> Thanks for asking :)

It has been a while since I posted here. Since May, four people have sent me messages asking why I’m not posting any more.

While I’ve replied to each of them individually, I figured I’d write it here too.

I’ve had to deal with a tumorous growth in my nasal passage, the resulting surgery and post-surgery bullshit. Yes, it sucked. Yes, there are still problems, but I’ll live.

I’m back home, and when I’m not resting or taking disgusting medicines, I’m working to re-establish old political links and forge new ones.

I do intend to write on a lot of issues, based on my experiences and reading in the past two months.

Currently, I’m busy with the ongoing PTCL workers’ strike, and various other things. Incidentally, “PTCL” stands for “Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd.”

I’m too sleepy to write anything more than this: the PTCL workers ROCK. Seriously. For me, it is an honor to be a part of their struggle.

Mazdoor Ittehad: Zindabad!
Long Live the Workers’ Unity!

> Wall Street, greed and the world-system

I recently read a fascinating overview of the current global financial crisis, written by Wallerstein using his brilliant and lucid world-systems analytical approach.

Instead of trying to grasp the particulars of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, I believe it is more important to understand the big picture, i.e. to get a broad overview of why financial crises occur and what they represent for the global market-based system.

Even a total new-comer to the field of political economy and the global financial system can easily understand the situation he describes:

Commentary No. 230, April 1, 2008

“Wall Street is Really Predicated on Greed”

It is not I who is saying that Wall Street is really predicated on greed, but Stephen Raphael. And who is Stephen Raphael? He is a former member of the Board of Bear Stearns, the Wall Street bank that collapsed last month. And where did Raphael say this? In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, which is more or less the house journal of Wall Street. And what was Raphael’s point? It was to explain (or was it to excuse?) the collapse of the firm. “This could happen to any firm,” he said.

Yes, indeed it could. And it did. Meanwhile, while this was happening, the chairman of the firm, Jimmy Caynes, was nonchalantly playing bridge in a tournament. Not too smart for a greedy banker. As a result, he lost most of his personal fortune, and another greedy firm, JPMorgan Chase, came in like a vulture and made a killing. Oh, incidentally, some 14,000 employees of Bear Stearns are, or will soon be, out of a job.

Is then capitalism nothing but greed? No, there are other things to it, but greed plays a very big role. And greed, by definition, works for some at the expense of others. So, some firms are going bankrupt these days - on Wall Street, and elsewhere in the world - and others are not. The United States as a country is going bankrupt, and others are not. The United States doesn’t call it that, but that is the truth of it.

Is it always like this? No, not always. Just half the time. Let us review how Wall Street and the United States got into this particular disastrous corner. It all started out well - for Wall Street and for the United States in 1945. The war was over. The war was won. And the United States was the only industrial power whose factories were intact, untouched by wartime damage. There were destroyed cities elsewhere, and actual hunger in Europe and Asia.

> A few words about Pakistan (and some great stuff by Immortal Technique)

I have two exams looming next week, in addition to co-curricular events which require a lot of time. College life can be fun at times, but it really makes it hard to post on your blog. If only I could spare half an hour every two days, I could post regularly here. I’ll try.

I’ve been reading up on the post-election situation in Pakistan, and obviously, there are some very encouraging signs. I hope a strong anti-Musharraf coalition can materialize in the new Parliament. Delays could prove fatal for the unity of anti-military forces in the country. I suspect that is precisely what Musharraf and his defeated coterie are hoping for.

In the meanwhile, I’d like to share a song by one of my favorite progressive artists, Immortal Technique. I know there are lots of weird people who don’t like rap, but even if you’re one of them, check this out anyway (the lyrics are a part of the video):

If you haven’t been introduced to Immortal Technique before, look up more of his songs.

Also check out this video, where he talks about neo-colonialism in very simple language (the video includes footage of Salvador Allende):

Wonderful stuff!

> The final solution to the Palestinian problem…

…is now being implemented by the Zionist Entity. Here is what it looks like in Gaza:

Gaza bleeds and the “international community” does nothing about it. The neighbouring Arab states do nothing about it. Mahmoud Abbas and his opportunist, treacherous clique in Fatah do nothing about it.

The Zionist Entity has been implementing this final solution ever since 1948, when they began the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by killing, robbing and terrorizing the native Arabs, until they were left with no option but to flee their own lands.

