Used to be a fast bowling analyst - Now failing at saving the world - Part time Rockstar
Joined August 2011
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Pakistan cricket = Pakistan's elite capture in microcosm.
Stars enter the elite bubble →learn values of arrogance, zero accountability, entitlement.
Sycophant vultures in media & franchises enable it.
Fans r left happy with the crumbs.
Civilizational rot on full display
Asfandyar Farooq retweeted
Life doesn't begin at the age of 70. Imran Khan has lived a life that 99.99% of the world population can only dream of. His current resistance is tantamount to what a larger than life personality Imran Khan is who does not know how to surrender. Long live resistance! ✊🏼
Asfandyar Farooq retweeted
Who better to lecture us on freeloading off the state than you?
I'd be more concerned about your own descent into hedonistic decadence. How tragic it must be to grow accustomed to privilege that you begin mistaking your own indlgence for virtue and evryone else's needs for greed
All because JAAC wanted to remove reserved seats for Indian Occupied Kashmir (which can happen inside the Azad Jammu and Kashmir assembly only) and because Islamabad said “wait” before accepting the demands for more free handouts while ensuring zero taxation 🤡
The lesson for Islamabad, which it refuses to learn over 79 years, is that freeloading isn’t sustainable - it creates “hedonistic adaptation” and populations used to freeloading want “more” because of the habituation.
Asfandyar Farooq retweeted
Their rage does not stem from wounded pride over a scrutinized military-style governance garrison; it is the raw panic of an exposed syndicate. What terrifies them is that the great machinery of their extraction now stands naked before the public, a predatory racket that forces an entire nation to hold out a begging bowl under crushing sovereign debt and taxes, all to bankroll the gilded perks and hollow splendor of an illegitimate rule.
Asfandyar Farooq retweeted
Since Pakistan lives on foreign credit while its ruling government and military class captures the loans, how do ordinary people survive?
The state does not sustain its population through factories or productive public investments. Instead, it relies on informal lifelines to keep millions right at subsistence level. Over thirty billion dollars arrives each year from working-class laborers and drivers in the Gulf, wired directly to their families to buy wheat flour and pay rent, completely bypassing the government treasury.
Meanwhile, sixty to seventy percent of the national economy runs off the books. Unregistered street markets, daily-wage labor, and illicit border trades provide the cash that keeps households from starving outside the formal banking system.
The government steps in only to manage hunger instead of solving it. Federal education spending has plummeted to less than 1% of GDP while the state expands targeted cash programs like BISP, giving families just enough pocket money every few months to stop food riots. When that falls short, private charities and community kitchens feed millions of workers on the street every day because public institutions refuse to do it.
The loaned rentier state keeps ordinary people functional enough to survive, but denies them the tools to build real wealth, leveraging their labor to pay the taxes that keep foreign creditors satisfied.
Asfandyar Farooq retweeted
When the courts belong to the regime, every petition is decided before it is heard.
ANATOMY OF OPPRESSION | No. 3: Silence the courts
The Philippines, September 1972. President Ferdinand Marcos declares martial law, and among the first people arrested is opposition senator Ninoy Aquino, the man widely expected to succeed him. Aquino petitions the Supreme Court for his freedom, but in 1974 the court upholds both martial law and his detention. Three years later, a military commission sentences him to death by firing squad.
Why it works:
– A court ruling turns an arbitrary detention into something that looks like law
– Every rejected petition tells the next detainee that there is no point in trying
– The regime no longer has to defend itself, because it can simply say the courts have spoken
Why it failed:
– Aquino refused to break. He spent seven years and seven months in prison, part of it in solitary confinement, and went on a 40-day hunger strike. After two heart attacks he was allowed to go to the United States for surgery, and three years later, warned that he could be killed, he flew back to Manila anyway. He was shot dead at the airport on 21 August 1983.
– His widow, Cory, who had never held public office, stood against Marcos in the 1986 election.
– Marcos declared himself the winner and refused to accept the result. The election's own computer technicians walked out rather than help rig the count, and hundreds of thousands of people poured onto the streets of Manila. Four days later, Marcos fled the country, and Cory Aquino became president.
No court ever freed Ninoy Aquino. His family and his people did.
When the courts go silent, the people have to rise. A dictator is always more afraid of the people than the people are of him. There are 250 million of us. We need to realise the power we have.
