The Londoner

By Sikander Hayat Today PTI conducted a jalsa in Ghotki, where Shah Mehmood Qureshi joined them. This is same Shah Mehmood who was Finance Minister of Punjab in the government of PML(N). He left Pakistan Muslim League and joined Pakistan Peoples Party and became foreign minister of Pakistan. He was also the Nazim of Multan in the time of Pervez Musharaf. His father Sajjad Hussain Qureshi was the Governor of Punjab in 1985 under the Martial Law government of General Zia-Ul-Haq. To keep the long story short, what I am trying to say is that this person and his family has been eternally in governing structures of Pakistan. Bringing him into the fold of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf will test the resolve of Imran Khan as the leader of the party and as the head of this anti corruption movement. These people are the feudal lords of Pakistan and want to keep governing the peasants in one way or another. Shah Mehmood saw very clearly in which direction the wind was blowing and was despera...

By Sikander Hayat Today America has attacked Pakistan again showing all the arrogance of an evil empire . Breaking every international law in the process and treating an ally like an enemy. It would be more palatable if America declares Pakistan an enemy and then kill us. We would than know who to fight against.The Taliban or the so called allies. Imran Khan has been saying this from the day one and now the popular public opinion is agreeing with him that our true enemies are the American government and not the Afghans. America is trying to forge an alliance which has all the enemies of Pakistan in it ranging from India and present puppet government of Afghanistan . Now openly killing Pakistani officers and soldiers in cold blood is basically telling Pakistanis to fuck off and may be this is time for our leaders to wake up from their deep sleep and tell the Americans to  stay in Afghanistan if they can on their own. This alliance must not go no any longer and must en...

IN THE centre of Sarajevo, Bosnia ’s capital, a gleaming piece of Arabic script adorns the top of a new building. This is the logo of Al Jazeera, the Qatari network that has changed the face of television news since it was founded 15 years ago. Inside the building, carpenters and technicians are putting the finishing touches to the offices. But this is not just another foreign bureau. Al Jazeera’s Balkan service goes live on November 11th. This will be the second foreign-language station the network has opened, after Al Jazeera English in 2006. But what language is it? Journalists will be broadcasting in “their” language, say station bosses. This tongue used to be called Serbo-Croatian ; now it goes by a number of names: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian or Montenegrin. (Think New Zealand, Scottish and American versions of English.) The target audience for the channel will be the former Serbo-Croatian speaking regions of the ex-Yugoslavia. But plenty of Macedonians and Slovenes understand...

“I AM almost full for next summer”, boasts Mike Aghjayan, an Armenian from Lebanon who is managing a new hotel in the town Azeris call Shusha and Armenians Shushi. Visitors, mostly diaspora Armenians, will come from the United States, Canada, France, Russia, Lebanon and Iran. In 1988 this was a pleasant hilltop town, home to 15,000. Today barely 4,000 live on amid the ruins of war. His guests, Mr Aghjayan explains, “want to see the land people gave their blood for.” Nagorno-Karabakh is often described as one of several post-Soviet “ frozen conflicts ”. However, as the war in 2008 between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway territory of South Ossetia showed, ice can melt quickly. In Soviet times Nagorno-Karabakh was a mostly Armenian-populated autonomous enclave inside Azerbaijan, some 4,000 square kilometres (1,540 square miles) big. Conflict erupted in 1988 as the territory’s Armenians sought to secede from Azerbaijan . By the time the war ended in 1994, the victorious Armenian...

AS the powerful Communist Party chief of Guangdong Province waited in an ornate conference room last week for the arrival of the new American ambassador, Gary Locke , the banter with his aides naturally turned to Mr. Locke’s Chinese roots. Mr. Locke had stopped in Guangzhou to talk to the party chief, Wang Yang, en route to a visit to his ancestral village. Mr. Wang put a quick end to that topic. “He’s no hometown folk,” he told aides as they shifted in a reception line. “He should clearly realize he is an American.” Just a few months ago, some Chinese media outlets were offering Mr. Locke as a role model for China’s stuffy political leaders — an American bigwig who flew economy class and shunned having a retinue of underlings, like those who attend to the needs of politicians here. Read the full story here.

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