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France Pushes Digital ID Check Laws For Platforms Like Reddit and Bluesky

Efforts by the French government to combat online access to pornography are quickly turning into a broader push to dismantle online anonymity, raising significant alarm among privacy advocates.

Authorities are now considering applying harsh age-verification mandates not just to explicit sites, but also to social networks like Reddit, Mastodon, and Bluesky, platforms where adult content may appear but where identity is not typically tethered to real-world credentials.

The shift doesn’t involve new legislation, but a reinterpretation of existing laws under France’s recently enacted regulations. This would allow the state to brand platforms that “enable the sharing of pornographic content” as porn sites, subjecting them to some of the most invasive digital ID checks yet proposed in the EU.

Digital Minister Clara Chappaz’s office stated, “Our focus is age verification for any platform that distributes or enables the sharing of pornographic content.”

Though framed as a move to protect children, the implications extend well beyond youth safety. Any service caught in this net would be forced to track the age, and by extension, the identity, of its users, undermining pseudonymity and threatening to make anonymous online activity impossible in practice.

The government’s renewed urgency follows the tragic killing of a teaching assistant in a high school, which President Emmanuel Macron used to reemphasize his call to ban social media for users under 15. While unrelated to pornography, the incident is being used to justify sweeping controls over digital spaces.

Platforms that fail to comply with the new age-check rules risk being fined, blacklisted by search engines, or even blocked entirely. Chappaz recently signaled that Elon Musk’s X is close to being designated as a pornographic platform, despite its primary function as a text-based social media site, highlighting how blurry and expansive the government’s definitions have become.

However, the legal path is anything but clear. Under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), decisions over “Very Large Online Platforms” rest with the European Commission, not individual member states.

These platforms are expected to assess and mitigate risks, including those tied to adult content, but retain discretion on how to do so. A legal review in France is reportedly underway, signaling the state’s intent to push this policy despite potential conflicts with EU law.

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Federal Employee Charged With Capital Murder For Slipping Abortion Pills Into Girlfriend’s Coffee

A 38-year-old Texas resident and federal employee was arrested and charged for killing his preborn child by feeding his girlfriend abortion-inducing drugs without her knowledge.

The Austin-American Statesman reported that Justin Anthony Banta was arrested June 6 and charged with capital murder and evidence tampering. In September 2024, he allegedly snuck abortion pills into his girlfriend’s drink at a coffee shop at about six weeks of pregnancy after she rebuffed his offer to buy “Plan C” for her, saying she wanted the baby.

The girlfriend, who remains anonymous, told police that she began experiencing severe fatigue and bleeding the next day, requiring an emergency room visit, and ultimately lost her baby on October 19.

Police confiscated Banta’s phone during the course of the investigation, accusing him of tampering with it remotely to delete evidence, allegedly using his skills as an IT staffer for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

“Sheriff Authier expressed his gratitude to the owners and staff of the coffee shop … for their full cooperation, along with the efforts of Parker County Sheriff’s Office investigators, the Texas Rangers, Benbrook Police, Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Digital Forensic and Technical Services, the U.S. Secret Service, the Regional Organized Crime Information Center (ROCIC) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for their support and resources throughout this extensive investigation,” the Parker County Sheriff’s Office said.

In Texas, capital murder is punishable at a minimum of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, though it is possible prosecutors could seek the death penalty.

Despite the abortion lobby’s framing of abortion as a matter of “choice,” it has long turned a blind eye to abortion coercion.

Live Action’s “Aiding Abusers” series draws on news reports, eyewitness testimony, and undercover video to expose Planned Parenthood employees’ willingness to offer abortions to girls as young as 12 without reporting signs of statutory or forcible rape to law enforcement. This enables the men who brought the girls in for appointments to bring them home and continue abusing them.

In 2023, the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute released a study that interviewed 1,000 American women and found that 61 percent of women who undergo abortions do so due to pressure from “male partners, family members, other persons, financial concerns, and other circumstances.”

“Forcing a woman to have an abortion, including a minor, is illegal in all 50 states of the United States of America,” according to the Justice Foundation’s Center Against Forced Abortions, which offers a variety of information resources to help those who are being pressured into killing their babies.

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British Government to Reopen over 800 Cases of Historic Child Rape Grooming Gang Cases

The British government will reopen more than 800 cases of historic child rape grooming gang cases in addition to launching a full national inquiry after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer bowed to pressure and made a major reversal on the issue over the weekend.

The National Crime Agency (NCA), the UK equivalent of America’s FBI, will lead investigations alongside local police forces across Britain into grooming gang cases that did not result in the suspected perpetrators facing justice.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said on Sunday that over 800 cases of suspected child rape grooming have already been selected to be reopened.

“The vulnerable young girls who suffered unimaginable abuse at the hands of groups of adult men have now grown into brave women who are rightly demanding justice for what they went through when they were just children,” Cooper said per the i paper.

“Not enough people listened to them then. That was wrong and unforgivable. We are changing that now.”

The move will come on top of a full national inquiry, which will be established under the Inquiries Act, meaning that it will have legal authority to compel witness testimony and have full access to police and other local documents.

The exact remit of the investigation remains to be seen. However, it was launched in response to the findings of a review from Baroness Louise Casey, which is set to be published this week.

Baroness Casey reportedly argues that a full national inquiry was necessary and that it should not only focus on the politically correct cover-ups committed by local officials and police, but also on the ethnicities of the perpetrators.

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$2 Million Advance? SCOTUS Justices Disclose Financial Gains

Eight of the nine justices on the highest court in the land have filed their annual financial disclosures. These reports, released to the public on Tuesday, detail the incomes, gifts, liabilities, and outside positions of each justice serving on the United States Supreme Court. 

The reports were due May 15 for eight of the justices. According to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Justice Samuel Alito requested a 90-day extension, as he has done previously.

Three of the justices reported considerable outside income from books in the last year. Ketanji Jackson recorded receiving a book advance payment from Penguin Random House for over $2 million. She also received reimbursements for thirteen “book events”. 

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch also brought in additional money from book deals, according to the reports. Sonia Sotomayor reported over $70,000 in book royalties from Penguin Random House LLC and an additional $60,000 in an advance payment. Sotomayor said that she visited the Coterie Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri, to “review a workshop performance” of “Just Ask,” her children’s book that was adapted as a musical. The trip was valued at $1,437, according to her own report.

Gorsuch claimed over $250,000 in book royalty income from Princeton University Press and HarperCollins Publishers LLC. He also listed reimbursements for three separate “Participations in book-related events” and $30,000 from teaching at George Mason University. 

Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett both reported income from teaching at the University of Notre Dame Law School, claiming over $30,000 each in their individual reports. Kavanaugh continues to coach girls’ basketball, according to his disclosure. 

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The $13 Billion Secret: How Obama’s DACA and Biden’s Open Borders Fund Cartels and Human Trafficking

Bottom Line Up Front: Immigration policies that create pathways to legalization, including programs like DACA, inadvertently signal that illegal entry can lead to permanent status, fueling a massive criminal enterprise that generates billions for cartels while subjecting migrants to exploitation and trafficking.

The data reveals that the U.S.-Mexico border has been transformed into a cartel-controlled profit center. Cartels and “coyotes” are reportedly earning around $13 billion a year by smuggling migrants across the United States/Mexico border, an amount that has soared from the 2018 number of just $500 million, representing a 2,500% increase in just five years.

This explosive growth coincides with Biden-era open border policies, expanded asylum processes and legalization programs that signal potential pathways to permanent status. 80 percent of unlawful border-crossers hire smugglers, according to a 2023 report by the Department of Homeland Security, demonstrating how thoroughly criminal organizations have monetized illegal immigration.

Border Patrol sector chiefs confirm unprecedented criminal control over migration routes. ‘Now nobody crosses without paying the cartels,’ testified Chief Patrol Agent John Modlin. Those who try to bypass the criminal networks face severe consequences, including beatings.

The financial incentives driving this criminal enterprise are enormous. Smuggling fees range from $2,000 to $40,000, with cartels taking a substantial cut at every stage. For most migrants, this represents years of savings, an investment they’d only make if they believed there was a real chance of staying in the U.S. If they thought they would be turned away at the border, jailed, or deported upon capture, they wouldn’t take the risk.

Many migrants go into debt or even enter into forms of indentured servitude to the cartels to cover the cost of being trafficked. This often results in exploitation, forced prostitution, and other abuses. It also fuels the ranks of street-level criminals distributing drugs for cartel-connected gangs inside the United States.

The promise of potential legalization has fueled a massive human trafficking pipeline. Smuggling migrants has become one of the top revenue streams, alongside drugs and extortion, for criminal organizations like Mexico’s Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels. Children are especially vulnerable in this system. One study estimates that nearly 60% of unaccompanied minors crossing the border are intercepted by cartels and forced into child pornography or drug trafficking.

