Filmmaker. Journalist. Media Consultant. Editor Magazines Dawn. Festival Director KaraFilm Festival. Also a hedonist trapped in an intensely political world.
Oct 8, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
There are two main elements in the Hamas-led Palestinian action against Israel. The first, of course, is the moral one: you can’t keep inflicting oppression and injustice against a people forever; inevitably there will be a reaction. And it won’t necessarily be well-considered…>
…it can simply be an expression of desperation and frustration. Anyone willing to ignore this aspect and simply look at this as an unprovoked attack on Israel is either willfully ignorant or willfully duplicitous. Israel has been brutally killing and suppressing Palestinians…>
Oct 24, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The unexpected death of anyone is tragic, and esp in circumstances as murky as the ones in which @arsched has died and they should be fully probed. I did not know him personally so cannot comment on his qualities as a son, husband, father or friend. But I was witness to his…>
…public fall as a journalist, so I find myself uncomfortable with the uncritical eulogies coming out for him. I know the usual tradition is that one should not speak ill of the dead and I don’t mean to cause hurt to his near and dear ones in their time of grief. But I think …>
Jan 18, 2022 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
I don’t usually put out personal info on here but am doing so in hopes that it might offer some lessons to others.
End of Dec I woke up with a mild fever and just a very mildly scratchy throat. I’d felt very chilly at night. I immediately isolated myself in my room and only…>
…went out to get tested. The fever had gone by the afternoon and by nighttime the result of the PCR came back negative. I was of course relieved. Two days later and for about 2-3 days, I just felt a bit sluggish and sleepy, nothing else. Third day on I got headaches, which…>
Aug 15, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
26 runs. 2 wickets. #WIvPAK
Oh Hassan Ali 🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️ That’s the match I think.
Aug 15, 2021 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
Like so many others, I have been thinking a lot about what’s going down in Afghanistan, what it means for Afghanistan and for us in Pakistan. I have to admit that fast-moving events and a multitude of emotions do cloud clear analysis. So I allowed myself the time to step back…>
But I think things are becoming clearer to me. But before I come to my realisations, let me just reiterate where I’m coming from. I’m very critical of the Taliban worldview but having spent some time in Afghanistan towards the end of their last rule, I also feel I understand…>
Aug 11, 2021 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
So apparently the closed door meeting yest by the army top brass with journos and others was intended to push for developing a narrative for the world re: Afghanistan. A few thoughts about what apparently transpired at the meeting…
1. Good luck trying to develop a credible narrative while beating down any voices of dissent within Pak media. Credibility is developed over years and years. No one will believe any narrative coming from the kind of toadies the establishment is fond of pushing within Pak. …>
Aug 9, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Putting this up here to show the stark difference between the facilities/ training/ support Neeraj Chopra had and what Arshad Nadeem had and so that moronic Brigadier can shove it… (2 parts to each vid)
Part 2 of Neeraj story
Jul 25, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
A fictional story: In a mythical land far far away, one senior army officer was assigned the task by his masters to ensure that their favoured group won regional elections. He complied but decided to get some personal benefits as well. He told a billionaire who lived elsewhere…>
…he’d get him made the next chief in the region, as long as he supplied a billion. The deal was struck and as advance payment 100m was paid out to the officer. Ostensibly this was to be used to buy candidates and to aid in the election of supportive candidates. But the smart…>
Apr 14, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
“The apartheid of opportunities in Pakistan is horrible, which is why so many young people are trying to leave the country.”
Have heard a very shocking story from a very reliable friend. So my friend who recently travelled to Turkey as part of a delegation told me that his travel agent told him before travel that his PCR test had already been done. He said he was flabbergasted. Turns out the travel...>
...agent had got fake negative PCR results from a well known lab to satisfy the paperwork requirement. “You can still get your own if you want,” the agent said, “but for our purposes it’s done.” The agent justified this by arguing that getting the paperwork done for the whole...>
Apr 1, 2021 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
Shaukat Tarin who is coming in as convenor of new Economic Advisory Council says on @GeoASKKS “nobody can tell which direction economy is going.” Strong words from someone coming in to government, which undercut the hifalutin claims of the government itself.
