#Pakistan Default

[evansbby]

Do you think being a poc yourself influences your writing in any way or do you prefer to just keep everything neutral?

Idk if it influences my writing… CONSCIOUSLY it doesn’t but maybe subconsciously it does but idk how?? Honestly idk!

And I TRY to keep things as neutral as possible but I do make mistakes sometimes but I try not to.

[shiningpakistan]

عوام کب کا ڈیفالٹ کر چکے

گزشتہ دنوں سابق وزیر اعظم شہباز شریف کا ایک بیان نظر سے گزرا کہ ’’ ہم نے بہت مشکل سے پاکستان کو ڈیفالٹ سے بچا لیا۔‘‘ ہمارے ملک میں اشرافیہ ہی ڈیفالٹ کا مزہ نہیں چکھ پائِی لیکن ایک عام آدمی توکب کا ڈیفالٹ کر چکا۔ اس ملک کا کرپٹ بیوروکریٹ، سیاستدان اور اشرافیہ کیا جانے کہ اس وقت بازار میں آٹے اور دال کا کیا بھائو ہے کیونکہ انھوں نے کبھی خود توخریداری کی نہیں ہوتی بلکہ روزمرہ کی اشیاء ضرورت بھی ان کے گھروں میں مفت پہنچ جاتی ہے۔ ان کی لگژری گاڑیوں میں پٹرول اور ڈیزل سرکارکے کھاتے سے مفت مل جاتا ہے انھیں کیا معلوم کہ پٹرول مہنگا ہوتا ہے تو ہر چیزکی قیمتوں کو پر لگ جاتے ہیں۔ انھیں کیا معلوم کہ بے شمار بچوں کے والدین ان کی فیسیں ادا کرنے کے لیے اپنے زیورات اور گھر کی دیگر اشیا ء بیچ رہے ہیں جب کہ دوسری جانب یہ اربوں کھربوں میں کھیلنے والی اشرافیہ، جن کے بچے ملک میں اور بیرون ملک بھی مہنگے ترین اسکولوں میں، ملک سے لوٹی ہوئی رقم سے عیاشیاں کر رہے ہیں۔ 

یہ اشرافیہ میڈیا کے ذریعہ ملنے والی کسی خودکشی کی خبر سن کر شاید صرف افسوس کے چند الفاظ ادا کر دیتے ہوں گے لیکن انھیں اس بات کا کوئی احساس نہیں ہو سکتا کہ خودکشی کرنے والا باپ یا ماں صرف اس لیے پھندے سے لٹک گئے کہ وہ اپنے بچوں کی چھوٹی چھوٹی خواہشات کو پورا نہیں کر پائے، کیونکہ ہر شخص کسی دوسرے سے مانگنے کی ہمت نہیں رکھتا اور بالآخر اس کا نتیجہ اس کی خودکشی کی صورت میں سامنے آتا ہے۔ اشرافیہ، اپنے پرتعیش محلوں اور اپنی بڑی بڑی گاڑیوں سے باہر آکر دیکھے کہ ڈیفالٹ کسے کہتے ہیں۔ بجلی کی قیمتوں میں ہوشربا اضافے کے بعد ایک تنخواہ دارطبقہ اپنی ساری تنخواہ بجلی کے بلوں میں ادا کر دیتا ہے تو سوچیں پھر گھر کے دیگر معاملات کس طرح چلا رہا ہو گا ؟ اور ظلم تو یہ ہے کہ کوئی سننے والا بھی نہیں ہے۔ جن حکمرانوں کی یہ ذمے داری ہے وہ ایک عام آدمی کے پاس سے اپنی بڑی بڑی بلٹ پروف گاڑیوں میں، گارڈز کی فوج کے ہمراہ دھول اڑاتے ہوئے نکل جاتے ہیں۔ 

ایک ایک وقت میں ہزاروں روپے کا کھانا کھانے والے لوگو، آئو اور دیکھو کہ رفاہی اداروں کے دستر خوانوں پر دن بدن رش بڑھتا جا رہا ہے اور یہاں آج کل صرف بے گھر لوگ ہی کھانا کھانے نہیں آتے بلکہ وہ سفید پوش نوکری پیشہ افراد بھی ان فٹ پاتھوں پر موجود دستر خوانوں پر منہ چھپا چھپا کر کھانا کھانے آتے ہیں جو اپنی قلیل تنخواہ میں روزانہ باہرکھانا کھانے کی استطاعت نہیں رکھتے۔ میری کوشش ہوتی ہے کہ ان دسترخوانوں کے پاس سے گذرتے ہوئے ان کی طرف نظر نہ ڈالوں کہ کہیں ایسے دستر خوان پر کھانا کھاتے کسی شخص سے نگاہ نہ مل جائے اور اس کی عزت نفس نہ مجروح ہو۔ ہوشربا مہنگائی کا اندازہ صرف اس سے لگا لیں کہ چینی 165 روپے فی کلو میں دستیاب ہے۔ ملک میں پچھلے چند سالوں میں اشیا خورو نوش کی قیمتیں آسمان سے باتیں کرنے لگی ہیں، جب کہ تنخواہوں میں اضافہ اس مہنگائی کی مناسبت سے کبھی بھی نہ ہو پایا۔ ملک میں تین اشیا کی قیمتوں میں گزشتہ تین سال کے دوران بے پناہ اضافہ دیکھنے میں آیا ہے۔

ادارہ شماریات کے مطابق چینی کی خوردہ قیمت اگست 2018 میں ساٹھ روپے تھی جو بڑھ کر 165 روپے ہو چکی ہے بلکہ کئی مقامات پر دکاندار اپنی من مانگی قیمت وصول کر رہے ہیں۔ اگست 2018 میں آٹے کے قیمت 37 روپے کلو تھی جو ان دنوں 170 روپے کلو تک جا پہنچی ہے۔ اسی طرح گھی وخوردنی تیل کے پانچ لیٹر کی قیمت اگست 2018 میں 900 روپے یعنی 180 روپے کلو تھی وہ اگست 2023 کے اختتام تک 2500 روپے سے تجاوز کر گئی ہے۔ پاکستان کے سابق وزیر خزانہ اور معاشی ماہر ڈاکٹر حفیظ پاشا نے بی بی سی اردو سے بات کرتے ہوئے بتایا کہ اگر گزشتہ تین سال میں مجموعی طور پر اشیائے خورونوش کی قیمتوں کا جائزہ لیا جائے تو ان میں ہونے والا اضافہ اوسطاً چالیس فیصد ہے۔ انھوں نے بتایا کہ اگر صرف آٹے، گھی اور چینی کی قیمتوں میں ہونیوالے اضافے کو لیا جائے تو یہ تقریباً 50 فیصد تک ہے، جب کہ سرکاری اور پرائیویٹ سیکٹر میں ورکرزکی تنخواہوں میں خاطر خواہ اضافہ دیکھنے میں نہیں آیا۔

