Global Nuclear Stockpiles on the Rise: SIPRI

Story by Express Defence • 1d • 


Credit: SIPRI© Provided by The Financial Express

The global landscape of nuclear arsenals has seen notable changes in 2024, as revealed by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The latest data indicates a significant increase in nuclear warheads, with China and India making substantial additions to their stockpiles. This development marks a pivotal moment in the global nuclear arms race, highlighting shifts in strategic postures and nuclear deterrence reliance.

China’s Rising Nuclear Readiness

For the first time, China has placed some of its nuclear warheads on high operational alert, pairing them with long-range missiles capable of short-notice strikes. This move represents a major shift in China’s nuclear strategy, signalling an enhanced readiness to respond swiftly to potential threats.

According to the latest report from the arms tracker SIPRI as of January 2024, China’s total nuclear stockpile is estimated at approximately 500 warheads, an increase of around 90 from the previous year. This development underscores China’s ongoing efforts to modernize and expand its nuclear capabilities, aiming to strengthen its position on the global stage.

India’s Growing Arsenal

India has also made strides in expanding its nuclear arsenal. SIPRI’s report reveals that India now possesses 172 nuclear warheads, surpassing Pakistan’s estimated stockpile of 170 for the first time in 25 years. This small yet significant increase highlights India’s commitment to bolstering its nuclear deterrence in a region marked by long-standing rivalries. The report also notes that India, along with Pakistan and North Korea, is advancing its capabilities to deploy multiple warheads on ballistic missiles—a technology already mastered by the US, Russia, UK, France, and now China.

Global Nuclear Arsenal Overview

As of early 2024, nine countries—the United States, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel—collectively possess around 12,121 nuclear weapons. Out of these, an estimated 3,904 warheads are deployed with operational forces, including about 2,100 kept on high operational alert. The bulk of these alert-ready warheads belong to Russia and the United States, but China’s recent actions mark a notable addition to this category.

Despite an overall stability in the size of their respective military stockpiles, both the US and Russia are deeply invested in modernizing their nuclear arsenals. Russia, in particular, has increased its deployed operational warheads by approximately 36 since January 2023. This expansion occurs amid a backdrop of reduced transparency regarding nuclear forces, a trend that has been particularly pronounced since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Regional and Global Implications

The expansion of nuclear capabilities by China and India has significant implications for regional and global security dynamics. In India, the growing nuclear stockpile is seen as a necessary measure in response to regional security challenges and the evolving nuclear landscape.

Earlier this week, Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan underlined the renewed importance of nuclear weapons in contemporary geopolitics during a recent seminar, reflecting on the strategic necessity of maintaining a robust nuclear deterrent.

China’s increased nuclear readiness is likely to influence the strategic calculations of other nuclear-armed states, particularly in the context of US-China relations and regional security in East Asia. The ability to deploy warheads on high operational alert enhances China’s deterrence capabilities, potentially altering the strategic balance in the region.


The 2024 SIPRI report indicates that nuclear arsenals are not only growing but also becoming more operationally ready. This trend raises important questions about the future of global nuclear stability and the potential for arms control agreements to address the evolving landscape.

In France’s rebranded far right, flashes of antisemitism and racism persist

Ahead of French elections, vitriol and innuendo from National Rally candidates amplify doubts about how much the party of Marine Le Pen has truly evolved.


By Anthony Faiola and Annabelle Timsit
June 28, 2024 

PARIS — French nationalist Marine Le Pen has executed one of the most extraordinary political rebrandings in the Western world. She has transformed the fringe neofascist party founded by her father into a mainstream political force with a shot at winning a majority and naming the next prime minister.

But as she and her deputy, Jordan Bardella, stand on the brink of what could be their greatest electoral triumph, innuendo, conspiracies and vitriol from National Rally candidates and supporters are amplifying doubts about how much a movement originally rooted in antisemitism and racism has truly evolved.

One candidate competing in the first round of the legislative assembly elections on Sunday suggested that a rival party was financed by Jews. Another claimed that some civilizations remain “below bestiality in the chain of evolution.” Yet another blamed a bedbug infestation in France on “the massive arrival from all the countries of Africa.” One more regularly pays tribute to the man who led the Nazi collaborators in World War II-era Vichy France.

France is rushing into a snap election with the far right ahead in the polls, followed by a left-wing bloc that some French Jews say harbors antisemites. (Video: Reuters)

French newspaper Libération has been compiling an “endless list” of National Rally candidates who have made or relayed “reprehensible remarks” online. Investigative outlet Mediapart counted 45 problematic profiles identified so far. Under the glare of media scrutiny, some candidates have deleted social media posts. Others appear content to let the record stand

Party leaders did not respond to requests for comment. In only a couple cases has the party taken disciplinary steps.

That may be because, like Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Le Pen’s ability to expand her party’s reach requires a delicate balancing act. While they portray themselves as reformers and reject descriptions of their parties as extreme, they can cater to their hard-line base by giving space and oxygen to the unrepentant extremists in their ranks.

“If you take a look at who votes for them, I wouldn’t say all of them are racist or homophobic, but many of those who are vote for the National Rally,” said Vincent Martigny, a political scientist at the University of Nice.

The limits of Le Pen’s de-demonization project

Marine Le Pen is kissed by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, after she was reelected as National Front Party president on Nov. 30, 2014. Within a year, she booted him out. (Jeff Pachoud/AFP/Getty Images)

Le Pen, 55, is widely credited with “de-demonizing” the movement launched in 1972 by her father, Jean Marie Le Pen, a serial polemicist who called the Nazi gas chambers a “detail” of history, suggested that somebody with AIDS should be treated “like a leper” and warned of a Muslim takeover of France.

