u/RaidBrimnes

Submission statement: Jordan Bardella, the popular leader of the French far-right party National Rally which currently topping the polls for next year's elections and who is mulled as potential Prime Minister were Marine Le Pen to win the presidency, has been exposed as having produced numerous crude antisemitic and conspiratorial writings in private conversations obtained by the investigative newspaper Mediapart, casting renewed doubts on the "de-demonization" of the far-right party.

"The Jew must dominated (sic) other peoples, crush them and rob them, a Zionist is necessarily and profoundly Jewish. In France, two good examples are BHL [editor's note, the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy] and [editor's note, prominent economic and political advisor Jacques] Attali. And that is what they want, a New World Order dominated by Israel, with of course Jerusalem as its capital” is the most striking message by Bardella, who also idolizes Alain Soral, a conspiracy theorist, Holocaust denier, masculinist and obsessional antisemite convicted thirty times for insult, defamation, incitment to hatred and harassment in France, Belgium and Switzerland.

Jordan Bardella, who has been serving as the president of the National Rally since 2021, is a career politician who joined the National Front as a teenager and rapidly climbed the ranks of the party, becoming the face of the "new National Rally" - in a suit and a tie, with a polished communication and an ostentatious disdain for open bigotry, focused on anti-immigration policies and cost-of-life concerns.

The National Rally was founded as the National Front in 1972 by Pierre Bousquet, a former Waffen-SS who fought on the Eastern Front, Roger Holeindre, member of the terrorist organization OAS which murdered 2,000 civilians during the Algerian War to keep the country under colonial rule, and Jean-Marie Le Pen, nationalist and populist career politician who would later be convicted for Holocaust denial.

The National Front remained a fringe far-right party until 2002, when Jean-Marie Le Pen scored a shock win by eliminating incumbent Socialist PM Lionel Jospin in the first round of the presidential election to face incumbent conservative President Jacques Chirac. Le Pen's devastating loss 82-18% did not stem the party's momentum, and in 2011, he ceded the party's presidency to his daughter Marine, who remodelled the party into a credible political force by focusing on cost-of-life issues, cultivating a strong field campaign courting voters in the de-industrialized and unemployment-stricken areas of the north, the northeast and the southeast, broadening her base to suburban and traditional right-wing voters.

Marine Le Pen's arching strategy was "de-demonization", which she pursued by softening her rhetoric on national identity, European integration and social conservatism, and by purging the party of its most visibly radical elements - including her father, kicked out of the party after yet another antisemitic outburst in public.

Jordan Bardella was groomed to be Marine Le Pen's successor and was pushed into the spotlight when Le Pen was barred from office following a conviction for embezzlement. More popular than Le Pen, with a more economically liberal platform and a "unionist" line aimed at forging alliances with traditional right-wing parties, Bardella was presented by his partisans as a more polished incarnation of the "nationalist right" able to shake off the stench of Le Pen's name. He was nonetheless sidelined after an appeal shortened Le Pen's ban from office and sealed her return in the presidential race.

Over the past fifteen years, Marine Le Pen has pursued, as part of her "de-demonization" strategy, an attempted rapprochement with French Jews, rebuking the overt antisemitism of her father, adopting a pro-Israel stance and focusing her attacks on the Muslim community and the far-left, which she accused of being the prime engines of modern antisemitism. Jordan Bardella was the first French far-right leader to travel to Israel after he was invited by the Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs, an invitation that caused massive uproar in the French Jewish community and led to a break between historical supporters of Israel and the current Israeli government.

Yonathan Arfi, the head of the umbrella organization of Jewish institutions, commented that the reveltions over Bardella's antisemitic tirades showed "the limits of de-demonization", concluding that the National Rally "never fundamentally changed" and "remained the den of antisemites and conspiracy theorists".

Relevance to the sub: Use of AI tools in the information battlefield of the war in Sahel, allowing for the expansion of existing efforts and new approaches to psychological warfare and recruitment tactics

The Dakar-based Timbuktu Institute, which studies political, cultural and military developments in Western Africa, has released a report - direct link here (pdf, in French) - examining how factions warring for the control of Mali have adopted AI tools to reshape their propaganda campaigns, turning Mali into a "laboratory of AI-assisted informational warfare".

The report identifies a more "basic" use of AI by JNIM, the Al-Qaeda affiliated Islamist insurgents, who are using AI tools to cut down on production costs for their communication efforts, and notably by using auto-translation features to translate their propaganda in the many languages spoken throughout the country to reach more communities - especially the Bambara, Fulani and Songhay populations who could provide the group with potential recruits. The productivity gain allows the group, who is also taking inspiration from the Islamic State's previous use of AI, to significantly increase the volume of their content to flood the zone.

The FLA, a Tuareg separatist group that concluded an alliance with JNIM against the Malian government, uses AI in a more decentralized manner, and has specialized in the creation of AI-generated "characters" whose diatribes against the military regime are reposted and amplified by complex networks of bots on social media platforms, notably by artificially boosting the number of followers and "likes" to create the illusion of a much greater popular support for the separatists' cause.

But the most complex and advanced use of AI is found among the Africa Corps, the Kremlin-managed paramilitary created on the foundations of Wagner, whose founder Yevgeny Prigozhin had pioneered mass use of troll farms and online disinformation.

Russia's online informational warfare in Africa is a longtime practice that has deepened with Russia's direct military involvement in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. As early as 2023, reports from NGOs and intelligence services evidenced that Russian operatives had planted deepfakes as part of their informational warfare to "prepare the field" before they deployed fighters to Burkina Faso, and attempted to divert OpenAI's early functions in 2024 to generate en masse fake profiles and comments on West African social media spaces glorifying Russia and lambasting France and the West for their past interventions.

According to the report, the Malian military regime has fully integrated Russian disinformation tools to generate and amplify narratives accusing France, ECOWAS or the UN of attempting to destabilize the country, but also to discredit and harass domestic opponents, lawyers, journalists or NGO workers who decry the military regime's crackdown on human rights. Combined with the junta's lockdown of the national information space by their tight control of the media and their persecution of independent journalists, the use of AI-assisted disinformation seems to be effective in strengthening the junta's grip on the country.

In conclusion, the mass adoption of AI tools is acting as a force multiplier for existing disinformation practices, and will continue to be integrated by combattants on all sides to boost their propaganda efforts as well as their approach of recon and drone warfare, another key innovation of 2020s warfare.

Relevance to the sub: Diplomatic incident between the US and a NATO member after another Trump outburst, in a broader context of rising tensions over the sovereignty of Arctic nations.

The Icelandic government has summoned the US ambassador Billy Long for an admonishment after US president Donald Trump posted a map showing the United States ruling over North America, the Caribbean, Greenland and Iceland. The "Stars and Stripes Map" is the latest in a series of provocative cartographic actions from Donald Trump, following the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to "Gulf of America", Lake Ontario to "Lake America", and threats to rename New Mexico in the same fashion.

These map antics have caused deep worry among America's partners and neighbors, as they are paired with serious imperialist threats against Canada and Greenland, the latest of which caused a severe crisis between the US and the EU over the sovereignty of the Atlantic island.

Iceland is a NATO member but does not maintain an army, and has relied for its security on a bilateral treaty signed in 1951 with the United States, who provide Iceland with defense guarantees and military assistance, in exchange for access to Icelandic waters for maritime training.

This is the second incident of this kind this year: in January 2026, during the surge of tensions caused by the Trump administration's threats against Greenland, the US ambassador to Iceland Billy Long was caught "joking" with his former House colleagues that Iceland would become the 52nd state with himself as a governor.

The diplomatic incident further digs a rift between longtime security partners, and comes a week after Icelandic voters rejected in a referendum the reopening of negotiations to enter the European Union.

Relevance to the sub: Discussion over cultural boycotts and the blurry distinction between intercultural exchanges and state-sponsored influence operations between Russia and Europe

Among the retaliatory measures announced by Germany following the drone attack at Leipzig-Halle airport, attributed to Russia, figured the closure of the Russian House of Berlin, a prominent Russian cultural institution that had operated in the German capital since 1984, first founded as a Soviet cultural center.

According to French intelligence services, the Russian House in Berlin operated as a spy hub for Russian intelligence services to plan and launch various influence and direct action operations in Europe and Germany in particular, a country that has increasingly been targeted by acts of hybrid warfare, ranging from disinformation campaigns about the war in Ukraine, to arson attacks and assassination threats against German defense industrialists.

The Russian House is operated by Rossotrudnichestvo, a Russian government agency placed under the responsibilities of the Foreign Ministry, and officially aims to distribute foreign aid (as an equivalent of USAID) and promote Russian language and culture abroad, as a counterpart to the Confucius Institutes (China) or the Goethe network for Germany, whose Moscow branch was closed as a retaliation for the closure of the Russian House in Berlin. The agency and its local branches have been involved in direct operations in Africa, notably by providing logistical support to Wagner/Africa Corps combatants.

While Rossotrudnichestvo is sanctioned by EU countries, Russian cultural centers continue to operate within the Union, and have been called out by researchers on Russian diplomacy and foreign interferences as instruments of the Kremlin to broadcast propaganda to European audiences under a veneer of cultural promotion.

Submission statement: Zambia's liberal President Hakainde Hichilema, who oversaw a rapid repair of the country's finances after decades of mismanagement, has secured re-election in a landslide (60%) amid high political tensions that saw his main rival go into hiding following the publication of the results.

Born into poverty, Hakainde Hichilema - nicknamed "HH" - became one of Zambia's richest men through financial consulting and cattle ranching, and positioned himself as the main opponent of the ruling left-wing Patriotic Front in the 2010s, doing a short stint in prison during Edgar Lungu's presidency, whom he defeated in 2021 in a hotly contested election.

During his presidency, HH, who had inherited a dire financial situation with Zambia defaulting on its debt the year before he took office, undertook deep reforms and secured debt restructuration deals, loans and investments into Zambia's backbone industry, copper, but also into hydroelectricity and cash crops.

Hichilema's landmark reform was making secondary education free for all, bringing more than 2 million children back in schools from their former informal activities, although the lack of planning led to overcrowded classrooms and a short-term deterioration of learning conditions.

While Zambia's economy recovered from decades of economic lull, voters expressed concerns about rising cost of life and the impact of the global food crisis, particularly severe in Zambia due to a historically harsh drought that led Hichilema to declare a state of emergency in 2024.

Since the fall of Kenneth Kaunda's dictatorship in 1991, Zambia has enjoyed a rocky although resilient multi-party democratic system with regular peaceful transitions of power, but Zambian critics and international observers have raised warnings about Hichilema's concentration of powers around the presidency, and the increased use of 'lawfare' against journalists and opponents. The vote counting was briefly suspended last week due to alleged threats against poll workers and civil servants, and dozens have been arrested on charges of fostering unrest and detention of weapons.

International observers described the election as free and largely peaceful, but noted "tensions" in many polling stations. Hichilema's main rival, Brian Mundubile, who gathered 38% of the vote, has accused the president of replicating the same authoritarian practices he was himself targeted with during Edgar Lungu's presidency, and has since gone into hiding due to alleged threats against his life, alongside his running mate.

Relevance to the subreddit: silencing of Russia's only credible liberal opposition party

The Russian Supreme Court has ruled this Monday that Yabloko, the only registered political party in the country who opposes the war in Ukraine, will be barred from standing in October's parliamentary elections, further cementing a crackdown on public expressions of anti-war sentiment as Vladimir Putin's regime strangles all signs of internal opposition.

Yabloko ("Apple" in Russian) was founded more than thirty years ago during the democratization period following the fall of the Soviet Union and defended a social-liberal and pro-European line. It gathered only 3-6% of the vote in the elections it contested, but has nonetheless been increasingly targeted by Putin's regime as Russia slid from a hybrid regime into full dictatorship.

After the elimination of figures like Boris Nemtsov or Alexey Navalny, Yabloko remained one of the few political forces to frontally oppose Vladimir Putin, and following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, adopted a strict anti-war stance, which attracted further persecution and the detention of several of their elected officials.

The lawsuit filed by the far-right, ultranationalist party Rodina ("Motherland") accused Yabloko of being foreign agents and a member of the "LGBT Internationale" - Yabloko is one of the only political forces to advocate for LGBT+ rights in Russia -, designated as a terrorist entity by the Duma since 2023. The decision comes two months after similar legal procedures against opposition and anti-war figure Boris Nadezhdin, who fled Russia due to threats against his life.

The ban on Yabloko is the latest act of political repression by Vladimir Putin's regime, which has grown increasingly paranoid and authoritarian following the invasion of Ukraine, clawing deeper and deeper into every space of civil liberties left for Russians, who are now exposed to raids by paramilitaries determined to enforce Putin's conservative "cultural revolution".

Submission statement: Interview with International Crisis Group's North Africa specialist Riccardo Fabiani over the broader picture painted by last week's migrant surge in Ceuta, the worst border incident involving a EU country in decades, and particularly the tightening relationship between Rabat and Washington.

On July 30, 2026, around 80,000 migrants breached the Moroccan-Spanish border in Ceuta and Melilla, two autonomous Spanish cities located on the northern coast of Africa claimed by Morocco, leading to a severe humanitarian crisis during which ~100 people died. The vast majority of the migrants returned to Morcco within the week, leaving Spain stunned by the scale of the border breach.

In the hours following the incident, footage of thousands of migrants pouring into EU territory inundated social media and provoked heated reactions from anti-immigration activists, up and to the White House, with US President Donald Trump calling the incident a "catastrophe" and an "invasion". Right-wing governments in Europe such as Italy's and Finland's called for a suspension of Spain's Schengen membership, despite neither Ceuta or Melilla being included in the free-movement zone of the EU, further exposing the bloc's divisions over immigration and solidarity with Spain.

Fabiani argues that the incident was not directly engineered by Morocco, but was facilitated and leveraged by Rabat to send a message to Spain, which they consider as still occupying "their" territory, despite Spain's 500-year administration of the territories and the residents' will to remain Spanish.

Nonetheless, Fabiani argues, the crisis in Ceuta should not be analyzed as a mere bilateral territorial dispute between Morocco and Spain, but as part of a broader Moroccan strategy to curtail Washington's favors as they seek to cement their claim over Western Sahara, the territory that has been administered and colonized by Morocco for fifty years despite opposition from the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, who claim to represent the Sahrawi people's aspirations to self-determination. Morocco, with help from US lawmakers like Sens Rick Scott, Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz, has sought to push for the classification of the Polisario Front as part of a network of proxies "backed by Iran, Russia and Hezbollah".

Washington's recognition of the Moroccan claim over Western Sahara was a key gain from Morocco's signature of the Abraham Accords normalizing relations between several Arab countries and Israel, and is part of a broader Moroccan push for international legitimacy on their administration of the territory, which notably saw the "Moroccan plan for autonomy" gain the support of the UK, France and... Spain.

Last month, Morocco officially renamed a new road crossing Western Sahara after Donald Trump to thank Washington for its support. According to Riccardo Fabiani, the rapprochement between Washington and Rabat and the contrasting diplomatic chill between Washington and Madrid over the Spanish position over the wars in Gaza and Iran emboldened Morocco to renew its claim over the Spanish autonomous cities.

While the United States' State Department stressed that it considered Ceuta as a Spanish territory following the crisis, mixed signals are coming from Washington after Mario Díaz-Balart, a prominent Rubio ally in the House of Representatives endorsed the Moroccan claim over the city, contrasting the Morocco-US "250-year alliance" with Spain's refusal to let the US use its bases to refuel on their way to strike Iran.

Personal opinion: while Morocco bears the brunt of the responsibility for the humanitarian disaster that unfolded in Ceuta, we should consider this incident as another wedge between EU and NATO allies exploited by the United States' current government's aggressive strategy against Europe.

Submission statement: consolidated evidence of the direct involvement of an American PMC, the United Arab Emirates and Chad in the logistical networks supplying the genocidal paramilitary RSF in its war against the Sudanese Armed Forces which has killed hundreds of thousands and created the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

UN experts will release in September a report confirming informations revealed by Reuters about Steven Shaulis, a US Army Special Forces veteran who has been operating a secret fleet of repurposed civilian Boeing aircrafts (one 737 and two 727s) to resupply the Rapid Support Forces in weapons, ammunition and personnel through Chad, Libya, Somalia and RSF-controlled areas in Sudan.

Steven Shaulis co-founded CADG, a company providing engineering and logistical services to areas hard to access, in 2002 and has since been in control of several companies registered in Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, receiving just under half a billion dollars in US public funds for humanitarian missions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Kenya.

The three aircrafts who landed in Sudan - one of which was destroyed by a Sudanese airstrike in May 2025 - were observed making frequent flights between Libya, where the secessionist government of Khalifa Haftar provides logistical support to the RSF, Chad, which is officially neutral but has provided covert support to the RSF, and Nyala, the "capital" of the RSF's rebel "Government of Peace and Unity".

The report, expected to be published in September, consolidates evidence that the United Arab Emirates did not just send financial and logistical support to the RSF, but also military personnel in the form of Colombian mercenaries, estimated to number between 1,500-2,000, who were directly involved in the siege, capture and destruction of El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur where at least 60,000 civilians were exterminated by the RSF in what the UN described as "hallmarks of genocide", possibly the worst massacre of civilians since the Rwandan genocide.

Steven Shaulis, like Emirati leaders, is not targeted by Western sanctions and is not targeted by any official investigation at this point.

Submission statement: deportation of a Russian journalist with direct ties to the Kremlin and embedded within a right-wing billionaire's media network, an event at the intersection of freedom of speech, press freedoms, defensive democracy, struggle against foreign interferences and collaborationism with hostile powers.

The Interior Ministry issued today a deportation order against Xenia Fedorova, a Russian journalist who had been in the crosshairs of the government for years due to her ties to the Kremlin as the former head of RT France. The Ministry justified the order on ground of national security, explaining that Fedorova was a "direct conduit of the disinformation campaigns piloted by the Russian state to destabilize the public order in France", accusing her of "attempting to manipulate public opinion."

Fedorova, 45, was sent to France to pilot the creation and management of the Paris section of Russia Today in 2017, as part of the Russian state's expansion of its soft power in Western Europe. RT was closed one week after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine amid a crackdown against Russia's propaganda networks in Europe.

Xenia Fedorova was granted new opportunities by Vincent Bolloré, one of France's wealthiest businessmen who built a media empire in recent years to steer public opinion towards his vision of an ultraconservative, Christian and zero-immigration country. Fedorova notably found work at CNews, Bolloré's flagship TV, and Europe 1, its radio equivalent, as a regular pundit who delivered verbatim the Kremlin's narrative of the war, which she calls the "special military operation", denying that Ukraine is a sovereign country, accusing the West of provoking the invasion, and casting doubt on the reality of Russian war crimes, including the mass abductions of Ukrainian children.

Outside of her shows and on-air interventions, Xenia Fedorova was described by multiple investigations, based on anonymous sources, of wielding considerable influence over Bolloré's news outlets, contributing to steer the discourse towards overtly pro-Russian positions, notably by firing journalists who opposed her.

The French government had been monitoring Fedorova's activities since her arrival in the country nearly a decade ago, and was under pressure after the revelation that her visa had been renewed in 2024, two years after RT's closure and as Russian interferences grew in scale and intensity. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez confirmed in June that the government was building up a case against Fedorova, focusing on her direct ties with the Russian state to prevent challenges over freedom of speech.

Fedorova is now under house arrest and banned from working, awaiting a deportation that could be complicated by logistical challenges and a tenuous relationship between French and Russian diplomatic services. She has announced a legal challenge against her deportation order.

The announcement of Fedorova's deportation was warmly welcomed among Emmanuel Macron's ruling centrist bloc, with MEP Nathalie Loiseau commenting "better late than never". Socialist Party MP Arthur Delaporte, who had questioned the government over Fedorova's visa renewal, also cheered for her deportation.

The announcement was sharply criticized on the far-right, with National Rally MEP Thierry Mariani, who lamented "the silencing of one of the few dissident voices over the official, authorized narrative of the Ukraine war", and denounced the "Eurodictatorship". Fedorova received the full support of her employers, with Canal+ and Groupe Lagardère denouncing a "severe attack against freedom of speech."

Relevance to the subreddit: Antisemitism, political violence, impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict abroad

An international study group on antisemitism released a report highlighting that 2025 was the deadliest year for Jews outside of Israel/Palestine since 1994 and the AMIA bombing in Argentina, which killed 85 people in an attack coordinated by Ahmad Vahidi, the now-head of the IRGC and one of Iran's de facto leaders.

In concrete terms, 20 Jewish people were murdered in antisemitic hate crimes across the world in 2025: 15 in the Bondi Beach shooting carried out in Sydney in December by ISIS sympathizers against a Hannukah celebration, 2 in a car and knife attack in Manchester on Yom Kippur in October by Islamist terrorists, one in Boulder, CO by an Islamist terrorist who attacked a running club's events gathering funds to support Israeli hostages in June, and 2 in Washington DC in May when a far-left terrorist opened fired at the Jewish Museum of the American capital city.

Aside from the deadly attacks, the report also highlights that the surge of antisemitism - comprising harassment, intimidations, threats or physical assaults - has become the "new normal" following the October 7 attacks, which led to an explosion of antisemitic hate crimes across all countries surveyed, then a slight decrease to plateau at a much higher level than before 2023.

The report studies occurrences of antisemitic hate crimes in the seven countries where 90% of Jews in diaspora live: the United States, France, Canada, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Germany and Australia, citing more than 23,000 incidents in 2025, and urging public authorities to strengthen the protection of the Jewish community and intensify efforts to combat hatred in public and online.

Relevance to the subreddit: international institutions, broader collapse of multilateralism

Chad's military government has announced on Monday, July 27, its intent to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its obligations under the Rome Statute, joining a growing list of countries who have opted to disengage from the international court.

In September 2025, the three Russia-aligned military regimes of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger announced their withdrawal from the court, accusing the body of "neocolonialism" and claiming they would found an alternate "Sahelian Criminal Court" based on anti-imperialist proceedings as the juntas battle growing Islamist insurgencies on their territory. The juntas that came to power between 2020 and 2023 have been accused of extensive human rights abuses, mass killings and torture.

In July 2026, it was the interim government of Venezuela, de facto under US administration, that announced its withdrawal from the ICC, citing "bias against African and Latin American nations", following nine years of preliminary investigations against the Venezuelan regime for the mass killings of protesters in the 2010s.

Chad's government officially stated it was withdrawing from the ICC due to bias against African nations, but has also cited pressures from Washington through its assistant secretary of state for African Affairs, who "expressed its concerns about the functioning of the institution and called on Chad to review its accession to the Rome Statute".

While the United States never recognized the legitimacy of the ICC, it has significantly escalated hostile efforts against the court following their issuing of arrest warrants against Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, inflicting broad sanctions against judges, procesutors and staff ranging from asset freezes to travel bans. Marco Rubio stated that the US' goal was to "dismantle the ICC, brick by brick if needed", an institution "backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments" that "waged a war" against the United States.

Chad, located at the crossroads of West, North, East and Central Africa, maintains military cooperation with the United States, France, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates to counter terrorism in the region. It has one of the world's worst human rights records, and has been regularly accused of providing logistical support to the RSF, the genocidal paramilitary forces waging war against the Sudanese Army at Chad's doorstep.

Chad's explicit mention of US pressure in its decision to withdraw from the ICC signals that the Trump administration is indeed pressuring signatory members to desert their obligations, and could announce other withdrawals in the coming months.

Relevance to the subreddit: multilateralism, international law, accountability in higher institutions

Karim Khan, the top Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), has been ousted from his position due to allegations of sexual misconduct, in an extraordinary session at the UN headquarters that gathered 82 votes for his removal, 15 abstentions and only 13 against.

Khan, a British barrister specialized in international law who worked as both a prosecutor and an attorney in high-profile trials on crimes against humanity in Rwanda, former Yugoslavia and Cambodia, was elected to a nine-year term as lead prosecutor at the ICC in 2021, succeeding Fatou Bensouda of the Gambia.

Described as authoritarian and "no-nonsense", Khan launched investigations into crimes committed by the Taliban in Afghanistan and dropped the ones on CIA black sites in Easterrn Europe, before taking the unprecedented step of requesting and obtaining arrest warrants against a head of state of the Permanent Security Council, Vladimir Putin of Russia, for the mass deportations of Ukrainian children and attacks on civilian infrastructures during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Khan's most divisive moment came when he requested and obtained arrest warrants against leaders of Hamas and Israel for crimes committed during the October 7 massacres and the war in Gaza. In particular, his arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu led to a fierce intimidation campaign from Israel and the United States, who imposed wide-ranging sanctions with bipartisan support against judges, prosecutors and staff of the ICC as a punishment, including asset freezes and visa bans.

American sanctions against the ICC have plunged the court into a deep crisis, with financial shortfalls and practical hindrances in its missions across the world. In July 2026, Marco Rubio announced an escalation of American efforts to destroy the ICC, vowing to dismantle the international institution "brick by brick" by expanding sanctions on ICC personnel and increasing pressure on American allies who are member of the ICC to withdraw their support to the court, which he described as "backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments", waging "a war against the United States, not with bullets or missiles but the so-called 'international law'".

Karim Khan faced allegations of sexual misconduct as early as 2024, when he was accused of sexually harassing a junior staffer of the ICC and pressuring her to drop her allegations. He was suspended from his duties in 2025 and could not attend the vote at the UN headquarters in New York due to a ban from entering the US.

In recent months, member of the ICC had privately confided that the allegations targeting Karim Khan had "tarnished" the image of the court and "poisoned" the internal atmosphere.

Karim Khan's dismissal was acknowledged by a number of high-profile officials, including Israel's ambassador to the UN Danny Danon, who cheered Khan's removal and threatened NY mayor Zohran Mamdani over his "witch hunt against Israel".

Relevance to the subreddit: Political violence, antisemitism, freedom of speech, direct involvement of a major left-wing party in the harassment

The political tensions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have claimed another victim last week, after French Jewish DJ Barbara Butch, who rocketed to worldwide fame after hosting a segment of the Paris Olympics' opening ceremony, was forced off stage by pro-Palestinian activists who protested her set and pelted her with projectiles.

Barbara Butch, an icon of LGBT+ Parisian nightlife and longtime activist against homophobia, fatphobia and antisemitism, had been targeted by a months-long campaign from pro-Palestinian activists and elected officials of the far-left party France Unbowed (LFI), who blamed her for giving a concert to the French embassy in Tel Aviv and signing a petition supporting the "Loi Yadan", a controversial bill that would have expanded the criminal definition of antisemitism to the calls of destruction of a state.

The calls to boycott and protests by LFI exploded into an unprecedented outburst of violence on July 18 in Grenoble. Barbara Butch, who was set to play at the Cabaret Frappé, was confronted by dozens of pro-Palestinian activists headed by Allan Brunon, the local representative of LFI, who drowned her set with boos and insults such as "dirty Zionist" and "assassin", until city employees exfiltrated Butch off stage after protesters threw glass bottles at the artist.

The attack was met with near-unanimous condemnation from LFI's opponents and allies alike: Clémentine Autain, a longtime official at LFI before she broke ranks in 2024, denounced the act and lamented "Don't we have political representatives who defend the Loi Yadan to call out before attacking Barbara Butch, a woman engaged in the fight for LGBT+ rights and against fatphobia, herself a regular target of violent, sexist and antisemitic attacks?"

Allan Brunon doubled down, saying he was "extremely proud to have participated in this peaceful protest", denied that protesters were violent, and added: "Barbara Butch isn't the one being silenced, the voices who denounce the genocide in Palestine are". Brunon was publicly backed by LFI officials who also denied any violence or antisemitism, even if reports suggest internal dissatisfaction over Brunon's attitude, especially over the flyer announcing the protest which showed Barbara Butch in front of a bloodstained rainbow flag branded with a star of David.

The left-wing mayor of Grenoble, Laurence Ruffin (Greens), who campaigned with LFI in March's mayoral elections, condemned the protest and announced the city would sue the protesters for throwing projectiles at the scene and sabotaging the electric wiring. Barbara Butch announced through her attorney that she would sue the protesters for "obstruction to artistic freedom" and LFI as a political party for "incitment to hatred and violence".

LFI, a left-populist party, has positioned itself as a staunch pro-Palestinian movement and has routinely faced accusations of antisemitism. In 2021, its founder and leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon suggested that the slaying of Jewish schoolchildren by an Islamist terrorist in Toulouse was part of a broader conspiracy to hurt the left's electoral chances; the same year, he asserted that far-right pundit Éric Zemmour's racism was "rooted in Jewish culture"; in 2024, he denied official statistics that showed an explosion of antisemitic violence in France by calling French antisemitism "residual" - other prominent figures of LFI have also come under scrutiny for calling Hamas a "resistance group" or retweeting antisemitic caricatures.

Relevance to the subreddit: personal freedom, social media regulation, state influence on access to information

French Parliament approved on Tuesday a bill that enforces a social media ban for children under 15 and bans phone use in high schools (age 15-18) by 279-81, with broad support on the center and right and some opposition on the left.

The bill was a promise of President Emmanuel Macron following public pressure after a string of teen suicides attributed to online harassment, as well as recommendations from the national health agency calling on to legislators to strengthen prevention and protection against the adverse effects of social media on children and teenagers.

The version of the bill approved on Tuesday shifts the responsibility of the age verification on the social media platform, with possibilities for them to sollicit government tools like FranceConnect or the schools' online work environments. It no longer lists the particular platforms concerned by the ban, and does not include video viewing, development tools, online encyclopedias or messaging apps - for example, YouTube will only be concerned by the "social media" features like comment sections or sharing playlists.

The ban was supported by a large majority of parents polled (74%), although 85% considered that the age verification process would easily be dodged by teenagers.

France's ban is the first to be enacted in the European Union and follows similar initiatives in Australia or the UK, with legislation in discussion in Portugal, Poland and Austria.

Relevance to the subreddit: LGBT+, women and immigrants' rights, checks and balances, and general respect for the rule of law before a key election that could see France tilt to the far-right.

