(Euronews: 2327 PST, April 5, 2011) "A colonial power even several decades afterwards is always unjustified in pronouncing a judgment on the internal affairs of its former colony - and you know it, and everybody knows it." That statement in January was how French President Nicolas Sarkozy justified France's non-intervention in Tunisia.

So what is to be made today of its action in Ivory Coast? What to make of the French helicopters that bombarded the Ivorian presidential palace? Of course, the French intervention is in tune with international law and backed by a UN mandate.