Some foreign affairs items that recently caught my eye …
Obama’s ill-timed Cuba move: Foreign Policy’s Shadow Government blog asserts that “(n)ot only are any policy changes that could be construed as lessening the isolation of the Castro brothers’ barbaric and unrepentant regime counter-productive at this point, they muddy the real issues at hand.”
The Anarchic Republic of Pakistan: Ahmed Rashid pens a grim review of the political and socioeconomic morass that is today’s Pakistan: “For a country that was founded as a modern democracy for Muslims and non-Muslims alike and claims to be the bastion of moderate Islam, it has the worst discriminatory laws against minorities in the Muslim world and is being ripped apart through sectarian and extremist violence by radical groups who want to establish a new Islamic emirate in South Asia.” It’s all the more poignant and heartbreaking as the flooding situation in Pakistan only worsens every day.
Hair Today, Prime Minister Tomorrow: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy had a odd, darly funny piece from Turkey: “Turkish politics adheres to a simple rule: wives and their moustache-wearing husbands like moustache-wearing men as their leaders. The Turkish prime minister not only looks like a man from the varos, but also walks and talks like one — for instance, cursing on TV whenever he likes.”
Tell your friends!
stillness of heart 