What’s it like being a harmless tourist in Iran? Judging by this post at the Lowy Interpreter, it sounds like a weird cross between a police state and Footloose. I’ve always felt that the fatal flaw of theocracy is that, by criminalizing human nature, it subverts the legitimacy of its own authority. Most people want to follow the rules. The two sure ways of keeping them from doing that is to make the rules so cumbersome that it pays to break them (e.g. French labor laws), or else by defining infractions so broadly as to include people in the criminal [...]
A Fistful of Euro’s P O Neill raises a good point about who is really involved in a “peace deal”: When a long running conflict is finally brought to “closure”, is the deal only an arrangement between elites on each side? The question is prompted by the Northern Ireland peace process, where great progress in reducing violence and devolving powers has not been matched by more harmonious relations at the community level. He (or she, there’s no bio) draws a comparison to the Middle East, suggesting that one internal contradiction of the Bush democracy promotion agenda (besides the fact that [...]
The amount of progress that’s been made since last November on the Turkish-PKK conflict is impressive, and worthy of mention. Yesterday, the Prime Minister of the Kurdish Regional Government, Nechirvan Barzani, had this to say about stopping PKK attacks originating from Iraqi territory to Turkish reporters while in Washington: Turkey’s demand — asking our territory not to be used against Turkey — is a just and righteous one. This from the nephew of KRG President Massoud Barzani, who up until a few months back was threatening to bring the fight to Ankara. PM Barzani also said of the Kirkuk referendum: [...]