Marine Le Pen purged Vichy remnants and Nazi apologists from the party, including booting out her father in 2015. She changed the name from National Front to National Rally in 2018 and set out to convince voters that it was a respectable party, ready to govern.

She has positioned herself as a defender of Israel, especially since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks — while accusing the left of using the Israel-Gaza war as an opportunity to stigmatize Jews. She has stopped talking about leaving the European Union, muffled her admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and dropped a pledge to repeal same-sex marriage.

All the while, she has cultivated her protégé, Bardella, as the new youthful and broadly appealing face of the party.

But shifts in tone and optics have been more dramatic than any shifts in ideology.


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“They have new suits, very nice ties, but it’s still the same ideas in a more proper, more acceptable manner,” Martigny said.

Still at the core of the party’s platform is the notion of “national priority” — that “foreigners should have fewer rights than citizens even when they have equal qualifications,” said Jean-Yves Camus, director of the Observatory of Political Radicalism at the Jean Jaurès Institute. In practice, that means French nationals could have preferential access to public housing and other benefits.

National Rally has sought to woo voters by pledging to reduce fuel taxes and energy bills and protect French farmers. But its populist promises are targeted toward French citizens — in some cases even excluding dual nationals and “French people of foreign origin.”

The party continues to frame immigration as a security threat. Its leaders talk of “drastically reducing legal and illegal immigration and expelling foreign delinquents” as part of an effort to “put France in order.”

“Contrary to the caricature that is given of us, we have no problem with the fact that there may be foreigners in France, the only thing is that we demand that they behave correctly,” Le Pen said to French reporters during a recent campaign stop.

Anti-globalism, too, remains central to the National Rally program. Party leaders have backed off a pledge to pull France out of NATO’s strategic command, but called for limiting the kinds of weapons France sends to Ukraine. Conspiracy theories about Ukraine are regularly shared by National Rally candidates.

The party has benefited from a general shift to the right in Europe, especially on immigration. Positions that were once extreme are now in line with the thinking of a substantial portion of the electorate.

At the same time, in many parts of Europe, taboos have been falling away. Austria’s resurgent Freedom Party flirted with the center before once again committing itself to overt dog whistles and political references that hark back to the 1930s. Its chairman, Herbert Kickl, has repeatedly campaigned as the nation’s future “Volkskanzler,” or people’s chancellor — a former title of Adolf Hitler’s considered a loaded word in German.

Few people fear a return of warmongering dictators in the heart of Europe. But there is concern about the spread of illiberal states like Viktor Orban’s Hungary, where the rule of law, political opposition, freedom of expression and foreign nonprofits have come under fire, while ties with Russia and China have been cultivated.

“I don’t trust [National Rally] to be democratic in the traditional, classic sense of the term,” said Dominique Moïsi, a noted French political scientist.

The unrepentant voices in the movement

Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella have said little about cases of apparent antisemitism and racism among their party's candidates and supporters. (Francois Lo Presti/AFP/Getty Images)

Glimmers of racism and antisemitism from National Rally candidates and supporters can bolster the impression that the movement has changed less than its leaders say.

There are more extreme voices in France than Le Pen’s. Yet, like Trumpism, LePénisme remains a safe harbor for anti-vaccine advocates, climate-change skeptics and Putin admirers. And as seen through social media posts and telling asides — as well as through homophobic attacks and racist tirades allegedly committed by Le Pen supporters — National Rally still provides a welcome home for vitriolic thought.

Marie-Christine Sorin, a National Rally candidate in southwestern France, posted on X in January that “not all civilizations are equal” and that some “have remained below bestiality in the chain of evolution.” She deleted the post after French newspaper Libération inquired about it, but defended the sentiment in a radio interview, saying she had been critiquing the treatment of women in Iran.

Sophie Dumont, a National Rally candidate in northeastern France, was spotlighted by Libération for a post implying that Jewish financing was behind Reconquest, a rival far-right party led by Eric Zemmour, who is Jewish. Zemmour’s adviser had said that the ritual slaughter of animals to make kosher and halal meat should not be banned in France. “The small gesture that betrays the origin of the funds that fuel Reconquest,” Dumont wrote in a now deleted comment.

Agnès Pageard, a National Rally candidate in Paris, has advocated for abolishing a law that makes it illegal to question the Holocaust and another that bans “incitement to hatred” against religious or racial groups. She responded to a social media post that alleged “collusion” among prominent Jewish people in France by recommending “reread Coston and Ratier” — two authors known for their antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Asked about seemingly antisemitic comments from candidates running in this election, National Rally frontman Bardella told French media that the process of selecting candidates for the surprise elections had necessarily been rushed, with “dozens, even hundreds of investitures … made in a few hours.” Never mind that some of the same candidates had run under the National Rally banner in past elections, too.

The notion that historically extreme parties have expelled their radical elements has helped their leaders gain global acceptance. Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party boasts a tricolor flame in its logo evoking a now-defunct movement made up of the political remnants of Benito Mussolini’s fascists. But Meloni has fiercely rejected the fascist label. At this month’s Group of Seven summit in southern Italy, where she was warmly greeted by world leaders including President Biden, she bristled at suggestions that her government and party were anything other than traditional conservatives.

