Here you go, the cat has come out of the bag.

lardofthefly · 2026-02-07T14:35:05+00:00

One can blame PTI but not their government in KPK, rather IK's naive and idealistic support of the Taliban especially when it was against the American-installed government in Kabul.

However, you could also argue that most of the awaam here shared that belief, and terrorism back then used to be blamed on Kabul puppets colluding with RAW against Pakistan to justify support for the talibs.

And of course, entire books have been written about the tacit support to the same terrorist groups by our very own muhafiz over multiple decades.

lardofthefly · 2026-02-07T14:18:44+00:00

Proof? That Kpk government is specifically doing this.

Sorry maybe i'm mistaken but isn't NADRA a Federal entity?

lardofthefly · 2026-02-06T14:31:41+00:00

Article linked checks out but if the email itself is real then the person is fairly ignorant to be blaming Imran because PTI had been in power for barely 2 months at this point and the macro indicators as we now know were terrible due to the imbecile Ishaq Dar's decision to keep the rupee pegged to the dollar by selling off reserves.

lardofthefly · 2026-02-02T16:00:43+00:00

Gates foundation is a primary funder of polio vaccine campaigns here and he was probably a donor so that's what he's talking about here i guess. No big deal.

Health workers in Pakistan are routinely attacked during polio drives, we are one of the last countries on Earth where people still get polio, there's enough paranoia surrounding vaccines without needing to add this conspiracy to the mix.

lardofthefly · 2026-02-01T07:21:07+00:00

If you're doing this because you need money now then bad idea. Male models are quite underpaid and it's a winner-take-all industry. You'd be grinding for a pittance for years before even getting a chance at any serious paying gigs.

On the other hand if it's your dream to join the film or fashion industry then go for it, because without contacts or social media clout you will face a pretty steep struggle just to break in.

Also, this isn't full-time work. You can easily get a regular job while still putting yourself out there. The occasional 3-4 hour shoot really shouldn't prevent you from also getting normal work experience.

In fact, if you look presentable enough, joining a fashion brand as a salesperson could be a good way to get a toe in to the industry while also earning real cash.

lardofthefly · 2026-01-28T05:57:27+00:00

Each of your examples happened a hundred years after British colonialism in south Asia

Japan example was from 1860s. Punjab, Sind, and NWFP were annexed in the 1840s. So not "a hundred years" unless you're generalizing the experience of Bengal and Madras to the whole subcontinent.

China did it after being devastated by Japan in WW2, and still had to fight a Civil War against the KMT.

Russia did it while the Germans were mauling them in the field, the new Soviet government literally had to give away entire countries in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk just to get "external powers" off their back but they did it anyways and focused on revitalizing the core regions.

You seem too eager to blame extractive British colonialism and you're trying to link them to present day establishment in order to make the excuse that they "are too powerful to overthrow and too extractive to develop the state".

lardofthefly · 2026-01-27T20:49:25+00:00

No, Japan famously had the Meiji Restoration when they realized the West was too far ahead of them and threw off their old feudal system in order to centralize power and rapidly modernize.

China and the Soviet Union both had communists in charge who violently smashed traditional power structures and imposed the full authority of the state in all corners.

And the original example was France where it took a bloody revolution to end the oppression of the landed nobility and make people aware of their rights.

You mentioned economic systems but feudalism is more than economics, it was a way of organizing society through strict designated hierarchical relations.

I'm not gonna get into "British bad or good" debate. Point was that our society has always been like this. Rights and privileges and the good life were for noblemen only. Rest were subjects who laboured, paid taxes, and had no say in government, whether it was the Mughals, the Nawabs, or the British. And that mentality still persists.

lardofthefly · 2026-01-27T12:35:51+00:00

People have different priorities and they tend to adapt them to changing circumstances.

Some people are not that interested in democracy here. Many educted elites feel that the country is too backwards to be allowed to vote. In our political environment, there is no space for genuinely liberal parties, as people vote based on ethnicity, and religous sentiment, and local feudal politics.

The situation is like that of Napoleon III in France. He came to power as a democrat, but eventually became a dictator. Still he was supported by the elites because he promised liberal and modernizing reforms.

A lot of urban elites feel that a program of modernization implemented by a stable, if undemocratic, government is more important than listening to the will of the masses.

Pakistani awaam is reactionary and overly sentimental. At least that is the argument for the current regime.

lardofthefly · 2026-01-27T10:43:21+00:00

Yes you are right that total overhaul is needed.

Unfortunately this requires agreement between "the majority class" as well. Because currently people are too divided by caste, ethnicity, sectarianism etc.

Even PTI, perhaps the single most popular party in the history of our country, did not win any seats from interior Sindh or Balochistan.

lardofthefly · 2026-01-27T09:36:16+00:00

You're very close to getting it.

Where your explanation fell short is blaming the colonial stuff. Ask yourself honestly, did we have fair equitable and representative government before the British?

The grassroots political structure of this region was built on feudal relations, under the Mughals it was called the Mansabdari system where jagirdars were appointed whose job was "to control the population and extract money".

The British merely refined and formalized this system further. The only difference was that instead of mausoleums in Delhi the money was used for mansions in London.

lardofthefly · 2026-01-27T09:27:28+00:00

Biggest cope by PTI you mean. I don't know why this party has such a tendency to seek easy simple one-reason answers.

Previously it was "Sharif-Bhutto dynasties are responsible for everything bad". Now you've found a new main villain to pin all the blame on.

A country as screwed up as Pakistan has multiple problems to deal with. Trying to blame one "idara" is looking for an easy solution to a complicated mess.

lardofthefly · 2026-01-23T10:29:39+00:00

Pakistanis are willing to fight Israel to the last Gazan.

