Is Sen. John McCain’s visit Friday morning to the Benghazi strong-hold of Libya’s rebel forces a sign of creeping escalation in the conflict with strongman Muammar Gaddafi that may lead to eventual troop deployment by Western nations? Impossible to know at this point, of course, but events coinciding with McCain’s visit to …
E.U.
In Libya’s Forgotten West, Rebels Gain Ground
According to reports, rebel forces fighting the regime of Muammar Gaddafi seized a strategic Libyan border crossing with Tunisia in the country’s remote, rugged west. Tunisia’s state news agency reported that at least 13 officers formerly serving the Gaddafi regime fled across the Tunisian border to the town of Dehiba, as rebels took …
Sarkozy To French Companies: Give People Money. That’s An Order.
Barack Obama, don’t try this at home (as if…):
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is attempting to fulfill his 2007 campaign promise to boost long-stagnant household purchasing power—easily the biggest plank in a wider election platform that has, also, mostly come to naught. So, four years on, monumentally unpopular, and up for …
U.K. and France Try to Boost Libyan Rebels, But Risk Rupturing NATO
As troops loyal to Col. Muammar Gaddafi continue to pound the rebel-held city of Misratah — leading to hundreds of civilian casualties — British Foreign Secretary William Hague announced April 19 that the U.K. and France were dispatching a joint squad of military advisers to Benghazi, stronghold of the Libyan rebels in the …
French Movie Goers Shun French Films: France’s New Cultural Exception?
French films may still be popular with cultural polyglots in New York, London, and other cosmopolitan capitals–and, of course, remain a staple of the global art house circuit. But there’s one crowd that the cream of le cinéma français is no longer thrilling, charming, or luring to theaters with trademark marathon dialogue, …
Cluster Bombs Fall on Misratah While Obama Calls for Regime Change
The New York Times and international NGO Human Rights Watch both confirm that forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi shelled the city of Misratah with cluster bombs, munitions banned by much of the international community. Times reporter C.J. Chivers, currently in Misratah, no stranger to warzones and author of a recent book on the history of …
In France, A Risky Business May Get Riskier
Given French society’s reputation of unbridled sexual attitudes and libertine habits, it’s probably not surprising that a new proposal to combat prostitution is provoking considerable push-back. On the face of it, the initiative appears to be generating heat by sending two pillars of French life clashing in conflict: France’s …
NATO Members Feud While Gaddafi Forces Batter Misratah
It’s increasingly looking like the only factor capable of resolving the international community’s dilemma in Libya is also the one element to that will never cooperate in finding a solution: Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi himself. Because as the meetings, summits, and declarations of coalition partners come and go, it becomes …
Hugh Grant’s Finest Acting Role: As a Journalist
The actor’s name is associated with many things—English charm (Hugh Grant can “twinkle for Britain,” the screenwriter and director Richard Curtis told me as I researched this piece about Grant’s on- and off-screen rival Colin Firth); a weakness for beautiful women including Elizabeth Hurley and Jemima Khan; and a weakness for less …
NATO Confronts a Crisis in Libya: Its Air War Has Not Dislodged Gaddafi
The split in NATO over its Libya operation ought to come as no surprise: it’s precisely because of the differences within the alliance over the terms and goals of the mission, and the inevitably limiting effect of the alliance’s consensus-based decisionmaking, that France had been reluctant to cede command to NATO in the first place. But …
France: Hate Crimes on the Decline, Xenophobia on the Rise
The good news, according to France’s official National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH), was the number of racist and anti-Semitic acts in France dropped significantly in 2010—down 13.6% from 2009. But the bad news, the CNCDH’s annual report adds, is that in contrast to that decline in the number of reported racist …
After Gbagbo’s Arrest, What’s Next for the Ivory Coast?
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Laurent Gbagbo, Ivory Coast’s isolated and besieged strongman, was finally seized by opposition forces in the country’s biggest city, Abidjan. His arrest follows weeks of bloodletting and mayhem in the West African country, fueled in large part by Gbago’s stubborn refusal to accept …
France’s Burqa Ban Comes Into Force With Much Noise, Little Impact
It sparked the protest, denunciation, and even arrests many had feared, yet as France’s legal ban of the burqa took effect April 11, it had many viewing the interdiction of facial coverings in public as one of the strangest and least enforceable laws in the long and cluttered French history of trying to legislate every aspect of …