While that summit was ongoing, Italy was rocked by the emergence of secret footage taken by a journalist who had infiltrated a Rome branch of the youth wing of Meloni’s party. “We’re Mussolini’s legionaries, and we’re not scared of death,” the group was filmed chanting. The footage contained other fascist songs and slogans, with members at one point shown giving the Roman salute while yelling “Sieg Heil!”

In a response to lawmakers, Meloni’s minister for parliamentary relations, Luca Ciriani, did not deny the acts occurred, nor did he condemn them. Rather, he described the footage as “decontextualized” images of “minors” that had been unfairly published without prior consent. It wasn’t until further revelations this week that senior party officials condemned the acts and called for swift punishment. Several involved youth league members also resigned.

After weeks of silence and mounting pressure, Meloni finally responded to the controversy late Thursday, calling racism and antisemitism “incompatible” with her party, while also criticizing the journalists involved in the secret report.

“We’re talking about an ongoing and deliberate apology of fascism,” said Matteo Orfini, an outraged lawmaker from the opposition Democratic Party.

In France, a different video sparked a scandal last week. A public broadcaster documented insults hurled at a Black woman, Divine Kinkela, by National Rally supporter neighbors in a town south of Paris. In released footage, one of the neighbors is heard saying that Kinkela should go to the “doghouse” and that they had left public housing “because of people like you.”

When asked about the report by news outlet La Voix du Nord, Le Pen said the neighbor’s invective was not racist.

Kate Brady in Berlin and Stefano Pitrelli in Rome contributed to this report.


By Anthony FaiolaAnthony Faiola is Rome Bureau Chief for The Washington Post. Since joining the paper in 1994, he has served as bureau chief in Miami, Berlin, London, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and New York and additionally worked as roving correspondent at large. Twitter

By Annabelle TimsitAnnabelle Timsit is a breaking news reporter for The Washington Post's London hub, covering news as it unfolds in the United States and around the world during the early morning hours in Washington. Twitter

France’s far right is on the brink of power. Blame its centrist president.

How Emmanuel Macron accidentally helped the far right normalize itself.


by Zack Beauchamp

Jun 28, 2024

Campaign posters featuring Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron on display in Montpellier during the 2022 presidential election. Pascal Guyot/AFP

This Sunday, French voters will cast their ballots in the first round of the country’s parliamentary election — one that President Emmanuel Macron called as a surprise after the far-right National Rally (RN) won big in the European parliamentary elections earlier this month. The French polls suggest that the RN will also win big on Sunday and in the second round of voting that follows a week later — gaining either a plurality of seats or perhaps even an outright majority.

While the final results may not be known for more than a week, the stakes are quite clear and quite high. In the French system, presidents depend on parliamentary majorities for major domestic policy-making; without a majority, Macron will be fairly impotent at home. If the RN has an outright majority, it can start passing parts of its far-right agenda, and Macron will have only limited tools to stop them.

On one level, this isn’t surprising. The RN’s long-time leader, Marine Le Pen, has been Macron’s chief rival in the past two presidential elections. It’s clear that her party has emerged as the leading alternative to Macron’s centrism; few observers are surprised that his decision to call this parliamentary election early is likely to lead to RN gains. A deeply unpopular president causing voters to turn to the opposition: In some ways this is just democracy as usual.

But on another level, the RN’s rise should be truly shocking.

Not so long ago, the party’s extremism made it anathema to nearly everyone in France. When Le Pen’s father and the party’s founder Jean-Marie made it to the second round of the presidential election in 2002, nearly the entire country rallied against him and his party (then called the National Front, or FN). He lost in a landslide 82–18 defeat, the worst showing of any presidential candidate since 1958.

Even after years of Marine Le Pen softening the RN’s image, its policy agenda remains nearly as radical as it was then. The RN’s signature policy is to enact a “national priority” law formally discriminating against immigrants in housing, hiring, and public benefits.

The real story of the 2024 election is not that voters are turning against Macron, but how the far right came to be seen as a palatable alternative.

It’s a rise fueled in large part by the RN’s canny political strategy, an extreme party doing a brilliant job of making itself seem reasonable to voters outside its base. But it’s also been fueled by the hubris and missteps of Macron, who seems motivated by a false sense that the RN was so toxic that he would inevitably triumph in a forced binary choice, just as his predecessor did in 2002.

These two forces have worked in tandem to turn the RN into the de facto leader of the opposition to an unpopular president. And now, France — like other democracies around the world — is reaping the whirlwind.

How France’s extreme right mainstreamed itself

The rise of the RN can best be understood as a kind of double normalization, with each generation of Le Pens playing a distinct but crucial role.

After World War II, the European far right appeared to be a spent force. No political movement could hope to win national elections promising a Third Reich redux; those that tried found no success.

French politics immediately after the war — the Fourth Republic period — was tumultuous. After a military revolt in 1958, World War II hero Charles de Gaulle took power and ushered in a new constitution. The Fifth Republic remains the system under which France operates today. After De Gaulle left power in 1969, French elections evolved into relatively stable contests between center-right and center-left blocs.

Jean-Marie Le Pen was the first to develop a credible far-right alternative.

Recognizing that the Nazis had rendered dictatorship and race hatred beyond the pale, Le Pen refocused the far right on contesting elections by attacking immigration. The argument wasn’t (primarily) that minorities were biologically inferior, just that France is under no obligation to admit culturally distinct foreigners and treat them as equals. After he founded the National Front for French Unity (FN) in 1972, the party adopted the slogan “France is for the French.”