And now, the Zionist Entity openly admits that its leaders will implement a slow but equally deadly version of the “final solution” for the Palestinian Arab people, which they learned from the Nazis at Auschwitz and Dachau.

I wonder if supporters of Israel are struck by the irony of a state threatening to carry out a Holocaust when the main justification for its very creation was to prevent another Holocaust.

No rights can be won without struggling for them. The Palestinian Arab people can rely on nothing except the aim of their AK-47’s and rockets. The Muqawwama must go on, to the bitter end.

Assalamu-alaikum, ya shuhada!
Martyrs of the Palestinian people, we salute you.

> Wallerstein on the demise of neo-liberal globalization

As is often the case, Immanuel Wallerstein once again provides a perceptive analysis, based on his work on World-Systems analysis (if you need a quick introduction to it, go here).

So, according to Wallerstein,

Commentary No. 226, Feb. 1, 2008

“2008: The Demise of Neoliberal Globalization”

The ideology of neoliberal globalization has been on a roll since the early 1980s. It was not in fact a new idea in the history of the modern world-system, although it claimed to be one. It was rather the very old idea that the governments of the world should get out of the way of large, efficient enterprises in their efforts to prevail in the world market. The first policy implication was that governments, all governments, should permit these corporations freely to cross every frontier with their goods and their capital. The second policy implication was that the governments, all governments, should renounce any role as owners themselves of these productive enterprises, privatizing whatever they own. And the third policy implication was that governments, all governments, should minimize, if not eliminate, any and all kinds of social welfare transfer payments to their populations. This old idea had always been cyclically in fashion.

In the 1980s, these ideas were proposed as a counterview to the equally old Keynesian and/or socialist views that had been prevailing in most countries around the world: that economies should be mixed (state plus private enterprises); that governments should protect their citizens from the depredations of foreign-owned quasi-monopolist corporations; and that governments should try to equalize life chances by transferring benefits to their less well-off residents (especially education, health, and lifetime guarantees of income levels), which required of course taxation of better-off residents and corporate enterprises.

The program of neoliberal globalization took advantage of the worldwide profit stagnation that began after a long period of unprecedented global expansion in the post-1945 period up to the beginning of the 1970s, which had encouraged the Keynesian and/or socialist views to dominate policy. The profit stagnation created balance-of-payments problems for a very large number of the world’s governments, especially in the global South and the so-called socialist bloc of nations. The neoliberal counteroffensive was led by the right-wing governments of the United States and Great Britain (Reagan and Thatcher) plus the two main intergovernmental financial agencies - the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and these jointly created and enforced what came to be called the Washington Consensus. The slogan of this global joint policy was coined by Mrs. Thatcher: TINA, or There is No Alternative. The slogan was intended to convey to all governments that they had to fall in line with the policy recommendations, or they would be punished by slow growth and the refusal of international assistance in any difficulties they might face.

The Washington Consensus promised renewed economic growth to everyone and a way out of the global profit stagnation. Politically, the proponents of neoliberal globalization were highly successful. Government after government - in the global South, in the socialist bloc, and in the strong Western countries - privatized industries, opened their frontiers to trade and financial transactions, and cut back on the welfare state. Socialist ideas, even Keynesian ideas, were largely discredited in public opinion and renounced by political elites. The most dramatic visible consequence was the fall of the Communist regimes in east-central Europe and the former Soviet Union plus the adoption of a market-friendly policy by still-nominally socialist China.

The only problem with this great political success was that it was not matched by economic success. The profit stagnation in industrial enterprises worldwide continued. The surge upward of the stock markets everywhere was based not on productive profits but largely on speculative financial manipulations. The distribution of income worldwide and within countries became very skewed - a massive increase in the income of the top 10% and especially of the top 1% of the world’s populations, but a decline in real income of much of the rest of the world’s populations.