Where have you seen this playbook?
#FreeImranAndFamily
Asfandyar Farooq retweeted
They jailed Nelson Mandela for 27 years.
Then they came for his family.
June 1964. Mandela is sentenced to life imprisonment and sent to Robben Island. He sleeps on the floor of a small cell and breaks rocks in a quarry. He is allowed one 30-minute visit and one letter every six months.
1968. His mother dies. The state refuses to let him attend her funeral.
1969. His eldest son, Thembi, is killed in a car crash. Refused again.
12 May 1969, Soweto. Police storm Winnie Mandela's home before dawn and take her in front of her two daughters, aged nine and ten. She is held under a law that lets police detain people for as long as they like: 491 days, much of it in solitary confinement.
February 1970: a court acquits her. Instead of walking free, she is detained again.
September 1970: acquitted a second time. Released, then banned, put under house arrest and, in 1977, banished to a remote town.
The plan is simple: punish the family until the man breaks.
1985. The regime offers Mandela his freedom, if he renounces violence. His daughter Zindzi reads his answer to a packed stadium in Soweto:
"Your freedom and mine cannot be separated."
11 February 1990: Mandela walks out of prison. Four years later, he is president.
Today, @ImranKhanPTI is in solitary confinement. His three sisters are held without charge under a 1960 detention law.
The parallels with apartheid South Africa are striking.
Mandela refused to buy his freedom with a deal. Khan has said he will not make one either.
He walks in Mandela's footsteps – and like Mandela, he will walk out and free his people from a draconian regime.
Has jailing a leader's family ever broken a movement?
#FreeImranAndFamily
All those books, all that knowledge, and this is the application. Sigh!
The Military and Mullahs have always got along, and this alliance isnt weakening anytime soon with such budding intellectually enslaved posterboys itching to carry its torch.
This quoted post is unavailable.
Asfandyar Farooq retweeted
Pfp featuring a bookshelf in the background and reading a book himself. A bio reads "aspiring political theologian". Don't make it so glaringly obvious how much of a wannabe you are.
A bio reading "a general's bitch" would have reflected your personality more accurately.
This quoted post is unavailable.
Asfandyar Farooq retweeted
This is an exceptionally cruel take when Pakistanis have their Vote and Mandate stolen and have zero representation in Parliament and how their State is run. Pakistani voters are demanded to match US Voters but do Pakistani elections match US elections in being free and fair?
Asfandyar Farooq retweeted
When the Military Junta dismantles a democratic Provincial Government and enforces Governor rule to expand its illegitimate regime, the moral and intellectual legitimacy is provided by the country's leading Marxist Academic. This is why the Larper Left is complicit in this
دہشتگردی کے سہولت کاروں میں سے ایک خیبرپختونخوا کی نااہل حکومت تھی، ڈی جی آئی ایس پی آر geonewsurdu.tv/latest/444957…
Asfandyar Farooq retweeted
Let's go back to how it all started. Pakistan's foremost Marxist scholar was singing songs for PDM movement which later became the 'democratic cover' for US backed Military Coup in Pakistan which led to collapse of Rule of Law, dismantling of Judiciary and brutal repression
Asfandyar Farooq retweeted
This is completely consistent with my earlier assessment that Judges like Mansoor Ali Shah were informed by the notion that PTI/Justice Bandiyal were part of Military backed regime, PDM/QFI represent civilian supremacy. This position still informs Pak progressives today.
Justice Mansoor Ali Shah explains the reasoning behind his dissent in the 2023 case on holding elections within the constitutionally mandated 90 days in Punjab and KPK
Panel: Judicial Independence and the Rule of Law in Pakistan
Hosts: @Alliance4PJ and World Affairs Council of Western MA
Asfandyar Farooq retweeted
ISPR drama Green channel is desperately manufacturing consent in their dramas for ‘talk of the town Nawaz Sharif’ 🤡
Looks like they are trying to connect with the youth 🙃
"Green Entertainment is an upcoming TV channel of ISPR"
thepakistan.pk/upcoming-seri…
Asfandyar Farooq retweeted
Brief_Pk has placed “Pakistani Journalism” on the global stage! All those, from any part of the world, who want to understand what’s happening in Pakistan need to follow “Brief_Pk” - A New Intelligent Aware Pakistan is being born out of the dead carcass of “Generals controlled Faujistan”
We’re now told Afghan front companies have been looting KP’s mines. That would be in a province that has been through 22 major military operations and more than 14,000 intelligence-based operations since 2002, where soldiers man the checkposts from Bajaur to Waziristan, and where nothing moves without the Army’s say-so.
Somehow the Afghans slipped past all of it. Nobody making this claim has named a single company, and they don’t need to guess, because KP’s mining register is public. Every title in it names its holder, and there is no Afghan company in it. What it shows is the Army, under names that don’t say Army. FWO holds KP’s only working large-scale mine, 30 sq km of copper in North Waziristan, through a company called Degan Exploration Works. It pays the province 10% of the profits (some argue its actually 5%).
The Army Welfare Trust has held limestone and shale leases in Nowshera since the early 1990s. Its Askari Cement held more Nowshera titles before it was folded into Fauji Cement, a Fauji Foundation company, in 2021.
The army-run NLC applied for a lease in Swabi last month. The elite aligned civilians took their cut too. In 2024 the provincial titles committee approved a consortium with a firm called Sky Link Communication for 51 sq km of metals and stone, and another with BM General Order Suppliers for 30 sq km of river gold.
In July, KP’s elected assembly ordered a review of every lease in the province. On October 11, Islamabad shut that assembly down and called it a fight against terrorism. Within a week the governor was inviting foreign companies to extract and sell KP’s minerals, and PEMRA had banned TV channels from showing terror attacks. Islamabad’s minerals investment forum opens on November 12.
Terrorism and bad governance are the cover story. Governor’s rule is the theft of KP’s copper, gold, lithium, etc, plain and simple.
Asfandyar Farooq retweeted
The “third world” isn’t “imported” from somewhere out there.
It is actually co-produced by the Western powers as a knowledge and philosophy through its deep engagement, influence and partnership with the military dictators in the underdeveloped world.
And it is reinforced everytime the Western leaders choose to enable and legitimize military dictators to achieve their short term security interests over long term democratic interests of the billions of people living the underdeveloped states.
The danger, then, isn’t the “third world” migrants running from tyranny in their homelands; it is the refusal to acknowledge and address how that “third world” is even produced, perpetuated and sustained by the Western powers in partnership with their “Favourite Field Marshals” abroad.
Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion. They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility. They were told it would lead to this and they didn't listen.
I pray that France, a beautiful country of amazing people, will stop this madness before more of its landmarks burn.
And I hope Americans are paying attention. This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.
Asfandyar Farooq retweeted
CIA has made left wing to not be abt working class, about anti-imperialsm. Its about mental health, sexual identities and college educated yuppies, who form Mamdani's base. Mamdani's leftist despite fascist police support, caping for US imperialism. Climate not even a thought
Asfandyar Farooq retweeted
Imran Khan's base is working class. Jailed for opposing US imperialism. Environmentalist who planted a billion trees. Tried to get undocumented Afghans and Bengalis naturalized. Made healthcare free for the poor. Wants to emulate classless state of Medina. But he's "right wing"?
Asfandyar Farooq retweeted
A crackdown on Afghan nationals is planned to begin starting in Peshawar on November 1. Shielded by a complete ban on reporting, this operation is the exact mechanism they will use to wipe out local political dissent, lock in their permanent grip on KP, and seize full control of the province's resources. At least that is our reading thus far.
Asfandyar Farooq retweeted
This is the present day Pakistan after 4 & a half years of Shahbaz Sharif:
- Pakistan has by far the highest poverty rate in the region (4 times compared to Bangladesh & India)
- Pakistan has by far the highest unemployment rate in the region.
- Pakistan has the highest inflation in the region
- Pakistan has the highest petrol & diesel prices in the region and by far
- Pakistan has the highest electricity & gas prices in the region
- Pakistan has the most expensive wheat flour in the region
- Pakistan has the highest taxes in the region
- Pakistan has the lowest per capita income in the region
- Pakistan has the highest interest rates in the region
- Pakistan has the highest number of out of school children in the region
- Pakistan has the highest number of stunted children in the region
- Pakistan has the worst ranking in human development index in the region
- Pakistan is number one on the World terrorism index.
- Pakistan has the worst investment ratio in the region
- Pakistan’s exports are the lowest compared to India & Bangladesh
I can go on and the list is long.
But where are we heading.
Another year and imagine the fate of common Pakistanis.