WPR Blog Archive

“I’m not interested in that pretentious little fool.” The “pretentious little fool” [petit con prétentieux] in question: none other than French literary star Bernard-Henri Lévy. And the author of the phrase: none other than “Special Advisor” to French President Nicolas Sarkozy and presidential speechwriter Henri Guaino. Guaino made the remark yesterday to the French news site Rue89 and he took the trouble to specify: “you can print that.” He was responding to remarks made earlier in the day by Lévy — or “BHL,” as he is commonly known in France — on the radio station France Inter. In his interview […]

This Los Angeles Times op-ed on the Dutch government’s decision to stop providing protection of Dutch citizen and former member of parliament Ayan Hirsi Ali is a convincing indictment of the Dutch government’s behavior: Hirsi Ali was persuaded to run for parliament and to become the world’s most visible and imperiled spokeswoman for the rights of Muslim women, on the understanding that she would be provided security for as long as she needed it. Zalm, in his capacity as both the deputy prime minister and the minister of finance, promised her such security without qualification. Most shamefully, Jan Peter Balkenende, […]

MOSCOW — Two very different demonstrations took place in Moscow Sunday. One mourned the death of a journalist; the other celebrated the birth of a president. On the one-year anniversary of the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, over 2,000 police officers monitored a gathering of several hundred mourners and political activists in Moscow’s Novopushkin Square. The journalist was shot and killed in her apartment building last year in what was widely believed to be an attack stemming from her investigative work of Russia’s ongoing conflict in Chechnya. The Politkovskaya rally took place under a light rain and featured eulogies […]

According to the Associated Press, Kim Jong-il believes himself to be an “Internet expert.” Is he an expert in the technology that powers the Internet, or an accomplished programmer? Does he think deeply about the social and economic implications of information and communications technology? No, somehow I suspect he means that he’s accomplished in using the Internet. In other words, he writes emails, knows how to use a Web browser and a search engine, etc. In achieving this kind of expertise, Kim is in the company of close to 1 billion people worldwide. Leaving aside for a moment the obvious […]

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan — Every district’s main town here has a government center, where the functionaries of the police, the commissar, and the KGB are rolled together into a small building that often looks shuttered. Most district centers in this remote corner of the former Soviet empire still bear statues of that discarded deity of distribution and allocation, V.I. Lenin, as if they are waiting for disposal instructions from the dysfunctional capital. Perhaps Vladimir Ilych still stands in parks and squares because in Tajikistan, the poorest former Soviet republic, life was markedly better under Moscow’s rule. Unlike other corners of the […]

Last week we introduced the WPR top 10. Today we present the second weekly installment. The top 10 list for the last 30 days will only appear every two weeks. Below is the list of most popular articles for Sept. 23 – 29: 1. Repercussions from Air Force Nuclear Weapons Incident Continue2. Spain’s M-11 Verdicts Won’t Explain Government Bungling of Investigation3. Rights and Wrongs: Cambodia, Child Soldiers, Egypt and More4. French Defense Minister Hervé Morin on France, NATO and ‘New’ Security Threats5. A New Paradigm for Africa: Sarkozy’s Vision for a ‘Eurafrique’6. Reporting the Story of the Israeli Strike that […]