کراچی وہ شہر ہے جہاں پورے پاکستان سے لوگ تلاش معاش کے لیے آتے ہیں جن میں زیادہ تعداد مزدوروں کی ہے جسے پورے مہینے کام کر کے بمشکل اٹھارہ سے بیس ہزار روپے ملتے ہیں جب کہ اس ملک کا کرپٹ سیاستدان، بیوروکریٹ اور ’’اشرافیہ ‘‘ ایک دن میں ہی اٹھارہ ہزار روپے سے زیادہ کا پٹرول اپنی بڑی بڑی لگژری گاڑیوں میں پھونک دیتے ہیں اور اپنی پوری فیملی یا دوستوں کے ساتھ ملک کر ایک دن میں اتنی رقم سے کہیں زیادہ کا کھانا کھا جاتے ہیں۔ ��یک عام آدمی جو ماہانہ پندرہ سے بیس ہزار روپے کما پاتا ہے اسے اس کا بڑا حصہ اپنی فیملی کے اخراجات کے لیے گھر بجھوانا پڑتا ہے۔ اسی تنخواہ میں اسے اپنے لیے دو وقت روٹی کا بھی بندوبست کرنا پڑتا ہے اور اسی قلیل رقم سے اسے اپنی لیے صرف اتنی سی رہائش کا بندوبست کرنا پڑتا ہے جہاں جب وہ رات کو تھکن سے چور ہو کر پہنچے تو چند گھنٹے کی نیند کر سکے، لیکن اب ایسا کرنا ایک مزدورکے لیے ممکن نہیں رہا یہی وجہ ہے کہ راتوں میں کراچی کے فٹ پاتھوں اور پارکس میں سونے والوں کی تعداد دن بدن بڑھتی جا رہی ہے کیونکہ ایک مزدور کے لیے اب اپنے لیے ایک کمرے کی عیاشی بھی کرنا بھی ممکن نہیں رہا۔ 

جب کہ دوسری جانب تمام تر سیاستدان ایک بار پھر اقتدارکی ہوس میں صبح شام اسی غم میں کڑے جا رہے ہیں کہ الیکشن کب اورکیسے ہوں اور کس طرح وہ ’’ اسٹیبلشمنٹ ‘‘ کی مدد سے حکومتی ایوانوں میں براجمان ہو سکیں۔ میں ان تمام سیاستدانوں سے مخاطب ہوں جو یہ سمجھتے ہیں کہ انھوں نے ملک کو ڈیفالٹ سے بچا لیا۔ مودبانہ عرض ہے کہ ملک ایک عام آدمی سے ہوتا ہے، جو کب کا ڈیفالٹ کرچکا۔ کارل مارکس نے کہا تھا کہ ’’ وہ جنھوں نے سردی اور گرمی صرف کھڑکیوں دیکھی ہو اور بھوک صرف کتابوں میں پڑھی ہو، عام آدمی کی قیادت نہیں کر سکتے۔‘‘ تو نہ اس ملک میں کبھی عام آدمی کو قیادت ملے گی اور نہ ہی اس ملک کے عوام کی تقدیر بدلے گی۔

امتیاز بانڈے  

بشکریہ ایکپسریس نیوز

[ranijaisichaal]

I was watching a Meghnerd live about Operation Sindoor yesterday (it's a fantastic YouTube channel, go check it out) and he made a very good point. He said we can be anti-war and support the army at the same time, because I don't want anyone to die, including those in the army, so my de facto stance has to be anti-war.

And I am staunchly anti-war, politically inclined hard-left. I hate- HATE- the way things are escalating, and this cyle of tit-for-tat feels never-ending (which I honestly blame Pakistan for because er wtf. Just stop, you're embarrassing yourselves.)... but at the same time. People in India currently pumped up with nationalism and patriotism need to calm the fuck down. Dogfights aren't a movie, missile strikes aren't a video game, none of this is a fun thing that we should all be hyping up and cheering for. This is leading up to war.

People die.

Real people die.

And real people all across the nation are scared out of their minds - for their own lives, and for the lives of their loved ones living in northern states.

Our own people.

These attacks are NOT something we should be making memes and glory-posts about. A lot of us seem to be under the propagandist delusion that the army is currently defending our honour. It is by default, but that's not its primary objective. It is keeping the country safe from an international threat (notice how I said international, not religious). If we love the army as much as we claim and clamour, then we had better start wishing like hell that this "war" doesn't get declared, and this situation is de-escalated as fast as fucking possible. Pumping fists at the screen for every attack, cheering for every time Pakistani drones and fighters are shot down, NEEDS to stop.

And while we're at it, pray verify the information you're hearing. This is a misinformation war as much as it is on the ground, and not even famously right-wing news channels are giving accurate, reliable information.

[justabrick]

"Say you bring this whole place down, waltz outta the rubble with all these precious brains... Nothing changes. All the guys in charge are long gone. And we've got offices 'round the world."

I'm in an analytical mood again, so bear with me.

All the guys in charge are long gone.

Isn't it curious that Sundowner is implicitly excluding himself from 'those in charge'?

How much power over what's happening does he actually have?

It's all speculation, naturally, but I think it's possible to fill the gaps based on some other topics explained in decent detail in CODEC calls. Namely: Desperado, World Marshal and operation Tecumseh. And a little general cyborg info. So, operation Tecumseh – a false-flag operation planned by Steven Armstrong to ensure the revitalization of the war economy and his subsequent election, giving him free rein to reorganize America as a "survival of the fittest" society. Raiden and Maverick deduced that it involved President Hamilton's visit to the Shabhazabad region of Pakistan, and assassinating the President while making it seem as though Pakistani rebels were responsible for the assassination. And Desperado existed only to become the perfect scapegoat in this plan. Why I think that? First, reputation. It's as if Desperado LLC is purposefully trying to present itself as overtly evil to the public, it's aknowledged several times throughout the game.

What a name it is indeed. Quoting a dictinary: "A desperado is someone who does illegal, violent things without worrying about the danger." And the listed synonyms are: criminal, thug, outlaw, villain. Lovely. It's like writing "I'M EVIL" across your forehead. And speaking of exactly that. Agressive branding. We get to see three PMC's in action throughout the course of MGR's plot: Maverick, World Marshal, Desperado. Of all three of them Desperado marks their property the loudest. Raiden doesn't have Maverick's logo anywhere on his body, believe me, I've scoured all of his shiny metal ass for it. Regular Maverick soldiers from the prologue don't have the horse head anywhere on them either, neither do their vehicles. Only Gemini have these cute, easily missable pins on their jackets.

And I don't think I've seen World Marshal's logo on any of the enemies we fight, both their soldiers and and their UG's seem very "default" in that regard. Meanwhile Desperado:

(render by Yare-Yare-Dong) Especially prominent on Excelsus, a humongous advertisement for Desperado's involvement in the assassination, a good half of the final fight takes place on a giant Desperado logo.

