province of Pordenone are set to strip beloved national dishes from their canteen menus, swapping them for alternatives such as chicken curry and couscous in a bid to cater to Muslim pupils.

The north-eastern province, situated in the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia region, will see iconic staples including air-dried San Daniele prosciutto, porchetta and pasta all’amatriciana – a classic recipe built around pork jowl – removed from school canteens.

Supporters of the initiative argue it is a sensible and inclusive step, given that a significant share of the pupil population cannot consume pork on religious grounds.

Critics, however, have reacted with fury, insisting that accommodating Italy’s increasingly diverse demographics should not come at the cost of the nation’s culinary heritage.

Children from migrant backgrounds account for 21 per cent of Pordenone’s school population – nearly twice the national figure of 11 per cent.

In the majority of affected schools, pork products will be eliminated from menus entirely. A smaller number of institutions will continue to make them available upon request.

Regional dietary guidelines in Friuli-Venezia-Giulia, which is governed by a centre-right administration, already recommend prioritising white meat over red. Beef remains on the menu.

Marco Dreosto of the conservative League Party declared: “Respect for other cultures and religions cannot and must not mean giving up our traditions.”

Three of the League’s European Parliament representatives – Anna Maria Cisint, Silvia Sardone and Susanna Ceccardi – branded the decision to replace pork on school menus as “absurd.”

Emanuele Loperfido, the Pordenone chief of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, struck a similar chord: “It is right to promote coexistence, but it cannot be at the expense of our cuisine.”

Gianangelo Bof of Futuro Nazionale – a fledgling party established by a retired special forces general – was equally blunt: “You can’t get rid of pork at the lunch table for Italian children just so as not to cause offence.”

However, Fausto Tomasello of the centre-left Democratic Party offered a rather different framing: “The first concern of everyone should be making sure that our kids eat healthy food.”

Pordenone’s mayor, Alessandro Basso, acknowledged local food traditions ought to be maintained wherever feasible, but stressed the importance of providing “alternative dishes so as to respect different religious beliefs.”

The school meals controversy arrives amid a broader political reckoning over immigration and integration.

Last month, Ms Meloni’s government enacted a decree imposing a 30 per cent ceiling on pupils with limited Italian language proficiency in any single classroom – a measure affecting roughly 1,000 classrooms, or 0.3 per cent of the national total.

The same decree outlawed the wearing of burqas and niqabs in schools, with parents facing fines of up to €1,000 (£870) for breaches.

Ms Meloni characterised the package on social media as “common-sense measures that do not divide but help foster genuine integration, avoiding ‘ghetto’ classrooms and giving all students equal opportunities.”

Opposition parties accused the ruling coalition of exploiting immigration as a political weapon ahead of a general election that must be held within the coming year.

gbnews

FRANCE RIOTS EXPLODE: Islamo-Marxist Rioters Threaten Macron’s Palace as Historic Buildings Burn to the Ground, Police Run For Their Lives, and Stores Get Looted (VIDEOS)

The Islamo-Marxist riots in France have completely exploded after weeks of mayhem and are threatening President Emmanuel Macron’s home.

As The Daily Mail reported, thousands of violent protesters overturned cars, set buildings ablaze, and attacked police across the country.

The worst violence arguably occurred in Lyon. There, a tourist office and cars were set on fire by rioters.

France’s interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, also added that looting by the red-green rioters was recorded in many cities. These cities included Paris, Rouen, Nantes, Toulouse, and Marseille.

Several videos have emerged showing just how ugly the scenes were.

WATCH:

Now, one of the most historic structures in the entire country, the 143-year-old Limoges town hall, has now burned to the ground as the police continue to sit on their hands.

Rioters are on the verge of reaching Macron’s palace. Just imagine the horror if it were set on fire as well.

France will have officially fallen.

Police officers are also running for their lives:

WATCH HERE

Despite all of this, Nuñez says that they will NOT declare a state of emergency.

This is a result of failed previous efforts by authorities to shut down the riots.

In one instance, in Marseille, France, on October 2, a hooded 15-year-old burned a woman’s face with an aerosol can and a lighter at Place du 4-Septembre. She had tried to stop protesters from vandalizing a bus shelter.

Police arrested the teenager that evening in the Frais-Vallon district after identifying him through video surveillance.

He was charged with voluntary violence with three aggravating circumstances: using a weapon, acting as part of a group, and concealing his face. The prosecutor said, “No demand of any kind could justify such acts of violence.”

thegatewaypundit

British Government Reportedly Plotting Internet Tax to Prop Up BBC

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The left-wing UK government is reportedly planning to introduce an internet tax to prop up the financially struggling BBC public broadcaster.

Currently, everyone who watches broadcast television in Britain must pay the government an £180 ($239) annual licence fee, whether they watch the BBC or not. The fee was originally used to fund the BBC’s radio broadcasts, but was later expanded to incorporate TV following the Second World War. Now, amid the rise of streaming services, the left-wing Labour Party government is said to be planning on extending the effective tax to the internet.

According to The Independent, which cited a Whitehall source, plans to change the BBC’s charter will be made public before Christmas, with the present agreement set to expire in December of next year.

The source said the so-called “YouTube tax” will be imposed on internet-based video platforms to stop people from avoiding the television licence fee by watching content on computers, phones, or tablets. This comes as about two million people have stopped paying the BBC television licence fee over the past five years, and 539,000 over the past year, up to April.

If the government imposed an internet fee, an estimated three to four million more people would likely be on the hook to fund the BBC. Yet this would still likely be insufficient to meet the broadcaster’s budget shortfalls.

