"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths." Northwoods is a ministry dedicated to refreshing Christians and challenging them to search for the truth in Christianity, politics, sociology, and science
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Father God, thank you for the love of the truth you have given me. Please bless me with the wisdom, knowledge and discernment needed to always present the truth in an attitude of grace and love. Use this blog and Northwoods Ministries for your glory. Help us all to read and to study Your Word without preconceived notions, but rather, let scripture interpret scripture in the presence of the Holy Spirit. All praise to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
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The right wing Chega party is now LEADING in Portugal at 30.7%
The Austrian Freedom Party is LEADING at 41%
The AfD is LEADING new poll in Germany at 30.5%
Marine Le Pen is LEADING to become next President in France.
The right is now LEADING the polls in Spain.
The FrP party in Norway is LEADING massively at 35%
Georgia Meloni's party is LEADING in Italy at 27.5%
Europe is turning right.
Ukraine will never repay the billions of euros lent to it by the EU to keep it afloat in the conflict with Russia, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has said. Slovakia is refusing to partake in another massive financing package for Kiev.
Speaking in Brussels on Wednesday, Fico noted that the existing €90 billion ($101 billion) EU loan package had already proved insufficient. The sum was intended to meet Ukraine’s needs in 2026–2027, with €60 billion allocated to the military and €30 billion to budget support. Under the agreement, Ukraine is required to repay the loan only after receiving Russian reparations – something that Moscow has categorically ruled out.
Fico said that the EU is now considering another loan, stressing that while Slovakia would not prevent other EU countries from providing additional funding, it would seek an opt-out for itself.
“By all means, give money to Ukraine, but the Slovak Republic will not participate in this mechanism. These are not loans; they are gifts. Ukraine will never pay back any of this money,” he stressed.
The prime minister suggested the EU summit could produce a political commitment to decide on another multi-billion-euro loan in December. He warned against tying participation in the scheme to negotiations over the bloc’s 2028–2034 budget, insisting that Slovakia would once again seek an opt-out.
Under Fico, Slovakia has remained skeptical of Ukraine assistance as well as the country’s push to join NATO, and has halted government weapons shipments while consistently calling for peace talks.
Fico’s remarks come after Ukraine’s revelation in August of an unexpected $27 billion defense funding shortfall, reportedly catching European officials off guard. Many are said to doubt whether Kiev is overstating its needs.
Brussels refused to validate the figure, subsequently rejecting Kiev’s request to bring forward funding earmarked for 2027. Instead, it is demanding progress on reforms – including those meant to tackle rampant corruption – to unlock assistance already available.
Earlier this month, Vladimir Zelensky announced that Ukraine would be able to cover its budget deficit through austerity measures and spending reallocations. A Ukrainian government source told RBC-Ukraine that some funding would be found by cutting weapons expenditures. Kiev’s European backers had also agreed to work toward arranging for weapons production while shifting payments into January, the outlet reported.
Berlin can’t deport migrants due to broken police cars – Welt
Vehicle shortages have turned promised deportation initiatives into “real-life satire,” according to union leader
Berlin police have been unable to carry out planned migrant deportations because of a shortage of functioning vehicles, Welt has reported, citing a police union warning about the German capital’s deteriorating fleet.
Several operations could not proceed as planned because officers simply did not have enough vehicles to collect people scheduled to be returned to their home countries, Frank Teichert, Berlin chairman of the German Police Union, told the newspaper.
The shortages have caused considerable frustration, turning every promised “deportation offensive” into “real-life satire” on the ground, he said.
Some 159 of Berlin’s 3,304 police vehicles have been unavailable because of workshop work, according to a parliamentary inquiry. Teichert also said more than half the fleet meets at least one criterion for replacement.
The problems stem from years of underfunding, Benjamin Jendro, a police union spokesman, said. Officers regularly encounter worn brakes, seat belts, buckles and interiors, while the vehicle budget remains at 2016–17 levels despite higher prices and increased demand.
