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Environmental degradation

There is the Cerrejon thermal coal mine in Colombia -- jointly owned by Glencore and two other transnational companies, BHP and Anglo American -- whose expansion over the past 40…

Moral panic and social change

LAST week in an interview to a private TV channel, the prime minister made several remarks about what he believed were indicators of moral degradation in Pakistani society, and the underlying reason…

Unthinkable thoughts

There is this forbidding thought that bothers me a lot. Let me put it as a question. What is more crucial for our nation’s progress, a nuclear arsenal or universal…

Can’t take them on

One of the most dreadful periods I have lived through, as a citizen and as a journalist, was in the aftermath of the assassination of Salmaan Taseer in the first…

Lives people live

An ominous moment it was – at around midnight – when they finally announced their consensus to form the new government and agree on names for major positions at the…

What floods can’t wash away

There is something decrepit and old in rural Pakistan that the floods have not washed away. So, will it be any different when the waters that have drowned entire settlements…

Anti-poor bias?

IT is estimated that Karachi’s informal economy is between 30 to 40 per cent of the city’s total economy. Most of it consists of informal markets scattered at various locations…

The resistible rise of fanaticism

Now that we have survived three days of a particular kind of national disarray, we have one more occasion to make some sense of what is happening to us. In…

The Moon Gazers

The moon gazers

Their stern looks put the fear of God into our hearts and make us tremble for our lives. We know that a shout from the pulpit can result in lynching,…