L'articolo Finally, someone is trying to feed the soul of Europe. Thanks to the initiative of ECR MEP Carlo Ciccioli, an exhibition on Frederick II has been opened in the European Parliament. proviene da Bubble report.

The director of Open Doors presents today the annual report on the harassment of Christians around the world. World Watch List 2025 is the list of the top 50 countries where they are most persecuted for their faith.

A shocking report: one in seven Christians experience persecution or discrimination. A rising trend that has increased the number of Christians under fire worldwide from 365 to 380. .

The blacklist is topped by North Korea, as it has been for 23 years, but there are no fewer than 13 countries where persecution is “at an extreme level,” including Eritrea and India.

The North Korean dictatorship has zero tolerance. Between 50,000 and 70,000 people are held in concentration camps. “There are nations like North Korea, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, where the only way to live the Christian faith is in secret,” Nani explains. “The Algerian government closes all Protestant churches, while the Chinese government harasses those who dare to claim freedom of worship, and the Iranians persecute Christians who meet in their homes. The hidden church is perhaps the fastest growing church in the world today.

Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be the epicenter of violence. There are 16.2 million Christian refugees or displaced persons in this region alone. Worldwide killings have thankfully dropped from 4,998 faith-based deaths last year to 4,476. Nigeria, with fewer victims, is still the epicenter of the massacres with 3,100 killed. The presentation will include the moving testimony of a Nigerian widow who saw her husband murdered in front of her by Boko Haram terrorists.

Northern Nigeria is also infested with the breakaway faction of the Islamic State of West Africa Province. Jihadist groups are “joined” by Fulani herdsmen who attack farming communities, killing hundreds of people, especially Christians.

The blacklist shows that Central Asia is becoming the new “hell” for Christians.

No country in the top 50 had a higher increase in its persecution score than Kyrgyzstan (up 7). Armed representatives of the State Commission for Religious Affairs raided St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Talas, threatening worshippers until “two Slovak nuns signed a statement admitting to ‘illegal missionary activities’ and ‘spreading their ideology. In Kazakhstan, “at least 20 Christian women have been sexually assaulted because of their religion, and as many have been forced to marry Muslim men. The scourge of rape, abuse and forced marriage has been recorded at 3,944 cases, but this is only the tip of the iceberg as many such cases go unreported. There are 3755 abducted Christians, and in the Myanmar conflict, ranked 13th on the blacklist, Christians are trapped in the ongoing fighting.

One “good” piece of news is that attacks on churches worldwide have halved, from 14,766 to 7,679. But Nani points to the increase in “the number of homes and businesses looted or destroyed, more than 28,000. One of the reasons for the flight of families and entire communities, exoduses of a church on the run, crying out for help”.

L'articolo 380 million Christians persecuted – Dramatic data on faith denied today. Africa is the epicenter of the violence. What are the EU and the Pope doing about it? proviene da Bubble report.

L'articolo On the eve of the hearings of the vice-presidents-designate of the Commission, tensions are rising between the Socialists, Liberals and Greens on the one hand and the EPP, ECR, Patriots and ESN on the other. The former would like to get rid of Fitto. But they know very well that it would be the Socialist Teresa Ribeira who would pay the price. As usual, the needle of the scales is in the hands of the EPP, which decides which majority to adopt according to the convenience of the moment. Be it the “Ursula” one (EPP, S&D, Renew and Greens) or the “Venezuela” one (EPP, ECR, Patriots, ENS). And even if the EPP has protected Fitto like an armoured car, some German hawks, like Ehler, would like to take advantage of it to remove some important delegations from the Italian Commissioner-designate’s portfolio in exchange for support. Always in the EPP, the Spanish delegation would like to see Ribeira with a stake in her ass, regardless of Fitto. Especially now that Sánchez had to run for his life from the angry mob. proviene da Bubble report.

During a speech at a meeting of his centre-right Civic Coalition political grouping in Warsaw, Tusk said people smugglers – aided by Belarus and Russia – were abusing the right to asylum.