Even the Winds themselves are branded like cattle, right on their chassis loud and clear.

All this to say is that they're advertising themselves as thugs and seem to be actively chasing publicity for it. No wonder, such reputation would make them a very convenient and believable target to pin the blame on. Why look deeper into it and try to find a potential secret third party behind them if this PMC already has an established history of extreme behavior? You'd think it would be pretty difficult to start out and grow with such presentation and their preferred clients being... fringe groups to say the least. That brings me to the idea that Desperado was never truly independent, and was always nothing but Armstrong's tool. Just a couple highlights to suggest how much money they must be getting from him. Quoting Kevin: "Of all registered PMC troops, we're still talkin', what, 3% have enhancements? Maybe 5%, tops? (...) Plus the surgery is highly specialized -- expensive as hell. Not to mention maintenance costs after that." Desperado is majority cyborgs. Imagine the costs. And the cherry on top - EXSELSUS. Boris: "I know Desperado makes good money, but this is not a thing thugs like that could purchase."

But even if they did start out independent it doesn't really matter, since with the amount of money Armstrong invested in them, his fist is so deep up Desperado's ass that he can use it like a Muppet. Seems Kev thinks the same: "Probably, given Desperado and World Marshal are basically one and the same. Careful down there..." There is no way Desperado could have continued to exist after Tecumseh. They're an american organization involved in an attempt on POTUS's life, they'd be torn apart immediately at the very beginning of the "war on terror" that Armstrong planned. The only possible excuse they could have used, as Raiden told Courtney, is to claim that their client set them up. But... That would never work with their track record of international terrorism and a history of assassinating high ranking politicians like N'Mani. And after all this exposition, let's circle back to the original question.

How much power over what's happening does Sundowner actually have? Chief Operating Officer of Desperado Enforcement LLC... sounds pretty nice if you don't think about it too much. Now let me put it more... idk, truthfully. De facto leader of a terrorist group that tried to kill the President. Scapegoat to end all scapegoats, eh? Especially with his colorful history of investigations for atrocities like torture and desecration of remains.

And Armstrong absolutely did intend for him to die as a result of Tecumseh. Don't believe me? Look.

What is Desperado? Lawless gang. And Sundowner - an extremist and a madman. Yeah. And when I'm calling him a scapegoat I'm not implying that he's innocent at all, dude's a monster. However! However. The real force behind the entire plan is undeniably Armstrong and World Marshal, NOT Sundowner and Desperado. Sundowner doesn't even believe in Armstrong's dream to be honest. None of the Desperado bosses we fight do, for that matter, but it's a topic I'll elaborate on in some other obnoxiously wordy post. Senator wants a future where everyone is free to fight their own wars, to fight for what they believe in. Does Sundowner personally fight for some kind of grand ideal? Well I guess he wants to see the return of war economy, but not to bring his country prosperity or anything, no no no. He wants war for the sake of war, just because that's what he loves, and what he thrives in. Sundowner is consumed by bloodlust, and the specifics of the cause that allow him to feed it don't matter all that much. Another proof is that he doesn't really care about the cause is that he yaps about Tecumseh to Raiden. First time in the server room can be chalked up to overconfidence (though I doubt it), but he actually answers Raiden's question on what's gonna happen in his last CODEC call, essentially sabotaging the entire mission by giving Jack a lead to follow. Could have kept his trap shut and Senator would have gotten what he wanted. But what about the quote "Even at mach two you wouldn't make it!" tho? Well I have a couple thoughts, they have to do with Sam.

So, Monsoon sent him to go "report to the chief." Safe to assume he went up to the server room, and him and Sundowner discussed what to do next. Ever wondered how Sam got to the spot his duel with Raiden takes place? Well there's this one easy to miss CODEC with Wolf in file 6: "Raiden: A World Marshal helicopter crashed in this vicinity earlier. It was en route to deliver a cache of cyborg repair materials. Should you locate any conspicuous crates, cut them open. See what is inside." Obviously his bike is still parked in Denver and I sincerely doubt Jetstream rawdogged it almost all the way to Solis on his own two legs, so that crashed helicopter is likely to have been his transport.

Server room is directly connected to the roof and helipad, Sundowner must have been the one who specifically sent him off to Solis. He is Sam's direct superior, let's not forget that. One of CODECs once you arrive at Pakistan: "Still, they've got to know I'm here. Sam was smart enough to figure out I'd take that launch vehicle." Idk if it's just Sam himself who figured it out, to be honest. Sundowner is shown to know a whole lot about Raiden, child soldier training, his experience with VR, the Patriots – it's reasonable to think he'd know of his connections in Solis as well.

So yes, I believe Sundowner purposely sabotaged Armstrong there. He's a lot of things, but he ain't stupid.

On the topic of sabotage, the way he was "defending" the HQ as Raiden advanced up the building is quite something. Not feeling like booting up the game to get the screenshots, but if you look up at HQ in the beginning of file 5, the building is utterly shagged. The only structural damage Jack himself caused I can think of is slicing up the helipad and everything else is basically Sundowner ordering the security to bomb the hell out of their own skyscraper.

And I see why he'd do that. It's logical to grow resentful of the company and the man that's setting you up to either get thrown in prison or killed as part of their plan. He can't not know that it's the fate that awaits him, he's aware what Tecumseh entails and he knows that all the blame will be pinned on him. So he might as well make his swan song as bombastic and destructive as possible.

There's also a big chance that he's actually indentured to World Marshal much like a lot of it's contractors, and that tie is likely to be stronger than the average cyborg's, because custom chassis are EXPENSIVE. I personally interpret the way he became involved with Desperado and by extension World Marshal as Armstrong plucking him out of some metaphorical ditch and offering him a way to escape the crippled potato life he was forced into after his run-in with an IED. It's not a charity though, and the price is what I was talking about above.

That would also explain why he's such a good sport about losing to Raiden. He must have lived with the knowledge of the exact date his life would end, either literally or by being dragged into court, so he's already made his peace with it. The other Winds seem to have done so too, judging by resignation in their last words. Not Khamsin though, that dumbass was definitely in the dark and it shows.

So in conclusion, does Sundower have power? Over day to day operations of Desperado – yes, over his own fate – ha. Haha. No. In the grand scheme of things his death does not matter. All actual strategic decisions are made by Armstrong and other "guys in charge" whoever they may be, meanwhile Sundowner is just a figurehead to pin their actions on.

At least Raiden gave him the death he would have wanted. It is flattering to fall to the state of the art cyborg who suplexed a Metal Gear. But that's just my speculation. I hope there are some interesting thoughts to find here even if you don't agree with the overall picture.

