Outis

This does it.

Foreign Policy’s Passport blog is the best on the web — for me, at this moment in time.

Any Cuban who votes for the GOP is a commie.

Larry Johnson, former CIA officer:

I am old enough to remember the Cold War. I have read the works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who spent years unjustly imprisoned because Soviet leaders believed he was a terrorist bent on destroying Soviet rule. We have now come full circle. Like the Kremlin leaders of old, George Bush and his Administration now authorize the secret detention, imprisonment, and interrogation of people he decides are “terrorists”. Instead of the rule of law we have the rule of man. One man who sets himself above all others and becomes, by definition, the final arbiter of who is good and who is evil.

Erlier today I found out about Chinlone.com via MetaFilter.

When I showed it to my friend Federico, a big soccer fan, he remarked that it was interesting they were wearing soccer uniforms — or variations thereof.

It wasn’t until I showed it to Ana that I realized that the ball they’re using is not the size of a soccer ball. In fact, the odd thing is that it’s decorated like a soccer ball, at all. It could be any color or pattern. That it does look like a soccer ball is not a coincidence.

If anything, this sport — and art — is more like footbag than futbol. So why the references to the latter?

Well, if you’re planning to export the traditional “non-competitive sport” and dance of Myanmar to a global aduience, you’d best package it in the universal language of soccer.

Well, now, that’s interesting.

James Forsyth writing at Passport:

As Milani pointed out, a country where the price of gold is rocketing up is hardly one where those with money are confident about future stability.

Ahmadinejad’s economic policies are totally wacky. He has reduced interest rates to below the level of inflation. Unsurprisingly, the governor of the central bank wasn’t too keen on this. So, Ahmadienjad just took away that power from him. It is estimated that there has been capital flight of between $50 to $200 billion over the last four months. All of these economic problems and the fact that Iran has to import gasoline suggest, to my mind, that a blockade might be the overlooked option here.