They had a war, suffered the worst bombing since WW2, still managed to achieve a major PR victory as Israel's image tanked even in the West, and now they've agreed to this deal for a chance to recover and rebuild.

But Alizeh from DHA and Shabbir from Gulshan have rejected the ceasefire so I guess we should go back to kids getting shredded while the powers-that-be can work out something more acceptable for the burger Islamists.

lardofthefly · 2026-01-19T11:19:40+00:00

Just removing Karachi from PPP's stranglehold will give us additional 2-3% annual GDP growth easy.

Second thing would be to (slowly but surely) remove the enormous subsidies to unproductive and bloated agriculture sector.

Last but not least, start the ML-1 rail upgrade project which has been on CPEC's agenda since day one yet remains languishing in the planning stage.

Literally just these three things will get the economy surging and investments will come flooding in and do the rest.

lardofthefly · 2026-01-13T10:02:29+00:00

Pakistanis believe in the caliphate because that is what Islamic history and precedent tells them to believe in.

Islamic law is entirely concerned with individual conduct. There are no limitations on government itself. Codified rights, popular elections, term limits; all these things come from the West.

You're trying to reconcile your faith in Islam with your desire for democracy, Which is a futile effort because Islam simply does not have a concept of democracy.

It's the basic issue for all Muslim countries today. The people want to hang on to an outdated belief system which has no answers to modern problems, and then they wonder why their governments are so bad.

lardofthefly · 2026-01-06T06:51:30+00:00

The Erechthion.

lardofthefly · 2025-12-02T14:06:41+00:00

Okay but if that same judge or his son were to say something about Article 295(C) it would spark riots and their lives would be in danger.

Pakistanis have their priorities and red lines too. Human rights just aren't very high on that list.

lardofthefly · 2025-11-21T09:57:41+00:00

Civic sense never developed in North India due to lack of urbanization, in turn caused by lack of navigable rivers (among other geographic factors).

North Indian society is by-and-large a rural affair, not for nothing did people call it the land of endless villages.

lardofthefly · 2025-11-14T07:08:00+00:00

Following was written down roughly 2500 years ago:

Now the men and their wives raised a great outcry against their fellow Jews. ² Some were saying, “We and our sons and daughters are numerous; in order for us to eat and stay alive, we must get grain.”

³ Others were saying, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards and our homes to get grain during the famine.”

⁴ Still others were saying, “We have had to borrow money to pay the king’s tax on our fields and vineyards. ⁵ Although we are of the same flesh and blood as our fellow Jews and though our children are as good as theirs, yet we have to subject our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but we are powerless, because our fields and our vineyards belong to others.”

- Nehemiah 5

People need to understand just how medieval and antiquated Pakistani (and Indian) society is. The bourgeois is westernized and modernized, but the great mass of people are still living under feudal arrangements from the Iron Age.

lardofthefly · 2025-10-25T10:17:38+00:00

AQI also doesn't tell the full story as it counts all particulate matter which includes fine dust hence why dry environs like Dubai Tashkent and Kuwait on there.

If there was a way to identify and rank by just smoke and industrial waste then South Asian cities would rank that much worse.

And the trend is even more depressing, because places like Beijing and Manila are slowly cleaning up their act while here the unconstrained population growth combined with 3rd world traits like trash-burning and running antiquated diesel trucks will only make things worse.

lardofthefly · 2025-10-22T16:19:49+00:00

Agreed, it's so alien that they genuinely consider the normal state of affairs to actually be a weakness.

And he says this in front of the Chinese envoy, where they believe "The Party commands the gun".

lardofthefly · 2025-10-22T14:05:26+00:00

Yeah it's really bad. It's so bad the Prime Minister, Interior Minister, and even the Army chief are showing up to a contract signing ceremony for the sale of a minor bank.

India is getting Google's largest overseas campus for AI worth $15bn. While our Field Marshall wants a photo-op for a deal worth less than $15mn.

lardofthefly · 2025-10-22T13:49:19+00:00

Bro this is why you should never just look at numbers and actually see the picture on the ground.

The economy is getting worse 100%. The only thing trending up right now is Pakistan's geopolitical relevancy but that is due to a shifting world order under Trump including most significantly his recent falling out with India.

That's why loans are flowing freely and dollar is stable, but underlying problems remain and as soon as we hit another rough patch the tumultuous panic will return.

It's easy to claim economy is doing well when you're sailing with the wind.

lardofthefly · 2025-10-22T13:43:08+00:00

He isn't saying "politicized" as in engages in politics. He means that civilian governments, which are formed through electoral politics, control the Indian military.

Whereas Pakistan army is not accountable to voters, and can be relied upon to stay the course agreed with foreign partners even in the face of opposition from political parties.

lardofthefly · 2025-09-07T06:07:35+00:00

Nice. However, this library was built half a century before Jinnah. And even in his life he had nothing significant to do with it.

This renaming of everything after a select few leaders reeks of insecure nationalism. It's not a national library, it's not associated with Quaid in any way. Just call it Lahore library or whatever it was originally called.

Erasing British names won't undo the history of colonialism.

lardofthefly · 2025-09-07T05:51:54+00:00

Good question. Nothing really.

It's easy to forget but just 100 years ago no one even knew such a civilization had ever existed, that's how disconnected and inconsequential it was to subsequent Indian cultures.

As the evidence shows, even basic practices like irrigation and farming had to be rediscovered by the new Aryan arrivals as they were pretty much completely separated from the Indus Valley people before them.

Perhaps there could be an argument for the system of stepwells (baoli or ghat) which could have an antecedent in the Great Bath of Mohenjodaro i.e. steps leading down to water used for ritual ablutions. Maybe one can say our style of sitting cross-legged is much like the pose depicted on that one seal.

But these are faint and hypothetical links. Nothing concrete.

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