Chaos migratoire à Melilla: la pression démographique semble irrésistible

18 clandestins africains sont morts vendredi, lorsque près de 2000 migrants ont tenté de pénétrer par la force dans l’enclave espagnole. Analyse des multiples implications d’un phénomène hors contrôle.

Respectivement peuplées de 84 000 et 87 000 personnes pour une superficie n’excédant jamais les 20 kilomètres carrés, les villes autonomes espagnoles de Ceuta et Melilla sont des plaques tournantes de l’immigration au niveau méditerranéen. Faisant partie, avec plusieurs îlots et archipels, des « places de souveraineté » de notre voisin ibérique, elles constituent la seule frontière terrestre entre Europe et Afrique, au niveau du Maroc.

The Woke Inquisitors Have Come for the Freethinking Heretics

Once governments normalize censorship and the punishment of points of view, free expression is firmly stamped with an expiration date.

Whenever censorship slithers back into polite society, it is always draped in the mantle of “good intentions.” Fifteenth-century Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola’s “bonfire of the vanities” destroyed anything that could be seen to invite or reflect sin. The notorious 1933 Nazi book burning… in Berlin torched some 20,000 books deemed subversive or “un-German”. During Communist China’s decade-long Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and ’70s, the vast majority of China’s traditional scrolls, literature and religious antiquities went up in smoke.

Russia’s Perpetual Geopolitics

Putin Returns to the Historical Pattern

For half a millennium, Russian foreign policy has been characterized by soaring ambitions that have exceeded the country’s capabilities. Beginning with the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century, Russia managed to expand at an average rate of 50 square miles per day for hundreds of years, eventually covering one-sixth of the earth’s landmass. By 1900, it was the world’s fourth- or fifth-largest industrial power and the largest agricultural producer in Europe. But its per capita GDP reached only 20 percent of the United Kingdom’s and 40 percent of Germany’s. Imperial Russia’s average life span at birth was just 30 years—higher than British India’s (23) but the same as Qing China’s and far below the United Kingdom’s (52), Japan’s (51), and Germany’s (49). Russian literacy in the early twentieth century remained below 33 percent—lower than that of Great Britain in the eighteenth century. These comparisons were all well known by the Russian political establishment, because its members traveled to Europe frequently and measured their country against the world’s leaders (something that is true today, as well).

Putin’s Search for Greatness

Will Ukraine Bring Russia the Superpower Status It Seeks?

On Saturday, Russia invaded and effectively annexed Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula in the Black Sea. In doing so, Russian President Vladimir Putin shrewdly took advantage of the political uncertainty that arose when Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s former kleptocratic president, took flight last week and was swiftly replaced by a hastily formed provisional government in Kiev. Russia might justify its behavior by speaking of a need to protect ethnic Russians but, in reality, the move was a thinly veiled attempt to forward Putin’s real agenda: reestablishing Russia as a resurrected great power.

Iran’s Top Nuclear Negotiator Holds Talks In Moscow

Ali Baqeri, Iran’s deputy foreign minister and lead negotiator in the talks on the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal, held talks with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov in Moscow.

The twitter account of Russia’s diplomatic mission in Vienna said in a post that Baqeri and Ryabkov held a meeting in Moscow on July 1.

How The Iranian Regime Interferes In Foreign Countries

For more than four decades, the Iranian regime has been perfecting its strategies for infringing on the sovereignty of foreign nations. It exerts influence and interferes in other countries’ domestic affairs in order to advance its political, revolutionary and ideological interests.

Russia Has Failed Challenging EU-US Relations

Contrary to Russia’s expectations, the Ukraine war and entailing crises not only did not damage EU-US relations but also improved them to the extent that France proposed “strategic autonomy” for Europe is now consigned to oblivion.

As in the Cold War, Russia sought to exploit the rift in transatlantic relations under Trump and weaken the political and economic Europe-US alliance. However, except for some limited success in Serbia and Hungary, Moscow has failed to achieve its goals.

Putin’s War Economy Leading To Decline In Russians’ Standard Of Living

Between the fourth quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022, the number of Russians classified by the Russian government as poor rose by 8.5 million, according to Russian government statistics, Maksim Blant of Radio Liberty reports (svoboda.org/a/armiya-bednyh-kak-voyna-vliyaet-na-urovenj-zhizni-rossiyan/31895963.html).

Russia claims control of pivotal eastern Ukrainian province

Russia claimed control Sunday over the last Ukrainian stronghold in an eastern province that is key to achieving a major goal of Moscow’s grinding war.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s military reported that its forces had withdrawn from Lysychansk in Luhansk province. President Volodymr Zelenskyy acknowledged the withdrawal but said the fight for the city was still raging on its outskirts.

Iran Intervenes To Stop Turkish Invasion of Northern Syria

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad thanked Iran Saturday night for helping to reduce tension between Damascus and Ankara. Turkey has been threatening in recent weeks to invade northern Syria, launch a military operation against Kurdish militias in the area, and establish a 30-kilometer buffer zone along the border by removing Kurdish-led fighters.