Will the real Pervez Musharraf please stand up on September 7, 2017Gen (rtd) Pervez Musharraf is either a wily fox gifted with a strategist’s mind. Or else he is a wily-yet-craftless opportunist, used to just winging it. He has, of course, been charged by an Anti-Terrorist Court in connection with Benazir Bhutto’s murder. Yet he is presently in self-exile, safe in the knowledge that under Pakistani […]
Will the real Pervez Musharraf please stand up on September 7, 2017Gen (rtd) Pervez Musharraf is either a wily fox gifted with a strategist’s mind. Or else he is a wily-yet-craftless opportunist, used to just winging it. He has, of course, been charged by an Anti-Terrorist Court in connection with Benazir Bhutto’s murder. Yet he is presently in self-exile, safe in the knowledge that under Pakistani […]
Days of Cocaine Socialism. Over on September 6, 2017Loaded. Charged. Wireless. Roaming. A revolution was happening. Oh, sorry, hadn’t you heard? The Free-Marketeers were the children of the new world. But too late had they arrived. The party, it was over. The heady days of Cocaine Socialism. Over. But irony. Irony was not over. And nor would it be. Not even the day […]
Bangladesh workers and blind justice on August 31, 2017They say justice is blind. Which is not necessarily a good thing if one is poor. Just ask the families of those killed when the now infamous Rana Plaza collapsed back in 2013. Shoddy construction work and the illegal stacking of additional stories left some 1,100 dead and around 2,500 injured. Bangladesh put owner Sohel […]
Blind justice for Bangladesh garment workers on August 31, 2017They say justice is blind. Which is not necessarily a good thing if one is poor. Just ask the families of those killed when the now infamous Rana Plaza collapsed back in 2013. Shoddy construction work and the illegal stacking of additional stories left some 1,100 dead and around 2,500 injured. Bangladesh put owner Sohel […]
Masked men of anarchy on August 30, 2017More, more, more, cried they. These rebel yellers unschooled in the politics of punk but looking, oh so, prettily vacant for the impending media frenzy of third-eye-blind-shutter-vision voyeurism. The hour was not midnight, yet here they were. Armed with arrows of pent-up desire, poised to shoot their loads all over the prison halls of wealth […]
Trump and the US war machine on August 30, 2017Donald Trump is a man who likes to leave his mark on things. Even when it risks being more of a stain than a mark of, well, anything of real substance. After lamenting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and more or less promising the American people a cut-and-run in both he looks predictably set […]
Trump and the US war machine on August 30, 2017Donald Trump is a man who likes to leave his mark on things. Even when it risks being more of a stain than a mark of, well, anything of real substance. After lamenting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and more or less promising the American people a cut-and-run in both he looks predictably set […]
Is the media dead on arrival? on August 27, 2017Sitting outside a London café in summertime. It was a few days after 9/11 and some British friends and I were trying to come to terms with what had happened. The un-general consensus among our small group was that America’s hand had been forced. Afghanistan would be bombed, there really wasn’t any choice. My voice […]
Reckless language will not smash the patriarchy on August 26, 2017Ayesha Gulalai should keep quiet. But now that she has misspoken an apology must be forthcoming. No, not for Kaptaan. Once he has decided upon just the right line-up of the usual suspects ready to don the well-worn one-size-fits-all hats of the parliamentary probesters then justice can be done. Provided, of course, it doesn’t turn […]