Nevertheless, the civil service source told the Independent that the additional money could be spent countering “conspiracy theories and fake news” that they claimed helped Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party rise in working-class regions of Britain.

This negative attitude by the civil service and the BBC towards Reform may reflect the party’s vow to abolish the BBC licence fee altogether and force the broadcaster to compete on an even footing with private media.

Although the BBC’s charter mandates that it provide the public with bias-free news coverage, it has long faced accusations of skewing its coverage against the populist right and, indeed, the socialist left.

This was particularly true during the 2016 referendum to leave the European Union, when a report from the News Watch think tank found that BBC Radio 4’s coverage showed clear bias.

“There were no attempts in any programme to explore the benefits of leaving the EU, but conversely, Brexit came under sustained negative attack,” the report found.

Another report from Civitas found that in the decade leading up to the referendum, only three per cent of guests on Radio 4’s flagship Today programme were pro-Brexit. The report also noted that the public broadcaster often failed to platform pro-Brexit voices from the left, giving the public the impression that the issue was only a priority for the right.

Meanwhile, a study commissioned earlier this year by the head of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Lisa Nandy, found that 70 per cent of Britons believe the BBC is out of step with modern British society and needs to change.

In addition to reportedly planning an internet tax to fund the broadcaster, BBC director-general Matt Brittain has suggested farming out BBC content to existing streaming services, rather than limiting it to BBC iPlayer.

A BBC spokesman said: “We have consistently argued that the current funding model is outdated and needs reform. We will continue to engage with government to secure a new charter that provides sustainable, sufficient and universal funding so the BBC can deliver for audiences for generations to come.”

A DCMS spokesman added: “The BBC must be funded by a model that is sustainable and fair to all those that are paying it. Through Charter Review, we are looking at a range of options, including how the licence fee could be reformed, but no final decisions have been made.”

breitbart

Stop ALL Asylum to Britain? + Khan to Become UK’s Top Surname + Burnham’s Brexit STITCH UP!

{YouTube CC-BY 4.0}

On this week’s show host Rafe Heydel-Mankoo and panellists Michael Murphy of Outpost Studios, Celeste Warren of the Free Speech Union and Alex Story, writer for The Critic discuss:

  • Reform’s new policy to stop all asylum applications and revote refugee status from many of those already here
  • Andy Burnham’s Plant to Bring the UK back into Europe
  • Khan to replace Smith as the most popular surname in the UK

Europe’s Triple Own Goal

Europe’s leaders have pulled off a rare feat: open friction with the three powers the continent actually needs.

They outsourced energy to Russia, industrial inputs and competitiveness to China, and hard security to the United States. When those bargains broke, they chose confrontation on all three fronts before alternatives existed. The bill is high energy costs, high interest rates, collapsing industrial investment, and almost no strategic freedom of action.

The energy bet was the most obvious. Before 2022 the EU took roughly 40 percent of its gas and a quarter of its oil from Russia. After the war in Ukraine started it cut the pipes, banned most coal and oil, and pivoted to expensive LNG and Norwegian gas. Russia’s share of EU gas demand fell sharply, yet the transition remains incomplete and costly. Residual LNG still arrives, long-term contracts run into 2027, and storage has been lower than recent winters. Households and industry paid the difference. Some demand was simply destroyed.

That shock landed on an industrial base already shaped by earlier choices: phase out nuclear and domestic fossils while counting on cheap pipeline gas. The result is a structural energy premium. EU industrial power prices have run 1.5–2 times U.S. levels on a sustained basis. Gas settled well above pre-2022 norms. High interest rates, kept elevated by the ECB’s inflation fight, compound the damage by raising the cost of capital. New plants, retrofits, and capacity expansions that might have been marginal under high energy prices alone become unviable when borrowing is also expensive.

The industrial numbers show the squeeze. In chemicals—the feedstock for ammunition, vehicles, electronics, and much else—announced closures have removed roughly 9 percent of capacity since 2022, with the pace accelerating. New investment collapsed by more than 80 percent in 2025. Output continues to weaken. Energy-intensive segments across metals and basic chemicals have seen multi-year drops of 20–30 percent or more in several countries. Higher energy and financing costs shrink competitiveness, idle plants, and divert capital. The continent is quietly becoming more dependent on Chinese intermediates precisely where defense and strategic production need them.

China was the parallel dependency. The goods deficit has approached €360 billion a year. More important is the concentration in rare-earth refining and magnets essential for EVs, turbines, electronics, and defense systems. Export restrictions produce immediate cost spikes and production risks. “De-risking” language and the Critical Raw Materials Act have not matched the scale or speed of exposure. Chinese overcapacity and selective market access continue to pressure European factories while Europe’s own high energy and capital costs make matching that capacity harder.

Security dependence on the United States remains the third leg. Europe still relies on the nuclear umbrella, high-end air and maritime power, ISR, and logistics. U.S. conventional posture is under review and already thinner in places. Replacing key American enablers would require hundreds of billions of euros and hundreds of thousands of additional personnel. Rearmament therefore runs into the same industrial constraints: steel, aluminum, chemicals, energy, and specialized facilities are more expensive to produce or expand under Europe’s energy and interest-rate regime. Each euro of defense spending buys less physical output than it would under lower costs.

Europe chose to forego cheap Russian gas, open markets with China without reciprocity, discard nuclear and bank on a peace dividend without residual strength. Those choices now leave it facing Russia, China, and the United States while energy costs and high interest rates make every new ton of steel or chemical more expensive and every factory harder to build. Ambition without affordable energy or capital is not a strategy. It is an inevitable decline.

freewestmedia