by TIM STRANGLEMAN Neither faith in, nor critiques of the idea of meritocracy is new. Michael Young’s famous 1958 book The Rise of Meritocracy argued that class privilege and advantage were likely to be amplified as financial and cultural capital passed across generations in families. Each new generation would benefit from existing structural advantage created by their parents and even grandparents. They might …

KRASLICE, (Czech Republic): In the winter of 1978-79, Afghanistan’s communist regime deployed a hit squad to find and kill Babrak Karmal, the high-profile ambassador to Czechoslovakia. Fearing for his life, Czechoslovak authorities secretly hid Karmal and his family in a remote hunting lodge in the dense forests straddling the border with East Germany. The family-of-six lived covertly for a year …

  The Maulana has dared to challenge an authoritarian system, but the fate of democracy will remain in doldrums until all democratic forces mobilise the downtrodden people of Pakistan, writes senior journalist and political commentator Imtiaz Alam in an opinion article published in The Wire, an online news portal. This column written by him has been censored in Pakistan where news portals …

Abominable tells the story of a young girl living in Shanghai and a yeti Herald Report A newly released animated children’s film triggered a territorial controversy in South East Asia. A half-second blip in the film aggravated a decades-old geopolitical controversy in Southeast Asia in October, writes Grennan Milliken in the GlacierHub, an online news portal. The film about a lovable yeti and …

A new book highlights gaps between aid agencies and communities, the efficacy of aid in poverty reduction and human development Herald Report The debate over development strategies and policies being applied in the developing countries to eradicate poverty has been going on ever since the introduction of the neoliberal economic agenda and the structural adjustment programmes. Independent economists and academics …

Historian William Dalrymple’s new book, The Anarchy, indicts the East India Company for “the supreme act of corporate violence in world history,” writes Matthew Wills in JSTOR Daily. It’s become commonplace for corporate lobbyists to write bills passed in state legislatures. The influence of corporate lobbyists in the US Congress may be more subtle, but the combined power of lobbyists, many …

The End of History author on what Karl Marx got right, the rivals to liberal democracy and why he fears a US-China war. By George Eaton History is having its revenge on Francis Fukuyama. In 1992, at the height of post-Cold War liberal exuberance, the American political theorist wrote in The End of History and the Last Man: “What we may …

KARACHI: Once a prime candidate for extinction, the population of vultures in Pakistan has shown tentative signs of recovery in the past five years, but nature’s “garbage disposal” is still facing looming threats on several fronts, experts said. The population of several species of vulture started declining in the mid-1990s due to the ingestion of livestock carcasses containing residues of deadly …

HAH Report   Islamabad: Tens of thousands of charged protesters descended on the federal capital on Thursday calling on Prime Minister Imran Khan to resign over misrule, faulty economic policy and corruption claims. The ‘Azadi (freedom) March’ organised by the religiopolitical party, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazal (JUI-F), and supported by almost all major opposition parties to show their grievances against the government. Public and …

 By Amir Hussain Our carefully manufactured brands of holy war are no longer available to fight the battles of strategic importance on two fronts at least i.e.  Against the enemy within and the one outside the national borders.  Left to their own choices by state the religious puritans in the recent past enjoyed liberty to harass and persecute the imagined enemy within …