Le Pen paired this xenophobia with extreme nationalism. He was a veteran of France’s failed wars to keep colonies in Vietnam and Algeria; in one contemporary interview, he seemingly confessed to personally torturing Algerian detainees (a charge he later denied). As a politician, Le Pen defended French imperialism and railed against its diminished glory in a post-colonial era. Immigration, for Le Pen, was a kind of “reverse colonization” in which France’s former subjects were destroying its identity from within.

Because the FN was never an outright fascist party, it could put itself forward as something distinct from Europe’s discredited Hitlerite past. This “reputational shield,” as scholars term it, helped it make inroads into French politics in ways that neo-Nazis never could. In 1984, just 12 years after its founding, the FN managed to win 11 percent of the national vote in a European Parliament election. It soon became a model for far-right parties across the continent, which rapidly began outperforming neo-Nazi rivals.

Nonetheless, the FN had a clear ceiling, and Le Pen himself was a big part of the problem. The party’s founder has always had a habit of rhetorical bomb-throwing that kept it from making further inroads with the broader public.

He has repeatedly engaged in Nazi apologia, calling the Holocaust a “detail” of history and saying that “in France, at least, the German occupation was not particularly inhuman.” In a 2006 interview, he said that “you can’t dispute the inequality of the races” because “blacks are much better than whites at running, but whites are better at swimming.” In his 2018 memoir, he defended French citizens who volunteered for the German SS during World War II.

“I — like millions of other French people — grew up with the image of Le Pen as a snarling bigot with an underbite, a political bogeyman who tidily gathered up all the ugliness of France’s recent history,” journalist Nick Vinocur writes in Politico.

When Jean-Marie’s daughter Marine took over the FN in 2011, she was initially perceived in much the same way. But the younger Le Pen proved a cannier operator, not only realizing that her party needed an image makeover but successfully delivering on it.

France's far-right political party Front National founder and honorary president Jean-Marie Le Pen gestures onstage as FN's president Marine Le Pen looks on, in Paris France, May 1, 2015. Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images

Much of this was about language. As Vinocur reports, she shifted the party’s demagoguery away from direct attacks on Muslims and Arabs and toward dog-whistles about cultural change and terrorism.

She would occasionally discipline party members who crossed her lines — including, most notably, her father. In 2015, when Jean-Marie once again got into trouble over comments about Jews and the Holocaust, Le Pen did the unthinkable: She expelled her father from the party he founded. He should “no longer be able to speak in the name of the National Front,” she said at the time.

In 2018, following a decisive presidential defeat, she changed the party’s name from National Front to National Rally. While seemingly minor, the move helped distance the party from her father’s relatively toxic brand and establish Le Pen’s independence as a political figure.

In the current election, she has tried to elevate candidates — most notably, 28-year-old party leader and proposed prime minister Jordan Bardella — who come across as normal, suit-wearing politicians rather than bombastic confessed torturers.

Don’t be fooled. Experts on French politics say that Le Pen’s moderation is primarily symbolic. While she has sanded off the RN’s rough edges, she also has maintained the far-right policy core — most notably, the “national priority” system mandating discrimination against immigrants in public goods — that helped make her father’s party so toxic in the first place. During the current campaign, Bardella vowed to ban dual nationals from holding government jobs.

“From [a policy lens], there’s very little difference between what Marine Le Pen is running with and what Jean-Marie was defending,” says Marta Lorimer, a Cardiff University expert on French politics.

Together, in short, the Le Pens accomplished one of the most successful political rebrandings in modern history. They created a party rooted in thinly veiled bigotry and, without significant policy compromise, turned it into something that the median French voter might actually consider supporting.

Macron’s (implicit) deal with the devil

The RN’s recent success is not merely a story of Marine Le Pen’s political skills. Like most European far-right parties, it benefited hugely from the 2015 refugee crisis, which turned its signature issue of immigration into the issue across the continent.

Le Pen also benefited from the rise of Emmanuel Macron, a self-proclaimed “radical centrist” who shattered the foundations of France’s party system. In doing so, he created the perfect conditions for Le Pen’s rebranding to succeed.

The traditionally dominant factions of the center right and center left, today called the Republican and Socialist parties, saw themselves as rivals with a shared responsibility: guarding the republic from extremist forces that would harm it. They agreed never to share power with the FN/RN, an agreement referred to as “the republican front” or “cordon sanitaire.”

Macron broke the two-party system. In 2016, he quit his position as finance minister under a Socialist president to run for president at the head of a party he just founded, now called Renaissance. At the time, this may have seemed like an act of extreme hubris. But Macron proved far more popular than either of his mainstream rivals, and he won the most voters in the first round of France’s 2017 election. He faced Marine Le Pen in the head-to-head second round and crushed her.

After winning power, Macron made two moves that would serve his short-term political interests but end up paving the way for the RN’s rise in the long run.

First, Macron built his new party as a kind of centrist empire, one designed to occupy the entirety of the territory between radical right and extreme left. Containing both former Socialists and Republicans, its rise sapped the vitality from the already-weakened established parties.

Their decline should, in theory, have left Macron and Renaissance the only serious choice for most French voters. Certainly that was Macron’s theory.

No politician, even one as “Jupiterian” as Macron, can maintain a personal majority forever. Macron has become deeply unpopular, with a mere 26 percent of French voters approving of his current performance. It’s easy to blame specific policies, like his pension reform and failed gas tax, but it also might be plain old exhaustion. Around the world, incumbents are unpopular, and Macron has been in office for seven years.

