These are stories from the international scene that may not be a full post.

the Pakistani government imposed Section 144, or emergency rule, on the Sindh Province, matching a move yesterday in Punjab, and placing roughly two thirds of the nation’s 172 million people under harsh restrictions. The Punjab edict resulted in mass arrests of opposition members and a ban on all public gatherings. The Sindh edict has similarly banned public gatherings, and several have already been arrested. At least one district leader in Sindh has refused the order.

Shahbaz Sharif, who was Chief Minister of Punjab until last month when President Zardari imposed governor’s rule, today echoed his brother (former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif)’s call for people to take to the streets for a revolution.

This makes it to congress yet again….last time Turkey crapped on the deal.

Several U.S. lawmakers have written to President Barack Obama urging him to follow up on campaign statements and label the 1915 massacre of Armenians as genocide.

The pressure on Obama comes ahead of an expected presidential trip to Turkey, which has warned that such declarations by the United States would damage relations.

Turkey denies that up to 1.5 million Armenians suffered genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks during World War One. Turkey accepts many Armenians were killed, but denies they were victims of a systematic genocide.

Ronald Reagan was the only U.S. president to publicly call the killings genocide. Others avoided the term out of concern for the sensitivities of Turkey, an important NATO ally.

Good luck with that guys.

Obama’s new Afghan goals.

The White House objectives were expected to roughly parallel 15 goals contained in a 20-page classified report to the White House from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Among them were getting rid of terrorist safe havens in Pakistan and adopting a regional approach to reducing the threat of terrorism and extremism in both countries.

The U.S. goal in Afghanistan must be to protect Kabul’s fragile government from collapsing under pressure from the Taliban — a goal that can only be achieved by securing Pakistan’s cooperation, increasing substantially the size of Afghanistan’s national security forces and boosting economic aid in the region, according to senior military and intelligence officials.

The review addresses “the safe haven in Pakistan, making sure that Afghanistan doesn’t provide a capability in the long run or an environment in which al-Qaida could return or the Taliban could return,” Mullen said, as well as the need for stability, economic development and better governance in Afghanistan, and the development of the Afghan armed forces.

Propping up the Karzai government is kinda lame…basically he is the mayor of Kabul and the government is little more than the city council.  Afghanistan, where empires go to die……..