The scale is staggering: during the Biden era (2021–2024), encounters of unaccompanied children at the U.S. border surged to 546,255. Trafficking children is not only profitable for the cartels, it is also incentivized by U.S. policies like DACA, which shield minors from deportation. These policies contribute to the liberal narrative that “families are being torn apart” when illegal immigrant parents are deported but choose to leave their U.S.-born “anchor babies” or DACA-protected children behind.

According to Pew Research (2024), roughly 4.4 million U.S.-born children under 18 live with an illegal immigrant parent. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program protects many who entered the country illegally as minors, offering legal protections and work authorization. Even the program’s name, “Dreamers”, sends a message of opportunity, reinforcing the belief that entering the U.S. illegally with children can eventually lead to legal status. As of March 31, 2024, there were over half a million active DACA recipients in the country.

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A US Bank Closed Our Accounts Because I’d Visited Cuba Six Months Ago

For years, World BEYOND War and other peace groups from around the world had been attending peace conferences in Cuba. When I visited Cuba this past January it was with a visa for that purpose. I published here the remarks I made at the conference. We shouted as loudly as we could about January’s conference in websites, social media, emails, and media interviews. The notion that there could be anything wrong with it — or that some institution could punish us for it — never entered our minds.

Legally, you’re allowed to go to a peace conference in Cuba. Nobody has so much as hinted that I’ve done anything illegal. But on Thursday June 5th I got a bunch of letters in the mail telling me that on Monday June 9th the U.S. bank accounts of World BEYOND War and the private accounts of all of my family members would be closed without explanation. This was the action of a particular bank called First Citizens, with no indication of any involvement by any government. (The explanation, it would be made clear, was my visit to Cuba.)

Morally, it seems a useful thing to do — attending peace conferences in Cuba. As at similar conferences in many other countries, one can meet diplomats, authors, activists, and politicians from all over the world to discuss peace education, disarmament, negotiations, and cross-cultural understanding. Videos of the entire conferences in Cuba, like most others around the world, are posted online for all to see.

World BEYOND War works to abolish all war, and opposes all sides of all wars — an unusual position even at peace conferences. We are constantly working to persuade some people not to support the Russian side of a war and other people not to support the Ukrainian side. We oppose any and all war-making by the U.S., Cuba, or anyone else, without equating disparate sides or blaming victims in any actual wars. Some groups try to shut down weapons programs because the weapons don’t work well; we start with opposing those that kill the most. When Trump sends troops into Los Angeles, we don’t join the Governor of California in asking that soldiers and Marines do their work abroad; we ask people to think about whether such armed forces should invade anyone else’s city either. The nice thing about peace conferences is that we can advance these views nonviolently, disagreeing amicably.

The problem, apparently, for a U.S. bank, with Cuban peace conferences is that, as with many things in Cuba, the Cuban government is involved. The president of the country wanders into the panel sessions. While that has the potential to cause censorship, it also has the potential to educate decision makers. I’d like to see presidents wandering in at peace conferences in Washington and other capitals.

Of course, the U.S. government has been sanctioning and blockading Cuba for generations, for the stated illegal purpose of overthrowing the government but — as usual — with the result of strengthening it instead, and the actual illegal impact of impoverishing the Cuban people — whose impoverishment is then blamed on the Cuban government and used as an excuse to overthrow it. This cruelty from the North provides a handy excuse for all sorts of repression and awful governance by the Cuban government, just as with the Iranian government and several others.

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Top FDA Official Admits She Refused the Covid-19 Vaccine While Pregnant

One of the most powerful figures at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has admitted she refused the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine while pregnant—even as her agency promoted it as “safe and effective” for all pregnant women.

Dr Sara Brenner’s explosive disclosure, made on 15 May 2025 at the MAHA Institute Round Table in Washington, DC, is as revealing as it is troubling.

A preventive medicine physician, Brenner has worked at the FDA since 2019. As the FDA’s Principal Deputy Commissioner—and briefly its Acting Commissioner—Brenner was at the centre of decision-making.

Prior to that, she was Chief Medical Officer for diagnostics and was detailed to the White House to support the Biden administration’s Covid-19 response. She didn’t just participate in the pandemic response, she helped shape it from within.

“Knowing what I knew—not only about nanotechnology, about medicine, about the medical countermeasures—but also having a very strong and firm grounding in bioethics…there were many things that were not right,” she told the audience.

