Allah's Willing Executioners

The German foreign ministry has deleted a poem published in its internal magazine InternAA due to its satirical content.

The 32-line poem, titled Ken & Barbie, is a thinly veiled critique of the policy of former Greens party foreign minister Annalena Baerbock and her party comrade, former German vice chancellor Robert Habeck.

The poem alludes to topics such as the Greens fight against gas and oil-fired heating systems (“Heating off, pullover on”); and Habeck’s past as an author of children’s books (“A bogeyman on the rise, politics just like a bad book”). Baerbock’s excessive spending on stylists and make-up artists is also alluded to (“Around the world with high-gloss makeup, hair always perfectly weaved”).

The poem made light of Baerbock’s new job as President of the United Nations General Assembly for which, in April last year, she pushed aside Helga Schmid, the German diplomat who was originally promised the role:

“And so she leaves her homeland and nation,

For the Big Apple, what a celebration,

A job swindled, how elegant,

The people rejoice, now she is banned.”

According to newspaper Bild today, the piece was originally published in the January 2026 edition of InternAA, an online magazine for the employees of the foreign ministry.

According to the byline it was composed in April 2025 by an unknown author who used the alias “SIGGIG”.

As Bild reported, the poem caused quite a stir at the ministry – many of whose employees were likely recruited during Baerbock’s term of office as foreign minister from 2021 to 2025.

It was quickly deleted. In its place readers of the magazine now find an apology note that reads: “We have made an unfortunate mistake here. There was originally a poem at this point. It appeared even though the editors of InternAA had already decided in June 2025 not to publish it.”

A spokesperson for the foreign ministry told Brussels Signal today that the ministry would not comment on the content of the magazine, adding: “InternAA is a purely internal magazine produced by members of the Foreign Service for members of the Foreign Service. The InternAA editorial team makes independent decisions about the magazine’s content.”

Critics are now accusing the ministry of applying double standards.

In an editorial for newspaper Berliner Zeitung, author Harald Neuber pointed out that under Baerbock the foreign ministry’s official X account had published posts mocking US Republicans. He added that the Greens party had rushed to defend state TV comedian Jan Böhmermann when he accused Turkish President Recep Erdoğan of having intercourse with goats in a satirical poem of his own.

“[There is] an asymmetry that has characterised German politics for years: There is satire that is considered courageous, and satire that is prosecuted as hate speech.

“The distinction is not based on whether something is funny or tasteless, but on who it affects,” Neuber concluded.

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France, yet again, in what has become a now-familiar but deeply unsettling pattern, was shaken this week by another crime that has reignited public anger over mass migration and the state’s failure to enforce its own laws.

In the town of Melun, south of Paris, a 15-year-old girl was allegedly raped by a foreign national from North Africa who was already under an order to leave French territory, the French outlet Valeurs Actualles reported.

The suspect, a 22-year-old Algerian migrant, had been living without a fixed address and was known to authorities for previous offenses. Despite being subject to an expulsion order, he was still free to move through public transport and residential neighborhoods.

According to police accounts, the teenager was approached and harassed on a bus late in the evening. After she got off, the man reportedly followed her into a public square, where the assault is said to have taken place.

After the attack, the suspect fled but continued contacting the victim through social media. That digital trail led police to a municipal gymnasium being used as emergency accommodation for migrants and homeless individuals, where he was eventually arrested.

Authorities confirmed that the suspect had prior entries in France’s criminal records database. He was also already flagged for removal from the country, raising questions—yet again—about why the order had never been enforced.

For French citizens, the case—and similar cases, of which there are too many to count—has become emblematic of a broader breakdown in state authority driven by unceasing mass migration from culturally alien societies into the Western world.

For French citizens, the case—and similar cases, of which there are too many to count—has become emblematic of a systemic breakdown in state authority driven by unceasing mass migration from culturally incompatible societies into the West.

Deportation orders are issued routinely, yet rarely carried out, leaving communities exposed to preventable violence.

The Melun case comes amid long-standing and rising tensions in other parts of France. In Marseille, riots erupted following Algeria’s elimination from the Africa Cup of Nations in 2025, with unrest spilling far beyond the soccer field.

Groups of Algeria fans took to the streets late at night, torching cars, destroying street furniture, and setting garbage containers ablaze. Entire neighborhoods were plunged into chaos, forcing residents indoors as fires burned unchecked.

Videos circulating online showed scenes resembling urban unrest rather than sports-related disappointment. For locals, the violence reinforced a growing sense that parallel societies operate beyond the reach of French law.

