A year after riots rocked the suburbs of French cities, French Police are denouncing what they see as coordinated attacks on their officers by Muslim youth in Paris’s banlieues. An official of one right-leaning French police union has even labeled the new round of attacks an “intifada” against French police. The latest incident occurred Friday night and early Saturday morning in the Paris suburb of Epinay-sur-Seine, when police responding to reports of thievery were ambushed by a group of youths wielding stones and other weapons. One officer was injured when a stone hit him in the jaw, according to accounts [...]
Georgia is on the brink of war with Russia, a place where journalists get murdered by government hit men. But really we should be watching nearby Belarus, the capital of illegal arms deals. Everything is coming undone in Nicaragua and 650,000 have died in Iraq, from which U.S. troops should pull out immediately. These were among the striking claims put forth by op-ed writers this week. But let’s not kid ourselves. Really, it was North Korea, North Korea, North Korea all the time. Not since the Israel-Hezbollah conflagration three months ago have the world’s opinion pages been so blindingly focused [...]
Apparently, the seismic and geological analyses of the North Korean nuclear tests that are now beginning to trickle in point toward a failed test. This Korea Times article is the first news report I’ve found questioning the test’s success. And Jeffrey Lewis at the blog Arms Control Wonk is all over the story. He cites already published U.S. Geological Survey data as evidence that the test was a dud. According to Lewis, the French defense minister was the first official from the government of a major power to entertain the possibility of a failure. Lewis also explains why it didn’t [...]
