Donald Trump’s ultimate battle isn’t abroad — it’s at home. From campuses to city halls and the military, resistance is rising as America’s institutions push back against his power grab.
Source: LE NOUVEL OBS
Le Nouvel Obs, formerly known as Le Nouvel Observateur (“The New Observer”), then as L’Obs, is France’s most widely read weekly newsmagazine. Founded in 1964 by Claude Perdriel, it has been part of Le Monde group since 2014, and is based in Paris.
This is not (just) about awkward exchanges or conventional indignation. It’s about understanding what’s “happening” to us, the rest of the world, that is forced to adjust to this paradigm shift.
In an era where every tweet from the White House sets global agendas, Donald Trump has mastered a brash spectacle, luring us into endless commentary. Behind the daily uproar lies a calculated strategy to reshape America’s alliances and democratic safeguards.
Europe is holding on to qualities that are gradually disappearing elsewhere. How can these be preserved? How can we avoid a return to power struggles of imperial times, to the brutality toward which we all suddenly appear to be heading?
Why is the U.S. suddenly hostile towards the EU? It’s a question of models and ideology, but also a wake-up call for Europeans for what’s at stake.
One month after his return to the White House, Donald Trump’s second term is proving far more ideological, imperial and aggressive than the first, awakening memories of the 1950s communist witch hunt at home and shaking relations with European allies abroad.
A French writer goes deep into the imagined reality of the violent Grand Theft Auto video game franchise, and finds a full-throttle, 360-degree takedown of American society.
Since Oct. 7, the Israel-Hamas conflict has continued to spread, deepening divisions within Israeli society and radicalizing a section of public opinion. Radicals both in Israel and Hamas are taking advantage of the chaos of war to prevent peace — just as they did in the 1990s. For how long will the world allow them to do so?
The current unprecedented political crises in France and the United States — two very different systems and political cultures — have points in common, notably that partisan issues are still taking precedence over the need to rethink the democratic system and its practices.
Eight months into the Israel-Hamas war, Israel has lost the battle of world public opinion. This may seem unfair to Israelis, but the right to self-defense does not authorize anyone to disregard international humanitarian law. And undermining these legitimate international bodies will only cause wider chaos.
Spain is leading the way on European recognition of the state of Palestine. Ireland, Malta and Slovenia have also signed a joint statement asserting readiness to recognize the warring region. Will other European Union countries follow suit?
For almost two years, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the West has been trying to salvage its relationship with the countries of the so-called Global South, unconvinced by the sincerity of its discourse on international law.
In the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel, the United States, often projected as no longer wanting to be the region’s policeman, finds itself deploying aircraft carriers in the eastern Mediterranean and conducting F16 raids against Iranian targets in Syria. But the epoch-shifting challenge is elsewhere.
The war in Ukraine has become globalized, with its effects being felt from Africa to China. The only hope of de-escalation is in a potential diplomatic summit between the U.S. and China this autumn.
A movie star, a tennis player, a tech billionaire — and now the Foreign Minister: the Chinese Party’s parallel justice system does not discriminate when it comes to hushing down figures deemed “subversive.”
By challenging Israel’s constitutional system and launching a crackdown on the Occupied Territories, Benjamin Netanyahu is playing a high-stakes game opposed by half his country and the country’s allies. It can’t last much longer.
Right now, according to a joint survey of Israelis and Palestinians, hopes for a peaceful solution of coexistence simply don’t exist. The recent spate of violence is confirmation of the deepest kind of pessimism on both sides for any solution other than domination of the other.
Yassine S. presented himself in Brussels as a Harvard-educated psychologist. Business was booming until his “mental manipulations” caught the attention of colleagues.
French academic André Gunthert asserts that the selfie is not narcissistic folly at all, but rather represents a new kind of revolution that threatens elite control of society.
