The following is a chart representing the evolution of civilian casualties in Iraq. I have adapted it from the Brookings Institution publication here [pdf-file]. The Brookings data is taken in turn from the anti-Iraq War website "Iraq Body Count" (IBC). Via a remarkable sort of moral contortionism, the latter manages to hold the Iraq War [...]
On the American Future blog, Marc Schulman points to an English-language offering on Spiegel Online that accuses renegade former SPD Party Chair Oskar Lafontaine of right-wing “populism” (or, more exactly, “run-of-the-mill populism”, whatever that is supposed to be), and thereby implicitly racism, for having used the word Fremdarbeiter. The expression is quite simply the literal [...]
So-called “human rights activists” have placed their calls for the creation of an international criminal jurisdiction like the International Criminal Court (ICC) under the banner of bringing an “end to impunity” – namely for the perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The supposed urgency of their appeals is frequently underscored by alleged analogies [...]
In my comment on the so-called German “werewolves” who continued to fight the Allied occupation forces even after the May 1945 capitulation of Nazi Germany, I wrote: for anyone who knows anything about Nazi ideology and the fanaticism it bred, regrettably, within large swathes of German society, it is quite simply ludicrous to suggest that [...]
With the expulsion from Iraq of French freelancer Anne-Sophie Le Mauff [link in French], Iraq’s black market in French journalists – rumored to be worth some many millions of euros a piece from the French government when seized as hostages – has taken a serious hit. Regular readers of Trans-Int may remember Ms. Le Mauff [...]
When UN staff protest the increasingly blatant political partisanship of UN officials and point out the incompatibility of such partisanship with UN regulations and indeed the very mission of the UN as set out in the UN Charter, this deserves to be taken notice of and publicized as much as possible. In early May, the [...]
A reader has taken issue with my passing reference in yesterday’s post on "German Normality and Hamas" to the German "werewolves", i.e. the diehard Nazi loyalists that continued to "resist" the Allied occupation forces even after the formal capitulation of Nazi Germany in May 1945. The German term "Wehrwolf" – not the traditional "Werwolf" of [...]
(Note: For background to this post, see "More Euros for Terror?" and "Follow-Up: The Release of Florence Aubenas".) The “Florence and Hussein” show has been all over the French media since the arrival in Paris last Thursday of Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi, former translator and guide of Libération reporter Florence Aubenas in Iraq and her alleged [...]
Today is the annual “Fête de la Musique” in France – a hugely popular publicly-funded outdoor music festival. As reported here [link in French], participants all across the country will be invited at 9 PM sharp to intone together George Brassens’ sentimental favorite “Les copains d’abord” – roughly, “Your Pals Come First” – in honor [...]
An unidentified European diplomat, as quoted in Friday’s (17 June) Le Figaro, on recent EU contacts with Hamas: We have had technical diplomatic contacts with Hamas, but this does not mean a change of European policy with respect to this movement that continues to be on the European Union’s list of terrorist organizations. Does this [...]
