News

Since the end of WWII, Japan’s constitution has limited its military action to self-defense. However, “Japan’s cabinet has approved a landmark change in security policy, paving the way for its military to fight overseas… a reinterpretation of the law will now allow ‘collective self-defense’—using force to defend allies under attack” (BBC, July 1, 2014). The Japanese President assured “It will be strictly a defensive measure to defend our people.

The Islamic militant group ISIS that recently took over cities in northern Iraq has “declared an Islamic ‘caliphate’ [state] in an area straddling Iraq and Syria” (The Guardian, June 30, 2014). One jihadist commented in a high tech video made to promote ISIS, “This is not the first border we will break, we will break other borders” (ibid.). “Later the fighter pledges that jihadists will free Palestine. ‘We are not here to replace an Arab cahoot with a western cahoot.

“The Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa is ‘totally out of control,’ according to a senior official for Doctors Without Borders, who says the medical group is stretched to the limit in responding” (Associated Press, June 20, 2014). Ebola, which causes its victims to bleed to death internally, is spread from person to person and has no cure or vaccine.

“It’s not a good sign when the leader of a G7 nation feels the need to state his country still matters. That is precisely what French President Francois Hollande did at a meeting of European Union leaders last month after his Socialist party’s humiliating defeat by the hard right National Front in European Parliament elections” (Reuters, June 13, 2014). According to one former European affairs minister, “Hollande is a devalued currency.

This Friday EU leaders will meet to appoint Jean-Claude Juncker as the next president of the European Commission (Telegraph, June 22, 2014). Some Europeans are strongly supportive of Mr. Juncker, while some British see him as Anglophobic because of comments he made in a 2005 speech to the European Parliament (ibid.).