Inflation and the prices of basic commodities under the incumbent Pakistani Muslim League (Nawaz) [PML(N)] government have risen enormously wreaking havoc on the lives of ordinary people. Purchasing power is declining rapidly with the depreciating value of incomes and salaries.

The crisis is spiralling out of control at tremendous speed. The strategists of capital have no clue how to address and find a way out of this economic and social catastrophe.

Today is the third day of strike action by workers at the Master Tiles factory in Gujranwala. After more than 15 years of repression, torture and violation of labour laws at the hands of the owners and management, workers finally managed to get their union registered by the Labour Department.

The incumbent PML (N) regime in Pakistan has announced the biggest ever privatisation of state assets in the history of Pakistan. Sixty eight State Owned Enterprises (SOE’s) have been identified to be sacrificed on the altar of aggressive “neo-liberal” capitalism.

There is hardly a day when the news coming out of Pakistan does not have some form of a calamity or trauma with harrowing footage splashing across television screens. Terrorist attacks or suicide bombings, earthquakes, floods, other natural disasters, unbearable price hikes, collective suicides of impoverished families, selling of children and human organs and so many other horrific events have become a norm in this tragic land. It has been years if not decades that the beleaguered masses of this country have had any blissful respite.

As if there were not already excruciating misery for the working classes in Pakistan, the massive rise in electricity tariffs and the prices of petroleum products will wreak havoc on an already impoverished populace of this tragic country.

October 9th marked one year since the serene valley of Swat was suddenly overcome with pain and anguish at the bestial attack on Malala Yousafzai and other schoolgirls in the van taking them home as it rounded at an army checkpoint in the midst of a fundamentalist insurgency.

Within months of coming to power the right-wing government of the Muslim League announced their intentions of privatizing the state owned enterprises. On 13^th September it was announced that 26% of the shares of Pakistan International Airline’s would be privatized along with the control of the management of the company. Pakistan Post, Railways, WAPDA (Water and Power Development Authority) and many others are also on the list for privatisation.

Introduction: In June this year, Shahrukh Jatoi the son of a Sindhi feudal landlord, was handed the death penalty after being found guilty of shooting dead university student Shahzeb Khan last December. The case raised furore all over Pakistan as it was a clear example of the corruption and cronyism that exists within Paksitani society. As Khan's father said: “This is the brutal reign of the feudals. They don’t spare anyone.”. Despite being found guilty and sentenced to death Jatoi was pardoned last week after paying Khan's family a sum of 350 million Rs ($3.3m).

The killing of five Indian military personnel in firing across the line-of-control (LOC)  in Kashmir has once again laid bare the underlying tensions and the ongoing crisis that have become a festering wound for the people of Kashmir for the last sixty six years.

The maiden speech by the third time prime minister, Mian Nawaz Sharif, was no different from the ones we have heard from the rulers of this tragic land ever since its creation.

Imran Khan’s Tsunami that was supposed to sweep across the political landscape of Pakistan failed to materialise. As the election results started to pour in, the heightened hopes of the supporters of the PTI were dashed. In a period where ideological politics was forced into oblivion by the forces of finance capital and the betrayal of the opportunist leaders of the PPP at the helm there was a yawning vacuum for the rise of a new political formation that could challenge the status quo.

There is immense euphoria mainly in the Pakistani media, the political superstructure, “civil society” and the political outfits serving as umbrella organisations for diverse NGO’s on the appointment of Dr. Abdul Maalik as the chief minister of Baluchistan by Nawaz Sharif. What lies behind this euphoria?

Although the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) bagged more seats in the May 2013 election compared to the 1997 elections the impact of last month’s defeat is far greater. This undoubtedly will have profound repercussions as PPP activists may succumb to pessimism. Questions over the PPP’s future haunt its supporters. The chattering classes are incestuously debating the PPP defeat, albeit superficially.

Most of the elitist actors at the helm of the political edifice personify the social, moral, ethical, and cultural decay through which the country is passing presently