There’s currently a lot of activity, a good measure of confusion, but no real sign of progress in France towards an eventual resolution to the NATO-led intervention in Libya that Paris was instrumental in launching. And it’s against that backdrop of somewhat chaotic operation slog that the French parliament is being asked Tuesday …
Conflict
A.Q. Khan’s Revelations: Did Pakistan’s Army Sell Nukes to North Korea?
Abdul Qadeer Khan is tired of being a scapegoat. The controversial father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb shared hi-tech secrets and equipment with a host of rogue regimes — including North Korea and Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya — earning himself international notoriety and a 2005 TIME magazine cover that dubbed him “the Merchant of …
What Tristane Banon’s Novels Tell Us About DSK’s French Accuser
As the battle between New York prosecutors and Dominique Strauss-Kahn continues to disintegrate into what increasingly looks like a legal paintball war using bazookas and rotten fruit (seemingly paralyzing hits of semi-gelatinous melon and fungoid kumquat being regularly scored by both sides), the French are taking closer look at the …
Will New Evidence of War Crimes Tip the Scales Against the Sri Lankan Government
On June 14, the British television network Channel 4 broadcast a stunning hour-long documentary presenting footage of horrific abuses allegedly committed by Sri Lankan troops during the last months of the country’s war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The images are graphic and profoundly disturbing. They include the …
Clashing Op-eds: Recommended (Perhaps Even Required) DSK Reading
Well-deserved props to both the New York Times and Washington Post (What? I can do more than criticize!) , whose op-ed writers today contributed interesting observations and arguments about where the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault case should go from here—and how the next steps taken in it will reflect upon the American …
As One Alleged Strauss-Kahn Rape Case Cools Off, Another Heats Up
The legal travails of Dominique Strauss-Kahn seem to get messier as the days go by. As noted in our story yesterday, even as Strauss-Kahn’s troubles in New York seem to have dissipated with the prosecution’s case against him appearing to crumble, new charges of criminal sexual misconduct have surfaced back in Paris. On Tuesday, …
The Dominique Strauss-Kahn Story: A Cottage Industry For Theme-Seeking Journalists
Though it wasn’t deafening enough to mark the official opening of journalism’s summer Silly Season, a recent chorus of articles improvising on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn topic does merit the momentary elevation of the discerning reader’s eyebrow. Come on colleagues: this caper is sensational and dramatic enough on its own to …
With NY Case In Doubt, Strauss-Kahn Faces Attempted Rape Charges In France
Just as the legal outlook for ex-International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn started looking brighter in the U.S. with news prosecutors’ case against him for sexual assault may not get to a court, DSK’s horizon seriously darkened back in France. On Monday, as various signs accumulated suggesting his political career …
Legal Holes Develop In the DSK Case, But Will Women Care?
News of the prosecution’s weakening sex assault case against former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn–and the consequential court decision Friday morning to lift his house arrest awaiting trial–have added a new jolt of drama to what already had been a sensational story followed closely on both sides of the …
Closer to Closure, but Closer to Crisis? Lebanon’s Special Tribunal Names Names
Who killed Rafik Hariri? Today Lebanon got one step closer to answering a question that has plagued this war-wracked nation ever since the 2005 Valentine’s Day truck bombing that killed the country’s prime minister in downtown Beirut. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, the UN-backed body investigating the assassination, delivered …
French Military Admits Supplying Arms and Ammo To Libyan Rebels
U.S. President Barack Obama soon won’t be alone in taking flack about the legality of certain moves he’s made on Libya. On Wednesday, French military officials confirmed press reports that France has dropped arms and ammunition to Libyan rebels in what will doubtless spark protests that such action violates limitations the United …
Can China Help Avert a Looming War in Sudan?
When you’re wanted by the International Criminal Court and subject to possible arrest when abroad, travel can be a problem. So perhaps it’s not surprising that Omar Hassan al-Bashir trip to Beijing this week ran into problems from the start. Sudan’s president arrived a day late after his flight from Tehran was forced to turn back …
How to Avoid a War in the South China Sea
Recent months have seen a spike in tensions between China and some of its neighbors, particularly Vietnam and the Philippines, over the South China Sea. And while the dispute with Japan over the Diaoyu Islands has calmed since last year, the unease remains, as evidenced by Japan’s wary reaction to the presence of Chinese warships …