All posts
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Open Thread – “Open War” breaks out between Pakistan and Afghanistan
Open Thread on open war between Pakistan and Afghanistan: Pakistani airstrikes on Kabul and Kandahar followed Taliban attacks on border posts on the Durand Line, with the question of where…
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Kleptocratic Pakistan versus Oligarchic India
X.T.M examines whether “kleptocracy” fairly describes Pakistan, after Kabir objected to the word. He documents military business holdings and concedes that institutional capture may be a better label, while arguing…
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Open Thread: Who Would Be India’s Best Prime Minister, And Why?
Open Thread asking who has been India’s best prime minister among the 14, judged on criteria such as economic stewardship, institutional integrity and crisis management, with a fact sheet on…
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Double Standards, Modi’s Gamble, and Why Ramadan Gets It Right
X.T.M argues that applying a deconstructive lens to Hinduism but not Islam is asymmetric, citing Manu Pillai’s book. The post also treats Pakistan’s literacy gap and Modi’s strategy, and ends…
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The Cantonment and the Clean Street: Why Pakistan’s Punjab Looks More Ordered Than India’s
X.T.M asks why Pakistan’s Punjab feels more ordered than richer India. He answers that military cantonments and DHA enclaves are governed outside city control, so the order seen on Lahore’s…
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According to BAFTA, ‘Free Palestine’ is the slur. Not the N-word.
X.T.M argues that the BBC, working on a two-hour tape delay, aired an involuntary racial slur from a man with Tourette’s yet cut “Free Palestine” from a filmmaker’s speech. He…
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What Tehran and Harvard Have in Common; And Why Trump Is Letting Both Burn
X.T.M announces the return of the BRAHM newsletter, whose first piece argues Iranian clerics and US academia both traded moral authority for proximity to power, and that Trump is letting…
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She Parked a Car With Her Husband. Fifty Years Later, She Is Still Waiting.
X.T.M tells the story of Damayanti Tambay, who has searched for fifty years for her husband, missing since the 1971 war, with 54 Indian personnel still unaccounted for. He argues…
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Brown Pundits Is Not a Cesspit. Keep It That Way.
X.T.M announces that all four authors are moved to commentator status until each commits to evidence-based comments. The post sets out how “genocide” is defined and contested for 1971, and…
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Indian Music Spotlight – Kazinama – Ahista Ahista
Bombay Badshah shares Kazinama’s Ahista Ahista, an Indian neo-soul remix of a late-1980s Pakistani song, with an editor’s note on crediting the original artist.