Incidents such as these are not isolated, but part of a recurring pattern. Crimes and riots linked to migrant populations are followed by official silence, government excuses, and calls to avoid “stigmatization.”

The statistics tell a harsher story. Deportation orders, particularly for nationals of countries such as Algeria, are enforced in only a tiny fraction of cases, rendering the system largely symbolic.

Previous tragedies have underscored the consequences of this failure. High-profile cases involving the rape and murder of minors by individuals under expulsion orders continue to haunt the national conscience.

Despite these warnings, government after government in France—and across much of Europe—have doubled down on policies that prioritize mass migration over public safety. Borders remain porous, enforcement deeply inconsistent, and accountability absent.

For women and girls, the cost of this left-liberal globalist ideology is paid in fear and vulnerability. Safe streets, once taken for granted, are now conditional on time, place, and luck.

Working- and middle-class families bear the brunt of these policies, while political elites remain insulated from their effects. Calls for “living together” ring mean nothing when the state cannot even guarantee basic security.

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French farmers gathered in their tractors in a blockade around the National Assembly in Paris to protest against the Mercosur trade deal between the European Union and several South American nations.

Around 350 tractors rolled into Paris on Tuesday morning demanding “concrete action” from their national government against the impending Mercosur trade deal with Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay, which is set to be signed by EU chief Ursula von der Leyen in Asunción on Saturday.

The agreement, which has been in negotiations for over two decades, has seen near universal opposition in France, with parties across the political spectrum opposing the deal over concerns on its impact to the nation’s critical agriculture industry.

Opponents in France warn that the Mercosur trade deal would see Europe flooded with cheap meat and produce from countries like Argentina and Brazil where the cost of doing business is significantly lower, due to the cost of labour, land, and other goods. Thus, there have been concerns raised from European farmers in nations like France and Italy that they will be unable to compete with the cheap foreign imports.

Yet, France was unable to convince enough other fellow EU member states last week to band together to block the deal from being ratified.

Speaking to the Le Figaro newspaper outside of the National Assembly in Paris, Thomas, a 25-year-old farmer said that he joined the protest to “denounce the distortions of competition in Europe.”

His fellow farmer Hector added: “It’s difficult to make a decent living as a farmer these days, especially in free markets… Rather than handing out checks, which are often futile and useless, we need to review the taxation of agricultural businesses.”

Even prior to the Mercosur deal, farmers in France and indeed throughout Europe have been struggling under the weight of heavy regulations and taxes, many of which are imposed upon them by Brussels as a part of the green new deal agenda, sparking previous large-scale tractor protests in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands, among others.

Economic pressures on French farmers have been particularly acute in recent years, with the country’s agricultural trade surplus falling from €4.5 billion ($5.25bn) in 2024 to just €125 million ($146mn) in October. This came on top of a decade of declines, falling from a surplus of €10.5 billion ($12.25) in 2015.

The protest outside of the French parliament building on Tuesday drew the support of several high-profile politicians, including the vice president of the National Assembly and MP for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, Sébastien Chenu, who told farmers that his populist party is “quite aligned with your demands.”

Le Pen family scion Marion Maréchal also joined the farmers, and called for the French President Emmanuel Macron to withhold its annual financial contribution to the European Union budget in order to force Brussels to walk away from the Mercosur trade deal.

However, farmers expressed doubt that Paris is willing or able to do anything to stop the agreement. The President of the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions, Arnaud Rousseau, said that his supporters will turn their attention to the European Parliament in Strasbourg next.

“We’re going to Strasbourg on the 20th, because we understand that Mercosur will no longer be decided in France but within the European institutions,” the union boss said.

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NCF Fellow Emma Trimble debates left-wing commentator Owen Jones on BBC TV’s Sunday Morning Live.

An Italian man who had previously confronted a Moroccan national for harassing young girls near a train station was left with permanent facial injuries after being attacked with a broken glass bottle by the migrant, in an assault that an Italian court ruled was carried out with the intent to kill.

According to La Tribuna, the attack took place in May last year behind the train station in Mogliano.

The victim had confronted 49-year-old Moroccan Isam Rachid a few days earlier after witnessing him harass young girls near the station.

The two men encountered each other again on the afternoon of May 27, 2025, and a further confrontation ensued. Surveillance footage cited in court showed an argument between the two before the violence escalated.

