This year’s Bastille Day promises to be a very sombre affair.  In a move being billed variously as a “disaster”, “bloodbath” and “earthquake”, car marker PSA Peugeot-Citröen announced on July 12 that it would be laying off 8,000 workers throughout France and stopping auto production at one of its flagship plants at Aulnay-sous-Bois, not far […]

The collapse of the latest round of negotiations between the great powers and the Islamic Republic of Iran in Moscow has prompted the usual soul-searching in Washington and Brussels: Did we misread the mullahs’ psychology yet again? Could a sweeter Western proposal have overcome their natural mistrust? These are worthwhile questions to ask. But the emotional […]

The past several days have elapsed without my having made a comment here on matters Middle Eastern. That does not mean nothing has been going on, but nothing has happened of such a dramatic nature as to focus any extended comment. Reality does not always pour forth with punctuation marks, so that it seems to […]

The sabre rattling in the Persian Gulf continues with the deployment of the USS Ponce. Up until recently, the vessel was simply an aging transport ship destined for the scrap heap, but it appears that the Navy has retrofitted the ship, turning it into a command and control station for a variety of missions designed […]

It looks like François Hollande’s honeymoon will be short indeed. We’re only two months into the first Socialist presidency France has seen in nearly two decades, and already French automakers are facing significant layoffs and plant closures. The FT reports that French manufacturer Peugeot is planning to cut one of its plants near Paris, as […]

Some disheartening news on the religious freedom front from China. Reports the BBC: A newly-ordained bishop is reportedly being held after announcing he was quitting the body that oversees China’s state-sanctioned Catholic Church…Bishop Ma did not return for mass on Sunday and is said to have been taken away to a seminary in Shanghai and […]

One thing the new US policy in Asia hasn’t managed to do is reduce tensions in the waters around China. In fact, tensions between China and Japan in the East China Sea, and between China and it’s neighbors around the South China Sea, are rising. Developing a mechanism to resolve these disputes will be on […]

Should House Republicans be put on suicide watch?Many, Via Meadia included, had hoped that the rise of a Republican majority focused on deficit reduction in the House would be the catalyst to finally cut  farm subsidies—one of the country’s most wasteful and ill conceived programs. At a time when annual farm income has reached a […]

Newly crowned as Egypt’s first democratically elected Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi departed on his first trip abroad this week. The destination? Saudi Arabia. There is a temptation to view this as a trip by one Islamist to visit powerful nearby friends who are also conservative Islamists. In reality, the Saudis have never liked the Muslim […]

A rebel group advancing on the main eastern Congolese city of Gomo is showing no signs of slowing down. Their provenance has yet to be determined. The Congolese government, as well as the UN, says the rebels are backed by Rwanda; Kigali denies the charge. What is clear is that the fighting has displaced at […]