The Pakistani Spectator

A Candid Blog

Posts Tagged ‘united states’

Purposeless knee-jerk reactions

By Dr Shireen M Mazari • Jan 10th, 2010 • Category: Politics, Worth A Second Look

So the US has decided to increase the torture for travellers from Pakistan and other “suspect” countries. It is not just Pakistanis who will now face the “full-body pat downs” but anyone who has visited Pakistan or any of the other countries either seen as supporters of terrorism or countries of “special interest”. Interestingly, these [...]



No Drone Attack During Hilary Clinton Visit

By Dr. Hassan Isfahani • Oct 31st, 2009 • Category: Politics

The people of Federally Administered Tribal regions of Pakistan must be wishing in thier hearts that the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remain in Pakistan for as long as possible or forever, as it will save them from the fatal Drone Attacks.
Hillary Clinton has said that the United States was not losing the [...]



When absurdities rule

By Dr Shireen M Mazari • Oct 19th, 2009 • Category: Politics, Worth A Second Look

Travelling back from usual monthly visit to my village in Rajanpur district, I was intending to write on the mistreatment of southern Punjab at the hands of the local feudals in power, the provincial government and the national leadership. The latest action in this regard was the cutting off of our water on the orders [...]



Afghanistan’s Doomed Occupation

By Mir Adnan Aziz • Oct 5th, 2009 • Category: Politics, Worth A Second Look

“A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility today. How could you have one, if one of its features would be several cities lying in ruins, several cities where many, many thousands of people would be dead and injured and mangled…. That isn’t preventive war; that is war….. It seems to me that when, [...]



Chaos and neglect — national drift

By Dr Shireen M Mazari • Sep 2nd, 2009 • Category: Politics

As another 14th August approaches, there is so much disarray and violence across the land and amid it all there is a qualitative increase in the dangerous trend of giving over sovereign space – both in terms of physical land as well as people – that one barely knows where to begin commenting. However, since [...]



India, America, Diplomatic Hide n Seek

By Ch. Naeem Sidhu • Aug 1st, 2009 • Category: Politics (Urdu)


Shifting Sands

By A Khokar • Jun 25th, 2009 • Category: Politics

 If we take the usual defamatory rhetoric in the press about President Pervez Musharraf out—- that the man availed a lateral entry to come to the power and took an infamous action of U-Turn after incident of 9/11 but reality is that there he was who ruled us for eight long years as a President [...]



The Beat Goes On

By Prof. Michael Brenner • Jun 14th, 2009 • Category: Politics, Worth A Second Look

Rooted dogma is tenacious – especially when well fertilized by fear.  America’s ‘War on Terror’ is going at full throttle after briefly pausing in neutral during the presidential transition.  For all the talk of ‘change’ there is nothing different about how the Obama administration either defines the country’s interests or its audacious global strategy for [...]



Obama’s Double Century

By Prof. Michael Brenner • Jun 12th, 2009 • Category: Politics

Home run?  Boundary 6?  Dazzled them! some of them?  I submit that these are not the most appropriate metaphors. Let us begin by distinguishing between Obama the celebrity and Obama the statesman - something that we ourselves have difficulty doing.  The celebrity realm has its own logic (more accurately, non-logic) that has to do with image [...]



Fearful America Torture

By Prof. Michael Brenner • Jun 9th, 2009 • Category: Politics, Worth A Second Look

American actions in the ‘war on terror’ have been driven by fear – at home and abroad. Fear that it may happen again, fear of the unknown, fear of the alien.  It explains not only the radical thrust of Washington’s actions in the Greater Middle East but also the dulling of critical faculties.  That pertains [...]