Marcel Mpumbu

France is on the eve of voting one of the most shameful laws in its history: it would effectively outlaw criticism of Israel and criminalize any speech seen as even remotely sympathetic to whoever the French government chooses to designate a "terrorist group." In effect this law would turn France's foreign policy into unchallengeable dogma backed by prison time. You could literally be sent for 5 years in prison if you, for instance, call what France says are "terrorists" a "resistance group." Think for instance Nelson Mandela during the apartheid (the ANC was on every Western terrorist list) or, heck, France's own Résistance against Nazi Germany - designated as "terrorists" by the Vichy regime and the Nazi occupation. It's frankly absolutely insane. The new law is called "loi Yadan" after its author Caroline Yadan, a MP who represents French expatriates living in Israel. The U.S. has congressmen paid by AIPAC: France has cut out the middleman entirely, we have MPs whose constituency is literally in Israel. The law has already passed committee and heads to a full parliamentary vote on April 16th - 3 days from now - under a very unusual fast-track procedure. Seven of eleven parliamentary groups have said they'll vote yes and the law is expected to pass. What does the law say? Let me quote from it directly (full text here: assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/textes/…): 1) Article 1 introduces the concept of "implicit" provocation to terrorism and punishes it with five years imprisonment and a fine of €75,000 That's the one I was speaking about. Under this provision, describing anyone France designates as terrorist as a "resistance movement" - the way France describes its own Résistance against Nazi occupation - could effectively become a crime. The key concept is what does "implicit provocation to terrorism" mean? Nobody knows. And that's the point. It means whatever a prosecutor wants it to mean: a perfectly good case could be made that, for instance, quoting international law on the right of occupied peoples to resist with respect to Hamas is, in fact, "implicit provocation to terrorism." France's most famous anti-terrorism judge, Marc Trévidic, says he has never seen anything like it in his entire career (x.com/CharliesIngall…): "Implicit provocation to terrorism: do you realize what that means? Becoming a censor of other people's thoughts, trying to guess what a person really meant." 2) The same article also expands the terrorism apology offense to include "minimizing or trivializing acts of terrorism in an outrageous manner." This is even crazier: until now, "apology of terrorism" meant actually expressing a favorable judgment of "terrorist acts" (which is already insane because, as we all know, one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter). Well, under this new provision, a judge could decide that providing context, explaining root causes, or insufficiently condemning an act amounts to "trivializing" terrorism - and that would now be punishable with 5 years in prison. So, for instance, a history teacher explaining the origins of Hamas or Hezbollah is providing context - but a prosecutor could argue that contextualization is trivialization. The same reasoning could apply to a journalist, a researcher, or anyone on social media who says "yes, it was terrible, but here's why it happened." The "but" becomes a crime, as it is trivialization. 3) Article 4 expands Holocaust denial law Under current French law, denying the Holocaust is already a crime. This provision extends that crime by specifying that contestation of crimes against humanity now includes, "whatever its formulation, a negation, minimization, or outrageous trivialization" of those crimes. Again with "outrageous trivialization"! In this instance the very authors of the text - Caroline Yadan and her colleagues - explain their reasoning explicitly in the law's preamble (assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/17/textes/…): "Comparing the State of Israel to the Nazi regime would thereby be punishable as an outrageous trivialization of the Shoah." So while the provision is written in general terms, its architects are openly saying what it's for: making it a crime to draw any parallel between Israel's actions and those of the Nazis. 4) Article 2 creates a brand new crime: calling for the destruction of a state. The law adds to an existing 1881 press law a provision punishing anyone who "publicly, in disregard of the right of peoples to self-determination and the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, calls for the destruction of a state recognized by the French Republic." Five years imprisonment, €75,000 fine. The qualifiers about self-determination and the UN Charter are meant to sound reassuring. But what does "destruction" mean? In practice, if you advocate for a one-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians live as equals, you are de-facto calling for the "destruction" of the state of Israel. Well, that would now be punishable by 5 years in prison 🤷 There you go. Absolutely insane: if this new law passes, and it unfortunately very much looks like it will, France - the country that gave the world the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the country whose national identity is built on the Résistance - will have made it illegal to use the word 'resistance' about anyone the government doesn't like. Jean Moulin would be prosecuted. De Gaulle would be prosecuted. The only people who wouldn't be prosecuted are those who stay silent. Which, of course, is the whole point.

This TV ad, which was broadcast back in 1971 during the Vietnam War, is weirdly relevant today. Fight for your slice

China built this record-breaking bridge for under $300M — meaning the US could buy one B-2 bomber or China could build seven of these.

🇨🇳⚠️🇺🇸 Le secrétaire américain de la Défense avait déclaré : « Sur chaque simulation de guerre contre la Chine, on perd systématiquement… Les missiles hypersoniques chinois pourraient abattre tous nos porte-avions en seulement 20 minutes. »

In a matter of minutes, Israel killed more than 350 people across Lebanon on Wednesday, April 8. Here are some of their stories.

We need a registry of every IDF soldier in the United States. We cannot allow people who put sniper bullets into the heads of children in Gaza to roam freely. They are sleeper cells for all sorts of TERRORISM.

When the Artemis II actornaut's earpiece cuts out mid post-mission speech 💀

Because they are actors being fed their lines in real time through an earpiece, obviously.

