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Movie Review: The System is an old-fashioned commercial flic
The young protagonist in Shahzad Ghufoor’s The System just can’t take it anymore. The corrupt politicians, immoral villainous (and easy to buy) police men, rising expense – nothing makes sense to him,...
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Desperately seeking data in Pakistan...
It is a gathering of 300 ‘sexy’ specialists at Ryerson University who, until recently, were known as ‘geeks’. However, thanks to Google’s Chief Economist, Dr. Hal Varian, who calls data scientists and...
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MQM: Has the machine begun to creak?
Ever since the late 1980s, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has aptly been described as ‘a well-oiled electoral machine’. In Karachi – the country’s largest city and an MQM stronghold – the party’s...
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Movie Review: The System is an old-fashioned commercial flick
The young protagonist in Shahzad Ghufoor’s The System just can’t take it anymore. The corrupt politicians, immoral villainous (and easy to buy) police men, rising expense – nothing makes sense to him,...
View ArticleThe Fault In Our Stars: romance doomed at day one
From Romeo and Juliet to Love Story, doomed love is one of the great themes of literature and cinema, its heady brew of sex, death, commitment and mortality a time-honoured way for teenagers and young...
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Movie Review: Koyelaanchal is a complete flop
The year 2014 is a very important year for Bollywood since it is the year that India went to polls. It is one of the reasons that this year Bollywood has released a number of movies based on...
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The case of Pakistan's vanishing Facebook pages
Illustration by William BanzaiIt’s lamentable that our people are not unaccustomed to things magically disappearing, and a few missing leftist pages on Facebook naturally sink to the bottom of our...
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It's not just a cliché: the poor are getting poorer in Pakistan
Illustration by Khuda Bux AbroMost of Pakistan finds the budget speech delivered by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Tuesday to be indecipherable gobbledygook. But in this – the first budget that the...
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An India of small towns
It is the cities of India that have captured the world’s literary attentions: In Khushwant Singh’s novel, the betel nut-chewing Bhagmati tells us of Delhi; and the grandiose Saleem, of Rushdie’s...
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When a mosque closes its doors
“Lock your doors and windows. Close your eyes. Recue the light. And wait patiently as now you do not have an option,” said the old man sitting outside the closed doors of a mosque.“Put out the light....
View ArticleMore peace talks? Anyone?
The attacks are no longer confined to military and police bases. They are no longer targeting the poor common man in vegetable markets and mosques.They have smoothly arrived where their penetration...
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Just another flight, just another night of terror
It was quarter to 11 on Sunday night and our flight back from Lahore had just landed at Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport. While we were making our way inside the terminal, to the conveyer belt...
View Article‘We reported it blowing up first!’
For those of you lucky enough to have missed out on last night’s live television coverage of the attack at Jinnah International Airport, let me inform you that TV journalism died yesterday.What else...
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Movie Review: Heropanti has some impressive acrobatic display
Usually when a movie is specifically made to launch a superstar’s son, expectations from the project become very high. People and critics alike tend to put in extra attention on the performance of the...
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Target: Airport
Airports have always been a favourite target of terrorists of almost all extreme ideological convictions. On 8 June 2014, when a group of religious militants stormed the old terminal building of the...
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Karachi's Polo Ground: Digging into history
Akhtar Balouch, also known as the Kiranchi Wala, ventures out to bring back to Dawn.com’s readers the long forgotten heritage of Karachi. Stay tuned to this space for his weekly fascinating findings.On...
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We're not moving towards civil war, we're in it
Being a Shia is not a crime, but in Pakistan it now carries a death sentence.The 24 Shias from Kohat and Orakzai agency, who were summarily executed by the militants near the Pak-Iran border, have now...
View ArticleSecurity meeting rituals — can we just stop them now?
A ritual is a set of actions and gestures done in a specific sequence. As a nation, we’ve had a history of being ritualistic to a fault.Take our government, for instance. After every devastating attack...
View ArticleLearning from the attack: What went right and what never does
A Charlie Foxtrot is a military situation where everything has gone completely wrong. Where should I even begin to explain everything that's gone wrong with the terrorist assault on Karachi's Old...
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Hockey: When we were giants (and then some)
Imagine a football World Cup without Brazil or an international table tennis event without China. Impossible? Perhaps, but never underestimate the emergence of the implausible and the impossible in...
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