Photographs of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution

Pakistan's so called "Feminists"

Imagine waging a grand struggle for something for 30 odd years and still being unable to make even a small incremental change towards your goal. Pakistan’s so-called feminist movement is a story of foibles, missed opportunities, humongous egos and personal enrichment. Meanwhile, in Pakistan, a woman’s testimony is considered half that of a man in terms of financial transactions, and Hudood Laws for all intents and purposes continue to infringe upon women’s personal freedoms. The little progress that women have made, and it is pathetically little, over the last 30 years has come from outside the influence of the cabal of feminist activists. In fact, at every opportunity, these feminists have tried to bring down people who have tried to speak for women’s rights and equality from a non-gender based perspective on the basis of equality of citizenship regardless of gender.

Lincoln, the film, the lawyer and Pakistanis

By Yasser Latif Hamdani

(Some spoilers- beware)

"Lincoln" v. "Gandhi"

A few days ago, I watched Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" starring amongst others the likes of Daniel Day Lewis, Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones. It was one of the most extraordinary films I have seen in my life and what is more is that it wasn't preachy or unrealistic - quite unlike Richard Attenborough's rather mediocre film "Gandhi" which distorted history and presented the subject as an infallible saint instead of the shrewd politician, very capable of cunning and cant, that Gandhi was. Sir Ben Kingsley did a terribly unconvincing job as Gandhi but to be fair that film fails on account of a weak script and the fact that it was naked hagiography masquerading, but failing, as history. On the contrary  Lincoln was a political film about a politician who was human but whose integrity shone through even as he was fighting a grave battle for his nation. Consequently Daniel Day Lewis was superb and masterly as Abraham Lincoln. One reason for this might be that this film itself is for an increasingly aware audience in the information age, as oppose to the naive gaping and ignorant buffoons who crowded cinema halls in the early 1980s (I can only imagine how cinema goers could have reacted without the ability of doing some basic fact checking back then).