“Of course it explains why the royal couple postponed their honeymoon to Abbottabad,” joked Jimmy Kimmel, one of the first U.S. television hosts to start mining Osama Bin Laden’s death for comedy. The funniest thing about Kimmel’s quip was that it appeared to contain a grain of truth. The announcement, the day after the wedding of the …
E.U.
EU Revision Proposals For Schengen: A Demonstration Of False Hustle?
The European Commission—the European Union’s executive organ—is slated to present proposals Wednesday responding to the Franco-Italian demand for revision of the 1985 Schengen accords. An excellent story in today’s New York Times offers a forecast of what the EC’s suggestions are likely to include. It also provides a peek into …
Avenging Bin Laden’s Killing: Terrorists Will Need Time
As yesterday’s story following Osama Bin Laden’s death indicated, security officials in Europe don’t foresee the demise of the al Qaeda leader sparking an immediate flurry of retaliation terror strikes by his followers. The logic behind that thinking doesn’t under-estimate the desire for revenge jihadists everywhere are doubtless …
Could Bin Laden’s Death Speed The End To The Afghan War?
As accumulating press reports confirm, intelligence agencies, security officials, and independent experts around the globe agree the death of Osama Bin Laden in no way lowers the curtain on his al Qaeda organization, nor extinguishes the myriad radical groups and individuals sharing its ideology of international jihad. But if there’s …
The Aghast List: Guess Who’s Not Coming to the Royal Wedding
Tomorrow’s wedding—yes, that one—is termed a semi-state occasion. And it seems that the House of Windsor and Her Majesty’s Government have got themselves into a semi-state about it. Hear that screeching? It’s the noise of palace machinery being thrown into reverse as representatives of dodgy regimes are disinvited, while Tony Blair …
Ambassador Loses Fighter-Jet Bid, Takes Marbles, Goes Home
Some big news from New Delhi today on one of the world’s biggest outstanding defense orders: the $10 billion contract to supply 126 fighter jets to the Indian Air Force. After the news broke that both U.S. bids were out of the running, the U.S. Ambassador to India, Timothy Roemer, resigned.
This morning’s newspapers revealed that the …
Five Reasons to Hate the Royal Wedding
Sure, you probably don’t need my help, but here’s why I’m boycotting the royal wedding — well, at least after I get through this opportunistic blog post.
Now’s not the time to celebrate a monarchy. To cover this day-long farce, many news organizations will divert their attention and resources away from reporting the world’s real …
Six Years After France’s Suburban Project Riots, No Justice For Its Iconic Victims
The decision Wednesday by a French appeals court to drop the case against two police officers implicated in the accidental deaths of youths that sparked nation-wide rioting in France in 2005 offers a reminder of how little things have changed for France’s blighted suburban housing projects since those dark days. Thankfully, …
Official Statistics Mock The Sarkozy-Berlusconi Offensive Against Schengen
As noted yesterday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi created headlines in responding to their bilateral Tunisian dilemma with their call Tuesday for revision and restriction of the entire Schengen treaty. Reworking that 26 year-old text, they made clear, will allow member nations to once again throw up …
Sarkozy and Berlusconi Want to Scrap Europe’s Open Borders
With their governments locked in conflict over how to deal with around 25,000 of Tunisians fleeing the chaos of their homeland for stability in Europe, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his Italian opposite Silvio Berlusconi banded together Tuesday in the common cause of dumping their problem squarely in the European Union’s lap. …
Why Americans Care More Than Brits Do About the Royal Wedding
A quick glance at the news from the real world and it’s not hard to see why the media-consuming public of the United States appears willing to lose itself in the fantastic miasma created by saturation coverage of the Disney-for-adults spectacle of a British royal wedding.
There’s nothing new about the decline of the erstwhile empire …
There He Goes Again: Threatening To Suspend Schengen Accords, Sarkozy Drifts To the Extreme Right
It would be tempting to give French President Nicolas Sarkozy points for being consistent, except his incessant efforts to approximate the positions of surging extreme-right leader Marine Le Pen have proven so catastrophic it’s difficult not to wonder if the Elysée isn’t suffering from a deep and dysfunctional learning disability. …
Bernard-Henri Lévy: France’s Libya Warmonger-in-Chief
French media celebrity (and one time philosopher) Bernard-Henri Lévy has been called many things over the years by his equally large and outspoken armies of detractors and supporters. “Curveball”, however, was never among them. It might be time to consider adding that name to the list. Because Lévy was essential to French President …