That someone with her seniority and access to internal data privately rejected the vaccine, while her agency promoted it to millions of pregnant women, presents a profound ethical dilemma.

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Tehran denies western media reports about ‘seeking mediation’ to end war

Iran has categorically denied requesting that regional countries pressure Washington for an end to Israel’s war against the country, as some recent reports in western media have said. 

Sources close to the Iranian Foreign Ministry confirmed to The Cradle on 17 June that no such contacts have been made with any country. 

Lebanese journalist Radwan Mortada also reported on Tuesday that “Iran has not requested any mediation to halt the Israeli war against it.”

“All claims circulating among journalists or foreign reports about its mediation with Arab or foreign countries to halt the war are pure fabrication. All Iranian officials involved in this matter have categorically denied these claims,” Mortada said. 

“This systematic campaign aims to portray Iran as begging for a ceasefire, when in reality, Iran is escalating its attacks more violently by the day. Tehran has made it clear that Israel started the war, but it certainly won’t decide when it ends,” he added. 

On 16 June, Reutersreported that Iran has asked Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Oman to pressure US President Donald Trump to “use his influence” to get Israel to agree to a ceasefire.

The report, which cites two Iranian and three regional sources, also said “Iran is willing to be flexible in the nuclear talks if a ceasefire is reached.”

One of the sources told the outlet that Gulf states are “deeply concerned the conflict will spin out of control,” and have “all appealed to Washington to press Israel to agree to a ceasefire and to resume talks with Tehran towards a nuclear deal.”

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The regime change maniacs are back: Iran is in their sights, and they’ve learned nothing

In 2002, the Bush administration was met with scant resistance from the mainstream media or wider establishment as it drummed up the case for toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. But there were a handful of dissenters, above all Brent Scowcroft. The two-time former national-security adviser (under Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush) urged the nation to consider the law of unintended consequences — and to open its imagination to nightmare scenarios.

A similar imagination is desperately needed today, as hawks in Washington and Jerusalem gleefully fantasize about collapsing the Iranian regime. It’s a bewildering replay of the same overconfidence that gave birth to the Iraq catastrophe — with some of the same figures who pooh-poohed counsels of caution and restraint back then doing the same thing today.

An invasion of Iraq, Scowcroft argued early on, would distract Washington from the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the actors behind 9/11. Drawing on his experience as the elder Bush’s adviser during the Gulf War, he warned that regime change would mean “occupation of an Arab land, hostile Arab land”. Not for months, but for years. In short, Scowcroft predicted everything that went wrong with Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The war’s advocates quickly dismissed his warnings. Reuel Marc Gerecht, the ex-CIA officer turned uber-hawk writing in 2002 in the now-defunct Weekly Standard, insisted that “these fears for the war on terrorism are unfounded”. While William Kristol, speaking to the New Yorker in 2005, “laughed” about Scowcroft’s emphasis on foreign-policy realism and Middle-East stability: “When things go bad, realists look good, until things look really bad.”

By the time Kristol made those remarks, optimism about regime change in Iraq had begun to curdle. An insurgency, incipient at the time, would grow to expand Iran’s influence in Iraq and give rise to what became the Islamic State. This new jihadist group would go on to carve a vast swath across Iraqi and Syrian territory, massacring and enslaving Iraq’s Christian and Yazidi communities, and prompting America to extend its presence in the region, where it remains still.

More than two decades on, all but a few unreconstructed war boosters consider the project a costly, colossal mistake. Contra Kristol et al, the realism of Scowcroft — his anticipation of potential nightmare scenarios — was on the money. Yet here we are, in 2025, poised to attempt the same in Iran: a country that is vaster, more populous, and significantly more complex than Iraq. And we’re doing it with even less planning and forethought.

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US Launches Another Airstrike in Somalia’s Puntland Region, Says ISIS Targeted

US Africa Command has announced that its forces launched another airstrike in Somalia’s Puntland region as the Trump administration continues its air war in the country at a record pace, with virtually no media coverage.

As usual, the command offered no details on the strikes, only claiming that it targeted the small ISIS affiliate to the southeast of the port city of Bossaso. “Specific details about units and assets will not be released to ensure continued operations security,” AFRICOM said.

Based on the count from AFRICOM, the strike marks the 39th time the US bombed Somalia this year. New America, which tracks the US air war, counted the attack as the 40th US strike this year, as it includes airstrikes that have been reported but not confirmed by AFRICOM.

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