Since 2021, Poland has seen a huge increase in the number of people, mainly from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, crossing into the country illegally from Belarus.

Warsaw has accused Belarus and Russia of “hybrid warfare”, directing the flow of migrants towards the European Union in a bid to destabilise the bloc. Both countries deny this.

When the migration crisis began in August 2021, in that month alone, eight times as many people tried to cross the border illegally than had attempted to do so in the whole of 2020. Dozens continue to attempt to cross the border daily.

Tusk said he would present the new migration policy at a government meeting on 15 October.

“One of the elements of the migration strategy will be the temporary territorial suspension of the right to asylum,” the prime minister said. “I will demand this, I will demand recognition in Europe for this decision,” he added.

Under international law, countries are obliged to offer people the right to claim asylum. Tusk did not say how he would justify the move to his EU partners.

“We know very well how it is used by Lukashenko, Putin… by people smugglers, people traffickers, how this right to asylum is used exactly against the essence of the right to asylum,” he said. “Poland must take back 100% control over who comes to Poland,” he added.

Many of the migrants who cross into the country from Belarus do not stay, instead entering Germany. The trend has prompted Berlin to introduce checks on its border with Poland.

Tusk’s pro-EU coalition government surprised many by continuing a hard-line migration policy implemented by the previous right-wing Law and Justice government, which authorised pushbacks and built a 5.5-metre-high steel fence along 186km (115 miles) of its border with Belarus.

While it talked tough on migrants from Middle Eastern and Asian countries, the Law and Justice-led government issued the highest number of annual residence and work permits in the whole of the EU during much of its time in office.

Tusk’s coalition has continued the policy of pushbacks and re-introduced an exclusion zone on part of the border. In July, following the death of a 21-year-old soldier who was fatally stabbed by migrants on the border, the government pushed through parliament the decriminalisation of the use of firearms by security forces in self-defence in certain circumstances.

Opinion polls suggest much of the public supports the hard-line, with 86% of respondents supporting the use of weapons in self-defence by the security services.

Indeed, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski identified a tough migration policy by Civic Coalition as a key element in its electoral success in October last year.

“I don’t think we would have won if we hadn’t outflanked the then ruling party on the right on migration, if we hadn’t convinced the electorate that we will be as tough on physically protecting the Polish border as the previous government was, so we neutralised this issue,” Mr Sikorski told an audience at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington in September.

But rights groups have expressed concern over the new government’s migration policy. NGOs estimate more than 130 migrants have died on both sides of Belarus’ border with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia since the crisis began.

“I never saw Donald Tusk as a human rights champion, but this is a new low,” Malgorzata Szuleka, a board member of the Warsaw-based Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights told the BBC.

“There is a humanitarian crisis on the border, but it is also an open migration route. We need to find a place for a rational discussion that is not so populistically driven,” she added.

L'articolo Even the “European Donald” is obsessed with borders – Tusk plans to temporarily suspend the right to asylum to combat irregular immigration from Russia and Belarus: ‘We know very well how it is used by Lukashenko, Putin… by people smugglers, people traffickers’. For the Polish PM it is a win-win situation: he deals a blow to his eastern enemies and in the meantime exploits them to appease the internal conservative opposition. Truly machiavellian… proviene da Bubble report.

L'articolo BUBBLEFLASH – Everyone take cover! – The special train returning to Brussels from Strasbourg caught fire. The entire European bubble evacuated and awaiting instructions from the authorities. Meanwhile, meetings cancelled and dinners postponed proviene da Bubble report.

No, it was a predictable and expected result, though perhaps not of these proportions. But AfD has been on the 25% consensus for years, now it has broken through the 30% mark.

– AfD in Thuringia pulled nearly 10 points ahead of the Cdu, marking the first victory of a far-right party in a German state since World War II. In Saxony it came in second by a whisker, just one point behind the Cdu. Are fears of a neo-Nazi comeback real?

AfD, after one of its exponents’ remarks about the SS, was expelled by Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini from the European group Identity and Democracy. Certainly it is a party with still neo-Nazi overtones, particularly in some realities. But underlying this advance of right-wing extremism is something else. And it is this other that allows AfD to establish itself, despite the scandals and controversies.