The problems also extend to the fire service, where vehicle shortages force neighboring stations to cover calls, increasing travel distances and response times, according to the firefighters’ union. External repair costs have also risen from around €4.7 million in 2024 to nearly €8 million last year.
Berlin’s interior administration maintains that reserve vehicles ensure operational readiness, while acknowledging that limited funding and rising procurement costs are hampering efforts to replace aging equipment.
The failures come despite Germany’s promises to tighten migration controls, expand border checks and accelerate deportations. Growing public frustration over immigration, housing shortages, and subsequent pressure on public services has continued to fuel mass protests in recent months both in Germany and across the EU.
European governments have pledged faster removals, but implementation has continued to lag. EU countries issued around 110,000 deportation orders in the second quarter of 2026, while fewer than 37,000 people were actually removed from the bloc, according to Eurostat. Missing documents, legal challenges and receiving countries’ refusal to cooperate have remained obstacles to deportation.
At least 70 Labour MPs demand Starmer resign – media
The UK Prime Minister has acknowledged catastrophic losses in last week’s local election, but vowed to stay in office
Published 11 May, 2026 21:01 | Updated 11 May, 2026 21:08
At least 70 Labour MPs are demanding that Prime Minister Keir Starmer resign, Sky News reported on Monday. This comes after the party came out as the biggest loser in last week’s local elections, relinquishing more than 1,300 council seats across the country.
In addition to dozens of lawmakers calling for Starmer to go, at least three junior members of his government have so far resigned from their positions, Sky News reported.
Under Labour rules, a formal leadership challenge would require backing by at least 81 party MPs, a fifth of the party’s total roster in the House of Commons. Former foreign secretary and Labour MP Catherine West announced that she’s gathering support to kickstart the process and elect a new leader by September.
“The results last Thursday show that the PM has failed to inspire hope,” she wrote on X. “What is best for the party and country now is for an orderly transition.”
In a speech earlier on Monday, Starmer admitted that there was “no sugarcoating” the scale of the defeat suffered by Labour but vowed to stay in office and claw back support. He promised to rebuild the UK’s relationship with the EU and to make Britain “fairer.”
Starmer has sunk in the approval polls since his party’s landslide victory in the 2024 general election. The decline followed deeply unpopular austerity measures, the resurfacing of the historical Pakistani rape gang scandal, and government response to the 2024 anti-immigration protests and riots – which sparked allegations of “two-tier” justice after hundreds of British citizens were arrested for social media posts.
The Labour government has also lost left-wing voters by designating the pro-Palestinian protest group ‘Palestine Action’ a terrorist organization.
Half of Britons want Starmer to step down, while only 29% want him to remain in office, according to a YouGov poll published on Monday that surveyed 4,904 UK adults.
Euroskeptic, anti-immigrant Reform UK has emerged as the biggest winner in the local elections, taking more than 1,200 local council seats across the country.
“Betrayed voters have left Labour for good,” party leader Nigel Farage said on X on Monday.
Denmark’s government has collapsed after a record poor election showing for Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. King Frederik X has now asked Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen to form a right-wing government, but little will change:every major Danish party is preparing for war with Russia.
In a statement on Friday night, Denmark’s monarch announced that he had tasked Poulsen with forming a government “that does not involve the participation” of Frederiksen’s center-left Social Democrats or Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen’s Moderates. The announcement came after Frederiksen tried and failed to build a government after winning a plurality – but not a majority – in general elections in March.
Frederiksen’s party won just under 22% of the vote in March, the worst result for the Social Democrats since 1903.
The election was dominated by two issues: the rising cost of living, and immigration. Poulsen’s center-right Venstre party, Frederiksen’s Social Democrats, and Rasmussen’s Moderates are all in favor of restricting inward migration, but the right-wing Danish People’s Party (DF - 9.1%) wants citizenships revoked, migrants deported, and “measures that will lead to Muslim net emigration from Denmark.”
