On 3rd October, striking Power Loom workers from various areas of Ludhiana gathered to demonstrate in front of the Labour Department offices for a second time to increase the pressure on local officials to get their demands met. This was the 12th day of the workers’ struggle to get a pay increase to offset the recent rises in inflation and to have labour laws enforced that are part of the Indian constitution. These have yet to be accepted by the employers who are trying their best in order to ignore the plight of the workers.

As if the catastrophic effects of terrorism, flooding, violence, the dengue plague and other innumerable disasters were not enough, the ruling elite and its brash media has hyped up the empty imperialist provocations and vague threats, adding to the mental trauma the masses were already suffering in Pakistan.

The September 30^th anniversary commemorating the “failed” 1965 “G30S coup” has come round once again. It was a dark day that changed the fate of the Indonesian toiling masses. The Good Book says, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” (Matthew 20:16). The same fate but in reverse befell the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) that was reduced from being the largest Communist party outside the Soviet Union and China to a handful surviving in the underground and in exile. It is no exaggeration to say that the collapse of the PKI transformed the world political order in Indonesia.

For the second time in Nepal since the election of the Constitutional Assembly in 2008, a Maoist is heading the Nepalese government. This time it is Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, who has become the new, 35th, Prime Minister of Nepal. But what does this mean for the Nepalese revolution?

The existence of a steel producing giant in a backward country like Pakistan is nothing less than a miracle. The idea of setting up Pakistan Steel was put forward during the era of Ayub Khan (1958-1969) but the US like many other advanced capitalist countries refused to give any kind of assistance, as the creation of any such kind of basic industry in an underdeveloped country was considered a threat to their own exploitative imperialist agendas.

The terrible floods have ravaged Sind yet again this year. Torrential rain poured down on Karachi after a recent spate of unending bloodletting. A peculiar strain of mosquito has wreaked havoc in Lahore. Psychological trauma overwhelms the Punjab, particularly its capital. Baluchistan continues to bleed and the repression of the state is relentless. Pushtoonkhawa find no respite from bombings by the imperialist predators and fundamentalist terror. The misery in Kashmir worsens with every passing day and the dream of freedom fades away further into oblivion.

Gathering in Kolkata on Monday 12th September a joint press meeting was held by the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC), the All India Trade Union Congress and other trade union bodies, where Kali Ghosh (State General Secretary of CITU) and Ramen Pandey (INTUC State General Secretary) denounced the Anti-Labour policies of the Trinamool Congress lead government of West Bengal.

The crisis that has shaken the world economy since 2008 has pushed bourgeois ideologists to desperately seek a solution. They are looking for alternative ways of running their system, seeking to square the circle and maintain capitalism without its inevitable contradictions. As Asia, and China in particular, is doing so well, there is a burgeoning literature about the Chinese model, just as in the past there was so much made of the “Japanese miracle”. In Part One of this article Luca Lombardi looks at the experience of Taiwan.

The political edifice in Pakistan fabricated under the auspices of imperialism, particularly the British, has once again been shaken by the recent outburst of Zulfiqar Mirza, Sindh’s most senior (former) minister.

Societies seething with discontent and deprivation erupt in most peculiar ways. In India’s egregiously unequal society, the recent upheaval, if at all it can be called that, around the right-wing conservative social activist Anna Hazare shows the malaise that has set in in this largest democracy in the world with one of the fastest growing economies.

The Indian economy has undergone a long period of high and sustained growth. It remains a country of huge contradictions, with immense polarisation of wealth. And yet, in spite of all the propaganda about the state being “bad”, without it Indian capitalism could not have developed as it has.

Peace and harmony – the crown jewels of any ruling class in every epoch. On July 9^th, a 50-thousand strong demonstration in the heart of Kuala Lumpur robbed the Malaysian ruling class of this peace and harmony. Organized by a coalition of NGOs and civil societies who call themselves the Bersih 2.0 coalition, the rally shook Malaysia to its core.

The mayhem and human slaughter that has been prevalent in Karachi for more than three decades intensifies periodically. Another such wave of this dreadful violence has been unleashed in the recent weeks. However, this gruesome spate of killings and devastation is not the cause but a symptom of the severely diseased social and economic system, the harrowing crisis of which is now nudging society into the throes of barbarism.

The elections for the AJK assembly of Pakistan controlled Kashmir being held recently are perhaps the most unrelated of issues plaguing the Kashmiri youth and the working people on this side of the Line of Control. The ruling elite neither have the resources nor the will to solve any of the burning problems the Kashmiri masses are inflicted with.

The workers at the Nestle plant in Kabirwala are waging a relentless struggle against brutal management which has the support of the local administration, and services of hired goons and yellow press journalists along with huge amounts of money. The workers only have one weapon which is their unity!