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Image is of the leaders of various parties making up the French left coalition in the coming parliamentary elections, from this article.

Macron has recently called a snap parliamentary election in the aftermath of the far-right getting a large proportion of the votes in the EU elections. Why exactly he called an election at a point of profound weakness is a little beyond me. Explanations that I've seen range from "He thinks the element of surprise will benefit his party and not others," to "WW3 is about to start and he doesn't want to be leader for it," (which, like, isn't true - Macron is the President of France, not Prime Minister, he won't be unseated by this election and he has said he will not stand down regardless of result), to "He doesn't want to swim in the shit-filled Seine."

While we still have a couple weeks to go, the polling I've seen generally puts the far-right in first place with the left-wing coalition slightly behind, with Macron's party all the way back in third place. Anybody who knows anything about French politics knows that while France does actually have something of a left opposition in aggregate (in contrast to the two wings of the Capitalist Party in the UK and the US, for example), French left coalitions are profoundly unstable and this one will inevitably split - perhaps even before the voting begins - meaning they aren't nearly as useful as they otherwise could be.

Living in a France governed by far right parties would be awful, but maybe they might at least be against the carnage in Ukraine, and sue for peace with Russia? Well, possibly not, if the example of Meloni in Italy is anything to go by. It seems that the differences between the "centrist" parties and the fascist ones truly are not that great, beholden to the exact same set of capitalists regardless of which party wins, and will likely bend the knee to NATO, though they may grumble a lot. Would a left coalition be better on Russia/NATO? They have already helpfully told us that they won't (only opposing sending French troops to Ukraine but otherwise being full steam ahead), and additionally are genocidal Zionists. Western leftists have long been hampered by a dramatically faulty misunderstanding of how geopolitics works, with many seemingly believing "imperialism is when countries interact with other countries" and "democracy is when you can vote between two parties even if widely popular policies aren't at all represented by either of them, and if those popular policies are enacted but it's by a one-party state then that's authoritarian evil" and other such strange ideas, making them terminally useless on foreign issues and pretty unremarkable on domestic issues too. France is no exception.

And just to top it all off, this is coming in a period of further imperial decline for the tattered remains of the French empire, with West Africa rebelling and Kanaky (New Caledonia) deeply unhappy with recent French decisions.

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In 2020, hundreds of top TikTok content creators banded together in service of a single goal: get Joe Biden elected. They posted videos, hosted online events and spent hours educating followers to help Biden defeat Donald Trump. Four years later, the coalition once known as TikTok for Biden is now called Gen-Z for Change — and so far, it has not endorsed Biden’s reelection. “Biden is out of step with young people on a number of key issues,” said the coalition’s founder, Aidan Kohn-Murphy, 20, who called “the frustrations of young progressive leaders a barometer of widespread dissatisfaction among Gen Z voters.” Across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Twitch, anger and resentment toward Biden are boiling among Gen Z content creators who say they feel disaffected and betrayed by Biden’s positions on an array of issues, including the war in Gaza, the climate crisis and the president’s decision to support a potential TikTok ban. The rift has been exacerbated by the White House’s evolving strategy of courting friendly influencers while shutting out others who have been critical of the administration. When Biden took office in 2021, the White House sought to fortify its relationships with Gen Z content creators, working with them to promote the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine and briefing them on key issues. At one such briefing on the war in Ukraine in 2022, press secretary Jen Psaki and Matt Miller, special adviser for communications at the White House National Security Council, told influencers that Biden viewed them as the “new media” and would strive to keep them informed.

“I have noticed that there have been a lot more events with creators, but the creators that are getting invited are the creators who are very pro Biden and just parroting talking points or sharing photo ops of them smiling with the President. Not the creators who have been critical,” said Kahlil Greene, a history content creator and education advocate in Washington who said he hasn’t been invited to the White House since he criticized the administration over the TikTok ban and the war in Gaza. Annie Wu Henry, a political influencer and digital strategist who has worked on Democratic campaigns, agreed. While the White House once treated creators as independent media, she said, they now seem to be playing favorites. Biden’s team “is trying to say that they’re handling influencers like the press. But the thing is, the press briefing room has to have Fox News no matter what. They have to allow all of the media in,” Henry said. “When it comes to influencers, they only let in people who agree, and anyone who gives even a little bit of pushback is not welcome.” This picking and choosing has had stark consequences for Biden: In the first four months of this year, nearly a quarter of top left-leaning content creators on TikTok have posted anti-Biden content, according to CredoIQ, a social media analytics firm, with those posts collectively amassing over 100 million views. Much of the anti-Biden content is being posted by young, non-White liberals with “shared ideology that the U.S. Government, and specifically Joe Biden, want to stop the flow of free speech and information,” CredoIQ found. “This perceived assault on free speech is enabling anti-Biden sentiment to leap from a smaller demographic of pro-Palestine young progressives” — who are outraged by Biden’s support for Israel as it wages a brutal war in Gaza — “to a potentially market-moving bloc of unenthusiastic young voters that are upset with the TikTok ban.” According to a recent poll conducted by Morning Consult, two-thirds of Gen Z voters — 67 percent — say Biden’s decision to back legislation that could lead to a TikTok ban has made them less likely to vote for him in November. Smaller groups say they have been turned off by the president’s handling of the war in Israel (46 percent) and Biden’s approval of new oil and gas drilling projects on federal land (38 percent). A White House spokesperson said administration officials “continue to have substantive meetings and discussions with creators who hold a variety of viewpoints – including those who disagree with us on important issues.” “This White House has taken historic steps to engage digital creators, and works hard to meet Americans where they are,” the spokesperson said. “… We’ll continue to elevate their voices and utilize a variety of platforms to reach Americans who don’t closely follow traditional news.” Democrats have long struggled to compete with conservatives online. While Trump and other conservatives enjoy the support of a vast cohort of right-wing content creators and platforms, Democrats have tried to recruit influencers to amplify their message. As president, Barack Obama courted Vine stars and sat for interviews on policy initiatives with YouTubers during his second term. During the 2020 campaign, Biden established a partnership team for influencers in July, shortly before the Democratic convention. This time around, the Biden campaign started its influencer outreach earlier and on a broader scale, according to a person familiar with the strategy. Dozens of staffers are focused on courting content creators, and the campaign has partnered with more than 550 of them. It is advertising for a manager position to develop partnerships with meme pages — social media accounts where users post entertaining images and videos — that pays up to $85,000 per year. While some influencers feel unfairly excluded, Biden supporters say the campaign is genuinely struggling to respond to a rapidly evolving media landscape in which some influencers think of themselves as traditional journalists while others are paid for their views. “I think they’re in a political pickle. There’s just not a traditional comms structure for creators,” said pro-Biden political content creator Keith Edwards. “If they were press, this type of [restricted access] would be outrageous, but they’re in this strange space where they occupy media attention, but they’re not traditional press. And I don’t know if anyone knows what the right way is to engage. Is it traditional press outreach? Is it paid [marketing] work? This is something we’re all learning together as the media is quickly shifting.” To help recruit new online supporters, the Biden campaign has contracted Village Marketing, an influencer marketing firm, which began sending outreach emails in April to a slew of popular content creators, according to emails viewed by The Post. “We’re reaching out on behalf of the Biden-Harris campaign team in search of social media supporters for the 2024 election!” said the email, which offered creators the chance to become “an official campaign partner.” Those interested were directed to a portal where they could link their social media accounts and provide access to account metrics like audience data. Village Marketing founder Vickie Segar said many creators are hesitant to post about politics given the contentious online climate and decisions by various platforms to downgrade political content. “We are here to talk it out with any creators who are hesitant [about Biden] and who have questions,” Segar said. “I hope that we have even more people participating as we get closer to the election. We want to get President Biden elected, we agree with his values and policies, and we’re here to support that.” But creators are less eager to sign on to a political campaign in 2024 than they were in 2020. On TikTok, for example, many creators who were relatively new to the industry four years ago and working to build their followings have become powerful multiplatform influencers running profitable media businesses that reach tens of millions of young people. Today, they say they expect more in return for their support.

In 2020, “Gen Z put Biden in office with our voices and with our platforms,” said Hassan Khadair, a content creator in Birmingham, Ala., with 6.3 million followers on TikTok, 2.8 million subscribers on YouTube, a podcast and a robust following across myriad other apps. This time around, Khadair said, “He has to earn that vote. We’re not just going to give it to him because we don’t want Trump to win. We did that once. We’re not doing it twice.” Gen-Z for Change Executive Director Elise Joshi, a content creator and climate activist, said she hosted Zoom calls with hundreds of other young people in 2020 outlining why they should vote for Biden. Now, she said, she and others her age have a host of reasons for feeling betrayed. Back then, Joshi said, she appreciated Biden’s climate policies and how he said he planned to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. Today, Joshi said, Biden is permitting record-breaking oil and gas extraction on public lands while “doubling down on the fossil fuel economy.” Joshi said she and others also are frustrated with Biden’s “mishandling” of the pandemic, which remains “a crisis and we can’t even get masks in health-care settings.” While “combating the pandemic was a focal point of Biden’s campaign in 2020,” she said, “now it doesn’t seem to be a top priority.” Finally, Joshi said many young people are outraged by the administration’s failure to negotiate an end to the Israeli military campaign in Gaza. “The group that rallied people around Biden in 2020 is the same group that built a tool sending over 100 million emails to the government urging a cease-fire,” she said. Joshi said she doesn’t mind being left off guest lists for events like the White House Christmas party for digital content creators. What angers her is the president’s failure to engage with Gen Z influencers’ substantive concerns, she said — though she acknowledged that the White House climate office recently contacted her directly regarding a pause in the approval of new liquefied natural gas projects. “I prefer having a meaty climate strategy conversation with them than to get an invite somewhere,” Joshi said. Alaina Wood, a Gen Z sustainability scientist and content creator, said she also has felt cut off from the Biden administration since becoming more critical of his policies. “As soon as I was like, I’m not going to praise you all the time, I’m not going to be a propaganda piece for you, they stopped talking to me,” she said. Wood and other creators said they are skeptical that Biden’s latest attempts to recruit influencers would make a material difference in Gen Z support for his reelection. “If the comment section of my videos are any indication,” she said, “a lot of people, especially young people, do not want to vote for Biden again.”

I know Trump's word is worth less than dogshit, but hypothetically, he's now the harm reduction candidate when it comes to Ukraine.

Of course the liberals of reddit are hand-wringing about Putin and "tHe FrEe WoRlD"

Good to see people are making the connections between scientific racism, tech moguls, and the effective altruist/longtermism dumbasses.

The French are famously good at protesting – and it looks like they might be staging a more, er, unusual protest in Paris this summer.

Locals are clearly not too pleased about the government’s €1.4 billion scheme to clean up the River Seine for the 2024 Olympics. In fact, the French are so unhappy with this plan that they’re threatening to defecate into the iconic river.

Officials are intending to use the Seine for the Olympics, with triathlon and open-water swimming events planned to take place in the river. However, there are widespread concerns that the river is not safe to swim in due to contaminated water. Recent tests have found that samples of water from the Seine still contain E.coli.

Swimming in the Seine has been illegal since 1923, though it seems things are changing with French President, Emmanuel Macron, and Paris Mayor, Anne Hidalgo, promising to dive in before the Games this summer.

News that their President will be taking a dip in the Seine has prompted the French to devise a plan to protest against what they see as wasteful spending on the cleaning scheme. The #JeChieDansLaSeineLe23Juin hashtag, which translates to ‘I poop in the Seine on June 23’, has been trending on social media. If it goes ahead, protestors plan to defecate in the river before the politicians and Olympians venture in.

