🇫🇷We didn't start the fire, but we're trying to fight it
🇺🇸World keeps turning as America keeps burning credibility, Bardella cancels CPAC speech after Nazi salute, WEST reactor beats Chinese world record for nuclear fusion, and Bayou case is dismissed
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This week
🇺🇸World keeps turning as America keeps burning credibility
🛑Bardella cancels CPAC speech after Nazi salute
☢️WEST reactor beats Chinese world record for nuclear fusion stability.
🌳Julien Bayou case dismissed
🇺🇸World keeps burning as America keeps churning
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s been a bit of a week.
In the last seven days, we’ve had Emmanuel Macron call two Paris summits as EU leaders attempted to rebuild a new coalition to help Ukraine to survive and thrive, as well as to find some kind of basis for a future way of surviving this new world order where the Trump Administration said they were less concerned by Russia than by “the threat from within [Europe]”:
Not only this, but we saw Mario Draghi stand up, exasperated by the constant navel-gazing of EU leaders and decided to give them all a piece of his mind, almost demanding that they tell others that they’re unable to “deliver on the fundamental values for which this European Union’s been created” and shouting at them to do something.
and to cap off the week in international affairs, we found out that the American administration, led by Donald Trump’s Sugar daddy, Elon Musk, was threatening to shut down Starlink in Ukraine if they didn’t agree to a deal that gave up a substantial amount of their Critical Raw Materials.
Aside from it being clear that we should ban Starlink from European markets on national security grounds to prevent ourselves from becoming victims of a renewed far-right American imperialism, it’s clear that the world is getting less and less stable.
It’s also clear that there is more and more need for active analysis, reporting, and explanations of what is happening in the world.
Which is why we will be opening a contributor and recruitment for volunteer team members very, very soon, in order to start delivering more content, more regularly, and with slightly more pizzazz to start building this project of ours into a much larger publication.
And this is all thanks to you, my dear readers, for your continued support through the last few years, which I wholeheartedly thank you for and hope continues in the future.
🛑Bardella cancels CPAC speech after Nazi salute
Naturally, things are continuing to spin out pretty quickly in the US.
For the eagle eyes amongst you, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was taking place in Washington, and has become the go-to event for the far-right, with authoritarians like Viktor Orban and his team regularly appearing.
This year was no different, but things took a darker turn where, following the example of Elon Musk, Steve Bannon threw out a Sieg Heil live on stage while saying “fight fight fight” after having called for Donald Trump to be made President for Life.
While Steve Bannon is no longer a major advisor of the American President, having found himself sidelined after several disagreements, this is a worrying show of moral decline from the American Republican party, with actors from across their party actively defending or waving their actions.
And let’s not forget all of the Europeans actively defending grown men throwing out Nazi Salutes just because it makes them feel so good and owns the libs or whatever.
When pressed about why he had cancelled his speech, Bardella gave the following response:
“At this podium yesterday, while I was not present in the room, one of the speakers allowed himself, as a provocation, to make a gesture referring to Nazi ideology. I have, therefore, taken the immediate decision to cancel my scheduled speaking engagement at the event this afternoon”
And quite honestly, he has your favourite publication editor’s respect for not forgetting our history.
and of course, Steve Bannon violently reacted when asked about this cancellation:
And for the high-browed transcript:
“He is such a pussy. That was a wave, I did that exact same wave at the Front National seven years ago when I spoke in front of them. That was a wave to these great patriots right here. If he’s so gutless, and such a little girl, he’ll never be the leader of France. Le Pen has picked the wrong person, he’s a wimp, he’s a pussy, he’s not a man, he will never be the leader of France. He’s worse than Macron.
Fuck him and fuck you.”
Sadly for the American far-right, we usually reserve that kind of language for Nazis and the far-right.
With Jordan Bardella continuing to build up his profile as Marine Le Pen’s successor, he is straddling a fine line between attempting to seem presidential and respectable to the French electorate, to building a profile amongst the identarian and nationalistic far-right.
Unfortunately, both of these things can frequently fall into conflict, meaning that Bardella, the president of the Patriots group in the European Parliament, will more and more often find himself needing to sacrifice one of these positions to advance his career.
Which will likely lead to him being targeted more and more by the American far-right, and finding himself being undermined by out-of-control megalomaniacs like Elon Musk.
☢️WEST reactor beats Chinese world record for nuclear fusion stability.
To move to a slightly more positive story: France has been showcasing French technological prowess this week, but breaking a Chinese-held record for Plasma Stability.
As the race towards nuclear fusion power continues, China had set a record in January, having sustained a stable plasma reaction at around 1,066 seconds (17-ish minutes), the first time that anyone had passed the 1,000 second barrier.
Of course, the European capital of nuclear power took this personally, and the French WEST reactor, situated in Cadarache near Marseille, ran an experiment that further pushed the length of stability forward, achieving a 1,337 second (22 minute) long stable plasma reaction
The Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives (CEA, French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission) hailed the event in a press statement that was brimming with hope for the future of nuclear energy:
“WEST has achieved a new key technological milestone by maintaining hydrogen plasma for more than twenty minutes through the injection of 2 MW of heating power. Experiments will continue with increased power. This excellent result allows both WEST and the French community to lead the way for the future use of ITER.”
- Statement by Anne-Isabelle Etienvre, Director of Fundamental Research at the CEA.
However, the very statement also included a caveat on the short-to-mid-term viability of nuclear fusion as a large-scale producer of energy, noting that the sheer logistical, infrastructural, and economic needs of the technology currently forms a barrier:
“…given the infrastructure needed to produce this energy on a large scale, it is unlikely that fusion technology will make a significant contribution to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. For this, several technological sticking points need to be overcome, and the economic feasibility of this form of energy production must still be demonstrated.”
Which means that we’ll get to continue enjoying this race between nuclear powers for some time to come.
🌳Julien Bayou case dismissed
To finish the week off: former EELV deputy, Julien Bayou, was the subject of several complaints by his ex-partner in July 2022 and March 2024, who had accused him of ‘moral harassment’ and ‘abuse of weakness’ back in 2024.
During investigations where she accused him of “psychological violence”, she had accused the then Parisian deputy of, amongst other things, having attempted to make her feel that she “had psychiatric disorders”, and claimed that there were “two suicide attempts” linked to this treatment.
These investigation led to Julien Bayou stepping down from the co-presidency of the Ecologist group in the Assembly, and resigning from the party leadership back in 2022.
The first internal party investigation was closed in February 2023 following a convoluted process, where the complainant did not want to be heard, leading the Ecologists to announce that they had “not … been able to carry out its investigations”. Julien Bayou had not been heard as part of this investigation.
The second investigation, launched in 2024, progressed further with the party handing the investigation to a specialised firm. As a result of this investigation, Julien Bayou resigned from the group and party, and failed to receive any support from the Nouveau Front Populaire to run in the 2024 Legislative Elections.
The investigation was closed by the Paris Prosecutor’s office on 30 January 2025, with investigators finding an “absence of offence”.
Julien Bayou immediately went on the attack, lambasting his former party for “mediocrity”, “cowardice”, and “baseness”, announcing that he “no longer expects anything” from his former party, despite the former leader finding support in several hundred supporters who have called on the party to affirm his innocence and apologise to him.
The party, from there side, stated that they “[regretted] that this case, amplified by its media coverage, may have caused suffering and had negative consequences on Julien Bayou's life. … We [also] regret the impact that [it] has had on our movement, which has been criticized as much for doing too little as for not doing enough, and on all its activists.”
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Bravo to Jordan Bardella
"Operation Defend Europe"