PAKISTAN appears to be a candidate for a political meltdown. All the actors, as if in a Greek drama, are ready with their knives and swords sharpened for the act of annihilation. Some believe they have the street power of protesting crowds behind them while others are armed with weapons of war. Like Unlike

The beloved sun did not rise when they threw up the wall. How long eyes have searched for it and are still waiting! Can the eyes themselves be lost? Could the wall have gouged them out? — Mahmood Darwish THE six-metre high metal border wall erected by the Israeli government around Rafah in 2004 stands [...]

The president should by now be only too familiar with the metaphors of power and the lure of resurrection. Their seduction, like the witches’ prophesies in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, is hard to resist but as the thane discovered (too late) — they never fulfil their initial promises Like Unlike

saifee2001@hotmail.com Everything is governed by a law, some visible and some invisible. With the passage of time, having observed Pakistani ‘vices and virtues’, I have rather arrived at the conclusion that even negative things move under a law. Yes, under some law, or some theory. Successful and triumphant are those who learn these laws/theories like [...]

Simone de Beauvoir’s seminal book, The Second Sex, analysed gender differences from the biological, psychological, historical and master-slave perspectives. At the very outset in her 1949 book, de Beauvoir offers an interesting thesis, that “women are not born, they are made.” There is a difference between sex and gender. Sex is a biological division which [...]

Ambassador’s Diary Dr Samiullah Koreshi Recently the Indian Navy Chief made a statement claiming that this port will be able to block the Gulf to India by closing the Straits of Hormuz . I am surprised that the Navy Chief of the second largest blue water navy in the Indian Ocean can make such a [...]

No one can deny the importance of electricity as the main engine for economic activities and industrial growth of any country. In fact, the economic prosperity of any nation is the direct result of reliable, secure and cheaper electricity supply to make the products of the country competitive in the world market. Like Unlike

I am not the only one in Islamabad using dramatic language to describe the current trust deficit between Pakistan and the United States. There is someone else in this city doing it far better: Ann W. Patterson, Bush administration’s envoy to Pakistan. Like Unlike

The lesson to learn here is that revolutions don’t always behave. They are slave to no one and masters of all. When revolution comes, the people who succeed are normally not the people who believe in all the wonderful things such as human rights and the rule of law. In times of revolution, power flows [...]