The French Parliament has approved on Tuesday the nomination of François-Noël Buffet, Senator of the right-wing party Les Républicains (LR) and former minister in the Bayrou government (2025), to the position of Defender of Rights, an independent administrative department that combines the responsabilities of an Ombudsman with broader powers over protection of children and women's rights, ethics in matters of governance and security, and protection of whistleblowers.

François-Noël Buffet was nominated by Emmanuel Macron for a single six-year term in replacement of Claire Hédon - also appointed by Macron -, a legal practicioner and journalist specialized in great poverty and racial discriminations, whose term expired this summer.

Buffet's profile has raised dire concerns among NGOs and left-wing opposition due to his "arch-conservative" positions. As a member of Parliament, he staunchly opposed same-sex marriage, the extension of IVF to couples of women, and the constitutionalization of the freedom to access abortion. As a minister, he advocated for stripping far-left MEP Rima Hassan, a Syria-born Palestinian woman, of the French citizenship she acquired as an adult to solve her stateless status due to Hassan's frequent controversies over the Middle East conflicts and antisemitic declarations, and defended a sharp reduction of the State Medical Aid (AME), a welfare program providing immigrants with basic medical assistance.

Buffet was confirmed by a narrow 42-39 vote in the parliamentary commissions and a more comfortable margin by the two chambers of Parliament, with support from Macron's centrist alliance, the right-wing Les Républicains, and the far-right National Rally, and opposition from the left.

Over the past months, Emmanuel Macron, who will leave office in May 2027 after completing two terms, has rushed to appoint close allies to key positions in the state, such as former Budget Minister Amélie de Monchalin as head of the Court of Audit, former parliamentary leader Richard Ferrand as head of the Constitutional Council, and his former chief of staff Emmanuel Moulin as head of the central bank - which is part of the supervisory board of the BCE.

While the practice is common, Macron's appointments have been sharply criticized by his opponents contesting next year's presidential elections, with Marine Le Pen's party decrying a "lockdown of the state" by the outgoing president.

Relevance to the subreddit: Morocco is a regional power in Africa and has in recent years tightened relationships with Western powers such as the US, Israel, Spain and France over issues of migration, security, energy and diplomatic conflicts over the fate of Western Sahara, whose right to self-determination has been progressively crushed under Moroccan efforts. Reporters from the journalism consortium Forbidden Stories reveal that Morocco's powerful intelligence apparatus has made extensive use of the Israeli-made spyware Pegasus to spy on journalists and political dissidents in Morocco, a repressive country with a flawed human rights record, but also on its allies in Europe and Africa.

Pegasus is a spyware developed by the Israeli defense firm NSO Group, and the sale of licenses to foreign entities has to be approved by the Israeli Defense Forces. It is a malware that grants the attacker full access to the target's phone data, geolocation, camera and conversations. In the late 2010s, leaks and investigations by journalists across the world revealed that Pegasus was used by various intelligence services to target criminals and terrorists, but also political dissidents and journalists, being linked to a cartel-led assassination in Mexico, monitoring of NGOs in Hungary by the Orban regime, abductions and persecutions of dissidents in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, the Emirates, El Salvador, Russia and China - possibly being used to locate and assassinate Saud journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi. Revelations over the PiS-led Polish government's use of Pegasus led to an arrest warrant against former Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, previously sheltered by Orban's Hungary and now a political fugitive in the US.

Simultaneously, national leaders such as Emmanuel Macron (France), Pedro Sanchez (Spain), Cyril Ramaphosa (South Africa), AMLO (Mexico), and staff from 10 Downing Street under the Conservative Party's leadership were also targeted by foreign actors using Pegasus spyware.

Morocco's use of Pegasus has been documented since 2021, but Forbidden Stories can now confirm that their use of Pegasus to spy on members of the French government, including the now-PM Sébastien Lecornu, caused the cancellation of a planned €60 million contract with NSO Group from France.

Forbidden Stories documents how Morocco has deployed the spyware as part of a broader rapprochement with Israel and the United Arab Emirates over security matters, to further their internal repression of political opponents and to aid their diplomatic goals of enshrining their sovereignty over the contested territory of Western Sahara.

Relevance to the subreddit: Legislation opening a right to assisted suicide, a social question at the crossroads of individual freedom, equality and access to healthcare.

The National Assembly has adopted this Wednesday in a final, solemn vote, a bill legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia for gravely ill patients, after years of a chaotic legislative journey and intense debates over its moral and social implications.

The final version of the bill, rewritten several times, conditions access to assisted dying to five criteria that must be met by the patient:

1. Be aged 18 or older
2. Be a French citizen or a longtime, regular resident
3. Be affected by a grave, incurable and life-threatening condition at an advanced stage characterized by an irreversible process of deterioration of the patient’s health affecting their quality of life
4. Be affected by pain related to said condition that is resistant to treatment or unbearable for the patient. A psychological pain cannot alone open access to assisted dying
5. Be able to manifest their will in a free and informed manner

A patient that meets all five criteria will be able to request the procedure to their doctor, who will need to offer the possibility of hospice care and psychological help to the patient before they can confirm the procedure through a collegial decision with other physicians within two weeks. The patient will then benefit from a 48 hour “period of reflection” before they can self-administer the lethal substance or have the doctor do it if they physically can’t.