So if French voters want to vote against Macron, who should they turn to? The center right is a shadow of itself. The center left has been forced into an unwieldy “new popular front” alliance with the polarizing and unstable extreme left, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. There’s a smaller extreme-right party, led by comedian Eric Zemmour, but he’s even more radical than Le Pen.

That leaves only one non-Macron option with a proven electoral track record: the RN.

“There’s only two options for voters,” says Florence Faucher, a professor of political science at France’s Sciences Po research center. “At some point, people are going to want change from the majority of Macron.”

But Macron didn’t just demolish the other centrist parties. He actually aided Le Pen’s strategy of normalizing her party by tacking to the right on immigration. “It’s not so much that the National Rally has moderated [on immigration] than that the entire political system has radicalized,” says Lorimer.

French President Emmanuel Macron at a press conference after the end of the two-day European Council and Euro Summit in Brussels, Belgium, on October 27, 2023. Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Macron has, for example, said that “Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world” and banned some traditional Muslim clothing in schools. (Roughly 6 million people in France practice Islam or come from a Muslim background.) Last year, he had Parliament pass an immigration bill so draconian that Le Pen hailed it as “an ideological victory” for her party.

She was more correct than it seems. Some research on European politics suggests that when parties in the center take right-wing positions, they don’t actually win over that party’s supporters. Instead, they end up normalizing far-right discourse on the topic: helping people on the fence think it must not be so weird to rail against Islam if self-proclaimed centrists are doing it and that maybe they can consider voting for the far right without being a bad person.

That appears to be how Macron’s strategy has worked out in France. His attempt to take out Le Pen’s signature issue has only made her seem more reasonable, all without persuading her base to defect to the center.

“All the attempts to co-opt the far right have aided the process of normalization,” says Art Goldhammer, an expert on France at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies. “The slogan in France is that people prefer the original to the copy.”

It wasn’t Macron’s intent to usher in an RN-led Parliament. His actions betray a belief that the RN would always have a ceiling; that, when push comes to shove, the French people would always choose his moderation over Le Pen’s extremism when presented with a binary choice.

This strategy has long worked in modern France, but Macron appears to have finally found its limits. The same arrogance that powered Macron’s 2017 presidential bid has now brought France to the brink of a Parliament dominated by radicals.

Zack Beauchamp is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers ideology and challenges to democracy, both at home and abroad. His book on democracy, The Reactionary Spirit, will publish in July and is currently available for pre-order.

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In break with its past, French far-right now supports Israel

FASCIST SOLIDARITY

From founder who described Gaza as 'concentration camp' to current leader, who blasts Palestine recognition, National Rally over the years changed rhetoric

Esra Taskin |28.06.2024

TRT/ AA

French far right leader Marine Le Pen holds a press conference in Paris


ANKARA

In a break with its past, and with fresh legislative elections set for this weekend, France’s far right is now supporting Israel rather than being critical of it.

After being anti-Israel in its early years, the far-right party National Rally (RN), now under Marine Le Pen, who took the party helm in 2011, has changed its position radically.

The party won more than 30% of the vote in the June 9 European Parliament elections, a blow that led French President Emmanuel Macron to acknowledge his centrist bloc’s defeat, dissolve parliament, and announce snap elections, set to begin on Sunday and conclude a week later.

The announcement jolted France across the political spectrum.

The Israeli offensive on Gaza, which has claimed over 37,000 lives since last October, and the recognition of Palestinian statehood were among the top issues for the parties in this context.

Since its founding in 1972, the National Rally has been accused of using antisemitic language, and Marine Le Pen’s father, the party’s founding leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, was known for his criticism of Israeli attacks on Palestinians.

The elder politician went so far as to describe the Gaza Strip as a “concentration camp where people are deprived the chance to defend themselves” – an assessment many modern critics of Israel would tend to agree with.

In contrast, however, Marine Le Pen, argues that the National Rally has been in favor of the creation of a Jewish state throughout its history, calling it a longtime Zionist party.

Last November, weeks into what would become Israel’s months-long attack on the Gaza Strip, Marine Le Pen and current National Rally President Jordan Bardella joined pro-Israeli protests despite criticism.

Presenting his party’s government plan ahead of the snap polls, Bardella on June 24 said: “Recognizing Palestine now would be recognizing terrorism.”

Macron, for his part, previously said several times that recognizing Palestine was not a “taboo,” but it should be done at the right time.

In contrast, the New Popular Front, the alliance of France’s left-wing parties, vowed, in its government plan, to recognize Palestine immediately after taking office.

France's far-right surge risks muddling Paris Olympics message

Agence France-Presse
June 28, 2024 

Marine Le Pen (AFP Photo/Martin Bureau)

When the Olympics roll into Paris next month, the country could have a far-right government, risking seriously muddling the message around openness and diversity that organizers have been pushing for years.

France goes to the polls this Sunday for the first of two rounds of voting for a new National Assembly in snap elections called by President Emmanuel Macron earlier this month.

Polls show the far-right National Rally leading, although experts say it is too early to know how many seats they will win in the 577-member lower house and whether they will be enough to form a government.

But the prospect of the far-right taking power, once considered near-impossible, is being taken seriously by almost everyone -- with huge potential consequences for the image of the 2024 Paris Games.

"This event wants to be open, wants to be a stage for the whole world, to show Paris as a welcoming place," said sports historian Yves Gastaut, a co-curator of the "Olympism, a history of the world" exhibition on display in Paris.