During the altercation, Rachid, who was holding a beer bottle, smashed it and attacked the local man with the broken neck of the bottle. He struck him four times in the face, aiming for the neck. The blows narrowly missed the jugular vein but caused permanent damage to the victim’s ear and mouth. The man collapsed to the ground.

The attack occurred in front of several witnesses, some of whom called the authorities. Emergency responders arriving at the scene found the victim lying in a pool of blood. Paramedics transported him to Ca’ Foncello Hospital in Treviso, while Rachid was arrested by officers from the Mogliano station on suspicion of attempted murder.

The attacker was initially held in Santa Bona prison before being placed under house arrest at his apartment in Mogliano. He had no prior criminal record.

Following a summary trial, Rachid was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to three years, six months, and 20 days in prison. The sentence was reduced by a third due to the choice of an alternative trial procedure and the recognition of mitigating circumstances.

The court dropped the aggravating circumstance of acting for futile motives, as requested by the prosecution, after supermarket surveillance footage showed that provocations between the two men were mutual.

During the investigation, the local public prosecutor ordered an expert assessment to determine whether the attack could have been fatal. Based on both the victim’s injuries and the surveillance footage, the expert concluded that the blows were delivered with the intention to kill.

The victim has also filed a civil claim against Rachid for damages.

Once Rachid has served his sentence, he will be expelled from Italy.

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The fact that in Western squares no one demonstrates for the heroic Iranians, but only for the cutthroats, does not bode well

Ali Montazeri, the successor designated by Khomeini, once said: “People in the world believe that the only activity practiced in Iran is killing.” The question now is whether the old man in the turban will have enough assassins to prevent the collapse of his theocracy.

Khamenei knows that small concessions lead to bigger concessions.

If protests grow and radicalize, Khamenei will tell his henchmen that preserving a theocracy, like winning a revolution, requires iron determination and bloodshed.

Mass executions in Iran began after June 20, 1981. Since then, the number of political executions is estimated at over 120,000. In 2025, according to Human Rights Watch, 1,500 people sentenced to death were executed in Iran-a record in more than 35 years. The July 1999 student uprising caused 7 deaths, 200 injuries, and 1,400 arrests. Capital executions then rose from 165 in 2000 to 246 in 2008.

But with the youth revolts and feminist movements of 2009, 2017, 2019, and especially 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini, repression intensified, reaching the highest execution rate in the world (relative to population): 388 in 2009, 544 in 2012, 576 in 2022, 853 in 2023, 975 in 2024, and 1,500 in 2025. From 2010 to 2024, 241 women were executed.

These are not the numbers of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

The population of East Berlin was in ferment. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets demanding elections, freedom of the press and thought, freedom of movement; many, tempted by travel like the Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians, risked their lives to leave the communist state behind. The day before, in Leipzig, a massive demonstration saw 120,000 East Germans march chanting “Wir sind das Volk”-we are the people-demanding freedom of vote, opinion, movement, and the opening of the Wall.

The GDR fell like an overripe pear on the evening when Günter Schabowski, East Germany’s spokesman, mistakenly announced at a press conference on November 9, 1989 that the border could be crossed. A correspondent asked when the rule authorizing GDR citizens to travel would take effect. The unfortunate man replied: “Immediately.” He was misinformed, but those two little words were enough to bring down the Wall.

An estimated 600 people were killed between 1961 and 1988 trying to cross to the West. And suddenly the Wall fell, without a shot being fired. In Iran, three times as many are killed in a single year. Reports claim over 2000 killed over the weekend.

It is not impossible that Khamenei could fall as Ceaușescu did-Ceaușescu, who was a frequent visitor to Tehran. His final speech in Bucharest remains legendary in the annals of fallen dictatorships. Just days earlier, Ceaușescu had received Khamenei.

The scene was extraordinary. Ceaușescu addresses the great square of Bucharest. Confused shouts rise: protests, jeers, cries. Ceaușescu, under his astrakhan hat, is stunned. He promises a minimum wage increase. He talks about socialism. Minutes later, the two Ceaușescus flee by helicopter from the palace roof. In vain. They will be executed.

In general, communism in Europe collapsed without a shot being fired. (Margot Honecker, the “witch of the GDR,” ended up wintering in Chile.) No one-except the legions of useful idiots in free countries-believed in the system or was ready to kill and die to defend it. Havel’s Czechoslovakia fell in velvet. In Poland, General Jaruzelski stepped aside and handed power to Lech Wałęsa. Hungary began dismantling the Iron Curtain on its own. Bulgaria under the mummy Zhivkov changed hands without chaos or violence.

