The hoarse bleating and the paranoia unleashed by the media and the intelligentsia in Pakistan complaining about the US operation in Abbotabad as a “breach of sovereignty” is mindboggling to say the least. When did Pakistan ever have genuine and complete sovereignty in its history?

“A middle-aged nonentity, a political failure outstripped by history – by the millions of Arabs demanding freedom and democracy in the Middle East – died in Pakistan yesterday. And then the world went mad.” (Robert Fisk, 3 May, 2011)

The famous Prussian military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, once wrote that “war is the continuation of politics by other means”. In the South Asian subcontinent the threat of war and the process of peace are also used as a device of deception for domestic consumption.

As the confrontation between the “allies” – US and Pakistan – in the “War on Terror” worsens, the prospect of any fruitful outcome to this war of attrition fades further away. The bloody conflict in Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan rages on. The colossal collateral damage caused by imperialist bombings and drone attacks, in reality means the brutal extermination of thousands of innocent souls. The fundamentalist terror doesn’t spare the ordinary people either.

Thirty two years ago on the night of 3^rd and 4^th April 1979, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was assassinated on the gallows in Rawalpindi jail. This was probably the most significant political murder in the history of the country. A terrified state, headed by the country’s most brutal and vicious dictator Zia ul Haq carried out this harrowing act.

The 1997 economic crisis that hit the South East Asian countries, in the changed conditions of Indonesia led to revolution in 1998 and the ousting of the old regime. However, it failed to remove the bourgeoisie from power, who adopted “Reformasi” as a means of channelling the revolution down safe lines; while granting “democracy”, however, they pushed for a greater intensification of the exploitation of labour and for greater “liberalisation”. Important lessons have to learnt from this period by the activists of the left in Indonesia today.

Inspired by the revolutionary movements in the Arab world the last few weeks have also seen protests in the Caucasus republic of Azerbaijan: against the elite in Baku, against the lack of genuine democratic rights and the violations of freedom of speech and against corruption.

Although independent, Indonesia’ economy was totally subordinate to the needs of imperialism. Economic development brought with it growing industrialisation and thus the development of a modern, fresh proletariat, which was destined to become a key factor in future events.

The defeat of the PKI (Indonesian Communist Party) in the 1920s led to the handing over of the leadership of the national liberation struggle to the emerging national bourgeoisie which was tied hand and foot to imperialism. While the national bourgeoisie was inherently incapable of completing the task of national liberation, the Stalinist PKI in the 1950s adopted the incorrect two-stage theory, which was later to lead to the bloodiest counter-revolution in 1965.

We start today a four part article on the development of capitalism in Indonesia. In Part One we see how the original Dutch East Indies colony, that was later to become Indonesia, played an important role in capitalist accumulation for the nascent Dutch bourgeoisie, the first to actually carry out a bourgeois revolution in Europe.

After tolerating draconian work conditions, with many workers on day wages, [i.e. workers who turn up each day and wait to see if they get a day’s work], suddenly the wrath of the workers spilled over and they downed tools. The response of the boss has been a lock-out. The struggle continues.

It is the worst disaster for Japan since the war, since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This triple whammy of a force-9 earthquake, a tsunami, followed by a nuclear disaster, has shaken the country to its very foundations. And the consequences of this multifaceted catastrophe are widening by the day.

The episode of Raymond Davis’s release has exposed the reality of justice, the myth of sovereignty and the character of Pakistan’s ruling classes. As Hegel once remarked, “Necessity expresses itself through accident”. The whole incident highlights the economic, diplomatic and military crisis the largest imperial power in history is experiencing in this epoch of the senile decay of capitalism on a world scale.

In Nepal the stalemate in power is continuing while the ideological battle inside the communist movement intensifies. The struggle for power through constitutional means by the largest party in parliament UCPN (M) faced another defeat when on November 1st parliament failed to elect a new Prime Minister for the 16th time. [Originally published in the Think India Quarterly]

In less than a day after the exorbitantly cruel price hike of petroleum products and the announcement of the home minister that a major terrorist network had been busted in Islamabad, the federal minister for minorities, a Christian, was gruesomely assassinated in front of his mother’s house in the very same city.