We have just witnessed an eventful week in which far-reaching extraordinary events took place in many different corners of the world, many unrelated to each other yet head-spinning in their import.

On December 13, the Judiciary Committee of US House of Representatives approved two counts of impeachment against US President Trump and sent it to the full House for a vote. This is only the fourth time in history of the US that a president has been recommended for impeachment and removal from office for having committed “high crimes and misdemeanours”. Read more…

This week the impeachment inquiry into President Trump moved into a new phase with public hearings by witnesses who have knowledge of the president’s communication with Volodmyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine.

The matter was brought to Congress a few weeks ago when a ‘whistleblower’ complained in writing that the US president was withholding approved US military aid to Ukraine in order to pressure the Ukrainian government into investigating Hunter Biden and his father Joe Biden, his presumed rival in the 2020 election. Read more…

In September 1977 I arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio to attend graduate business school. I knew almost nothing about this place except that they offered me a full scholarship. That was sufficient reason for me. As I settled in, I realized there was a very small Muslim Community here. No organized mosque and no Halal meat shop. Read More…..

Being a Pakistani-American who has lived in the US for over four decades, I often get asked by my American friends what Pakistan is like.

In this age of instant mass media we develop impressions of faraway lands based on snippets we see on television or on the internet. How does one really answer in a simple way what a country of 200 million is really like? Similarly, in my travels abroad I often get asked about the US. Everyone has seen and heard a lot about the US, yet how accurate could any impression really be? ...Read More 

On September 24, 2019 Nancy Pelosi speaker of the US House of Representatives announced she had initiated an impeachment inquiry against US President Donald Trump. Impeachment is a process provided in the US constitution through which a senior government official can be tried, convicted and possibly removed from office. It is an arduous process with a very high bar for removal, deliberately so as framers of the US constitution envisioned it to be used only in extreme cases of malfeasance. Read more…

On May 8, 2018 President Trump announced that the US would exit the so-called Iran nuclear deal, painstakingly negotiated and signed in 2015 between Iran on one side, and the US, Russia, China, European Union and United Nations on the other. The objective of the deal was to put a stop to or at least slow down Iran’s nuclear arms development program in exchange for sanctions relief. It put severe restrictions on Iran with highly intrusive inspections by international agencies to ensure compliance. Read more…

The next presidential election in the US is scheduled for November 2020, almost 14 months away. However, campaigning is already in full swing.The US is the oldest democracy in the world and rightfully prides itself at having an unbroken record of peaceful and democratic government transitions for over two centuries. Yet, the electoral system has continued to become more and more complex to the point that it appears the country is perpetually in ‘election season’. Read more…

The last three weeks have been agonizing for the Pakistani diaspora in the US as the matter of Kashmir has descended from a conflict to an outright catastrophe, particularly so for Muslims of Indian-held Kashmir. The status of the people of Kashmir has been precarious for the last several decades, as the government of India has tried to subjugate a restive population. It has been widely reported that more than half a million Indian soldiers are deployed in Kashmir to keep the population under control, making it one of the most militarized zones in the world outside of active war zones. more …

Gun violence on a mass scale is a sad phenomenon unique to America. This may be the only country where privately owned guns outnumber the total population. Just in the last two weeks there have been three mass shootings resulting in the deaths of 34 innocent civilians who were just going about their normal life. Read more…