Islamic Iran is different.

While all of Latin America was a mix of right-wing and communist dictatorships-coups and generals-Venezuela was once the most democratic country in the hemisphere. Returning to democracy after decades of bloody Bolivarianism will be relatively easy. Democracy in Afghanistan, by contrast, failed because Afghans like Islamic law.

Gilles Kepel is right: “The fall of Iran would have repercussions comparable to the fall of the Soviet Union.”

First with the fall of the Shah, then with the American embassy hostages, then with the Rushdie fatwa, and so on for half a century, Iranian mullahs have made Islam a global cause. The implosion of the mullahs would represent an enormous psychological setback for Islamic expansionism.

In Iran, the majority of the population is secular (anyone who has met an Iranian in exile will have found a brother in values and mindset), but the sharia regime, in order to preserve power, will not behave like some Schabowski. It still enjoys a certain popularity among a minority of the population. Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore speaks of 20 percent of Iranians supporting the regime-that is, about 25 million people.

The price of freeing oneself from the dictatorship of Islamic slippers will therefore be far higher than the fall of one of those gray communist mini-states beyond the Rhine where nothing worked.

History is cruel. Those who know coercion recognize it immediately. Those who mask it with good intentions always discover it too late.

Thus another scenario advances, of which no one speaks: while Arab countries no longer send their children to study with us for fear that we will radicalize them, are we not heading toward an upside-down world in which Europe becomes the new global base of Islamic power?

The fact that in Western squares no one demonstrates for the heroic Iranians, but only for the cutthroats, does not bode well.

Is Europe the next Islamic Republic?

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The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) wants to make it illegal to question someone’s self-chosen gender via a new proposal criminalising ‘conversion practices’.

‘Conversion practices’ traditionally mean practices aimed at changing, repressing or suppressing the sexual orientation. Activists have been pushing to include transgenderism to the equation in an expanded definition.

The controversial proposal seeks to treat those who do not affirm the self-chosen gender identity of people with gender-dysphoria the same way as those who want to “heal” homosexuality.

On January 29, the assembly will vote on a resolution calling for a Europe-wide ban on “conversion practices”.

The draft resolution, unanimously adopted by the PACE Committee on Equality and Non-Discrimination in December 2025, urges member states to prohibit any attempt to change, repress or suppress a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

Athena Forum, an Austria-based think-tank working to safeguard and advance sex-based rights, warns of a “dramatic expansion of the concept of conversion”. It says the move risks sweeping away legal, professional and ideological overreach, with serious consequences for children, parents, clinicians and educators.

“The proposed resolution is a pure ideological overreach,” says Faika El-Nagashi, director of Athena Forum.

“It seeks to criminalise therapists, teachers and parents who do not affirm a child as transgender, while mandating training programmes, public campaigns and sex-education curricula centred on gender identity and expression. This is a transactivist Trojan horse.”

In the draft, PACE calls on member and observer states of the Council of Europe to prohibit conversion practices.

It further calls to integrate the prohibition of conversion practices within broader national anti-discrimination and inclusion strategies to protect the rights of LGBTI persons, together with monitoring and reporting mechanisms.

PACE’s Europe-wide ban on “conversion practices” would criminalise them, including misgendering – using pronouns, names, or gendered language that does not align with someone’s gender identity while extending the prohibition to advertising and cross-border referrals and introducing civil measures and complaint mechanisms.

It also seeks to train professionals, integrate diversity and anti-conversion content into school curricula and run public awareness campaigns to prevent so-called misinformation.

Victims would be supported through confidential counselling, legal aid, peer networks, early identification by frontline services and emergency housing where necessary.

Finally, the proposal encourages regular monitoring, research on prevalence and effectiveness and international co-operation to share best practices in maintaining a ban.

Athena Forum has published a policy brief outlining potential harm. It states that the ban risks restricting open, exploratory therapy and undermining evidence-based care for children facing other health or social challenges, including lesbian and gay adolescents.

The organisation also warns that expanding the scope of “conversion” to include verbal dissent, parental concerns and professional judgement could lead to legal and professional overreach.

“The historic concept of ‘conversion therapy’ applied to coercive practices against lesbians and gay men,” the brief notes.

“Applying the same label to children struggling with puberty or gender non-conforming behaviour misrepresents their needs and risks channeling them toward social, legal, and medical transition.”

As part of the campaign, citizens across Europe are invited to email their national PACE members directly using a ready-to-send template available on Athena Forum’s website.