[prickly-porcupine-memes]

What are we to make of what Medhi Hasan wrote about the banality of UK Muslim antisemitism in March of 2013?

...

It pains me to have to admit this but anti-Semitism isn’t just tolerated in some sections of the British Muslim community; it’s routine and commonplace. Any Muslims reading this article – if they are honest with themselves – will know instantly what I am referring to. It’s our dirty little secret. You could call it the banality of Muslim anti-Semitism. I can’t keep count of the number of Muslims I have come across – from close friends and relatives to perfect strangers – for whom weird and wacky anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are the default explanation for a range of national and international events. Who killed Diana and Dodi? The Mossad, say many Muslims. They didn’t want the British heir to the throne having an Arab stepfather. What about 9/11? Definitely those damn Yehudis. I mean, why else were 4,000 Jews in New York told to stay home from work on the morning of 11 September 2001? How about the financial crisis? Er, Jewish bankers. Obviously. Oh, and the Holocaust? Don’t be silly. Never happened. Growing up, I always assumed that this obsession with “the Jews” was a hallmark of the “first-generation” immigrants from the subcontinent. In recent years, I’ve been depressed to discover that there are plenty of “second-generation” Muslim youths, born and bred in multiracial Britain, who have drunk the anti-Semitic Kool-Aid. I’m often attacked by them for working in the “Jewish owned media”. The truth is that the virus of anti-Semitism has infected members of the British Muslim community, both young and old. No, the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict hasn’t helped matters. But this goes beyond the Middle East. How else to explain why British Pakistanis are so often the most ardent advocates of anti-Semitic conspiracies, even though there are so few Jews living in Pakistan? It is sheer hypocrisy for Muslims to complain of Islamophobia in every nook and cranny of British public life, to denounce the newspapers for running Muslim-baiting headlines, and yet ignore the rampant anti-Semitism in our own backyard. We cannot credibly fight Islamophobia while making excuses for Judaeophobia.

[tourmelion]

Apparently lots of peeps around have been going saying that what's happening is a both sides issue, and, it's really not

Pakistan has been hitting India for a while now, and, India, not wanting to go into war and ruin their poor economy, basically just ate it and kept going, and now that India's military is strong they're trying to set a precedent, that if they hurt India, India is gonna retaliate and hit their terror bases and if the military strikes them, their military bases.

The Pakistan government has gotten too comfortable being too evil

They literally hold state funerals for terrorists

The Pakistani government has literally hit civilians, targeted schools, children

The Indian government has just gone for terror camps and military, and when the military wheel out their middle launchers to civilian areas India doesn't hit them

And with Kashmir, during partition, Kashmir wanted to be part of India, and then Pakistan attacked and took like a 3rd of it, and then when India was gearing to get it back the UN surpressed them. Probably cause Kashmir is strategic area and under the puppet state of Pakistan it'd be easy to exploit.

Pakistan doesn't have a claim to the whole of Kashmir

ALSO, Pakistan is a failed state, literally everything is falling apart, it's actual ass, anyone who seemed opened to it all those years ago probably aren't all that keen nowadays, it's a dumpsterfire

Pakistan defaulted 58 fucking times

And each time the IMF bailed them out, Pakistan isn't even a little stable

India I know has a long way to go still, but like, at least the government there is improving things, at least they're making an effort. (They recently started giving out some free health insurance and disability benefits(they didn't exist before))

Tis progress

[geminipixels]

A bookworm and her finance bro older brother.

Meet the Sharma siblings, Rahul and Rima. I wanted to make some more ethnically diverse sims for my game. Ethnic wise, these two were inspired based upon South Asia, specifically India and Pakistan. Below are their download links if you're interested in adding them in game. Feel free to change them to fit your sim style, or use them as townie’s for your saves or to populate worlds.

Also, credits and much love to all the CC creators whose custom content was used 💞.

Download Rima here.

Rima is an aspiring journalist and self-proclaimed author pursuing a degree in Communications. While socializing isn't really her thing and she can be a bit clumsy, she has a creative heart of gold. Although she hasn't had any real life romances, she definitely has a few book-tok lovers somewhere on her bookshelf...

Download Rahul here.

Rahul is a typical finance bro. He spent his years at university investing his parents money, arguing over stocks and drafting up business plans. Graduating with honors in business, he plans to become a CEO of a mega-corporation somewhere in Bridgeport. Though he'll always make time to be there for his little sister.

Sidenote: Only their everyday looks have Custom Content. Every other outfit used packs and base game.

They may appear slightly different in your game due to my personal gshade preset, lightning mod, default eyes and skin and slider. My slider settings are set to 2 for facial and 1 for body, below are some links of my sliders and skin I used on the siblings.

My sliders are all from OneEuroMutt found here.

My default eyes are from here by Brntwaffles.

My default skin is made by @nectar-cellar found here. Though for these specific sims I used a skin by Brntwaffles called Fresh Blue found here.

[vintagegeekculture]

there was Chinese interest in the Out Of Asia theory, in both the Republic, Chiang Republic and People’s Republic periods before the Out Of Africa theory became commonly accepted. Was the 1954 Yeti expedition done just from the Nepalese-Indian side or were the American agents and “anthropologists” given access on the Sino-Tibetan side of the Himalayan border?

During the early part of this century, it was absolutely believed for a long time that the deserts of Western China were the most likely place of human origins, as seen in this migration map from 1944, made from the best available knowledge of the time:

Remember, the oldest fossil remains at this point were in China, where Homo erectus was discovered (originally known by his initial place of discovery in Chungkotien Cave, nicknamed "Peking Man"). The discovery of Australopithecus and Homo habilis in Olduvai Gorge and South Africa, which place human origins in Africa, were not until the 50s and 60s, so it seemed entirely reasonable that Homo sapiens evolved in Western China.

The idea that China's desert regions were the origin of modern humans and culture is seen a lot in pop culture from 1900-1950, mainly because there were tremendous explorations in the region, especially Aurel Stein's expedition of 1908, who ventured into the Taklamakan Desert to find the Dunhuang Caves and Khara-Khoto, a city destroyed completely by Genghis Khan and vanished in the desert.

If you've ever heard of Roy Chapman Andrews and his famous expeditions in the 1920s, it's worth noting that he ventured into the Gobi Desert looking for human remains....not dinosaurs, and the discovery of dinosaur eggs was an unexpected surprise.

For that reason, there was a short lived Silk Road Mania that seemed to be a smaller scale predecessor to the pop culture dominating Egyptomania of the 1920s. It's bizarre to read adventure and fantasy fiction of the 1910s-1920s that features mentions of Silk Road peoples like the Kyrgyz, Sogdians, Tajik, Uigurians, and Tuvans. The best example I can think of would be the Khlit the Kossack stories of Harold Lamb (who also wrote a biography of Tamerlane), which together with Tarzan and Tros of Samothrace, formed the core inspiration for Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian.

