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Mahir Ali

Mahir Ali

Dawn

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Age-old dilemmas

IT seems likely at this juncture that the next presidential contest in the United States will once more pit Joe Biden against Donald Trump. Biden will...

yesterday 80

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Chinese whispers

TO paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one recently appointed senior cabinet minister could be construed as a misfortune; losing two seems like...

20.09.2023 100

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Silencing a songbird

JUST a few days after the elected president of Chile, his close friend and comrade Salvador Allende, had met a violent death in his workplace, the man...

13.09.2023 90

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Killing democracy

THE US has never officially been willing to concede that recent history encompasses not one but two 9/11s. There’s the one 22 years ago that...

06.09.2023 200

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Extreme misogyny

THE latest chapter in the Taliban’s crusade against women was unveiled this week, when at least 60 potential scholars expecting to be accommodated...

30.08.2023 100

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Made for each other

LATE last week, Joe Biden hosted the leaders of South Korea and Japan at Camp David to nudge them towards increased economic and “security”...

23.08.2023 100

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Scorched earth

MORE than 60 years ago, a British sci-fi movie called The Day the Earth Caught Fire illuminated the catastrophic consequences of anthropogenic climate...

16.08.2023 70

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Electoral fantasy

WILL the dissolution of the National Assembly and provincial assemblies be accompanied by the announcement of an election date? There has been...

09.08.2023 100

Dawn

Mahir Ali

American tentacles

NOT long ago, a writer discussing Churchill’s legacy singled out Britain and Australia as appendages to a rampaging Uncle Sam. The analogy might...

02.08.2023 80

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Bangkok backslide

IT did not come as much of a surprise when Pita Limjaroenrat was prevented from becoming the prime minister of Thailand earlier this month. After all,...

26.07.2023 80

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Masters of war

THE headlines from the Nato summit that concluded a week ago in the Lithuanian capital mainly reflected the prospect of Swedish membership and, more...

19.07.2023 200

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Jenin revisited

LAST week’s Israeli ‘special military operation’ in the West Bank town of Jenin has been compared, in terms of its intensity, to a 2002 assault...

12.07.2023 80

Dawn

Mahir Ali

France in flames

ALMOST 80 years ago, after the tide had turned against Germany in World War II, the dictator in Berlin wanted the Nazi-occupied capital of France to...

05.07.2023 90

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Russian disarray

WHEN future historians look back on these times, it is likely that they will pick Feb 24, 2022, rather than June 24, 2023, as the key turning point in...

28.06.2023 90

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Man of conscience

ON Sunday, June 13, 1971, the New York Times carried a groundbreaking report across three columns at the top of its front page under a rather mundane...

21.06.2023 100

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Italian trendsetter

WELL before global politics featured the likes of Trump, Bolsonaro, Orban, Erdogan, Imran Khan, Modi or even Netanyahu, there was Silvio Berlusconi,...

14.06.2023 60

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Artificial horizons

OF late, it has become almost impossible to navigate a Western news outlet without coming across an opinion about the risks posed by generative...

07.06.2023 100

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Never say die

HENRY Kissinger, often viewed as a war criminal, marked his 100th birthday last Saturday amid the usual accolades of the high and mighty, alongside a...

31.05.2023 40

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Never say die

HENRY Kissinger, often viewed as a war criminal, marked his 100th birthday last Saturday amid the usual accolades of the high and mighty, alongside a...

31.05.2023 80

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Fascism’s backers

ON the eve of the G7 summit in Japan last week, there was a sudden outburst of hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth in Australia. Just hours after the...

24.05.2023 100

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Three little words

UNITY, faith, discipline: it would generally be agreed that Pakistan’s motto has broadly been more honoured in the breach than the observance...

17.05.2023 80

Dawn

Mahir Ali

A blighted kingdom

PERHAPS the most interesting factor in the run-up to King Charles III’s cumbersome coronation last Saturday was the number of British polls pointing...

10.05.2023 40

Dawn

Mahir Ali

A polarising star

HARRY Belafonte was among that rare breed of cultural icons who become more radical as they age. He did not merely capture the zeitgeist of a...

03.05.2023 80

Dawn

Mahir Ali

General disarray

UNTIL a couple of weeks ago, the third largest nation in Africa was supposed to be heading towards a transition to some form of civilian rule. The...

26.04.2023 50

Dawn

Mahir Ali

War on leaks

LAST month, Daniel Ellsberg, announced that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and given just a few months to live. At 91, he decided against...

19.04.2023 60

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Peace dividend?

A FEW days ago, Saudi negotiators conceded most of the short-term demands of their Houthi interlocutors in Sana’a, setting the scene for the...

12.04.2023 100

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Manhattan project

HAD the Trump team been trying to figure out a scenario that would propel their figurehead down the path to second coming, they could hardly have done...

05.04.2023 60

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Bulldozer democracy

ON the last day of February 20 years ago, 23-year-old American activist Rachel Corrie wrote to her mother from Rafah in the Gaza Strip: “I think I...

29.03.2023 100

Dawn

Mahir Ali

The Iraq syndrome

IT has been common knowledge for more than 20 years that almost immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the George W. Bush administration was...

22.03.2023 100

Dawn

Mahir Ali

The three stooges

EARLY yesterday, Australian time, three heads of government could be seen on TV screens, lined up behind podiums on the San Diego coastline: the US...

15.03.2023 70

Dawn

Mahir Ali

And miles to go

THE time will eventually arrive, if the world survives, when International Wom­en’s Day (IWD) is little more than a historical curiosity — a...

08.03.2023 100

Dawn

Mahir Ali

First, stop the war

BACK in 1990, when the Soviet Union was on the cusp of disintegration but no one was clear about whether it would happen or the shape it might...

01.03.2023 100

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Nothing to lose

“THE problem we have is that we are headed towards communism. We are beyond socialism.” This warning comes not from 19th-century Europe but from...

22.02.2023 100

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Adieu, sweet prince

ZIA Mohyeddin was horizontal the first time I encountered him, reclining on a couch in his dressing room at the Central TV studios in Birmingham. I...

15.02.2023 50

Dawn

Mahir Ali

The last dictator?

BACK in 1999, in the aftermath of the coup coordinated from a cockpit, I found myself among a tiny minority of compadres and confrères who were...

08.02.2023 100

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Tanks & memories

GERMAN tanks on the borders of Russia. Why does that ring a distant bell, in fact, an alarm bell? The last time that happened may have been 80 years...

01.02.2023 70

Dawn

Mahir Ali

One of a kind?

THE gushing panegyrics Jacinda Ardern has attracted from liberal media outlets pretty much (but not only) across the English-speaking world since...

25.01.2023 70

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Exit strategy

WITHIN a few weeks, a bunch of international geologists are expected to pick a spot to mark the birth of what some scientists are calling the...

18.01.2023 50

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Far-right frolics

THE Jan 1 inauguration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was an orderly affair, even though his predecessor wasn’t there to perform the customary task...

11.01.2023 40

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Hope never dies

RINGING out the old and ringing in the new at the turn of the year invariably involves wishful thinking. Mostly, the detritus of the recent past flows...

04.01.2023 100

Dawn

Mahir Ali

Soviet experiment

EXACTLY 100 years ago today, representatives from the socialist republics of Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia (now Belarus) and Transcaucasia (Azerbaijan,...

28.12.2022 100

Dawn

Mahir Ali

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