"How does it work with an ideology in power that is an ideology based on the idea of rejection and the idea of fear of others?" he added.

The National Rally led by Marine Le Pen has expanded its popularity with an agenda that calls for massive curbs on immigration, French-first policies for public services, and a ban on Muslim headscarves in public.

- Diversity -

The marketing of the Paris Games has echoed the ideals of the Olympic movement, which was founded to promote peace and international cooperation -- in opposition to the surging nationalism of late 19th-century Europe.


Celebrating multi-cultural "diversity" is a more modern addition, which was underlined last weekend by International Olympic Committee head Thomas Bach as he inaugurated the official Paris 2024 Olympics sculpture.

Placed close to the Champs-Elysees avenue, the artwork is a larger-than-life bronze of a seated black woman, surrounded by chairs from across the world.

The official Paris Olympics sculpture by American artist Alison Sarr celebrates 'diversity' 

© JULIEN DE ROSA / AFP/File


The work by American sculptor Alison Saar was "an invitation to take a seat and reflect on the beauty of the diversity of humankind," Bach said, while refusing to comment directly on French politics.

The official Paris Games slogan is "Games Wide Open", while the spectacular opening ceremony being planned on the river Seine on July 26 is set to showcase traditional French culture alongside modern influences rooted in immigration.

When rumors began circulating in March that Mali-born and Paris-raised R&B superstar Aya Nakamura was going to perform, Le Pen was one of the most virulent critics.


An appearance by Nakamura, who mixes French with Arabic and Malian slang, would "humiliate" the country, Le Pen suggested, taking aim at her supposed "vulgarity" and "the fact that she doesn't sing in French."

- Spoiled party? -

Organizers of the Paris Games were blindsided like the rest of country by Macron's early election call so close to the start of the sport.

The head of the Paris organizing committee, Tony Estanguet, has been careful to avoid being drawn into the campaign.

"We aren't completely naive, we know what's happening in our country and in the world," he told French radio on Thursday. "We see the tensions, situations that are a bit worrying. Let's fight to make the Olympics a space for peace, sharing, emotions and a party."

Paris' Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo has sounded more pessimistic.

Macron has risked "spoiling the party", she said this week, adding that she would refuse to stand in any photographs with Le Pen's prime ministerial candidate, Jordan Bardella, if he took power.

Bardella has sought to reassure observers by saying he would not interfere with the organization of the Games.

"This event must be a triumph for the nation," he write on X, formerly Twitter, on June 14.

Gastaut, the historian, said the Olympics often ended up being defined by the events of their time, with the last edition in Tokyo held during the Covid pandemic, for instance.

"Every Olympiad starts with its pre-conceived ideas, you might say its foundational values, and then things happen during it, which give it another image that was not expected beforehand," he told AFP.

CRIMINAL CYBER CAPITALI$M

Indonesia arrests over 100 Taiwanese for alleged cyber fraud

By

 AFP

Indonesian police have arrested more than 100 Taiwanese at a villa in Bali over alleged cyber fraud, authorities said Friday.

The proliferation of cyber fraud groups in Southeast Asia has become a growing concern in recent years, and authorities in countries including China, Indonesia and Malaysia have stepped up efforts to stop them.

Bali immigration authorities said that after a tip-off from Indonesian police, they raided the villa in Tabanan Regency on Wednesday, where the group of 12 women and 91 men was found with hundreds of mobile phones and other electronic devices.

They were accused of abusing immigration permits and conducting online scams targeting Malaysians, said Indonesian immigration official Safar Muhammad Godam.

He added that officials could not charge them because the alleged crimes fell outside their jurisdiction, but were “closely working together” with related authorities, including those in Malaysia.

“Their activities target individuals outside the country, making it very difficult to meet the elements of a criminal offence in such cases,” Godam said in a press conference.

“They are subject to administrative immigration actions. In the near future, we will proceed with deporting all of the 103 foreign nationals.”

They are currently being held at an immigration detention centre in Bali for further questioning, he added.

Indonesia, with tip-offs from Chinese authorities, has previously confronted international cyber fraud networks targeting victims in China.

In 2018, Bali Police arrested 103 Chinese nationals, along with 11 Indonesians allegedly working for them, for running a multi-million-dollar cyber fraud syndicate that targeted wealthy businessmen and politicians in China.

This came a year after the deportation of 153 Chinese nationals involved in a network accused of fraudulently impersonating Chinese police or law officials, making around six trillion rupiah ($365.5 million) since launching operations in late 2016.

Kenya braces for fresh protests despite president's tax climbdown

Police erect roadblocks on road to presidential palace

BY REUTERS - 28 June 2024 -

Police officers detain a man during a demonstration over Kenya's proposed finance bill.
Image: Monicah Mwangi

Nairobi — Protesters took to the streets again in cities across Kenya yesterday, many calling for President William Ruto to resign, even after he bowed to their demands to withdraw a tax hike bill.

Kenyan police put up roadblocks on streets leading to the presidential palace as some protesters vowed to “occupy State House”, despite the president's climbdown on proposed tax hikes that sparked a week of demonstrations.

It was not clear how far protesters would be mollified by President William Ruto's Wednesday decision to withdraw the finance bill, a day after clashes killed at least 23 people and parliament was briefly stormed and set alight.

Ruto is grappling with the most serious crisis of his two-year-old presidency as the youth-led protest movement has grown rapidly from online condemnations of the tax hikes into mass rallies demanding a political overhaul.

Lacking a formal leadership structure, however, protest supporters were divided on how far to carry the demonstrations.