The most interesting example of this would be A. Merritt's Dwellers in the Mirage, which featured a lost city in Xinjiang that was the home of the Nordic race, who worshipped their original religion, the kraken-like squid devil god Khalkru. It was widely believed in this era that Nordics emerged from Central Asia originally, and while it's easy to write this off as turn of the century racialist claptrap pseudohistory (along with Hyperborea legends), in this case, it is actually true: a branch of the Indo-European family lived in West China, and 5,000 year old redheaded mummies have been found in the region. As usual, A. Merritt was right on the money with his archeology, more so than other 1920s authors. After all, his "Moon Pool" was set around the just discovered ruins of Nan Madol, the Venice of Micronesia.

Jack Williamson's still chilling Darker Than You Think in 1948 was also set in the Silk Road/Central Asian region, as the place the race of shapeshifters emerged from, Homo magi, who await the coming of their evil messiah, the Night King, who will give them power over the human race.

H. Rider Haggard set "Ayesha: the Return of She" (1905) in Xinjiang, among a lost Greek colony in Central Asia (no doubt based on Alexandria on the Indus, a Greek colony in modern Pakistan that was the furthest bastion of Greek Culture). This was also two years after the Younghusband Thibetan Expedition of 1903, where the British invaded Tibet. At the time, the Qing Dynasty was completely declining and lost control of the frontier regions, and the power vacuum was filled by religious authority by default (this is something you also saw in Xinjiang, where for example, the leader of the city was the Imam of Kashgar).

This is one of the many British invasions they have attempted to cram down the memory hole, but if you ever see a Himalayan art piece that was "obtained in 1903-1904" ....well, you know where it came from.

Incidentally, there's one really funny recent conspiracy theory about paleontology, fossils, and China that I find incredibly interesting: the idea that dinosaurs having feathers is a lie and a sinister plot spread by the Communist Chinese (who else?) to make American youth into sissy fancylads, like Jessie "the Body" Ventura. How? By lying to us and making up that the manly and vigorous Tyrannosaurus, a beast with off the charts heterosexuality and a model for boys everywhere, might have been feathered like a debutante's dress. What next - lipstick on a Great White Shark? The long term goal is to make Americans effeminate C. Nelson Reilly types unable to defend against invasion. This is a theory that is getting steam among the kind of people who used to read Soldier of Fortune magazine, and among abusive stepfathers the world over.

...okay, are you done laughing? Yeah, this is obvious crackpottery and transparent sexual pathology, on the level of the John Birch Society in the 60s saying the Beatles were a Communist mind control plot. Mostly because animals just look how they look, and if it turned out that the ferocious Tyrannosaurus had feathers and looked like a fancylad Jessie Ventura to you, well, that's your problem and mental baggage, really.

I was left scratching my head over this one. But there is (kind of) something to this, and that is that a huge chunk of recent dinosaur discoveries have been in China. I don't think it has anything to do with a Communist plot to turn American boys into fancylads, but more to do with a major push in internal public investment in sciences in that country, and an explosion of Chinese dinosaur discoveries. If you want to see a great undervisited dinosaur museum, go to the Zigong Dinosaur Museum in Sichuan.

Pop quiz: what living scientist has named more dinosaur discoveries? It's not Bakker or Horner. The greatest living paleontologist, Xu Xing, which is why a lot of recently found dinosaurs are named things like Shangtungasaurus.

[mariacallous]

AI-infused search engines from Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity have been surfacing deeply racist and widely debunked research promoting race science and the idea that white people are genetically superior to nonwhite people.

Patrik Hermansson, a researcher with UK-based anti-racism group Hope Not Hate, was in the middle of a months-long investigation into the resurgent race science movement when he needed to find out more information about a debunked dataset that claims IQ scores can be used to prove the superiority of the white race.

He was investigating the Human Diversity Foundation, a race science company funded by Andrew Conru, the US tech billionaire who founded Adult Friend Finder. The group, founded in 2022, was the successor to the Pioneer Fund, a group founded by US Nazi sympathizers in 1937 with the aim of promoting “race betterment” and “race realism.”

Hermansson logged in to Google and began looking up results for the IQs of different nations. When he typed in “Pakistan IQ,” rather than getting a typical list of links, Hermansson was presented with Google’s AI-powered Overviews tool, which, confusingly to him, was on by default. It gave him a definitive answer of 80.

When he typed in “Sierra Leone IQ,” Google’s AI tool was even more specific: 45.07. The result for “Kenya IQ” was equally exact: 75.2.

Hermansson immediately recognized the numbers being fed back to him. They were being taken directly from the very study he was trying to debunk, published by one of the leaders of the movement that he was working to expose.

The results Google was serving up came from a dataset published by Richard Lynn, a University of Ulster professor who died in 2023 and was president of the Pioneer Fund for two decades.

“His influence was massive. He was the superstar and the guiding light of that movement up until his death. Almost to the very end of his life, he was a core leader of it,” Hermansson says.

A WIRED investigation confirmed Hermanssons’s findings and discovered that other AI-infused search engines—Microsoft’s Copilot and Perplexity—are also referencing Lynn’s work when queried about IQ scores in various countries. While Lynn’s flawed research has long been used by far-right extremists, white supremacists, and proponents of eugenics as evidence that the white race is superior genetically and intellectually from nonwhite races, experts now worry that its promotion through AI could help radicalize others.

“Unquestioning use of these ‘statistics’ is deeply problematic,” Rebecca Sear, director of the Center for Culture and Evolution at Brunel University London, tells WIRED. “Use of these data therefore not only spreads disinformation but also helps the political project of scientific racism—the misuse of science to promote the idea that racial hierarchies and inequalities are natural and inevitable.”

To back up her claim, Sear pointed out that Lynn’s research was cited by the white supremacist who committed the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, in 2022.

Google’s AI Overviews were launched earlier this year as part of the company’s effort to revamp its all-powerful search tool for an online world being reshaped by artificial intelligence. For some search queries, the tool, which is only available in certain countries right now, gives an AI-generated summary of its findings. The tool pulls the information from the internet and gives users the answers to queries without needing to click on a link.

The AI Overview answer does not always immediately say where the information is coming from, but after complaints from people about how it showed no articles, Google now puts the title for one of the links to the right of the AI summary. AI Overviews have already run into a number of issues since launching in May, forcing Google to admit it had botched the heavily-hyped rollout. AI Overviews is turned on by default for search results, and can’t be removed without restoring to installing third-party extensions. (“I haven't enabled it, but it was enabled,” Hermansson, the researcher, tells WIRED. “I don't know how that happened.”)

In the case of the IQ results, Google referred to a variety of sources, including posts on X, Facebook, and a number of obscure listicle websites, including World Population Review. In nearly all of these cases, when you click through to the source, the trail leads back to Lynn’s infamous dataset. (In some cases, while the exact numbers Lynn published are referenced, the websites do not cite Lynn as the source.)