Brussels Signal reached out to Kate Osborne for a reaction but did not receive a reply at the time of publication.

NGOs and advocacy groups active on LGBT+ rights have been reporting on and campaigning around the issue for some time.

European citizens’ initiative reporting shows that more than 1 million Europeans signed a petition calling for a European Union‑wide ban on conversion practices, which now requires formal consideration by the European Commission.

LGBTQ organisation Stonewall has been campaigning  for a fully inclusive ban and publicly thanked Osborne for pushing this forward.

PACE also calls on delegates to return the draft to committee for further scrutiny before adoption.

The Council of Europe is Europe’s leading human rights organisation, an international intergovernmental body founded in 1949.

Its core mission is to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law across its 46 member states, which include nearly all European countries but it is not an EU institution and is separate from the bloc.

The organisation’s most well-known achievement is the European Convention on Human Rights, enforced by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, in 1950.

European institutions are undergoing a “structural transformation” in the way sex and gender are understood in law and governance. https://t.co/69u9dWrDT7

— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) October 7, 2025

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The former president of Ireland claimed that infant baptism violates children’s human rights.

The Irish Times published an excerpt from a recent talk by Mary McAleese at University College Cork (UCC), in which the heterodox Catholic made her case against infant baptism.

“Throughout the world, there continues a long-standing, systemic and overlooked severe restriction on children’s rights with regard to religion,” the former president of Ireland wrote.

“It restricts children’s rights as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 and United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989, to which both Ireland and the Holy See – which governs the Catholic Church and is effectively the author of canon law – are State Parties.”

McAleese, who was president of Ireland from 1997 to 2011, argued that children are restricted in their religious freedom by infant baptism, to which they cannot personally consent, and through which they become “a member for life” in the Catholic Church.

“Catholic parents are under a strict Catholic canon law obligation to have their children baptised at the earliest opportunity, hence infant Baptism is normative,” she said.

“I am not challenging the routine practice of infant Baptism itself, insofar as Baptism concerns gratuitous spiritual effects which the Church claims are indelible, like expunging original sin, opening up the possibility of salvation and the flow of God’s grace.”

However, she challenged the “imposed life membership without sentient consent” in the institution of the Catholic Church.

“Nothing else was to shape my life so powerfully or impose such formidable restrictions on my inalienable intellectual human rights as that brief Sunday Baptism ceremony 7½ decades ago,” McAleese said regarding her own baptism. “It does the same to the almost 40,000 children baptised every day across five continents, enrolling them as life members of the Church with a no-exit policy and without their consent.”

The Catholic Church teaches that baptism is necessary for salvation and that denying infants this sacrament endangers their soul and their eternal salvation.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in Baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God, to which all men are called. The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant Baptism. The Church and the parents would deny a child the priceless grace of becoming a child of God were they not to confer Baptism shortly after birth.“

While it is true that baptism confers imprints and an indelible character on the soul that cannot be reversed, McAleese’s claim that infant baptism violates the right to religious freedom is highly dubious. A Catholic who leaves the Church or is excommunicated does, in a sense, remain a member of the body of Christ through the imprint of baptism; however, they are not in full communion anymore and cannot receive the sacraments. In practice, anyone can leave the Church without Catholic authorities imposing any physical restriction on them, as millions have done in recent decades.

While separating oneself from the Church does have severe spiritual consequences, i.e., endangering one’s eternal salvation, there is no physical punishment for it. Even those who apostatize and join another religion are not physically prevented by Church authorities from doing so. Therefore, the “religious freedom” in the modern sense of these individuals is not violated.

In contrast, in the Islamic religion, apostasy is to be punished by death, and converts from Islam to Christianity often live under constant fear for their lives and are frequently threatened, sometimes even by their own family members.

McAleese has claimed before that infant baptism violates a baby’s human rights, as LifeSiteNews reported in 2018. In 2019, she published a study titled Children’s Rights and Obligations in Canon Law, which examines the application of Canon Law to children and its potential violations of so-called “children’s rights.”

The former Irish president is a heretical self-professed Catholic who has been outspoken in her support of homosexuality and “women priests,” and has criticized Catholic teaching on marriage and family as “homophobic” and “completely contradictory to modern understanding.”

In 2018, she referred to the Catholic Church as “one of the last great bastions of misogyny.”

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NCF Senior Fellow Dr. Philip Kiszely joins Talk TV to discuss Starmer’s attempt to silence his political opposition – namely, Elon Musk’s X.