Karachi is flooded. There are some truly remarkable images and videos online: of shipping containers floating down Bandar Road as the Urdu-speaking videographer morosely invites Imran Khan to take his place on it. A fire engine going down a quiet Defence street, its lights on and sirens blaring, sending waves that push open gates of […]
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Looking glass histories
Pakistan and Turkey seem to me to have very similar histories in a number of ways, in terms of civil military relations, how restive areas are treated, etc. Given the long history of closeness between the two, I wonder how people who matter in Pakistan have learned from those in Turkey. The memorandum of 1971 […]
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Pakistan is doing well on the coronavirus front, much to the befuddlement of all. Hard to say if it will last, but for now. In the meantime, I happened to be at the birth of a meme. One of the people I follow on Twitter lives in Karachi and with the devastating monsoon rain there […]
Astonishing
The Republican National Convention is on this week, and the party has decided that instead of having a manifesto it is supporting Trump. This is really remarkable, really dangerous. Clearly time for a USAID funded project to develop democratic institutions in that country – I worked on one a few years ago (funded by another […]
Shameful ripoff
Business degrees, especially those offered by private universities, especially those offered online, and most especially those in Switzerland are a really shameful business. I have recently come across one of these via a student, an African fellow who has shelled out tens of thousands of dollars to one of these to do an MBA online. […]
Intercontinental travel
This afternoon we took the ferry across the Bosphorus from Europe to Asia. We went to Kadikoy, and in particular to Moda, which is a little pointy bit of Anatolia looking down from the Bosphorus into the Sea of Marmara. Because it is pointy, there is a sort of a quiet lagoon within a lagoon […]
Bad aunt
I am now a bad aunt to at least six sets of nephews and nieces. I acquired another a new nephew to be a bad aunt to today – he is not new to the world, being around two, but this was the first time I’d seen the son of one of my closest university […]
Why vote for Biden
Metafilter has had one of its ugly circular firing squads about the Democratic convention, with some saying that they will not vote for Biden because of the neoliberal establishment nastiness. I wrote a comment making the argument from outside the US to vote for Biden, then decided not to post it: if there is one […]
Man on a boat
I joined in the collective global snigger when Steve Bannon was arrested for fraud whilst on an absconding Chinese billionaire’s superyacht. I then joined in the global raised eyebrow that the arrest was conducted by the US Postal Service’s police force. I mean… how militarised is that country that the post office has an armed […]
Singed ear
The GF has just returned from a haircut, his face perturbed and his ears lightly coated in ash. It appears that an intrinsic part of the Istanbul barbershop experience is to have your ears set on fire.