The “French model” for assisted dying is thus more restrictive than other models like Canada’s or the Netherlands’, as it excludes people only afflicted by mental conditions (depression, anxious disorders), minors in all cases, and individuals who are unconscious or with altered judgement, even if they have issued early directives.

Legalizing access to assisted dying was a promise of president Emmanuel Macron as his “landmark” social reform of his second term, following consultations with doctors, philosophers, activists and representatives of civil society.

The bill passed 291-241 with near-unanimous support by left-wing MPs, large support by centrist MPs, and near-unanimous opposition by right-wing and far-right MPs, with staunch opposition from the conservative-dominated Senate despite concessions from supporters of the legislation in terms of restrictions on eligible patients, additional funding to hospice care as an alternative, and finally the removal of an amendment that would have criminalized obstruction to access to assisted dying.

Supporters of the bill justified their advocacy on the basis of human dignity, freedom of choice, bodily autonomy, equality and protection of healthcare workers, as assisted dying was already de facto practiced by informal arrangements between patients and doctors in extreme cases, while some with the means to do so would travel to Belgium or Switzerland to undergo the procedure. Opponents of the bill justified their opposition on the basis of unequal access to hospice care, a risk of “slippery slope” towards a generalization of euthanasia, with some arguing that it represented a “major civilizational break” by allowing doctors, sworn to save lives, to end them instead.

The bill will now head to the Constitutional Council through a referral by Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu – who is personally opposed to the bill – on three provisions of the bill: the 48-hour period of reflection (judged as too short by the opponents), the eligibility of protected adults (under guardianship), and the clause of conscience, which allows for physicians to refuse to carry out the procedure in accordance with their personal beliefs, and mandates them to direct the patient to a physician who will, similarly to abortion procedures.

Direct link to the full text of the bill (in French)

Submission statement: An article examining how the Russian state is targeting young students to fill the ranks of their high-casualty drone units, increasingly drawing from the civilian sphere as losses mount in Ukraine.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, both sides have increasingly relied on drone warfare to further their objectives. But on the Russian side, drone units are among the most exposed to Ukrainian strikes, with at least 920 documented deaths since February 2022 - comparable figures to losses recorded in artillery units.

To replace these losses, Russian authorities are prioritizing under-35s, considered more receptive to drone technologies and innovations, by directly drawing into the educational system. BBC reports that teachers and educators are increasingly involved in the recruiting process alongside military authorities, who present students with a variety of persuasion tools, from promising them transferrable skills and career advancements, to bribing them with hefty cash payments or shortcuts to admission into academic programs, to coercing struggling students with peer pressure or threats of expulsion.

Matching earlier patterns, recruitment seems to be mainly targeting students who are struggling academically or personally, in vocational schools rather than prestigious universities, and in more peripherical regions of Russia. Institutions in Siberia and the Far East were reportedly faced with recruitment targets, and the profiles of the students enlisted and killed corresponds to more marginalized people: a young man raised by a foster mother and a Muslim student from Bashkortostan who flunked out of vocational school are among the newly recruited drone operators confirmed killed weeks after they arrived on the frontlines in Ukraine.

Submission statement: One of the worst declines in LGBT+ rights and access to healthcare is being carried out by Niger's military regime, an ally of Russia which is under severe pressure from jihadist insurgents of IS and JNIM for the control of its national territory.

The Nigerien junta adopted in June one of the most repressive laws against LGBT+ people on the continent, enforcing up to 10 years of imprisonment for consensual same-sex relationships, and up to 20 years for organizing, celebrating or attending a same-sex "marriage ceremony", and for funding, presiding or participating in associations or clubs "promoting unnatural acts" - including homosexuality but also "asexual acts".

The law is part of a broader continental wave of repression agasint LGBT+ Africans, pushed by widespread homophobia, social conservatism and religious revival, as well as foreign lobbies. In the past decade, anti-LGBT+ laws and bills have been proposed and adopted in Ghana, Senegal, Uganda, Kenya and Burkina Faso, enforcing severe legal punishments up to the death penalty in Uganda.

The legislation quickly translated into action as Niger's military ruler Abdourrahamane Tchiani, who took power in 2023 by overthrowing the Western-aligned democratically elected president Mohamed Bazoum, heralded the law as a way for Niger to assert "anti-imperialism", castigating homosexuality as a foreign practice imposed by the West, similarly to its neighbor and fellow military regime of Burkina Faso.

At least 40 men, including high-ranking members of the administration and military, have been arrested and disappeared since the law was enacted. Organizations which provide healthcare that could be linked to "unnatural acts", such as condoms, PreP or HIV tests had to stop providing these services out of fear of being hounded by the Nigerien authorities.

Humanitarian workers have warned that such policies endangered the wider Nigerien population, already affected by widespread extreme poverty, lack of sanitation and access to healthcare, by deterring HIV prevention and monitoring, risking another outburst of the epidemic that has disproportionally affected Subsaharan Africa.