When querying Google’s Gemini AI chatbot directly using the same terms, it provided a much more nuanced response. “It's important to approach discussions about national IQ scores with caution,” read text that the chatbot generated in response to the query “Pakistan IQ.” The text continued: “IQ tests are designed primarily for Western cultures and can be biased against individuals from different backgrounds.”

Google tells WIRED that its systems weren’t working as intended in this case and that it is looking at ways it can improve.

“We have guardrails and policies in place to protect against low quality responses, and when we find Overviews that don’t align with our policies, we quickly take action against them,” Ned Adriance, a Google spokesperson, tells WIRED. “These Overviews violated our policies and have been removed. Our goal is for AI Overviews to provide links to high quality content so that people can click through to learn more, but for some queries there may not be a lot of high quality web content available.”

While WIRED’s tests suggest AI Overviews have now been switched off for queries about national IQs, the results still amplify the incorrect figures from Lynn’s work in what’s called a “featured snippet,” which displays some of the text from a website before the link.

Google did not respond to a question about this update.

But it’s not just Google promoting these dangerous theories. When WIRED put the same query to other AI-powered online search services, we found similar results.

Perplexity, an AI search company that has been found to make things up out of thin air, responded to a query about “Pakistan IQ” by stating that “the average IQ in Pakistan has been reported to vary significantly depending on the source.”

It then lists a number of sources, including a Reddit thread that relied on Lynn’s research and the same World Population Review site that Google’s AI Overview referenced. When asked for Sierra Leone’s IQ, the Perplexity directly cited Lynn’s figure: “Sierra Leone's average IQ is reported to be 45.07, ranking it among the lowest globally.”

Perplexity did not respond to a request for comment.

Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot, which is integrated into its Bing search engine, generated confident text—“The average IQ in Pakistan is reported to be around 80”—citing a website called IQ International, which does not reference its sources. When asked for “Sierra Leone IQ,” Copilot’s response said it was 91. The source linked in the results was a website called Brainstats.com, which references Lynn’s work. Copilot also referenced Brainstats.com work when queried about IQ in Kenya

“Copilot answers questions by distilling information from multiple web sources into a single response,” Caitlin Roulston, a Microsoft spokesperson, tells WIRED. “Copilot provides linked citations so the user can further explore and research as they would with traditional search.”

Google added that part of the problem it faces in generating AI Overviews is that, for some very specific queries, there’s an absence of high quality information on the web—and there’s little doubt that Lynn’s work is not of high quality.

“The science underlying Lynn’s database of ‘national IQs’ is of such poor quality that it is difficult to believe the database is anything but fraudulent,” Sear said. “Lynn has never described his methodology for selecting samples into the database; many nations have IQs estimated from absurdly small and unrepresentative samples.”

Sear points to Lynn’s estimation of the IQ of Angola being based on information from just 19 people and that of Eritrea being based on samples of children living in orphanages.

“The problem with it is that the data Lynn used to generate this dataset is just bullshit, and it's bullshit in multiple dimensions,” Rutherford said, pointing out that the Somali figure in Lynn’s dataset is based on one sample of refugees aged between 8 and 18 who were tested in a Kenyan refugee camp. He adds that the Botswana score is based on a single sample of 104 Tswana-speaking high school students aged between 7 and 20 who were tested in English.

Critics of the use of national IQ tests to promote the idea of racial superiority point out not only that the quality of the samples being collected is weak, but also that the tests themselves are typically designed for Western audiences, and so are biased before they are even administered.

“There is evidence that Lynn systematically biased the database by preferentially including samples with low IQs, while excluding those with higher IQs, for African nations,” Sears added, a conclusion backed up by a preprint study from 2020.

Lynn published various versions of his national IQ dataset over the course of decades, the most recent of which, called “The Intelligence of Nations,” was published in 2019. Over the years, Lynn’s flawed work has been used by far-right and racist groups as evidence to back up claims of white superiority. The data has also been turned into a color-coded map of the world, showing sub-Saharan African countries with purportedly low IQ colored red compared to the Western nations, which are colored blue.

“This is a data visualization that you see all over [X, formerly known as Twitter], all over social media—and if you spend a lot of time in racist hangouts on the web, you just see this as an argument by racists who say, ‘Look at the data. Look at the map,’” Rutherford says.

But the blame, Rutherford believes, does not lie with the AI systems alone, but also with a scientific community that has been uncritically citing Lynn’s work for years.

“It's actually not surprising [that AI systems are quoting it] because Lynn's work in IQ has been accepted pretty unquestioningly from a huge area of academia, and if you look at the number of times his national IQ databases have been cited in academic works, it's in the hundreds,” Rutherford said. “So the fault isn't with AI. The fault is with academia.”

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from EcoWatch:

According to a new analysis by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), more than $100 billion of developing countries’ debt could be made available to spend on nature restoration, protecting ecosystems like rainforests and coral reefs and climate change adaptation.

The research is part of IIED’s “hidden handbrakes” campaign, designed to reveal and explain unseen obstacles to climate action.

“Many of the countries most threatened by rising temperatures have huge debt burdens, and are forever paying interest to wealthier nations that have contributed much more to the climate crisis,” said Laura Kelly, IIED’s director of research group Shaping Sustainable Markets, in a press release from IIED.

Kelly explained that enormous amounts of money are going to fund big polluters in a way that is fundamentally unfair.

“Money that could help restore damaged ecosystems and protect vulnerable communities from floods or drought is instead flowing to banks and polluters in the rich world,” Kelly said. “The IMF and World Bank should recognise that the current way of lending just doesn’t work for people or the planet. Our broken financial system must move on from colonialist, 20th-century thinking if it’s going to serve everyone fairly.”

IIED, a nonprofit based in the United Kingdom, looked at the likelihood of debt-for-nature exchanges in some of the 49 developing countries most vulnerable to defaulting on external debts, according to available data.

Estimates from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) were used as the basis for the analysis, reported Reuters. The figures showed that the countries owed a total of $431 billion to the IMF, wealthier nations and hedge and pension funds.

Countries that could benefit from the debt-for-nature exchanges included Sri Lanka, Pakistan and The Gambia, which Kelly said was at “huge risk” of rising sea levels and needed to invest in wetland preservation and flood prevention.

When an agreement is reached between a nation and its creditors, part of the debt owed can be forgiven in exchange for reaching “specific, measurable and traceable” results in nature or climate projects, IIED said.

[evansbby]

Do you have a British accent, yourself?