> A murder that was never quite completed…

I know the greatest fear of our ruling-classes. I know what terrifies the military establishment and its civilian cronies more than anything else in the world. Take a guess: do you know what I’m talking about? No, its not those ragged “Pakistani Taliban” or the assorted tribal warriors who ally with them in self-defence. I’m talking about a man and the ideas he represented. I’m talking about the martyr Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

Our establishment thinks it killed him. And indeed it did - at least in physical terms. But I suspect they didn’t quite kill what they wanted to kill. They could not kill the ideas which he stood for in the popular imagination. They killed a man, only to be confronted by his resilient spirit, as represented by the masses.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was not a perfect leader, and perfect leaders don’t exist. He was not the best representative for the ideas he claimed to uphold. A prominent Sindhi feudal, talking about social justice sounds highly contradictory. But here is what separates ZAB from the others:

1.) His ideas were immensely popular with the people.
2.) He refused to back off on them: no matter what the cost.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was elected in West Pakistan on a fairly radical programme, given the usual reactionary politics of our country. He stood for nationalization of key industries, the implementation of a proper welfare state, extensive land reforms and above all, a foreign policy which was not tailored to fit the dictates of US imperialism.

At the end of the day, it is a matter of debate as to how far he delivered on his promises. But what we do know for sure is that he moved us in a direction which was unpalatable for the traditional ruling-classes of our country. The military, the industrialist families who had monopolized our wealth, the religious authorities, all these members of our traditional establishment were infuriated.

Above all, ZAB led us down a non-aligned path in foreign relations. For once in our history, we Pakistanis stopped acting as the most dependable American stooges in this region. We established friendly relations with the Soviet bloc, which resulted in the establishment of a steel industry with Soviet assistance. ZAB tried to unite Muslim countries in the Third-World, working with other progressive leaders such as Yasser Arafat from Palestine and Muammar al-Qaddhafi from Libya.

Despite the fact that ZAB occasionally resorted to unnecessarily heavy-handed repression, the 70s were essentially an era of increased civil liberties. There was a flowering of arts and culture in a progressive direction, and the State did not destroy it.

But this state of affairs was not meant to last too long. In 1977, the military overthrew ZAB’s democratically-elected government in a coup. Thereafter, they trumped up charges against him, and eventually hanged him.

The first half of this short video shows the criminal military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq, who overthrew ZAB and seized power, and then proceeded to terrorize our masses.
The second half shows ZAB himself, bringing a crowd to its feet like no other Pakistani leader could:

As for ZAB, whatever his mistakes might have been, he didn’t back off where it mattered. He didn’t leave the country when the generals offered it. He paid for that with his life. And that raises him head and shoulders above all the corrupt swine who have ruled us.

And just in case you’re still wondering what I was talking about at the start of this post, here it is:
The greatest fear of our ruling-classes is that the legacy of ZAB might one day be carried forward by the masses. It’s the last thing they want.
The murder of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto will be complete only when the working masses lose hope entirely, and surrender to the predatory clowns who rule us. I hope this will never happen.

> Al-Hakim has left us…

A song in honor of a great man:

George Habash (also known by his nom de guerre of Al-Hakim), the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), died of a heart-attack today. Ever since he relinquished leadership of the PFLP in 2000, he had been living in Jordan.

BBC reports it here and Al-Jazeera reports it here.

According to Ma’an News,

Amman – Ma’an – George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and a godfather of the Palestinian struggle, died of a heart attack on Saturday in the Jordanian capital, Amman, medical sources said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has declared three days of national mourning to honor Habash, who was known as “Al Hakim,” the Wise Man.

Habash was born in Lydda, in Mandate Palestine in 1925 into a Greek Orthodox family. Like hundreds of thousands of other Palestinians, he became a refugee during the mass expulsion committed by the Israeli army in 1948.

He graduated from the American University of Beirut (AUB) in 1951 with a degree in medicine. With a focus on pediatrics, he went to work in Palestinian refugee camps in Amman. While at AUB he met Hilda Habash, a Palestinian from Jerusalem.

In in 1952 he co-founded the Arab Nationalist Movement, which later spun off into several parties in individual countries.

Wanted by the Jordanian regime for his political activities, he fled Amman in 1957 for Damascus, where he was imprisoned several times, also for political reasons.

After leaving Jordan, Habash shifted his focus from Pan-Arab to Palestinian issues. His view was that the Palestinians should embrace Marxist-Leninist revolution.

In December 1967 he founded, with Abu Ali Mustafa, the PFLP. He remained the Secretary General of the Organization until 2000. He was succeeded by Abu Ali Mustafa.

George Habash belonged to a generation of revolutionary leaders which is now all but gone, and whose influence and contribution to liberation movements worldwide cannot be emphasized enough. We must credit Dr. Habash with the application of Marxist-Leninist theory to the practical problem facing the Palestinian working-class. As victims of US imperialism and its Zionist allies, the Palestinian people were in prime need of a modern revolutionary theory: one which could serve to guide their struggle. And it was leaders such as George Habash who provided them with this theory: armed struggle by the working-class, guided by Leninist ideas.