@EmileSchreuder @MinPres Kijk nu, een lezer van de Telegraaf.

@MinPres Links is goed en rechts is fascistisch. Dat waren al haar optredens de laatste 20 jaar. Nou hartelijk gefeliciteerd en toedeledokie.

Met het overlijden van Sonja Barend, de koningin van de talkshow, verliezen we een grootheid uit de Nederlandse televisiegeschiedenis. Generaties groeiden op met haar “Morgen gezond weer op.” Warm, kritisch en professioneel zette zij met haar messcherpe interviews de standaard voor iedereen die na haar kwam. Niet voor niets wordt het beste tv-interview jaarlijks beloond met de Sonja Barend Award. Mijn gedachten gaan uit naar haar naasten in deze verdrietige tijd.

Павел Дубравский выложил отличную графику: фото конгрессменов США, где красным обозначены те, кому платит деньги произраильская лоббистская организация AIPAC. Это 324 конгрессмена из 435! Парламент США управляется Израилем и, к сожалению, это не теория заговора.

How many generations of incest took place for this creature to exist?

@CoachCaroline @widtvoet Anti satanisme heet dat.

@widtvoet De anti Israel propaganda moet koste wat kost verder gaan!

Sonja Barend vindt het fijn en heel vrolijk dat er nog wat Israëlische gijzelaars levend zijn teruggekomen naar hun familie maar zij kan zich niet losmaken van wat er de afgelopen twee jaar gebeurd is: het uitmoorden van een half volk. Joe. #PauwenDeWit #Sonja #PauwenDeWit

@LeafMagnolia @NOSmirror Met een genocide vlaggetje? Sonja had felle kritiek op Israhel.

@NOSmirror Dag warme icoon van een beeldbuisvrouw. Uniek. Dank voor alles.

Televisiepresentator Sonja Barend (86) overleden nos.nl/l/2610145?utm_…

We will not forget. Israel was created on Palestinian land as a result of a series of massacres and ongoing land theft. The ethnic cleansing continues and spreads even beyond Palestine.

'I'm even straighter than Hormuz!' Did Donald Trump know what the Strait of Hormuz was before he attacked Iran? @Lewis_Goodall hears from satirist Cody Dahler.

Why did the US and Israel attack Iran’s Sharif University, its most advanced site of technological development? Dr. Farhad Ardalan, a renowned Iranian physicist and professor at Sharif University, explained in an interview with VPol contributor Dr. Helyeh Doutaghi (@Helyeh_Doutaghi). ￭ “We have to have an advanced military. We have to have an advanced industry. Israelis know this. They want to prevent it. So, this war was about prevention, destroying the industry in Iran, destroying the state structure, if possible, destroying the state itself to tear apart Iran into various pieces, and especially the modern military. Everybody knows that the future wars will be based on AI,” hence the targeting of the university’s data center/AI hub, and “drones, which we see are very important, already are a significant part of the military.” #VPol

@wpschuler @iraninyerevan @GeromanAT

@iraninyerevan @GeromanAT Then he's just a dumb f***. Iran does not have the right and never previously had the right to charge tolls and fees and control the straight hormous. It's just another act of terrorism by a cult of crazy Islamic terrorists.

An American voice: “Listen up, Trump, and every dumb f... in Washington who still thinks the Strait of Hormuz is some kind of American parking lot. This aint international waters. Never was. Never will be. Under the law of the sea, every coastal country gets twelve nautical miles of its own goddamn territorial water. The narrowest choke point in Hormuz is only twenty one miles wide. That means Iran and Oman own the whole fucking strait from shore to shore. Overlapping. Locked. Closed. No high seas. No open ocean free for all. Iran controls the big islands too, Qeshm, Hormuz, Larak, Abu Musa, the whole chain. You sail through, you are in somebody elses house. Iran never even signed that UNCLOS treaty, so they dont have to play your transit passage game. They say innocent passage and they mean it. You bring guns or you bring trouble, they can say no. America starts wars because it never learned geography in school. They  bomb first, read the map later. Before you drag us into another bloodbath, open a f...ing atlas. The water belongs to the land that touches it. Not to the country that prints the most dollars. Learn it now or bleed for it later.

@SachaRoytman Well, he's not lying.

🇬🇧 London, April 11: On Instagram, this man is shown as a poor elderly protester arrested at a pro-Palestinian demonstration. The reality: Minutes earlier, he was holding a blatantly antisemitic sign prohibited under UK laws. Behind every photo, there's a story the single frame hides. This is exactly how propaganda works.

@JDanielUSMC29 @RT_com You’re a Black man turning your back on your own community. What about the 300 years of slavery?

@RT_com Even the 3rd world knows what will happen if they mess with American boats.

'LAST WARNING… I am ready to OPEN FIRE' MOMENT US Navy warship ordered to TURN AWAY from Strait of Hormuz by Iran — IRIB

@legone30 @IngPabloSaRo @isaacrrr7 And how is that going?

@IngPabloSaRo @isaacrrr7 C’est pas par plaisir mais pour leur sécurité. L’Iran et le Hezbollah veulent détruire Israël

El Estrecho de Ormuz es un estrecho internacional. Según la Convención de la ONU sobre el Derecho del Mar, todos los buques tienen libertad de navegación. Ningún Estado puede suspender ese derecho. ¿Por qué nadie condena a Irán por violar el ‘derecho internacional’?