He also says the government has destroyed the economy by its earlier wrong decisions.
Jan 26, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
According to media reports Imran Khan has rejected putting up Islamabad’s F-9 Park as collateral for the Sukuk bond. Finally, some sense.
Also according to media reports he said it would be better to put up elite clubs like Islamabad Club as collateral instead. Now everyone’s trying to link it to the omelette. 😂
Oct 8, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This is what is known as a half-truth. Journos should understand bureaucratic nuance. #Churails was taken down by Zee5 on threats by PTA that it would ban the entire website/app in Pak.
Here’s a Reuters story with a little more truth...
Sep 15, 2020 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
The ethics of public hangings and castration have been called out quite adequately I think. But in this thread I want to focus on the other red herring thrown up by Imran Khan in his interview yesterday, mainly because I have heard this too often from poorly educated people: ...>
...That films with ‘vulgar content’ cause rapes. Imran Khan went to the extent of saying that Delhi had become the “rape capital of the world” because of Bollywood films.
There is a lot to unpack in this assertion but the first thing to understand is that there is ZERO...>
Jun 12, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Some uplifting news: Remember this @eosmagazine cover story back in March? Fahim Zaman had argued that the Karachi Circular Railway could be revived for under Rs 30b rather than the Rs 300b being projected by the govt. dawn.com/news/1540874
The huge cost was the main reason the KCR plan has been in the doldrums for so long. Well, it looks like someone finally took notice. A number of federal and provincial govt officials called and listened to Fahim’s pov. And now this news brecorder.com/news/1003327
May 20, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
If any further proof were needed of this PTI government’s economic incompetence, it was brought out in @GeoASKKS - which ran the claimed vs actual growth figures for the last 7 years.
Whereas since 2013, the claimed vs actual growth figures varied at most by 3-5% - sometimes actual were in fact more than the initial govt claims - in PTI’s first year (2018-2019), the actual figures have turned out to be 42% (!!!) less than what the govt had claimed.
Khalid Mahmood of Getz Pharma may have created one of the most important stratified random data sets of coronavirus spread by testing all the employees in his factory. So far the company has tested about 1,000 of its 1,650 employees at all levels. The remaining ...>
...will be tested in the next day or two. The results so far show that 7% of the 1000 employees tested so far were infected. But many of them were asymptomatic. Those testing positive have been told to isolate and the company is carrying out an aggressive contact tracing...>
Apr 16, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
I’ve been intrigued by the Covid-19 modeling the federal govt has been talking about, which both Imran Khan and Dr @zfrmrza say Pak is well below. No details have been provided about what assumptions went into these projections.
But I decided to go back to the original...>
...projections we had presented in @eosmagazine on March 22. Remember that these were based on the following assumptions:
a) That NO mitigation measures such as lockdowns were initiated
b) That based on various epidemiological studies around the world, numbers of infections...>
Apr 15, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
“More than 300 such patients have been brought to different public and private hospitals in the past 15 days — all of them either dead on arrival (DOA) or extremely sick with “pneumonia-like symptoms”, who died within hours of their arrival.” This is a very important story!
Dr Seemin Jamali of JPMC says on @GeoASKKS that while overall number of people coming into emergency has declined by 50% over same period last year (prob bec of the lockdown), the number of people being brought in DOA or near-death has risen by about 21%.
Mar 22, 2020 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Sindh announces lockdown from midnight tonight. All public transport to be shut down. People can be stopped and questioned why they are out and will have to show cnics. Those unnecessarily out will have action taken against them.
Effective midnight 22/23March
15 days lockdown in all of Sindh
CNICs mandatory for those stepping out
Cars with 1 passenger allowed, 2 if transporting sick