Within the PLO, there developed something of a tussle between Fatah and the PFLP, symbolized by their two great leaders, Yasser Arafat and George Habash. While we must credit Arafat for initiating the Palestinian armed struggle, it is rather obvious that Dr. Habash was the more consistent anti-imperialist leader. Arafat eventually succumbed to the opportunism of his own Fatah party and the pressure of US imperialism, but Dr. Habash continued to take a firm anti-imperialist stance. With his stance at Oslo, in 1993, Arafat clearly split from the path of resistance and armed struggle advocated by Dr. Habash and the PFLP.

In a 1998 interview, Dr. Habash explained in detail the reasons for the PFLP’s opposition to the Oslo agreements:

In fact the Oslo Agreements were signed under the worst possible Arab,
Palestinian, and international conditions for the Palestinian people.
Therefore they hinged on a balance of forces tilting decisively in favor
of the [Zionist] enemy. Wrong are those who believe that the outcome of
negotiations is determined by ability and negotiating skill alone apart
from the balance of forces! Good negotiators are the ones who know how
to use the available cards to obtain the best possible conditions
obtainable under the existing balance of power.

In that sense, the mediocre performance of the Palestinian negotiating
team diffused away some the most powerful Palestinian cards. For
example:

1) Agreeing to the containment of the Intifada (uprising), thus bowing
at the onset to a clear Israeli condition.

2)Giving up the legal international framework represented by United
Nations and Security Council resolutions, including those recognizing
the rights of the Palestinian people; our right to self-determination,
to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as capital; our right
of return; not to mention the natural and inalienable right to resist
and not to recognize the legitimacy of Zionist settlement.

That’s why the Israeli position always rejected an active role for
international agencies in the negotiations. Europe was given an
observer status…

As such this international framework of legal reference was bypassed for
one donned by a U.S. mediator well-known for its total bias in Israel’s
favor. Thus the negotiations’ point of reference drops to become…what
the negotiating partners agree to, taking us back once more to the
balance of forces, i.e., the law of the jungle.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the Palestinian Oslo team stooped down
even farther when it agreed to engage in secret negotiations away from
any Palestinian popular or institutional oversight. Hence the influence
of the Palestinian street was neutralized, and with it all the action
and pressure it could’ve generated to countervail U.S.-Israeli
pressures.

In addition to that, isolating the Palestinian issue from its natural
Arab depth and milieu just made it so much easier for Zionists to impose
the conditions and solutions that best befit their interest.
Consequently, the current leadership of the PLO lost its:

1) Arab backing, especially from Syria and Lebanon, and

2) Palestinian backing represented by internal Palestinian unity.

Then this leadership wallowed in a maze of secluded agreements with the
enemy drowning deeper and deeper in ever-worsening conditions and
concessions that are clearly opposed to Palestinian rights.

Are we in the PFLP just saying that to accuse or out pessimism?

A good reading of the contents of these agreements reveals their truth
in the way of unacceptable concessions, starting from recognizing
Israel’s right to exist, to amending the Palestinian National Charter,
to evading the most basic components of the Palestinian cause like the
right of return, to self-determination, an independent state, Jerusalem,
removing settlements, or sovereignty.

That’s what we mean by saying that these agreements didn’t bring about
any solution, and didn’t even result from a normal negotiating process,
but rather reflected the brute imposition of the conditions of the
stronger party on the weaker party.

Source: Free Arab Voice

In the current context of the splintered Palestinian leadership between Hamas and Fatah, the arguments presented by Dr. Habash are even more relevant than before.

Dr. Habash will be remembered for ever as a Palestinian revolutionary leader and a guide for the Third World in our struggle to defeat First World imperialism and establish a free, socialist world order.

Rest in peace, ya rafiq!
Rest in peace, Al-Hakim!

> An introduction to the Balochistan conflict

I’ve discovered, among other things, that you can sleep 15 hours a day and still feel sleepy. But really, I don’t mind being idle. Once the semester begins, I know I’ll drown in work.

Now that I’m back to blogging, I hope to devote more attention to the Balochistan conflict. We hear it so often, when there is a discussion of the numerous troubles facing Pakistan these days. And yet, very few people (apart from the Baloch themselves) actually understand what this conflict is all about.

