The White Queen is dead, long live the Grey Eminence. Vote for the Crown Prince and you get the Prince of Thieves. Mister Tenpercent Zindabad!
So it looks like a few more years of General Badmash, till some other general decides to take over, or the CIA decides to terminate him "with prejudice", pace the unmourned Zia
ul- Haq. Tariq Ali once wrote a book called "Can Pakistan Survive?" A synthetic nation with a phoney name, a secular nation of Muslims, their religion being the only common denominator. Israel, another synthetic nation, will last as long as the US needs it. Will it outlast Pakistan?

"Television spent most of 2007 with its head in its hands, whining that the audience didn't love it any more because it had been making stuff up. But only a moron would believe anything they saw on TV in the first place ..." (Charlie Brooker, in yesterday's Guardian)

The image I display to represent my blogging persona has been declared invalid or illegal, or something, and has been disappeared. I should be angry, "incandescent", to use a spin doctor's term. But I'm just a little peeved at the prospect of having to find an image that is sufficiently unattractive without being grotesque. I have to record my dislike of the misuse of the term "avatar", but if I'm going to disappear, then return in another form, the word may be apposite.