🌍 Macron’s Indo-Pacific tour

Hi there Intriguer. There are plenty of reasons to move to Brazil, but here’s an extra one if you’re a football fan: government employees can now roll in late to work if their national team is competing in the Women’s World Cup, a privilege previously bestowed only upon the men’s team.

Today’s briefing is a 5 min read:

• 🇫🇷 Macron goes to the Pacific.

• 🇮🇳 Lawmakers challenge India’s PM.

• ➕ Plus: The truth is out there, how the papers are covering Cambodia’s prime minister resigning, and how Hollywood drove its business model off a cliff.

1. 🇦🇿 Azerbaijan: Local authorities arrested a prominent opposition leader earlier this week (24 July) on money laundering charges. Rights groups say he was tortured and that the charges against him are “spurious.”

2. 🇻🇦 Vatican City: Prosecutors are seeking a seven-year sentence for a Cardinal at the centre of a $460M embezzlement scheme. The lead prosecutor called the scheme, which involves nine other defendants, the Vatican’s “crime of the century.”

3. 🇫🇯 Fiji: Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka postponed a trip to China yesterday (Wednesday) after falling over while looking at his phone. Fiji’s relationship with China has slowed under Rabuka, who ended a long-standing policing deal earlier this year after taking office.

4. 🇧🇴 Bolivia: Iran and Bolivia signed a secret security pact during a visit to Tehran by Bolivia’s defence minister last week. After Argentina made the agreement public, Bolivia conceded it was interested in acquiring Iranian drones to protect its borders.

5. 🇳🇪 Niger: Soldiers went on national TV last night (Wednesday) to announce they’d removed the president from power. West Africa’s main bloc denounced the “attempted coup d’état”, and called on the “plotters to free the democratically elected president.”

🇫🇷 France | Geopolitics

Macron offers the Pacific a third option (France)

French President Emmanuel Macron is, like any self-respecting European, on a summer trip. His official tour to the Pacific Islands this week includes a first-ever visit by a French president to an independent country in the region.

Macron’s itinerary is taking him to New Caledonia (a French territory) plus Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.

Why’s Paris so interested in the other side of the world?

• 👪 It’s got hundreds of thousands of citizens in three territories there (New Caledonia, French Polynesia, and Wallis & Futuna)

• 🗺️ Due to its Pacific territories, France has the world’s second largest Exclusive Economic Zone to protect (after the US)

• 🛢️ French energy giant Total also has several projects in the region, including a prospective gas field off the coast of PNG, and

• 🗳️ France is wary of secessionist sentiment in New Caledonia, where another independence vote failed in 2021 amidst a boycott.

So France clearly has interests in the region. But Macron’s visit was also about projecting France as a world power with something to offer the region more broadly: a third option amid US-China competition.

Intrigue's take: The current focus on the Pacific is startling: this week alone, the US Secretary of State has opened an embassy in Tonga, and the US Secretary of Defense has visited PNG, weeks after India’s PM was there. Plus, China’s foreign minister toured eight Pacific states in 2022, while Australia’s foreign minister has now visited all 18 Pacific Island Forum nations.

So that’s the context into which Macron has flown. The question is whether a presidential visit every five years is enough to keep up.

Also worth noting:

• In lieu of President Macron, Fiji received its first-ever visit by a French foreign minister this week. Fiji’s PM had earlier tweeted about his French ties, including once saving a French soldier.

• Meanwhile in New Caledonia yesterday (Wednesday), Macron warned that local independence could mean a "Chinese naval base tomorrow… Good luck, that is not called independence."

📰 How newspapers covered…

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen resigning and appointing his son as successor

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🇮🇳 India | Politics

India’s opposition wants Modi to act in Manipur

The ‘I.N.D.I.A.’ opposition bloc has submitted a no-confidence motion this week over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s handling of ethnic violence in Manipur state (in India’s northeast, bordering Myanmar).

Tensions in Manipur escalated in early May, when:

• ⚖️ a court directed the state government to extend special tribal privileges to Meitei communities (53% of the local population), and

• ✊ the smaller Kuki and Naga communities (comprising 40%) feared this would allow Meitei to cement their power.

So violence broke out, taking at least 140 lives, displacing 60,000 others, and triggering national and global outrage with graphic footage.

Critics say Modi initially stayed silent because his own party runs Manipur, where tensions also have a faith dimension (Hindu/Christian); a regional angle (with spill-over from conflict-torn Myanmar); and a narcotics factor (with claims the state's war on poppy cultivation has targeted Kuki areas).

Intrigue’s take: The opposition knows its motion (to be heard within ten days) can’t oust Modi given his huge majority in parliament. But it’s a flex for the new ‘I.N.D.I.A.’ bloc ahead of next year’s elections. And it’s an attempt – in India’s parliamentary tradition – to hold the government to account on a deeply troubling issue.

Also worth noting:

• An internet ban in Manipur has complicated efforts to verify local reports.

• Modi spoke about the months-long violence in Manipur for the first time last week, referring to sexual violence against Kuki women as “shameful for any civilised nation.”

• He faced his first no-confidence motion in 2018, before seemingly predicting a second motion would come in 2023 (this footage has now gone viral in India).

➕ Extra Intrigue

Here’s what we’re reading (and listening to) about challenges in the TV and entertainment industry.

• TV’s streaming model is broken. It’s also not going away

• US streaming hits a record just as Hollywood shuts down

• How Hollywood drove its business model off a cliff

• Netflix turns to South Korean writers and crews as Hollywood strikes. But they feel exploited too

💬 Quote of the day

David Grusch, a retired US Air Force intelligence officer, testified before Congress yesterday (Wednesday) that the US government has been concealing a decades-long program to study unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). He said the US has recovered UAPs containing “non-human” biologics.

The Pentagon issued a denial in response.

🗳️ Poll time!

Yesterday’s poll: What do you think about Israel's recent judicial reform limiting the powers of the Supreme Court?

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 👍 I agree with it, and here's why… (11%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 👎 I disagree with it, and here's why… (85%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🖋️ Other (write in!) (4%)

Your two cents:

• 👎 J.L: “Democracy needs checks and balances to avoid tyranny of the majority, and in this case, tyranny of a minority-elected, majority coalition.”

• 👍 W.K: “The selection of successor judges by those leaving their post would be anathema in other democratic countries & the worst of nepotism […]”

• 🖋️ J.S.G: “One wonders the use of a supreme court if there is no constitution for it to interpret […]”