Rohan’s posterous

Pakistani officials have told the Obama administration that the Marines fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan will force militants across the border into Pakistan, with the potential to further inflame the troubled province of Baluchistan, according to Pakistani intelligence officials.

Pakistan does not have enough troops to deploy to Baluchistan to take on the Taliban without denuding its border with its archenemy, India, the officials said. Dialogue with the Taliban, not more fighting, is in Pakistan’s national interest, they said.

Even as Obama administration officials praise the operations, they express frustration that Pakistan is failing to act against the full array of Islamic militants using the country as a base.

Instead, they say, Pakistani authorities have chosen to fight Pakistani Taliban who threaten their government, while ignoring Taliban and other militants fighting Americans in Afghanistan or terrorizing India.

Now this looks like the sort of thing I would want to do right out of college. Work as an international correspondent, wherever they send you, for just enough money that it costs you to travel and live there. Imagine that.

You have to free-lance, and be ready to live with the uncertainty that comes from that, but otherwise, I'm already somewhat of a multimedia journalist, and I'm prepared to go anywhere for pretty cheap, as long as the stories are interesting (and usually, if it's not London, Washington or New York, those cheap stories have to be interesting.

"Last week's events in [country in the news] were truly historic, although we may not know for years or even decades what their final meaning is. What's important, however, is that we focus on what these events mean [on the ground/in the street/to the citizens themselves]. The [media/current administration] seems too caught up in [worrying about/dissecting/spinning] the macro-level situation to pay attention to the important effects on daily life. Just call it missing the [desert for the sand/fields for the wheat/battle for the bullets]."

* Opinion poll shows big swing against Pakistani Taliban

* Overwhelmingly negative views of U.S., Obama also seen

* Pakistanis express opposition to the war in Afghanistan

Some interesting news out of Pakistan, both good and bad.

The good bit, is obviously that public opinion, as far as this new poll conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org shows that up to 81 percent of Pakistani people view Islamist militants and local Taliban as a critical threat to the country, up from 34 percent in 2007. That's a tremendous increase, if accurate. If coupled with the fact that the poll also shows widespread sympathy with the present government and support for the army, this could mean that Pakistan can now begin to really hit the Taliban and other radicals where it hurts, without worrying about alienating the public.

Meanwhile, the country that has given them billions of dollars and continues to promise plenty more, is still the target of widespread disdain (to say the least.) Pakistanis are still not fond of their American allies, but that doesn't matter as much, as long as they realise that the local militants are the ones that really matter and need to be beaten.

Interesting experiment into our natural tendency to be cruel.

"Last year Karla Hoff, an economist at the World Bank who is currently working at Princeton University, and her colleagues reported the results of experiments conducted in villages in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (American Economic Review, vol 98, p 494). In these tests, two players started out with 50 rupees each. The first could choose to give his to the second, in which case the experimenters added a further 100 rupees, giving the second player 200 rupees in total. The second player could decide to keep the money for himself, or share it equally with the first player. A third player then entered the game, who could punish the second player - for each 2 rupees he was willing to spend, the second player was docked 10 rupees.

The results were startling. Even when the second player shared the money fairly, two-thirds of the time the newcomer decided to punish him anyway - a spiteful act with seemingly no altruistic payoff. "We asked one guy why," says Hoff. "He said he thought it was fun.""