Week in Review: Germany in Mali, Paris Attack and Iran’s Legitimacy, Soviet Union Amnesia, and More

Week in Review: Germany in Mali, Paris Attack and Iran’s Legitimacy, Soviet Union Amnesia, and More

Brian Davidson/Sean Gallup/Dennis Grombkowski/Getty Images, JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images

Week in Review: Germany in Mali, Paris Attack and Iran’s Legitimacy, Soviet Union Amnesia, and More

All you need to know about everything in the news this week

November 28, 2015

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Highlights:

Germany to send troops to Mali

  • Germany is wary of a “ring of fire” connecting Paris, Ankara, Beirut, Sharm el-Sheikh, Kano, Yola and Bamako—cities in France, Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, Nigeria and Mali that have recently been targeted by terrorists.
  • Deutsche Welle wrote November 21: “This unsafe zone, defined by extremism and extensive conflicts, almost surrounds Europe.”
  • “[T]he ‘ring of fire’ is only a few hundred kilometers away from Europe, and the buffer zone between Mali and the now nonexistent Libya is smaller than the vast and sandy emptiness of the Sahara would have us believe”
  • Consequently, Germany will send an additional 650 soldiers to Mali to support the peacekeeping mission in Mali, as Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen announced on November 25.

    • How the Paris attacks boosted Iran’s legitimacy

  • In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris, France is reaching out to Iran and Russia to form an alliance against the Islamic State.
  • “This in turn legitimizes Iran’s military engagement in Syria, which Washington considers as one of the root causes of emergence of [the Islamic State] in that country,” said Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
  • “In that sense,” Alfoneh added, “the terrorist attacks in Paris came as manna from heaven for Tehran.”

    • Russia and the “great forgetting”

  • The West’s memory of the Soviet Union is rapidly fading, and forgetting that dark history is preventing people from understanding what Russian President Vladimir Putin is doing today.
  • History is repeating itself, and observers like Anne Applebaum fear the speedy “revival … of a belligerent Russian state, one led by men who were taught and trained by the Soviet state and are thus prepared to use a familiar blend of terror, deception and military force to stay in power.”

    • Racism on college campuses

  • College campuses have black student unions. Now white students are creating their own exclusive unions.
  • Perceived racist acts, like what recently happened at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, are now so quickly and frequently treated as confirmed malicious racist acts.

    • Other news:

  • A recent report by the Threat Knowledge Group said the Islamic State is radicalizing thousands of people in the United States.
  • The United Nations General Assembly adopted six resolutions that condemn the nation of Israel. Five of the anti-Israel resolutions were sponsored by the Palestinian Authority, while the sixth was sponsored by Syria—a nation being ravaged by four years of ongoing civil war.
  • In defiance to the United States, China said on November 22 that it will continue building military and civilian facilities on its artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea.
  • A newly released propaganda video from the Islamic State condemned America’s waning military morale and willpower, declining morals and rising racial tensions.

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