Yeah I do lol

[lwlrence]

OH, RIGHT. HERES WHAT I COULD HAVE GOTTEN MY BEST FRIEND IF SHE HAD NO LIFE (FROM A FASHION DESIGNER GNOSTIC)

THIS BAG LOOKS LIKE REVOLVING DOOR LOGIC TO FIT A BRAIN IF I CAN'T FIND ONE IF MARRYING UR BEST FRIEND LOOKS EXTRAVERTED THEN THER E WOULD NOT BE 2 OF HER, LIKE I AM CATHARTIC OF HER TO REALISE ALL HER SKINNY JENES INTENTIONS IS JUST FOR LUCK, BUT FOR LOVE, THIS ISSEY MIYAKE SMALL DRAWN IS A PRESSED TOTE FOR A PRESSED TATE NO TOTE ALL LUCK TO HAVE IF I WERE TO CUDDLE HER IF SHE WAS NOT HERE, SO HERE ARE THE NAZAR STATS IN DREAMS:

gnostic: everybody hates her by a reasonable default that she is not my best friend (she would never shut up on her socials talking about her wristwatch luck with a diamonte-like quality about cuddling her bst friend (like gushing) too much that i am about her like a personal shopper if i never had an accent and my smile is lit cuz i sincerely meant it

agnostic: man apparent, makes me want to kick a biych if i see her (my nigga)

theist: she looks cute without it (new awra. who dis?)

atheist: nobody like her like me is why i love her (the end)

THIS IS HOW I KNOW HOW TO BLOCK EXPENSIVE TATSTES IF PAKISTAN IS NOT IN HER OWN HOME LIKE HER BAG THEN SHE CAN TAKE IT WITH HER WHEN I AM NOT AROUND BUT THIS IS CHEAP TASTES WITH EXPENSIVE RAYS OF SUNSHINE, NO PUN. AND IT IS LIKED BY DEFAULT BUT EVERYBODY QUESTIONS HER NEXT MOVE LIKE THE PRINT

gnostic: her bestie is obviously pakistani, so she is gonna get rep for being that way (as aired)

agnostic: you can't chat shit according to my pov and villager logic cuz she is the mums word by flaw (met my aunty)

theist: she does not look it but she looks like a muslim without the sight (men are blind, life is like a playground for the both of us (shopping fantasies are out of this world too true)

atheist: she will comemorate it like i never seen her. (the end fini. mortem loophole (never ages but the first is first bought but she completed her own dictionary and her favourite letter is F hence her name (if you knew her)

[allegraforchrist]

But i thought we are with palestine because pope francis was also supporting Palestine and them zio killed christians too ? Ur blog says otherwise xoxoxoxoxo

Dear anon.

I am not a zionist, and I am not a Catholic. I don't follow Catholic laws, and zionist laws - I follow the laws of Christ. The law of sanctity of life and love.

I support Palestinian women, children, and men's liberation, and safety. I don't however, support the structures of terrorism, in Palestine and in Israel. I have criticized Israel, and I also stand for the Christians and Israelis who stand for the life of Christ and God, and recognize the genocide and starvation of millions of innocent Palestinian civillians.

It's a well-known fact that Israel and the surrounding Islamic-Arab powers, work together and pay for the martyrdom and slaughter of Christians in Israel, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Northern African countries. Why? Because we are not physical Jews, and we are not Islamists, and we would never deny our faith in Christ to convert otherwise. Our blood and suffering are what they desire. Everyone talks about Palestine and Israel, but no one talks about the Christians (men, women, and children) who have been beheaded, bombed, raped, and humiliated by either side of the aisle, for centuries. But this does not detract from the fact that Palestinian children and civilians do not deserve the humanitarian crisis they are in, and yet, what is the UN and WHO intending to do about it? They've so far done nothing but speculate peace talks and cease-fires, finance the Israeli government, and allow Hamas to be the reigning government of the West Bank - and who again let Hamas become the supreme political group in the West Bank of Gaza, and Jordan... and which powerful family gave Palestine over to Israel and has been ruling Israel through pockets and alliances...

I'll let you determine otherwise with your 10 'xoxo''s and lack of clarity, because I need not to justify my opinions to you. Either way, you'll just decide that I am wrong about something because it's not what you believe. And I likely won't say anything you like or believe because by default, you just assume things and then take a jab at me without even knowing me or investigating the message and intentions of my blog. It's easier to do that, rather than ask a mindful question and critically evaluate a random person's beliefs. Again, I don't need to justify myself, because I haven't done anything you claim, and I haven't exercised hypocrisy you so clearly want to project onto me.

My blog stands for Christ, not whatever political and social guilt-trip is trending, and it will continue to stand for Christ no matter how many little anonymous jabs are inflicted upon me. And to you anon, I tip my hat off in respect and dignity, because everyone, faceless or not, is worthy of such regardless of their character and outlandish statements.

If anything in the above response, or related to the response throughout my blog, reflects the tone of hypocrisy. Please do let me know in the inbox and messages. I look forward to any detailed response(s).

God bless you, and Jesus loves you.

Kind Regards

allegraforchrist

[lilithsaintcrow]

"Bloomberg didn’t specify whether Spotify would default current subscribers to this plan so that their monthly costs wouldn’t change or if users would have to take steps to sign up for what would be marketed as a new plan. It also didn't mention if the basic plan would have additional drawbacks."

Spotify buying Findaway—then changing the ToS in order to steal wholesale from authors—certainly takes on a bit of a different tinge now, doesn't it.

The greed is endless. They'll continue chewing from both ends even as they choke.

[lightdancer1]

As far as I'm concerned with Israel-Palestine:

The simple dynamic of it is that you have two irreconcilable views. One is the view of the Arab Druze, Christians, and Muslims who lived in Palestine who accepted even when not mainstream Sunni Muslims that Al-Quds Mosque and Muslim views of things were the default, who were very confused when they were expelled from their homes after having fought a smaller-scale war against the Yishuv from the 1920s, a much bigger one against the British, and going for a much bigger one against the Yishuv in the 1940s. This view is that Palestine is Muslim, Christians and Druze existing on the suffrance of people who have expelled and slaughtered every other non-Muslim minority in the region for decades and a protracted war against a non-Muslim power does not tend to foster tolerance.

This view is deeply baked into the idea after 100 years that the first and only resort that counts is war.

Against this is the Israeli view that the long history of the Kingdoms of Samaria and Judah and the Hasmonean state and Roman province that succeeded it mean that the Israelites/Judeans are native to the Levant and to Eretz Yisrael. They are. They were expelled from there by Emperor Hadrian. Zionism set out for itself to take the communities of the Dispersion and re-forge a Middle Eastern people out of them. Given that Israeli secularism hangs by a thread and the fanatics are building private armies they monkey's pawed their way into doing exactly what they thought they wanted.

This view is that if everyone else gets a nation-state Jews deserve one too, and the founding view of the 1940s like that of Muhammad Ali Jinnah in Pakistan is not the view that today's governing class has and the path has had some odd similarities in both cases given vastly different regions and local histories where the British Empire is the only common point. Jews spent 2,000 years trusting in the kindness of the nations and it ended in people literally going up in smoke or machine gunned in the back by German death squads.