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Mother By Day, Poker Player By Night
Sima, a Parisian mother of three, hits the poker tables every night around 10 p.m. and plays for a solid eight hours, just like a day’s work. She earns a decent living, if not the respect of her children’s teachers.
As a border guard in 1989, Arpad Bella personally opened a portion of the Iron Curtain between Hungary and Austria to a crowd of East German refugees. Today, while migrants rush to the gates of Europe, he sadly watches history run backward.
Tensions rise between northern European neighbors. Sweden is second only to Germany for hosting the most refugees, while Denmark is dubbed Hungary of Scandinavia.
AIX-EN-PROVENCE — Over the past two days, Hervé Pighiera has picked up 118 cigarette butts, 60 cigarette packs, 69 plastic bottles and 7.75 kilos of non-classifiable garbage, including a little dollhouse armchair made of wicker and plastic. Pighiera is on a mission to clean roadsides. On July 12, this smiling fellow in a straw hat, […]
After Syria, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere, ISIS tries to take root in the Palestinian enclave governed by the Islamists of Hamas. Internecine conflicts get ugly fast.
Peyrelevade, a village of 800 people in central France, has welcomed 60 refugees since April. Its former retirement home has been renovated, the primary school has avoided a class closure, and there are new jobs for residents. But the future is no less un
The world of rugby is not what it used to be. Artists gave way to men built like tanks, and the 2015 World Cup, kicking off in England, will take the Robocop scrum to a new low.
Gadgets that make it possible to spy on spouses, children, clients and bosses are more popular than ever. Few realize it is rarely legal to do so.
A vacation destination in western Turkey is now at the center of the human trafficking of Syrian refugees and other migrants trying to make the perilous sea journey to Europe.
Nicolas Ngwabije fled his native Congo in 1966, a political refugee. He ended up working for decades at a French migrant center, a reference point for generations of refugees. And they keep coming.
Remember Gattaca? The superb film describes the contrasting fates of two brothers, one of whom was genetically optimized at birth. A few years later, in another movie, The Island, a community of prisoners discovers one day they are nothing but clones of super-privileged people and that their sole purpose is to provide fresh organs as […]
A popular hot spot for European summer vacationers, the Greek island of Kos is now also a prime destination for undocumented immigrants from places like Syria and Pakistan.
We can now have sexual relations without making contact with other humans. But do the 3D helmets, connected devices and animated dolls represent a real sexual revolution, or are they just sophisticated toys?
The ordeal of the Yazidis ethnic minority began one year ago, escaping an impending ISIS massacre in northern Iraq. Tens of thousands fled to Turkey. But what happened next?
For the past 30 years, the American lawyer has been hunting down former despots all over the world. The trial of the former Chadian dictator Hissène Habré, which opened last month, is the latest fruit of his work.
-OpEd- PARIS — The late 1990s anti-globalization movement that protested against summits like the World Trade Organization in Seattle and G8 in Genoa used the slogan: “Another world is possible.” Is this “other world” now being constructed before our eyes by the BRICS, as the emerging countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa […]
The Church is hugely wealthy and exempt from almost all taxes. But its charitable works are crucial in Greece, ravaged by financial crisis and an inept public sector.
TEHRAN — She could be the future of Iran. It has been a long parade of investors and foreign CEOs in the office of Nazanin Daneshvar, a young female engineer who founded the e-commerce company Takhfifan (Persian for “discount”). She welcomes such visitors, and foreign journalists, who have come to Iran to discover a country […]
Can bug by-products help satisfy the world’s growing appetite for animal proteins? The French founders of Ynsect think so.
A timeline of a standoff that long seemed destined to continue, or worse.
MOSCOW — Alexander Prokhanov loves to play the bad guy. But he’s no character actor. He is editor-in-chief, since its founding in 1993, of Zavtra (Tomorrow), a Russian ultra-nationalist newspaper that is fiercely anti-Western and anti-American, as well as clearly anti-Semitic and homophobic. In his mess of an office, Prokhanov, 77, invites us to sit […]