“Let's not be foolish as we fight for a better Kenya,” Boniface Mwangi, a prominent social justice activist, said in an Instagram post.

He voiced support for demonstrations yesterday but opposed calls to invade State House, the president's formal offices and residence, a move that he said could spur more violence and be used to justify a crackdown.

A demonstrator throws back a teargas grenade as people attend a demonstration against Kenya's proposed finance bill 2024/2025 in Nairobi, Kenya.
Image: Reuters/Monicah Mwangi

In Nairobi, police and soldiers patrolled the streets yesterday and blocked access to the State House.

Police fired teargas to disperse several dozen people who had gathered in the centre of the city, though the crowds were nowhere near the size of those in Tuesday's mass protests.

Reuters reporters saw army vehicles on the streets after the government deployed the military to help police.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in Mombasa and in Kisumu, local television footage showed, though those gatherings appeared peaceful.

While some protest supporters said they would not demonstrate yesterday as the finance bill had been scrapped, others pledged to press on, saying only Ruto's resignation would satisfy them.

“Right now is not about just the finance bill, but about #RutoMustGo,” political activist and protester Davis Tafari said in a text message. “We have to make sure that Ruto and his MPs have resigned and fresh elections are held ... We occupy State House for dignity and justice.”

Eli Owuor, 34, from Kibera, an informal settlement and a traditional hotbed of protests, also said he was prepared to join a push on to the State House.

“We may just need to visit Zakayo today in his house to prove that after parliament we can occupy State House,” he said, using a nickname protesters have given to Ruto that references a biblical tax collector viewed as corrupt.

On Wednesday, Ruto defended his push to raise taxes on items such as bread, cooking oil and diapers, saying it was justified by the need to cut Kenya's high debt, which has made borrowing difficult and squeezed the currency.

But he acknowledged that the public had overwhelmingly rejected the finance bill. He said he would now start a dialogue with Kenyan youth and work on austerity measures, beginning with cuts to the budget of the presidency.

Kenya's president says tax protests 'hijacked' after they turn violent

In chaotic scenes in the capital Nairobi, protesters overwhelmed police and chased them away in an attempt to enter the parliament compound, with ...

NEWS

2 days ago

The International Monetary Fund, which has been urging the government to cut its deficit to obtain more funding, said it was closely monitoring the situation in Kenya.

“We are deeply concerned about the tragic events in Kenya in recent days,” the IMF said in a statement. “Our main goal in supporting Kenya is to help it overcome the difficult economic challenges it faces and improve its economic prospects and the wellbeing of its people.”

Ratings agency Moody's said the shift in focus to cutting spending rather than boosting revenue will complicate the disbursement of future IMF funding and slow the pace of fiscal consolidation.

Analysts at JPMorgan said they had maintained their forecasts for a deficit of 4.5% of GDP in 2024/2025 financial year, but acknowledged the government and IMF targets could be revised in light of recent developments.

They said the Central Bank of Kenya was unlikely to begin cutting rates until the final quarter of this year.

Unlike previous demonstrations in Kenya called by political figures and often mobilised on the basis of ethnicity, the current protests have appealed broadly to those weary of rising living costs and endemic corruption.

From big cities to rural areas, most of Kenya's 47 counties saw protests on Tuesday, even in Ruto's hometown of Eldoret in his ethnic Kalenjin heartland.

At least 23 people were killed nationwide and 30 were being treated for bullet wounds, the Kenya Medical Association said. Medical officials in Nairobi said scores were injured. — Reuters

What's next after Kenya withdraws finance bill amid protests?

Kenyan protesters vowed on Thursday to keep up their demonstrations against President William Ruto's government despite his pledge to withdraw ...

NEWS

21 hours ago

RIP

Worker, 21, dies in umpteenth workplace accident in Italy

Spate of accidental workplace fatalities continues

ROME, 28 June 2024
ANSA English Desk

- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

A21-year-old construction worker died Friday in the umpteenth recent workplace accident in Italy.

The young man died while at work in a shed of a construction company producing concrete products in Canicattì, in the Agrigento area.

According to an initial reconstruction, he was run over by a forklift truck he was manoeuvring.

He was one of several recent workplace accidental fatalities - two on Tuesday alone.
Almost 500 people have been killed in work accidents in Italy so far this year, the national observatory on the phenomenon said last Friday.

There were about 1,000 last year, it said.

Five men died after inhaling toxic gas in a sewer network near Palermo last month, and seven died in a hydro power plant blast near Bologna in April.

Eight workers were injured, five critically, in an explosion at an aluminum plant in Bolzano last week.

One has since died of his injuries while others are said to be still fighting for their lives from their critical burns.

Two more workplace accidents in Italy

One run over by forklift in Sicily, other falls into Adda River

ROME, 28 June 2024
ANSA English Desk



- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Friday saw two more workplace accidents in Italy in a spate of job fatalities that union UIL said kills more people than the mafia.
A 21-year-old construction worker died in Sicily while another worker fell to his death from a motorway maintenance site into the northern Italian Adda River.
The young man in Sicily died while at work in a shed of a construction company producing concrete products in Canicattì, in the Agrigento area.
According to an initial reconstruction, he was run over by a forklift truck he was manoeuvring.
He was one of several recent workplace accidental fatalities - two on Tuesday alone.
Almost 500 people have been killed in work accidents in Italy so far this year, the national observatory on the phenomenon said last Friday.
There were about 1,000 last year, it said.
Five men died after inhaling toxic gas in a sewer network near Palermo last month, and seven died in a hydro power plant blast near Bologna in April.
Eight workers were injured, five critically, in an explosion at an aluminum plant in Bolzano last week.
One has since died of his injuries while others are said to be still fighting for their lives from their critical burns.

