Daft Punk tunes for Macron and Trump
The U.S. president joins his French counterpart to celebrate Bastille Day
FRANCE: On Bastille Day, U.S. President Donald Trump joined French President Emmanuel Macron on the dais while a military band delivered a striking medley of Daft Punk hits (see below).
Two months since Macron’s election, the opposition right party National Front nearly has ceased to exist, while Macron and his leftist En Marche! party appear strong on politics but unclear on policy, says Stanford University French studies professor Cécile Alduy.
The Paris banlieues are changing into Muslim enclaves, but in many ways defy stereotype, as I found out during a recent visit. This highlights an oft-overlooked trend: The church is growing fastest in parts of the world where Islam also is dominant, the global south.
CHINA: Leading dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo died yesterday, following liver cancer complicated by his imprisonment and delayed medical care. Liu was the first Nobel winner to die in custody since the Nazi era, and state officials quickly censored coverage of his death, propagandizing his belated medical care and at one point shutting down BBC broadcasting in China yesterday.
SUDAN: In a Gilda Radner moment, I misstated (and misunderstood) the effect of the executive decision on Sudan sanctions this week. Trump’s order extended sanctions for three months, not the suspension of sanctions. Reactions to that decision and good background here.
The world’s fastest growing refugee crisis—and potential genocide—is in South Sudan’s Equatoria state, a contested border area.
IRAQ and SYRIA: Some important revelations in the Carter Ash op-ed on the liberation of Mosul:
The former Obama secretary of defense would have supported the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) in the fight against ISIS—not the Free Syrian Army supported by President Barack Obama, which eventually included al-Qaeda-linked elements. Ash gives credit to Trump Defense Secretary Jim Mattis for accelerating the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria (and hints at frustration with Obama delays). Most importantly, he warns against reliance on Russia in the tricky road ahead, saying, “Russia has played no constructive role in these impending U.S.-led victories … [operating] under the pretense of fighting terrorism and inducing a political transition.”I’M READING The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America’s War in Arabia by Gregory D. Johnson. And I finished this week the upcoming A Forest, a Flood, and an Unlikely Star by African missionary doctor J.A. Myhre, part of her Rwendigo Tales, a great summer series for young readers.
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