International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Release Ali Wazir, lift curfew, respect democratic rights!

Farooq Tariq, Lal Khan — 2019-05-27T13:52:32Z

In the morning of Sunday, 26 May 2019, a sit-in of the affected villagers at Kharqamar check post, Boyya, North Waziristan was going on. Ali Wazir and Mohsin Dawar both members of Pakistan's National Assembly arrived at the sit-in site to support the protest leading their caravan from Bannu. A wave of enthusiasm erupted amongst those in the protest against the military's brutal search operation of the area.

- News from around the world / Pakistan

Jallianwala Bagh Massacre

Lal Khan — 2019-04-16T06:39:37Z

In the late spring of 1919, green meadows in the fertile plains of the Punjab were acquiring a golden hue with the sun's rising radiance. It was the onset of harvest time. A century ago the near-absence of pollution, the air would have been fresh. With mustard yellow pastures in the periphery of the ripening wheat crops and the spring breeze imbued with fragrance of fresh foliage, gave spring its serene and alluring splendour.

- IV531 - April 2019 / Pakistan, India, Historical events and figures

Bhagat Singh

Lal Khan — 2019-03-30T06:44:23Z

Revolutionary struggles erupt with their own dynamics. The legacies, such struggles leave behind are often symbolised by iconic figures. According to the mainstream myths, Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru and other such leaders belonging to the native bourgeois fostered by the Raj led anti-colonial struggle in the Indian subcontinent.

- IV530 - March 2019 / Pakistan, India, Historical events and figures

Merchants of devastation – Pulwama and the danger of war in South Asia

Lal Khan — 2019-03-04T07:28:10Z

Ever since the bloody partition of the South Asian sub-continent in 1947, the endless history of hostility between India and Pakistan has been a curse for the oppressed masses. Periodically, either one of the two regimes turns this mutual hostility into episodes of acute confrontation â€” mainly in the interests of continuing domestic politics by other means. The latest incursion into mainland Pakistan and the bombing at Balakot by IAF fighter bombers after the Pulwama terrorist attack, and the subsequent shooting down of two Indian jetfighters by the Pakistan Air force, have heightened the danger of a full-scale war between the subcontinent's two nuclear-armed states. This military escalation has exacerbated a mad rush by the belligerent media on both sides of the Radcliff Line to bring about a scenario described by some as â€˜MAD' – the “Mutually Assured Destruction” syndrome. However there is some method in this madness.

- IV530 - March 2019 / Pakistan, India, Kashmir

The 1946 Revolution in India â€” History's loss!

Lal Khan — 2019-02-23T09:21:22Z

Truth, as they say, is the first casualty of war. The situation of the ruling classes of India and Pakistan is so disdainful that they cannot go to war nor they can sustain a genuine peace. What they contrive are virtual wars and hoaxes of peace. In the ongoing rhetoric of war and the hysteria being propped up by the subcontinent's elite, once again truth and sanity are the foremost victims. It's the organic nature of the region's postcolonial bourgeoisie being reflected in their hypocrisy, crookedness and deceit of their politics, ethics, morality and character. These odious characteristics stem from their origins.

- IV529 - February 2019 / Pakistan, India, Historical events and figures

Kashmir's agony, terror, occupation and repression

Lal Khan — 2019-02-18T06:58:02Z

On February 14th, a convoy of the Indian paramilitary police (CPRF) in Kashmir suffered a massive attack with a bomb-laden vehicle. The immense coverage of it has eclipsed any analysis of the mass revolt against the occupation and repression perpetrated on the Kashmiris. It once again illustrates how the ruling class uses such acts of terror to justify the brutality and exploitation that has inflicted intense agony on the ordinary Kashmiri people.

- IV529 - February 2019 / Pakistan, India, Kashmir

50 Years of the 1968-69 Revolution

Lal Khan — 2018-11-21T13:52:47Z

Fifty years ago this land witnessed the most glorious moments of its history. Pakistan's virgin proletariat and the oppressed classes were storming heavens. They had entered the arena of history and were determined to take their destiny in their own hands. Revolutionary periods are historical exceptions. They don't occur every day. Such an amazing revolutionary torrent had swept across the country from November 7th,1968 till the fall of the formidable dictatorship of Ayub Khan on March 26th, 1969. It had challenged the state and system and victory of a socialist revolution was on the horizon.

- Features / Pakistan, 1968

The myth of Direct Foreign Investment

Lal Khan — 2018-09-30T08:44:30Z

Even small DFIs that trickle into Pakistan come at exorbitantly high costs for the oppressed masses of this country

- IV524 - September 2018 / Economy, Pakistan

Tackling the scourge of terror

Lal Khan — 2018-09-28T07:04:49Z

The so-called Islamic leaders play on the anti-imperialist sentiments of the masses to expand their social, political and financial base

- IV524 - September 2018 / Pakistan

Challenge of the Students Uprising

Lal Khan — 2018-08-11T05:05:38Z

The students' movement that erupted on 29 July following the death of two students in a tragic road accident in Dhaka spread to almost all the major cities of the country. Thousands of outraged school and college students laid siege to the streets of the capital Dhaka for a week demanding road safety across the country. Within days its verve and militancy shook the despotic â€˜democratic' regime of Prime Minister Hasina Wajid's Awami League (AL), the party of Bangladesh's national bourgeoisie.

- IV523 - August 2018 / Youth and student movements, Bangladesh