Well, if you thought that France getting a new Socialist president, François Hollande, was going to mean a retreat from the Franco-dystopia that unfolded under his reactionary predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy—time to think again. Sarkozy's election in 2007 saw the outburst of an intifada by North African immigrant youth in the Parisian suburbs, followed by the unleashing of police repression. Not much later, Sarkozy instated a harsh crackdown on the Roma, ordering police to break up their camps, sparking more protests and an official censure of France by the European Commission. So what a sense of deja vu... Hollande now says his government will use "all means" necessary to restore peace after a new uprising by immigrant youth—this time centered around the northern city of Amiens—left more than a dozen police officers injured and several buildings damaged or destroyed. (LAT, Aug. 15)

It hasn't won the merest fraction of the coverage enjoyed by the London Olympics, but last week's massive Chevron oil refinery fire in Richmond, Calif., sent hundreds of people rushing to hospitals, darkened the skies over East Bay, and has gasoline prices headed back up towards $4 a gallon. AP notes this "was just the latest pollution incident at the facility that records show has increasingly violated air quality rules over the past five years. The refinery is one of three such facilities near San Francisco that rank among the state's top 10 emitters of toxic chemicals, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Release Inventory. Chevron's Richmond refinery...has been cited by San Francisco Bay area regulators for violating air regulations 93 times in the past five years."

China's move to set up a military garrison at Sansha on disputed Yongxing Island (also known as Woody Island) in the Xisha chain (claimed by the Philippines as the Paracels), along with creating a city administration for the island which has heretofore had few permanent inhabitants, is escalating tensions in the South China Sea (or, as Manila has it, the West Philippine Sea)—the key theater in Washington's new cold war with Beijing. On Aug. 4, Beijing summoned a senior US diplomat, the embassy's deputy chief of mission Robert Wang, over State Department criticism of the move. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said in a statement the day before that the US is "concerned by the increase in tensions in the West Philippine Sea and [we] are monitoring the situation closely."

We've warned before that if Israel continues on its accelerating trajectory deeper into Jewish chauvinism and monocultural supremacy, it may have to forfeit its long-touted claim to the title of the "Middle East's only democracy." (Especially given that Israel is ironically fast becoming a more closed society simultaneous with the unprecedented political opening in the Arab world.) We've also warned that one way this chauvinism is manifesting is in the Judaization of geography in Jerusalem, and censoring of old Arab place names by municipal authorities. Now a similar controversy emerges from Tel Aviv. From Ha'aretz, Aug. 10:

OK readers, we have finally unveiled our long-awaited redesign. Now we need to pay for it. We want to hear from you with your feedback. And we also urgently need your support. To get out of debt, we need to raise at least $1,000 dollars. The sooner we can pay it off, the sooner we can put funds toward journalism—more first-hand reports from the frontlines of the indigenous struggle in Andes, and our planned excursion to North Africa and Western Sahara. The kind of reportage on forgotten struggles for land and autonomy around the world that you can only find on World War 4 Report. $1,000 isn't very much—far less than what most alternative websites ask of their readers. Do we have 50 readers that we can count on to give just $20 each? If you value World War 4 Report's work, and want us to be there to continue bringing you news from the Fourth World across Planet Earth, please get the ball rolling on this urgent fund appeal—now, while you are thinking about it! 

The Aug. 6 massacre of six worshippers at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis. is revealing in its reactions from across the spectrum, but let's start with Mitt Romney. The media have noted his embarrassing blooper of confusing the words "Sikh" and "sheikh," but failed to note that the very quote in which he made the gaffe was not merely ignorant but insidiously sinister. Here it is: "We had a moment of silence in honor of the people who lost their lives at that sheik temple. I noted that it was a tragedy for many, many reasons. Among them are the fact that people, the sheik people, are among the most peaceable and loving individuals you can imagine, as is their faith." (AP, Aug. 7) Right, as opposed to those dirty you-know-whos. Numerous commentators (mostly on the left, natch) have pointed out that the emphasis on the fact that Sikhs aren't Muslims sometimes comes close to implying that violent attacks on Muslims would be OK. Romney's subtext is clearly that the Sikhs are good, domesticated wogs that white America can tolerate, while those bad Muslims have got it coming, because their faith is not "peaceable and loving."

Well, we did it. Just in time for our 11th anniversary next month, World War 4 Report is finally ready to unveil its long-awaited new design. We said when we first launched in the immediate aftermath of 9-11, that we would publish until peace. The world has changed a lot since then—especially in the past year and a half of revolutionary upsurge—but we feel that our mission is as vital as ever. Even if the end of the Bush era represented at least a slight retreat from dystopia, the US remains at war not only in Afghanistan, but in Iraq (yes, still), in Pakistan, in Yemen. The Libya intervention represented a turning point in the Arab Spring, when Great Power politics began to overshadow the initiative of the Arab masses. Syria looks like it could be next. And while the world is paying little attention, Western intervention is looking increasingly inevitable in war-torn Mali. World War 4 Report is virtually alone in doing the hard work of hashing out an analysis that opposes imperial agendas while loaning no comfort to dictators or jihadis.

From the Queens Times-Ledger, July 27:

Bronx family had just left Nigerian gathering at Richmond Hill hall before crash

Oby Okoro, the woman the NYPD identified as the driver in a gruesome accident Sunday morning in Jamaica that left five passengers dead, told police she lost control of her Mercedes-Benz because the brakes failed, according to a report.