Two issues that went undiscussed in the runup to the vote were Denmark’s support for Ukraine, and its historic rearmament program. Unlike in recent elections in Hungary and Bulgaria, where the frontrunners had dramatically different views on relations with Kiev and Moscow, blind support for Ukraine is apparently baked into the Danish system.
Denmark’s uniparty
During Denmark’s last general elections in 2022, Frederiksen focused her entire campaign around defense and security issues. On these, her views were indistinguishable from those of her rivals. Six months before the election, Denmark’s five main parties had signed a ‘National Compromise on Danish Security Policy’ in which they agreed to hike defense budgets, inject an additional 7 billion DKK ($1.1 billion) in emergency funding into the country’s armed forces, and end Russian energy imports.
Frederiksen went on to form a government with Venstre and the Moderates, both of which supported these policies. Together, the PM and her traditional rivals on the right have announced planned increases in military spending from 2.4% to 3.5% of GDP, purchased hundreds of new armored cars and dozens of fighter jets, given Ukrainian arms manufacturers grants to produce weapons components on Danish soil, and in an historic first, introduced compulsory military service for women.
Frederiksen and Poulsen both explicitly blamed Russia for a series of drone sightings at Danish airports and military sites in late 2025, despite months of investigation concluding that there was no credible evidence the drones ever existed. Frederiksen used the drone panic to push her rearmament program, telling the public in September that “there is primarily one country that poses a threat to Europe's security – and that is Russia… and that is why we are embarking on a historic buildup here in Denmark.”
Under Frederiksen, Denmark has given Ukraine just over €11 billion in bilateral military and economic aid. At 3.27% of its GDP, Denmark has proportionately handed Ukraine more money than any other Western country. After meeting Frederiksen in Cyprus in April, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky “noted the cross-party consensus on supporting Ukraine” in Denmark, according to a Ukrainian government statement.
More of the same
A government led by Poulsen will in all likelihood deliver more of the same. Poulsen warned in 2024 that Russia could attack NATO territory “within a three- to five-year period.” To prepare for this eventuality – which Russia has outright dismissed as “ridiculous” and a ploy by European leaders to extract more tax money from their citizenry – Poulsen has called for Denmark to increase military spending yet again, to 4% of GDP. Such an increase would put the country’s per-capita defense expenditure higher than that of the US.
Poulsen’s potential coalition partners include the Danish People’s Party, Liberal Alliance, and Conservatives. Of these, the Danish People’s Party is the only voice of moderation on Ukraine. Party leader Morten Messerschmidt has called for an end date to military aid to Kiev, has urged Ukraine to make territorial concessions for peace, and opposes its accession to NATO.
“Every time we spend a billion in Ukraine, that money goes from Denmark, from welfare, from whatever it is we want here,” he told Danish state broadcaster DR in 2024. Messerschmidt added that he intends to pressure whoever is in power in Copenhagen to “conduct a Ukraine policy that is based on the world of reality and not on a fantasy world.”
However, despite the party tripling its vote share to 9% in March, its leadership has told King Frederik that their only demand from Poulsen is that he enact policies that will reduce Denmark’s Muslim population.
Will Russia’s relations with Denmark change?
It is highly unlikely that the transfer of power from Frederiksen to Poulsen will alter Moscow’s sub-zero relations with Copenhagen. Denmark currently has no ambassador to Russia, and is considered an “unfriendly” nation by the Kremlin.
“If anyone wishes to talk, we will never refuse dialogue, even though we fully realize… that reaching an agreement with the current generation of European leaders will most likely be impossible,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters in January. “They have entrenched themselves too deeply in a posture of hatred towards Russia.”
‘Are we idiots?’: Fico on EU pivot away from Russian fuel
Do you really want me to answer that?
