Dr Aamir Khan

If you surf the internet regularly, you would not have missed the controversy relating to Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner ad. Pepsi duly pulled it within days but not before setting the internet ablaze. As a professor of marketing, I cannot recall the internet coalescing around any one ad with such unanimity, alacrity, gusto, and venom. At […]

The answer to the above question obviously depends on what the Panama verdict will be. However, if the verdict is seen as highly critical of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and if the PTI milks it fully, the chances are that Pakistan’s economic growth, political stability and fragile democracy will be tested, arrested and wrecked. And […]

Do you recall the magical scene in movies where the lost protagonist keeps ending up at the same place? The Pakistani nation is somewhat like that, going in circles. Nothing illustrates this circular movement better than the Panama tragi-comedy that has brought us back to square one. Déjà vu all over again. Let me begin […]

In a remarkable development, Ms. Tehmina Janjua has been nominated the new Foreign Secretary of Pakistan. The development is remarkable because Tehmina is the first woman to be appointed to this prestigious and high-profile post. It is also highly commendable. Pakistan needs women role-models at every rung of its antediluvian, male-dominated structures. Tehmina is one […]

In an astounding outburst, Prime Minister-hopeful, former cricketer and feisty head of Pakistan’s PTI political party Imran Khan has called dark-skinned cricketing stars who recently visited Pakistan as phateechar (decrepit) and rayloo-kuttay (a slang used in Pakistan for a player who is not valued). As if this insult were not graphic enough, the flamboyant and […]

In a sudden escalation of nuclear rhetoric, alarming statements from Russian President Putin and US President-elect Trump suggest that the tipping point of the MAD-led, post-1950s nuclear stability era may soon be reached. Putin talked about “strengthening missile complex to penetrate missile defence systems.” Trump tweeted that the US “should strengthen and expand its nuclear […]

In one of the most jaw-dropping developments in US political history, President-elect Donald Trump, who recently won a crushing electoral victory, is now at war with the most powerful bureaucracies in the United States. That the war is unfolding blow by blow one month away from his being sworn in as President is a portent […]

Hardly had the prescient nonagenarian Dr. Kissinger left Beijing after promising top Chinese leaders of his intention to work on US-China relational stability when President-elect Trump’s phone conversation with Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen and his subsequent, stridently provocative tweets plunged the most important bilateral relationship into considerable turmoil. Of course, the turmoil is not comparable […]

Man is mortal. Hopefully, science will find a way round this sad reality. This will allow some to build bigger empires and marry more glamorous women, others to travel to more exotic countries. I will be able to read more novels. There is something about reading a novel that is uniquely magical — a transcendental […]

In a world-shaking victory that has defied almost every poll, pundit and statistics-based prediction, Donald Trump has now been elected the 45th president of the United States. The victory is stunning. He had been labelled as a misogynist, racist and xenophobic. As his aficionados indulge in revelry, and as Hillary Clinton’s supporters weep, often publicly, […]