As Max Boot noted yesterday, the assassination of Salman Taseer highlights the rise of Islamic extremists in Pakistan, who have been gaining power in the country despite the fact that their views aren’t shared by the majority of Pakistanis: “Yet in a country where Taliban militants increasingly flex their muscles through bombings, religious hard-liners have great power to intimidate even though polls show that their views are not widely shared. Last week’s strike by Islamic organizations drew few supporters to the streets, but shops in major cities closed – and many merchants said they did so under threat.”
Politico reports that Robert Gibbs’s days as White House press secretary may be numbered. Gibbs is apparently considering stepping aside within the next few weeks to concentrate on handling media strategy for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.
At the Guardian, Sohrab Ahmari’s writes an excellent takedown of Stephen Kinzer’s recent column on human rights “imperialism”: “But it is Kinzer’s extreme cultural relativism that makes his argument against the human rights community particularly troubling. For he is effectively implying that some people deserve fewer individual rights than others.”
Days after dozens of Egyptian Christians were murdered in a terrorist attack during Mass, supporters of the victims protest peacefully in Cairo: “Hundreds of supporters of Egyptian Christians protesting a New Year’s bombing that killed nearly two dozen of their members marched Tuesday night on a church in a Cairo suburb, where they were met by an equal number of security officers in riot gear.”
Say what you will about Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism efforts — its intelligence service is top notch. While most spy agencies focus on tracking down human moles, the Saudis are concentrating on their avian counterparts.
