Pakistan, Kosovo and Castro deflected attention from the American Presidential elections but with Obama surging ahead after 11 consecutive primary victories, the periodicals are now beginning to frame what read suspiciously like Clinton’s political obituary. Time and Newsweek consider Obama head and shoulders above Clinton. Time also offers a scathing attack on “Clinton’s Spin Machine: run dry” — and its dismissive attitude to Obama’s victories “. Nebraska, Idaho and Utah didn’t matter. South Carolina, Louisiana and Georgia didn’t matter. (but) maybe all these Obama victories mean. that at the very least, (voters) have made it clear that the (spin) machine is broken, if not dead”.There’s lavish praise for the electoral verdict ‘in the most dangerous place in the world’. In Time’s ‘A moment of hope’, Mohsin Hamid, author of the The Reluctant Fundamentalist says for a change, it felt good to be a Pakistani: “.Pakistan also showed itself capable of conducting an effective election.” Hamid says the elections’ singular achievement is crushing religious parties especially in the Northwest Frontier Province, “.voters flocked to secular candidates, utterly rejecting the politics of ‘Talibanization’.”Newsweek profiles Pakistan’s likely new prime minister: Makhdoom Amin Fahim “has a reputation for being able to work with others and get things done.” The PPP loyalist, “is a complex, well-rounded man.(he) is a totally secular, moderate, pragmatic social democrat. He has a squeaky-clean reputation.” Newsweek says Fahim is widely trusted by the ruling troika — the military, the bureaucracy and influential businessmen. All in all, he’s “largely good news for Washington”.Newsweek also tries to explain Serb violence after Kosovo declared independence. Frank Wisner, a former US Ambassador to India and US envoy to the Kosovo status talks, says in an interview: “One can appreciate the Serb’s unhappiness: their national mythology has been built around the fact that the Serbian state was born in Kosovo. (They) have been driven out of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. and Kosovo.” It’s a “black period” in their history.While nobody’s sorry to see Fidel Castro go, The Economist is the most trenchant: in ‘Castro’s Legacy’ it calls Cuba “a sad, dysfunctional island. Cubans have had a rotten deal from a miserable regime.” It strongly favours lifting America’s longstanding trade embargo: “.the country can prosper only if the two Cubas — the entrepreneurial diaspora of 1.5m Cuban-Americans and the 11m on the island— work together.”Away from current political developments, The Atlantic Monthly analyses “China’s Firewall” regime of repression. During the Olympics many visitors will “be surprised.to notice that China’s Internet seems surprisingly free and uncontrolled. In reality, what the Olympic-era visitors will be discovering is not the absence of China’s electronic control but its new refinement”. The “Golden Shield Project” involves monitoring of “international gateways” with a “network sniffer,” which can mirror all data going in or out. Then there’s “DNS block” and the “URL keyword block.” While these components of the firewall. “are easy to thwart. The Great Firewall poses another question: How long can the regime control what people are allowed to know, without the people caring enough to object?”
