Young Doctors in Punjab achieved victory on Wednesday 7 November after a struggle that lasted over two years. More than 22,000 young doctors in Punjab were united in their demands for better wages and service structure under the banner of a new organisation called Young Doctors Association (YDA).

We look back at the 1925-27 revolution, which was a heroic attempt of the Chinese workers to follow in the footsteps of the October 1917 Russian Revolution. However, due to its unprepared and irresolute leadership, it went down to a tragic defeat. Failed revolutions are always the greatest of tragedies. However, the only way of really honouring the many victims of the counter-revolution that ensued is to study the revolution and learn from its mistakes.

The ruling of the Supreme Court in the Asghar Khan case [in which a former army chief and a former chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have been found guilty of rigging the 1990 general elections] has laid bare the burgeoning intrinsic conflicts between and within the most vital institutions of the Pakistani state, the titans, the political executive, military establishment and the judiciary.

In the past two months a handful of tiny Islands off the coast of China have been making headlines across the world. The disputed island chain, known as the Diaoyu in China and the Senkaku in Japan, made international news after Japanese nationalists planted the flag of Japan on its uninhabited shore (with lavish media coverage). The tension escalated when in September the Japanese government nationalised the islands, previously owned by the Kurihara family, sparking off a wave of militant nationalist protest in China. But why are these seemingly irrelevant islands so significant?

The political apathy that prevails amongst the deprived and oppressed masses in Pakistan reflects the deep malaise and despair that has set in society. The mammoth reception that Benazir Bhutto was accorded five years ago on her return from exile to Karachi on 18^th October 2007 that had raised new hope for the masses and the subsequent campaign that has turned into a vigorous movement had sent tremors in the echelons of power.

The reactions of the political elite during the recent caricature of a long march launched and abruptly ended half way by Imran Khan [a right wing populist politician and former Pakistan cricket team captain] were either hysterical or comical. The Jamaat a Islami and other religious outfits that supported it are trying to create an extreme right wing political force at the behest of the sections of the state.

The suffering of the people of Pakistan is largely unknown in the West. A veil of silence has been carefully drawn over the number of people killed every day by American drones and Taliban murders. But recently a small corner of the curtain was raised as the result of a particularly appalling event.

Tomorrow, October 3, will witness an important event in the history of the labour movement in Indonesia. For the first time in 50 years, Indonesian workers will carry out a national general strike which will involve an estimated 2 million workers in 21 different cities. Three demands serve as the basis of this general strike: increases in the official minimum wage, an end to all outsourcing arrangements, and universal national health care for all.

Bhagat Singh was a fervent torchbearer of the proletarian struggle. He rejected the prejudices of caste, creed, nationality, race, gender, and, of course, religion.

Sixteen years ago on September 20, 1996, in the dusk falling into darkness, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, aged 42, was riddled with the bullets of this ferocious state. He was assassinated along with six of his comrades in front of his house, 70 Clifton, Karachi — the most renowned political address in Pakistan. At the time, ironically, his sister was the prime minister and the chief executive of the country. Innumerable conspiracy theories and accusations have been doing the rounds since. Yet none of the culprits have been apprehended or indicted and those personnel of the state forces who were named and arrested have gone scot-free.

The Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign has organised a campaign of public meetings to commemorate the hundreds of workers who were recently killed in fire factories in Karachi and Lahore, exposing the criminal behaviour of the owners who had locked all exits bar one [at the Karachi factory] and even then insisted that finished goods should have priority over workers trying to escape to save their lives! The capitalists of Pakistan stand condemned before the whole of the working people.

The horrific factory fire at a Karachi garments and clothing enterprise where 289 workers, men, women and children, perished and hundreds were injured with severe burn wounds in an inferno in a caged factory with sealed gates is not an exception but the norm for the proletariat in Pakistan. It lays bare the conditions in which they are forced to work.

The picture of the Chinese economy painted by commentators in the West is often one of strength; an economy dominated by exports, with unstoppable growth and development; in short, a model to emulate. Recent figures released by the International Monetary Fund, however, describe a very different situation; a situation where contradictions are intensifying below the surface; a situation that is pregnant with crisis and revolutionary consequences.

The dominant intelligentsia with its constricted outlook, shackled in the fetters of an obsolete and redundant capitalist ideology, is now the merchant of doom.

South Asian subcontinent’s iconic poet and an ardent communist, Faiz Ahmed Faiz termed the independence of the subcontinent in August 1947 as a ‘blighted dawn’ in his famous poem ‘morrow of independence’. He was revolted with the bloody massacres during the partition on religious lines. It was perhaps one of the biggest genocides in modern human history. But if it began as a blighted dawn this independence has become a harrowing nightmare for the oppressed masses of the subcontinent sixty five years on.