Foreign Digest: Russian Chemical Attack, North Korean Cyberattacks, Italian Vaccination Mandate

Russian chemical weapons attack

            British authorities charged two Russian Federation military intelligence agents last week with the chemical weapons attack on a Russian exile in the United Kingdom this summer and demanded their extradition.  The attack, which also sickened other civilians, targeted a critic of Russian policies.  The authoritarian and kleptocratic Russian regime of Vladimir Putin routinely demands the extradition of exiles critical of its tyranny and corruption or even assassinates them.

North Korean cyberattacks

            The United States charged a North Korean agent last week with the cyberattack on Sony in 2014 and on other businesses last year.  The Communist regime was upset at Sony for a movie critical of the Hermit Kingdom’s tyrannical ruler.  Sony was also threatened with the destruction of its theaters, which should have merited a re-listing of North Korea on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Italian vaccination mandate

            Appeals to reason are defeating populism, as the populist Italian Government is abandoning its brief experiment with effectively voluntary vaccinations at the start of the school year, amid a measles outbreak, after objections from the health care community, opposition parties and the European Union.  Vaccinations for nursery and elementary school students are now again mandatory, instead of reliance on self-certifications by parents.  

           Anti-vaccination is a populist theme on both the far left and the far-right, in addition to the opposition to mandatory vaccination by many libertarians.  Putin’s Russian regime exploits this populist theme to discourage vaccinations as a kind of biological warfare against the West.