Roger Kaplan, a Washington-based writer, covers the Middle East and Africa (and tennis) for The American Spectator.
Emmanuel Macron addressed a letter today to the French people, inviting them to participate over the next couple months in a national debate on broad themes of public policy. The first-term president, under pressure from a tax revolt that has raised large issues of governance and national purpose, asks his compatriots to participate in town […]
In the thick of a demonstration in Paris protesting the unfairness of it all, a French professional boxer assaulted a cop and sent him to the hospital and thence on a fortnight’s sick leave. Demonstrations by men and women wearing yellow fluorescent safety vests entered their third month in many French cities. The same week, […]
As Americans ponder the lessons of the year gone by, worry about why their clothes don’t fit, weigh the virtues of fresh water vs. rye whiskey, and compare the benefits of tiddlywinks and free-style swimming, it dawns upon large swathes of the public that while our regime allows us to emerge as one out of […]
“They had to shoot back.” Laconically, the Interior Ministry reported why the life of Cheriff Chekatt, 29, ended Tuesday night on a street in Neudorf, a Strasbourg neighborhood not far from the Cathedral Square where a day earlier three people were shot dead by a man with a gun and the words Allahu Akbar on […]
The first historical reference that occurred to us at TAS, when reading of French president Emmanuel Macron huddling in the Elysée Palace with his inner cabinet and security officials to figure out what to do in response to violent riots across France was: Well, he didn’t hightail it to Baden-Baden. Maybe he should have. But […]
Twenty thousand berserk fans watched the starting Bleus doubles squad hold off a tenacious Croatian comeback on Saturday to win a round in the weekend meet, giving another day of hope to France. The venue was the Pierre-Mauroy Stadium in Lille; the occasion the finals of the Davis Cup. Meanwhile in Paris, a tax revolt morphed […]
It was perfectly stupid of French President Emmanuel Macron to say nice things about Marshall Philippe Pétain as commemorative ceremonies were getting under way to mark Armistice Day. General Pétain, as he then was, commanded French forces during the year-long battle of Verdun in 1916, World War I. About a million men died, with neither […]
In early 1971, General Creighton Abrams, the head of MACV (U.S. military command in South Vietnam), ordered the interdiction of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the network of roads and warehouses that ran through Laos and Cambodia practically to within an artillery shot of Saigon. The trail was used by the North Vietnamese to supply their armies and the Viet Cong (southern Communist led guerrillas). The latter were much reduced in numbers and effectiveness after frustrating years of efforts by the U.S. and South Vietnamese leaderships to devise a winning strategy.
Charles Aznavour gave his all to French literature, and it was a good thing he lived to a great old age, because his gifts were good ones, they will last. The world famous singer, who died a couple days ago at 94, wrote his own songs. They were about everything — everything he felt. You […]
Commenting on our U.S. Open coverage, a reader observes that a penalty is not the same as a warning during match play and we spun the beginning of the drama in the women’s final, when the queen of Queens — six-time winner Serena Williams — scolded umpire Carlos Ramos for enforcing the rules and turned […]
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