Mexican soccer players suffer the swine

Mexican soccer continues, yet without its fans. Two professional Mexican soccer teams recently played to an empty stadium due to swine flu concerns. Just imagine what the game sounded like. The images conceptualize it for you.

Immigrants in Toronto

He who assumes immigrants disrupt cities hasn’t been to Toronto, according to Will Wilkinson (a clear high-minded individual). Wilkinson brings two facts together to make a point. One: nearly half of Toronto’s population is foreign born. Two: Toronto is the fifth most livable city in the world. Put the two together and you’ve got a rich patchwork of a city’s best self. 

Here’s Wilkinson’s main point:

“None of this is to say that Toronto doesn’t have its problems. (Or that it’s not boring to New Yorkers.) But we would do well to learn the lessons of cultural accommodation and integration from our neighbors to the north. American cities could host much larger immigrant populations and thrive. Maybe someday an American city will place in the top 10 on the list of the world’s most livable places. Maybe—if it becomes more like Toronto.” Read more.

Pakistan’s elite: denial is dangerous

The United States is keeping a close eye on Pakistan as it appears to be in the grips of a civil war – though nobody seems to be using that phrase. The civilian leadership is fragile, having succumb to political divisiveness, with a weak president, Asif Ali Zardari, at the helm trying to reverse the Taliban’s burgeoning offensive. 

The Taliban are inching closer to Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, worrying the international community who know this means the radicals are getting closer to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

This escalation has the potential to overshadow President Obama’s other priorities as the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons grows unclear. Yet, according to the Washington Post, Pakistan’s elite remains cloaked in denial and focused on political calculations. And there isn’t much the United States can do about it!

Here is what the N.Y. Times had to offer on the subject: 

“President Obama said last week that he remained confident that keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure secure was the top priority of Pakistan’s armed forces. But the United States does not know where all of Pakistan’s nuclear sites are located, and its concerns have intensified in the last two weeks since the Taliban entered Buner, a district 60 miles from the capital.” Read more. 

Additionally, the Washington Post reveals how key U.S. military commanders are relating events to Iran’s revolution in the 1970s.

“The challenge in Pakistan is eerily similar to what the Carter administration faced with Iran: How to encourage the military to take decisive action against a Muslim insurgency without destroying the country’s nascent democracy.”

More from the Post’s Jackson Diehl:

“The National Security Council met last week to hear a new report by the U.S. intelligence community, which concluded that an Islamic revolution in Pakistan was not likely ‘in the near future.’ An intensive review has also begun of how Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are secured and what might happen to them in an emergency.”

“Much of the civilian elite remains focused on intramural political squabbles and — like Iran’s secular middle class in the 1970s — discounts the fundamentalist menace.”

And what tools do the U.S. have at their disposal? According to the Post:

“Anti-American feeling in Pakistan is high, and a U.S. combat presence is prohibited. The United States is fighting Pakistan-based extremists by proxy, through an army over which it has little control, in alliance with a government in which it has little confidence.

The tools most readily at hand are money, weapons, and a mentoring relationship with Pakistan’s government and military that alternates between earnest advice and anxious criticism. As criticism has dominated in recent weeks — along with reports that the administration is wooing Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari’s principal political opponent, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif — the partnership has grown strained.”