The Baloch people are spread over a vast area comprising south-western Pakistan and south-eastern Iran. They are mainly a tribal people, and their culture is shaped by this form of social organization. Much of Balochistan is an arid region, and it is very rich in minerals. Both the Pakistani and Iranian regimes treat it as a source for cheap minerals and a dumping-ground for their excess populations. The decades of mistreatment meted out to the Baloch people naturally engenders anger and rebellion among them. They are a proud people who refused to bow before British imperialism, and clearly, have no intention of surrendering to the exploitative military-dominated elite of Pakistan.

The Balochistan region supplies most of Pakistan with natural gas, which is used for heating, cooking and industrial purposes. Interestingly enough, most Baloch towns apart from the provincial capital Quetta don’t have natural gas access, even though the rest of Pakistan lives off it. As if that were not enough, the Baloch people are not remunerated adequately for the use of their natural resources. Balochistan remains Pakistan’s most under-developed region.

In the 70s, the Pakistani government conducted a deadly counter-insurgency war against the Baloch people. The Baloch insurgents were backed (to some extent) by the Soviet Union, and supported by the Left within Pakistan. The government which carried out the war against them was the most progressive government Pakistan has so far had, i.e. that of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. This goes to show the deeply-rooted tendency of the Pakistani elite to suppress Baloch aspirations for self-determination.

The Iranian government of that time, led by the Shah, actively participated in the suppression of the Baloch resistance. Among other things, they supplied the Pakistani government with gunship helicopters to hunt down the rebels.

The insurgency never quite died, and under the current military regime of General Pervez Musharraf, it flared up again. Nawab Akbar Bugti, an influential tribal chief in Balochistan, was a prominent figure within this insurgency. In 2006, he was killed in a military operation conducted by Pakistani troops. This has only served to increase Baloch resentment.

I personally believe that the Baloch people can still continue as a part of Pakistan, but for this to happen, the Pakistani establishment will have to drastically change its attitude and policies towards the Balochistan province. If we do not treat them as our people, they owe us no loyalty. And since the Pakistani establishment has not treated the Baloch people as equal citizens of Pakistan, I feel morally compelled to sympathize with the Baloch nationalist resistance. The Baloch people should be left free to decide whether they wish to stay within Pakistan, or become an independent nation.

Here is an excellent documentary on the Balochistan conflict. Note that this documentary was made when Akbar Bugti was still alive. It is divided into eight short Youtube clips of 2-4 minutes:

Part 1:
(the first 40 seconds of this clip are blank)

> What do you want to be when you’re big and strong?

A Palestinian child answers:

He is the son of Raed Nazal, a PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) leader who was martyred by the Zionist occupation forces in the West Bank town of Qalqiliya, on the 26th of April 2002.

Here is what the child says:

“My name is Asir Raed Nazal, son of the Leader of the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades. My mother says, “Martyrs don’t die.” But when I grow up I want to become like you, Dad. I want to be strong and carry a gun and destroy Zionism. I also told her, I want to crush the wall, burn their soldiers and destroy their tanks. When I grow up, I want to become a lawyer and defend Palestinian prisoners. And I want to raise on the mountain the flag of the PFLP, when I grow up, I want to fight like you and raise with you the flag of the PFLP…”

Let’s look forward to a day when the little comrade grows up to be a brilliant lawyer and political leader for his people in their struggle against Zionist aggression.

His mother is right: martyrs don’t die. They just pass on their weapons and their cause to someone else.

.

EDIT (January 16th, 2008): I found a PFLP poster commemorating the martyred PFLP commander, Raed Nazal:

> Only in good old Punjab…

…would you get to see a husband and wife going for each other like this:

If you speak Punjabi, you’ll love it. If you speak only Hindi or Urdu, you might be able to make out some parts. Either way, do watch.

If you marry that Punjabi girl you fancy, make sure you learn the language. Otherwise, your response to her vicious verbal weapons will be as woefully inadequate as that of a Taliban fighter to an American air-raid.

I love this part from the video:

Wife: Bhonki na ja, mein sachi-muchi chaleen aan!
–Quit barking, I’m telling you, I really will go off (to my parents’ home)–
Husband: Baahir ja kar chaleen, aithay dhuwaan karna ay?
–If you’re going to go off, do it outside, we don’t want smoke in here, do we?–

(he’s implying that she’s a deadly bomb)