Commentary on the dangers of being a female poet (in Afghanistan), a Nixon aid dies, Europe’s centre starts to fall away, why RORO rules and rescuing Canada’s railways.

Death sentence.

New York Times -- Why Afghan Women Risk Death to Write Poetry
In a private house in a quiet university neighborhood of Kabul, Ogai Amail waited for the phone to ring.

 

“You won’t allow me to go to school.
I won’t become a doctor.
Remember this:
One day you will be sick.”

Remembering Chuck Colson a Nixon political operative.

Economist -- Chuck Colson
Charles Colson, political operative and prison reformer, died on April 21st, aged 80.

The centre crumbles.

Telegraph -- Nightmare week for Angela Merkel as austerity bloc crumbles
Europe's political centre is starting to crumble, replicating the pattern of the early 1930s as the crisis ground into its third year under a similar mix of fiscal and monetary contraction.

Related.

Financial Times -- How to pull Britain back from the brink
The job as chancellor is a lonely one.

The Prudent Bear explains why investing is just RORO (risk on risk off).

Prudent Bear -- The Many Facets of Roro
Markets are broken. Accepted investment wisdom has been overturned and the basic tenets of value and diversification no longer work. The financial crisis put the market into a volatile ‘risk on, risk off’ – or Roro – mode for which there is no cure.

Choo Choo.

National Post -- A recent spike: Canada’s abandoned railway lines given second life by search for cheaper transport
One hundred and 26 years after Sir John A. Macdonald drove its last spike, Vancouver Island is bringing the E&N Railway back from the dead.