It’s fair to say the sentiment of locals towards the upcoming Olympic Games is mixed. Many Parisians are planning to leave the city, and news last year that the Seine’s famous bouquinistes will have to temporarily shut was not well received (though that decision has since been reversed).

Who’d have thought taking a dip in the river could be so dung-erous?

includes a translation of Putin's entire speech from yesterday Jun 14

“Faced with the marvels of machines, which seem to know how to choose independently, we should be very clear that decision-making, even when we are confronted with its sometimes dramatic and urgent aspects, must always be left to the human person,” Francis said.

“We would condemn humanity to a future without hope if we took away people’s ability to make decisions about themselves and their lives, by dooming them to depend on the choices of machines,” he continued.

“We need to ensure and safeguard a space for proper human control over the choices made by artificial intelligence programs: human dignity itself depends on it,” the pontiff added.

He specifically urged the G7 leaders to ban the use of lethal autonomous weapons, arguing that “no machine should ever choose to take the life of a human being.”

“In order for them to be instruments for building up the good and a better tomorrow, they must always be aimed at the good of every human being,” he said.

“It is up to everyone to make good use of [AI], but the onus is on politics to create the conditions for such good use to be possible and fruitful,” Francis said.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines, a nation hit especially hard by the deadly virus.

The clandestine operation has not been previously reported. It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines – China’s Sinovac inoculation.

Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus – Tagalog for China is the virus.

(More on site)

Melanie Ward, CEO of the Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) charity, faces major backlash from volunteers and workers after deciding to run as a Labour Party candidate in Scotland. Some 2,250 healthcare workers, medical volunteers, supporters, and donors signed a letter expressing concern.

On June 5, a protest letter was filed by workers and volunteers at MAP, expressing their dismay to the board over Ward’s candidacy with the UK Labour Party. To run for the position of MP in Scotland’s Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath constituency, Ward has taken a leave of absence but has not stepped down from her position.

Despite Ward’s pledge to make real progress for the Palestinian people if elected to Parliament, MAP is currently without an acting CEO during a healthcare collapse in Gaza. Some fear her actions could jeopardize the aid organization’s efforts on the ground, leading to threats of referring MAP to the Charity Commission.

To make matters worse, Ward has a history of pro-Israel sentiment that many fear is compromising the effort to aid Palestinians:

Ward has a history of affiliations with pro-Israel lobby groups, starting with her first trip to Palestine, organized by the Israeli Embassy-funded Union of Jewish Students (UJS). She blogged about meeting Israeli politicians and visiting settlements but shifted her perspective after a second visit to the West Bank. However, her relationship with UJS continued, including participating in a 2017 UJS panel called “Bridges Not Boycotts,” opposing boycotts of Israel.

In 2017, Ward publicly congratulated Israel lobbyist Danny Stone on receiving a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) award for his work combating antisemitism, which she praised as “excellent.”

Ward also supported the anti-Semitism “witch hunt” during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, which purged much of Labour’s pro-Palestinian base, including many Jewish anti-Zionists. She tweeted, “Farewell to Jeremy Corbyn, who really was a truly terrible Labour Party Leader. He will be missed not one little bit by those of us who want to see Labour in government again.”

In 2016, she signed a letter calling for Corbyn’s resignation, shared an article urging the public not to vote for him and tweeted the former Labour leader in 2015, “Corbyn unable to think of situation where he’d commit Forces to military action. Should think a bit harder if he wants to be PM,” in response to his anti-war stance.

I've always been worried about the leadership behind some of these charities since they take in a ton of money these days and they seem to be based in Western countries. Now my worries have been justified.

Putin goes on to say

”Our proposal is not to freeze the conflict, like how the west wants it, but to end it. I repeat, this is not to freeze the conflict, but for its final completion.”