Yes THIS is News

A week ago we asked the question "but is it news"?  The question was posed after two hours of viewing CNN's non-stop coverage of the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing.  Since then CNN has moved their focus to the Cleveland kidnapping case.   Again I ask - is it really "news"?  Well maybe the initial story deserved a mention and certainly it is "news" for the families and friends of those involved.  But for the common American what is the implication of this story?  How different might your life be if this event had or had not occurred?   It is certainly a horrible story - but there are a lot of horrible stories that go on in the world each day.  CNN appears to be broadcasting a horror movie rather than real news story...perhaps they should have looked into how much the rights to Stephen  King's movie Malice costs and run that instead.   Again I ask - is it "news"?

There is however a news story going on today which could potentially have enormous impact on the future of American.  And that is today's election in Pakistan.  A quick review:  Pakistan has a population of 180MM people (6th largest in the world) and a per capital GDP of USD 1,410.  Their literacy rate is below 60%  They currently suffer  from a debilitating energy shortage, a separatist movement in one of their provinces (Baluchistan), rampant crime and gang wars which have killed 1000s of persons in their largest city Karachi, plus a Taliban insurgency.  Perhaps this would not rise to the level of a horror movie except that Pakistan has nuclear weapons and Islamist sympathizers within their military.

The current government is headed by President Asif Ali Zardari the widowed husband of Benazir Bhutto.  He is extremely unpopular with approval ratings in the teens.  He and his party the secularist PPP are expected to lose in this election.  The two parties who are expected to pick up votes are the nationalist PML-N party of Nawaz Sharif and the PTI party of former cricket star Imran Khan.  Both have stated that they intend to be less supportive of the US and Khan has suggested that he would be willing to bargain with the TTP - the Pakistani Taliban.
  
This article by the CBC sums the situation up pretty well.
Here is today's NY Times coverage of the election.  Turnout appears very high (which is good).

And here is a fascinating set of polls by the the Pew Center the major results of which are summarized in the following two table

This next table at first looks promising showing relatively low support for terror groups - until you realize that 13% of 180MM people is 23MM people who look favorably on Al Qaeda. 

If there has been a major foreign policy failure of the Obama administration it has not been Syria or Bengazi or even North Korea (really what were we going to do there?) - it has been the continued deterioration of Pakistan.  One wonders how much it would have cost the US to provide schooling for 10MM Pakistani children?  Or to train 1MM Pakistani teachers?  Or to subsidize natural gas imports from Qatar to alleviate their gas shortages.  Like the Cleveland kidnapping story that CNN has been obsessed with, this situation could turn into a horror movie - but this is one that could have enormous implications for our future.  And that is real "news".