– What is this other?

There are three foundational points on which AfD has built its success over the years. The first is the issue of immigration and the difficulties of integration especially of immigrants of the Muslim faith that are felt particularly by the poorer part of East Germany, those regions where AfD is strongest.

– After the Solingen bombing, Olaf Scholz announced a crackdown on immigration, more repatriations and fewer permissions.

But from the perspective of the impact immigration has on daily life today, these measures are tardive. And at the European level they will do nothing to change the attitude in Brussels.

– The other two points?

The economic crisis: after the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine, with the ensuing sanctions on Russia, rising prices have hurt lower and middle-income groups in particular. AfD is beating hard on this issue by arguing the need for peace between Kiev and Moscow so that relations with Russia can be restored. And then lastly the Green Deal. The contestation of green policies is very strong on the right and is appealing to that electorate that suffers the costs. Added to this is impatience with political correctness, with an EU seen as intrusive.

– Chancellor Scholz spoke of a bitter and worryin election result. What effect will it have?

As has already happened in France, it is a vote that earthquakes the heart of old Europe, that highlights the shortness of breath that socialists and liberals, leftists and greens have. And this is a problem for Scholz, who loses legitimacy, so much so that early elections are not ruled out.

AfD, as has already happened to Rassemblement National in France, is becoming the escape valve for Germany, which cannot cope with the pushes of globalization. And which the leftists have abandoned.

– As happened in France for RN, however, Afd in Germany is also in danger of governing at all.

Today, no one wants to make agreements with AfD; they have erected a kind of cordon sanitaire to isolate it. And so it is still in danger of staying out of the control room. But how long can it last? In the meantime, they will govern at the local level, then we will have to see how it evolves. The risk is that AfD will grow so much in the Policies that they can no longer think of managing it by isolating it. And that doesn’t speak in favor of Germany’s political stability.

– In Italy, however, the right governs, and Italy is a stable country.

But you absolutely cannot make the comparison between AfD and the governing right-wing parties in Italy. AtD has not yet made the maturation path that parties like Fratelli d’Italia have made.

– On the left in Germany, Sahra Wagenknecht and her party is also growing, reaching double digits of consensus.

And the new left-wing party, personalistic, marked by a realist socialism, on very culturally conservative positions, opposed to immigration and the Ukraine-Russia war. A tenacious opponent of AfD, it nevertheless has many points in common with the right-wing party, from economics to immigration. In short, we see again in Germany what we experienced in Italy with the exposure of populist movements

L'articolo The ultra-right’s boom in Germany shakes the heart of Europe. In last sunday’s vote AfD was the first party in Thuringia, and second in Saxony, marking the first victory of a far-right party in a German state since World War II. Today no one wants to deal with them, a party that still has neo-Nazi overtones, so it will stay out of the decision room. But for how long? Lorenzo Castellani, historian and political scientist at Luiss-Guido Carli University in Rome, analyzes its success and what it will bring in the near future proviene da Bubble report.

L'articolo Being anti-Ursula does not automatically mean being anti-EU. There are currently five governments in the Council that are directly or indirectly linked to the ECR. The “cordon sanitaire” criteria cannot be maintained in the Council. In the new geopolitical context, territorial control is an indispensable condition for the existence of the Union, especially on some key issues, like migration and defence. And if Trump wins again, even more so… it will mean: common debt! proviene da Bubble report.

Prosecutors said in statement that the suspect’s office in Strasbourg, where the EU Parliament’s headquarters are located in France, was also searched in partnership with the EU’s judicial cooperation agency, Eurojust, and French judicial authorities.

The raids took place less than two weeks before Europe-wide polls on June 6-9 to elect a new EU parliament.

An investigation was announced last month by Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who said his country’s intelligence service has confirmed the existence of a network trying to undermine support for Ukraine.

“The searches are part of a case of interference, passive corruption and membership of a criminal organization and relates to indications of Russian interference, whereby Members of the European Parliament were approached and paid to promote Russian propaganda via the Voice of Europe news website,” prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said they believe the employee played “a significant role in this.”