The phaseout would deepen the bloc’s dependence on more expensive US gas, the Slovak prime minister has warned
Published 10 May, 2026 19:00 | Updated 10 May, 2026 20:05
The EU plan to phase out Russia as an energy supplier will end in the US reselling Russian oil and gas to Europe at far higher prices, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has warned.
Speaking in Bratislava on Sunday, Fico said Washington has “a huge interest in buying all transit infrastructures” across the European continent.
“So the Russians will supply the Americans with gas and oil at standard prices, and the Americans will sell it to us with an American high-margin surcharge. Are we such idiots already?” he said.
Already, “the share of Russian liquefied gas in Europe is increasing,” Fico added, pointing out the hypocrisy of Brussels singling out countries like Slovakia to pressure over Russian fuel supplies. “So we can’t, but France can buy liquefied gas from Russia.”
Contrary to the EU, Bratislava’s position is to “diversify the supply options for all fuels,” he said.
In February, the European Commission doubled down on long-standing plans to phase out Russian fossil fuel imports by 2027.
While the US-Israeli war on Iran and the subsequent fuel crisis have pushed Brussels to prepare for “the worst-case scenarios,” the EU will not abandon its pivot away from Russian liquefied natural gas, the bloc’s energy chief, Dan Jorgensen, told the Financial Times last month. Brussels will instead rely on more expensive supplies from the US and other partners, he said.
Just last week, Washington launched a multi-billion dollar push to invest in and build a major US pipeline project in Central and Eastern Europe, which still imports Russian gas via the TurkStream pipeline and its extension – Balkan Stream.
According to Moscow, such US projects, as well as sanctions against Russian oil companies, are part of a sweeping strategy to capture the energy market.
Washington is aiming to monopolize all international energy supply routes in an attempt to attain global economic dominance, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told TV BRICS earlier this year.
Global reputation of US sinks below Russia’s rating – survey
America’s reputation has been deteriorating for two years straight, according to a globalist pro-NATO nonprofit
Published 8 May, 2026 17:03
America’s reputation has been worsening under US President Donald Trump and the country now lags behind China and Russia, an annual study commissioned by the Alliance of Democracies Foundation indicates.
The Denmark-based nonprofit was founded by former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in 2017 in response to the purported retreat of Washington from the global stage amid Trump’s first tenure. Over the past six years, the foundation has released Democracy Perception Index reports, which assess “the state of democracy” in countries across the globe.
The return of Trump to office has seen the US plummet in the rating, which ranges between +100% and -100%, with the country currently dropping to -16% from +22% two years ago. The current indicator is less than China (+7%) and Russia (-11%), according to the survey.
The Nordic countries, Sweden, Norway, and the host nation of the non-profit, Denmark, were listed as the top three nations in the latest index. Ukraine was among the bottom five, taking 95th place in the rating and measuring -23%.
The survey was conducted by Nira Data polling company between March 19 and April 21, reaching more than 94,000 respondents across 98 nations. The study, however, does not provide much detail on what exact criteria were used to compile the index.
The poor performance of the US is “saddening but not shocking,” Rasmussen stated when the report was released. The ex-NATO chief squarely blamed Trump for the situation, citing the US administration’s actions, including repeated run-ins with Washington’s European allies over various issues ranging from aggressive trade policies to the openly proclaimed intent to seize Greenland from Denmark.
“US foreign policy over the past 18 months has, among other things, called into question the transatlantic relationship, imposed widespread tariffs, and threatened to invade a NATO ally’s territory,” Rasmussen said.
The strained transatlantic ties have been further aggravated by the US-Israeli war against Iran, which has been unpopular among many European NATO allies. The conflict has led to global oil shortages, with Europe emerging as one of the worst-affected regions.
Not to mention America's hostile takeover ambitions for Canada, and it's assaults on the Canadian economy.
Canada generally finishes near the top tier but for issues like the lack of transparency in the government.
