No secret
RECENT amendments to the Official Secrets Act (OSA), 1923, have caused consternation in political and legal circles, and the media. There has been outrage despite the original amendments having been…
A lifetime of struggle
A PROMINENT voice of progressive left politics in Pakistan, Yousuf Mustikhan passed away this week at the age of 78. Head of the Awami Workers Party, he had been fighting…
Time to correct mistakes
IN the soap opera that is Pakistani politics, the year 2022 should be the climax. Limits were pushed, the Constitution was under threat, rights were violated to the core, propaganda…
Revamping Nacta
A COMMON question being asked these days is: why has the resurgence of terrorism, after the latter was significantly reduced during 2010-2020, not been prevented in 2021? The answer is…
Tapping phones
THE recent ‘leak’ of private telephonic conversations between an ex-federal finance minister and two provincial finance ministers, all belonging to a political party opposing the centre, has raised many important…
Political culture
THERE have been many political movements in Pakistan; some of them have also been between two opposing ideologies, such as the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy and the Pakistan…
Leaking democracy
THE recent spate of leaked audios of conversations among PML-N government leaders as well as PTI leaders is a matter of grave concern for the right to privacy, cybersecurity and civilian supremacy,…
Distant echoes
ISRAEL prides itself, not unreasonably, on its intelligence-gathering capabilities. This applies internationally, with Israeli apps offering the go-to spying software to a range of reprehensible regimes. But within Israel and…
Our Latin American slide
After a CIA- and MI6-orchestrated campaign of mass killing and ‘purges’ in Indonesia in the 1960s that left an estimated upward of one million Indonesians dead, the attention of the…
People, sword, pen
“So, that the people of Pakistan may prosper and attain their rightful and honoured place amongst the nations of the World” — Preamble to the Constitution, 1973 IN my own…