Several Dutch news outlets identified the suspect as a staffer for EU lawmaker Marcel de Graaff of the far-right Dutch party Forum for Democracy. A person with knowledge of the investigation confirmed that the reports were accurate. The official was not allowed to speak publicly because the probe is ongoing.

Calls to de Graaff’s office at the European Parliament were not immediately answered.

The EU this month banned Voice of Europe and three other Russian media from broadcasting in the 27-nation bloc. The EU said they were all under control of the Kremlin and were targeting “European political parties, especially during election periods.” Since the war started in February 2022, the EU had already suspended Russia Today and Sputnik, among several other outlets.

De Croo said last month that the probe showed that members of the European Parliament were approached and offered money to promote Russian propaganda.

“According to our intelligence service, the objectives of Moscow are very clear. The objective is to help elect more pro-Russian candidates to the European Parliament and to reinforce a certain pro-Russian narrative in that institution,” he said.

EU nations have poured billions of euros into Ukraine, along with significant amounts of weaponry and ammunition. They’ve also slapped sanctions on top Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, banks, companies and the energy sector since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

L'articolo The last week of the election campaign gets heated – Searches at the home and office of Guillaume Pradoura, Marcel de Graaff’s personal assistant. The order came at the behest of the examining magistrate of the Brussels Court as part of an investigation into Russian interference a few days before the vote, immediately dubbed ‘Moscowgate’ by journalists. The timing of this decision certainly makes one think. While evidence of Russian influence is awaited, the media trial has already begun… proviene da Bubble report.

L'articolo Bubblereport #14 – Qatargate? Better to call it a soap bubble. Belgian justice continues to lose credibility. It has sacrificed justice on the altar of self-righteous vigilantism. First the conflict of interest of Judge Michel Claise, who has now entered the political arena (Montesquieu is turning in his grave) and whose son had business dealings with the son of one of the suspects. Now the audio of the chief investigator, who says, before he even has elements, “I don’t have faith in justice and we don’t believe anything Panzeri says” proviene da Bubble report.

In Berlin, dozens of tractors and lorries stationed in the city centre blasted their horns to signal anger at the start of a planned week of action.

Workers in sectors across Germany, from metallurgy and transport to education, have turned to industrial action in recent weeks.

Wage negotiations have taken a bitter turn as Europe’s biggest economy struggles with weak growth and households contend with sharply increased prices.

Rail workers will be next to walk out as they launch a three-day strike on Wednesday. Unions seek a pay rise to compensate for months of painfully high inflation.

Farmers began gathering on Sunday evening at the Brandenburg Gate in the heart of the government quarter in Berlin. The agricultural sector is up in arms over government plans to withdraw tax breaks.

Farm vehicles blocked the centres of cities including Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and Bremen, with up to 2,000 tractors registered for each protest.

Outside cities, demonstrators targeted motorway access ramps, snarling traffic in a coordinated nationwide show of discontent.

The protest also caused disruption at Germany’s borders with France, Poland and the Czech Republic, backing up traffic at crossing points.

Thousands of protestors had already descended on Berlin to protest against the planned subsidy cuts in December, blocking roads and dumping manure on the street.

The rallies prompted the government to partially walk back the reductions on January 4.

A discount on vehicle tax for agriculture is now planned to remain in place, while a diesel subsidy would be phased out over several years instead of being abolished immediately, the government said.

The farmers, however, have said that the move does not go far enough and urged Berlin to completely reverse the plans, which were announced after a shock court ruling forced the government to find savings in the budget for 2024.

L'articolo Pitchforks in hand – Germany is paralysed by the protests of farmers who are blocking motorways and supplies across the country. A month ago it was the French who took to the streets, tearing down road signs and turning them upside down. Farmers’ protests in Europe are becoming more frequent and more systematic, with the prospect of a new political entity. The hatred towards the global market is always strong: today, Ukraine, with its endless grain reserves, is the embodiment of these fears proviene da Bubble report.