Mahir Ali

1 day ago | dawn.com | Mahir Ali

BEFORE going in for heart surgery, a “rather vain Jesuit” asks God whether this is the end, and is informed that he would live for another 40 years. Delighted, he subsequently goes in for “a hair transplant, a facelift, liposuction, eyebrows, teeth”. Emerging from the clinic, he is run over by a car. It proves fatal. He is incensed upon meeting his Maker. “Oops, sorry!” Is the divine response.

1 week ago | dawn.com | Mahir Ali

ALMOST 70 years ago, the Chinese leader Mao Zedong dismissed the US as a “paper tiger”. He clarified that the reference was strategic. “Regarding [American imperialism] as a whole, we must despise it. But regarding each part, we must take it seriously. It has claws and fangs. We have to destroy it piecemeal.”That diatribe dates back to 1956, long before Mao himself, by then on his last legs, welcomed Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to Beijing.

2 weeks ago | amust.com.au | Mahir Ali

Voting in federal or state elections has invariably posed a dilemma ever since my family and I qualified as citizens almost a quarter-century ago, at a ceremony where we were handed out miniature editions of the New Testament alongside the sausage sandwiches. It was easy to detest the tories without being enthused by Labor in its Beazley-bub period. In 2004, the Mark Latham interlude seemed potentially game-changing. Given his subsequent trajectory, his loss back then seems like a blessing.

2 weeks ago | dawn.com | Mahir Ali

PRELIMINARY judgement on any new US administration usually involves waiting for at least 100 days before holding it to account. That arbitrary measure seems particularly inappropriate in the context of the revived Trumpocracy.

3 weeks ago | johnmenadue.com | Mahir Ali

Even as more than 40 lives were lost last week in the latest resurgence of sectarian violence on Pakistans northwestern flank bordering Afghanistan, the nations media remained focused primarily on a nationwide do or die protest focused on the capital, Islamabad, and organised by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI).