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Pakistan, Kosovo and Castro deflected attention from the American Presidential elections but with Obama surging ahead after 11 consecutive primary victories...

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 Clinton8217;s political obituary. Time and Newsweek consider Obama head and shoulders above Clinton. Time also offers a scathing attack on 8220;Clinton8217;s Spin Machine: run dry8221; 8212; and its dismissive attitude to Obama8217;s victories 8220;8230; Nebraska, Idaho and Utah didn8217;t matter8230; South Carolina, Louisiana and Georgia didn8217;t matter8230; but maybe all these Obama victories mean8230; that at the very least, voters have made it clear that the spin machine is broken, if not dead8221;.

There8217;s lavish praise for the electoral verdict 8216;in the most dangerous place in the world8217;. In Time8217;s 8216;A moment of hope8217;, Mohsin Hamid, author of the The Reluctant Fundamentalist says for a change, it felt good to be a Pakistani: 8220;8230;Pakistan also showed itself capable of conducting an effective election8230;8221; Hamid says the elections8217; singular achievement is crushing religious parties especially in the Northwest Frontier Province, 8220;8230;voters flocked to secular candidates, utterly rejecting the politics of 8216;Talibanization8217;.8221;

Newsweek profiles Pakistan8217;s likely new prime minister: Makhdoom Amin Fahim 8220;has a reputation for being able to work with others and get things done.8221; The PPP loyalist, 8220;is a complex, well-rounded man8230;he is a totally secular, moderate, pragmatic social democrat8230; He has a squeaky-clean reputation8230;8221; Newsweek says Fahim is widely trusted by the ruling troika 8212; the military, the bureaucracy and influential businessmen. All in all, he8217;s 8220;largely good news for Washington8221;.

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: 8220;One can appreciate the Serb8217;s unhappiness: their national mythology has been built around the fact that the Serbian state was born in Kosovo8230; They have been driven out of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina8230; and Kosovo.8221; It8217;s a 8220;black period8221; in their history.

While nobody8217;s sorry to see Fidel Castro go, The Economist is the most trenchant: in 8216;Castro8217;s Legacy8217; it calls Cuba 8220;a sad, dysfunctional island8230; Cubans have had a rotten deal from a miserable regime.8221; It strongly favours lifting America8217;s longstanding trade embargo: 8220;8230;the country can prosper only if the two Cubas 8212; the entrepreneurial diaspora of 1.5m Cuban-Americans and the 11m on the island8212; work together8230;8221;

Away from current political developments, The Atlantic Monthly analyses 8220;China8217;s Firewall8221; regime of repression. During the Olympics many visitors will 8220;be surprised8230;to notice that China8217;s Internet seems surprisingly free and uncontrolled8230; In reality, what the Olympic-era visitors will be discovering is not the absence of China8217;s electronic control but its new refinement8221;. The 8220;Golden Shield Project8221; involves monitoring of 8220;international gateways8221; with a 8220;network sniffer,8221; which can mirror all data going in or out. Then there8217;s 8220;DNS block8221; and the 8220;URL keyword block.8221; While these components of the firewall8230; 8220;are easy to thwart8230; 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?8221;