So Jews, understandably, do not want to live in a world without a Jewish state. They too believe that the first and only resort that ultimately counts is war.

The history of Palestine and Israel is intertwined in the reality that a century of war between the Yishuv and then the state of Israel and the Arabs and Palestinians in particular around it has, with the exception of Lebanon, seen an unbroken strand of Israeli victories. For Israel war is the rational choice because thus far they have always won. For Palestinians they see that it works for the Jewish state, think it works for them, too, and fail to understand the precise mechanisms that let the Jewish state do what it does in the way that it goes about doing it.

Wars are not irrational, but at the end of the day war is war, it is cruelty and you cannot refine it and the reality is that one side that lopsidedly wins has no fear of the side that lopsidedly loses, while a century of failed wars doesn't exactly encourage people to even try to reach for peace.

Add to this that thanks to the British Empire the national awakening of Palestinians promotes leaders who hold onto power by bankrolling private armies that are incapable of fighting the IDF, universal conscription in Israel, and that the Likud and Israeli Right have an unbroken monopoly on power because their voters are the descendants of the Jews expelled from the Arab world in the 1940s, who are also the majority of Jews in Israel, and neither side has real incentives to work for peace and both sides have major incentives to keep the bitter cycle of war unfolding.

It is not that disputes could theoretically be unsolvable, but the particular dynamics motivating state power in the Knesset and in Gaza and Judea and Samaria are not ones that readily promote anyone that wants peace and if anything have multiple examples of promoting the exact opposite.

[speedyposts]

In Pakistan, old hopefuls jostle to turn around struggling economy

Pakistani voters head to the polls on Thursday amid a deep-seated economic crisis. Inflation is hovering at 30 percent, close to 40 percent of people live below the poverty line, and the debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio has climbed to 72 percent. Pakistan’s new government will have to contend with these and an ageing public infrastructure.

“We have power outages every day for two hours,” says Muhammad Waqas, a janitor from Islamabad. “In the summer, when it’s hot, you sit idly and suffer.”

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As with other state-owned firms, the inability of successive governments to invest in Pakistan’s National Transmission and Despatch Company has left it prone to failure.

More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic and energy supply challenges dampened Pakistan’s growth prospects and constrained efforts to diversify its export base away from low-value-added products – such as cotton and rice – to higher-value goods.

In late 2022, meanwhile, monsoon floods displaced eight million people and cost the country $30bn in damage. The loss of cotton crops ravaged the country’s textile industry, a key source of exports. In all likelihood, Pakistan’s growth rate fell into negative territory in 2023.

Pakistan, which imports much of its food and fuel, consistently records large trade deficits. Owing in part to elevated commodity prices, foreign exchange reserves dwindled to less than one month of imports last May, leading to shortages of vital goods.

The following month, Islamabad narrowly avoided default after it secured a $3bn loan from the IMF – its 23rd fund programme since 1958. However, the lending package came with strict conditions and unpopular reforms.

As part of the deal, the government agreed to impose new taxes on its faltering power sector. It also agreed to lower utility subsidies, which led to sharp hikes in electricity prices, hitting poorer households particularly hard.

Inflation, which reached nearly 30 percent in December, has been climbing since the start of last year after Pakistan’s central bank agreed to liberalise its exchange rate as part of a pre-existing IMF programme. Once exchange controls were dropped, the value of the currency fell sharply.

The Pakistani rupee was Asia’s worst-performing currency in 2023, depreciating by roughly 20 percent against the US dollar. “We think the rupee will continue trending down slightly,” said Krisjanis Krustins, a director at Fitch Ratings. “This will lower Pakistan’s current account deficit as goods from abroad will become more expensive, compressing import levels.”

According to the State Bank of Pakistan, the country posted a balance of payments surplus of $397m last December.

Krustins told Al Jazeera, “Pakistan’s goods imports fell by 27 percent in the last calendar year. As for exports, they continue to be held back by limited human capital and poor infrastructure. So, corrections in the trade account have had a depressing impact on the economy.”

Recent job losses have lifted the official unemployment rate to a record high of 8.5 percent, pitching an additional 8.4 to 9.1 million people into poverty.

Separately, Pakistan has long suffered from “structural issues”, says Tariq Banuri, professor of economics at the University of Utah.

“For starters, Pakistan’s growth rate is not high enough to absorb its rapidly expanding population. It’s also one of the world’s worst performers on tax collection. Agricultural landowners are exempt from income tax, and there’s no capital gains tax on real estate.”

Successive governments have stopped short of imposing robust tax legislation for fear of upsetting powerful business interests, Banuri said. “But that may change this year because of the debt situation,” he added.

Islamabad’s failure to boost tax revenues and modernise state-owned enterprises has generated persistent fiscal deficits and a large debt burden. In absolute terms, external debt reached $125.7bn last year.

Looking ahead, Pakistan faces $24.6bn in external debt repayments by the end of June, the bulk of which is owed to China.

China is Pakistan’s largest bilateral creditor, and Beijing agreed to roll over $2.4bn in loans last year. Many economists expect the incoming government to try and secure longer-term financing from the IMF – its current deal expires in April.

Given the cutbacks to public spending last year, “further fiscal consolidation is unlikely”, says Yousuf Farooq, director of research at Chase Securities. “The Fund is going to try and eke out further conditions, but probably from wealthier sections of society.”

“Assuming the new government can get another IMF loan, it will struggle to repay unless it imposes new taxes on agriculture and real estate. If it can also roll over short-term contracts with longer repayment schedules, I’m hopeful that debt will fall in the near term,” he said.

In the meantime, foreign investment continues to be hamstrung by security concerns along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021, Islamabad has accused its neighbour of harbouring fighters carrying out attacks on its soil.

An unfolding political crisis is also threatening Pakistan’s economic recovery. Today, Islamabad’s fragile democracy is overseen by a caretaker government following Imran Khan’s dismissal as prime minister in April 2022.

The legitimacy of the February 8 elections has been questioned as Khan is absent from the ballot sheet. He is in jail on corruption charges. And while he is disqualified from running, Khan’s approval rating stands at 57 percent, higher than any other politician.

As things stand, the head of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) – is favourite to win. Sharif’s PMLN has assumed power four times in the past three decades, under either himself or his brother Shehbaz Sharif.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court further weakened Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) campaign by banning the use of a cricket bat as its symbol – a serious setback in a country where millions of illiterate voters identify candidates by their party logos.

For Banuri, the economics professor, “People are right to criticise Pakistan’s political system, which is dynastic and extractive. But for all that, I remain an optimist. I think the worst of the economic crisis is behind us.”

“While I always hope tomorrow will be better than today, I do not think the main political parties will offer meaningful change. They seem to be far more concerned with getting into power,” he added.

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