US 'deeply concerned' by Hungary's probe

 into anti-corruption watchdogs

28 June 2024 - 

BY ANITA KOMUVES

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, in power since 2010

 and with a two-thirds majority in parliament that allows his 

Fidesz party to change any legislation, has denied accusations 

he was undermining democracy in Hungary after the law passed.
Image: REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

The US criticised Hungary's new sovereignty law as being anti-democratic after the Sovereignty Protection Office launched an investigation into two anti-corruption watchdogs

The law, which was passed in December 2023, bans foreign financing for parties or groups running for election and carries a punishment of up to three years in prison. The law also set up an office to monitor risks of political interference.

The Sovereignty Protection Office launched an investigation on Tuesday into the Hungarian branch of the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI) and an online investigative outlet, Atlatszo.hu that focuses on corruption.

A statement by the US state department said that it was “deeply concerned” by the investigations and called them “draconian actions.”

“The Hungarian government’s attempt to harass, intimidate, and punish independent organisations runs counter to the principles of democratic governance rooted in the rule of law,” the statement said.

“This law places no limit on this entity’s ability to target the human rights and fundamental freedoms of its own citizens and puts at risk any country, business entity, or individual that chooses to engage with them,” they added.

The law had been criticised by the US State Department, as well as by a panel of constitutional law experts from the Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog, which said it could have “a chilling effect” on free and democratic debate in Hungary.

The European Commission launched an infringement procedure over the law in February this year, citing its potential to undermine the union's democratic values and fundamental rights.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, in power since 2010 and with a two-thirds majority in parliament that allows his Fidesz party to change any legislation, has denied accusations he was undermining democracy in Hungary after the law passed.

Reuters

Orban working on setting up new faction of CEE parties

 Slovakia's Smer led by Robert Fico (left) could potentially be a                                               member of the new faction led by Viktor Orban (right). / bne IntelliNews

Feedly

By Tamas Csonka in Budapest June 28, 2024

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is trying to create a Central Europe based populist grouping in the European Parliament, though it is unclear whether he will be able to attract enough MEPs to form a formal group with all the attendant privilieges.

Orban – who has been in power since 2010, making him currently the bloc's most longstanding PM –  sees himself as the leader of the radical rightwing parties in Europe and has tried to unite the right's fractious parties to confront the centrist groups that dominate the bloc.  He has also urged the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) – which moved to expel his Fidesz party in 2022 – to look right rather than left to form alliances in the new parliament following last month's bloc-wide elections.

However, the EPP has maintained its alliance with the Socialists and Democrats and the liberal Reform Europe grouping. At the same time the main rightwing groups, the radical rightwing European Conservatives and Democrats (ECR) led by Georgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy, and Marine Le Pen's far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group remain apart, divided over their stance towards Moscow.

The Hungarian strongman is now looking to form his own grouping after being disappointed in his approach to join the ECR, which has leapfrogged the Renew Europe group to become the third largest in the parliament.

The ECR, which is dominated by Italy's Brothers of Italy and Poland's Law and Justice, has taken Ukraine's side in its war against Russia, and was therefore wary of admitting the Kremlin-supporting Fidesz. The ECR has chosen to admit Romania's AUR instead, which Orban has rejected as "anti-Hungarian".

Instead Orban is now looking to unite right-wing parties from Central and Eastern Europe, including Hungary's Fidesz, Poland's former ruling party Law and Justice (PiS), former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis's ANO party, which recently left Renew Europe, and former Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa's Slovenian Democrats. The alliance could also include Slovakia's ostensibly leftwing SMER of Prime Minister Robert Fico, which was suspended from the Socialists and Democrats group after forming a governing coalition with the far-right Slovak Nationalist Party after last September's general election.

Balazs Orban, namesake and political advisor of Orban, confirmed to independent 444.hu website that efforts are underway to create a new Central and Eastern European patriot party alliance in the European Parliament after the ruling Fidesz party looks unlikely to join the ECR. Nevertheless, Balazs Orbán noted that Hungary's goal remains unchanged, which is to unite right-wing forces in the European Parliament.

PiS, led by former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, had signalled that there is an equal chance of leaving the ECR and joining the new alliance, though it now appears to have reached a deal over party posts with Meloni's Brothers of Italy and therefore will not leave the ECR.

Smer may also prefer to make a final attempt to rejoin the Socialist and Democracy grouping.

It is also unclear whether all of the mentioned parties would want to in effect put themselves under Orban's leadership, given the traditional national rivalries in the region.

This will make it difficult for the group to be formed. Forming a faction in the EP requires 23 representatives from at least seven different countries. PiS, with 20 mandates, would have been the biggest member of the alliance, while Fidesz will have 11 mandates.

An official announcement regarding the new alliance is expected soon, as time is running out, with the July 4 deadline to submit requests for new factions approaching.

Meanwhile, Germany's AfD and Hungary's Our Homeland are working on forming an extreme-right group, potentially leading to four radical and far right-wing groups in the European Parliament, 444.hu adds. Such a group could include Poland's Konfederacija.

However, AfD is also reportedly in two minds over joining with a ragbag of other extreme far-right MEPs, and may try to gain readmittance to the ID group after its recent expulsion.