With 78% of the population living below the poverty line, 66% facing food insecurity, almost 100 million without access to safe water and just under 94 million without access to adequate sanitation, for most sensible people, Pakistan’s 2015-16 budget should present a huge problem for leaders of the country.

The Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign is fully geared for massive May Day activities in more than 70 cities and towns in Pakistan.

There was a great pomp and show. There was a din of “eternal Pakistan-China friendship” broadcast from every media channel and newspaper incessantly for almost two days. A Chinese head of state was paying a desperately awaited visit to Pakistan for the first time in many years.

The strategy of investment is the core economic policy of Pakistan’s political elite and our domineering intelligentsia. They portray investment as the only means of growth and development, a way to generate employment and to alleviate and poverty. This would be hilarious nonsense were it not so devastating for the working masses.

The Pakistani masses have reacted very negatively to the prospects of becoming an accomplice in the Saudi Monarchy’s brutal aggression against Yemen. This response has shocked Pakistan’s ruling elite, the state’s bosses, the media and the intelligentsia. Even some in the media have dared to reveal the vicious character of the despotic Saudi regime and its atrocious treatment of more than 2.5 million Pakistani immigrant workers banished into slavery and drudgery by these tyrannical monarchs

The crisis in the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has now reached its very peak, with a feud erupting between long-time friends and close allies, former minister Zulfiqar Mirza and the party’s Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari. This struggle marks a bitter fight for the leadership involving Zardari’s and Benazir Bhutto’s own son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who has recently entered the political scene as PPP chairman. The party’s mass roots and support among the working class have been severely undermined by the extreme corruption of the leadership and many years spent in office carrying out pro-imperialist and neo-liberal policies. Here is Lal Khan’s take on these events.

A huge anti-privatisation rally was organised by the All-Pakistan WAPDA Hydro Electric Union of the Water and Power Development Authority in Islamabad on 18th February, 2015. Workers from all over Pakistan gathered in front of the Islamabad Press Club with red flags and banners against privatisation. This was the largest protest WAPDA has organised in recent times and the workers were determined to fight against this latest attack of the state against workers.

The Progressive Youth Alliance organised a National Marxist (winter) Youth School from 5 to 7 December 2014. The venue was the five thousand year old historical city of Mohenjo Daro. This city excavated in 1922 is the largest amongst all the excavations of the Indus Valley Civilization.

The attack by the Taliban on a school in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Tuesday 16th December 2014 was perhaps the most barbaric and brutal attack carried out by the fundamentalists to date. It was to be the deadliest terrorist attack in Pakistan in memory, claiming 141 lives including 132 children. On top of this over 125 people had been injured, predominantly children.

The massacre of 141 people including 132 children by the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban at the Peshawar Army Public School yesterday was probably the most heinous barbarity ever seen even in Pakistan, which has been victim to this scourge for decades now. Hardly a day passes without suicide attacks, terrorist bombing or target killings in this tragic country.

There is such a furore surrounding the movements of Qadri, Imran and most recently the PTI on the television screens and airwaves that ordinary people, who are already suffering from the brutal socioeconomic crisis, are left bewildered. The ongoing vicious cycle of talks and confrontations followed by the resumption of yet more talks, causes even greater despair for people’s already agitated minds and beleaguered souls. Some have come to the conclusion that if they avoided the television talk shows and news bulletins they would be better off. They could live without the stress and boredom the continuous rows and monotonous speeches with no real content or optimism. The bosses of the

Comrade Ali Wazir is a proclaimed supporter of the IMT. His mass popularity and support in this primitive region - the so-called bastion of the Taliban - shows that if the struggle for a socialist revolution is conducted with correct tactics, courage and determination, Marxists can win the support in these extremely hazardous areas, especially amongst the students and the youth.

The starkest contradiction of the present epoch is the huge level of inequality in which the vast majority of the human race is immersed in poverty, misery and deprivation in an era of plenty. And yet, today the means of production and modern advanced technology have the capacity to produce much more than the total needs for a decent existence of the human race.

In order to commemorate 150 years since the founding of the International Workingmen Association, the first international organization of the working class, and 97 years of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Pakistan Trade Union Defense Campaign organized public meetings across Pakistan. Here we give brief reports of the meetings.

In yet another recent tragedy in a vicious cycle of constant calamities afflicting society, at least 60 people were killed, including 21 women and 19 children below the age of 14, and numerous injured following a collision between a passenger coach and a truck near Theri Bypass in Sindh's Khairpur district. A mere accident or part of the general decay of Pakistani society?

The gruesome pogrom in which a Christian couple was beaten to death and their bodies burnt in the brick kiln where they worked, for allegedly desecrating a Quran, in the town of Kot Radha Kishan, symptomizes the malaise that has set in and that is ripping apart the decayed social fabric of Pakistan.

Urgent solidarity action is required for Pakistan Marxists in Malakand. Early this morning at 5.45am, comrade Ghufran Ahad’s home in the village of Allahdand in the district of Malakand, was attacked by a hand grenade. Fortunately no one was injured but the windows and other parts of the home were severely damaged.

The renowned American author and progressive thinker Gore Vidal, analysing the U.S. political setup, once wrote, “There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party… and it has two right wings.” Vidal was referring to the Republicans and the Democrats, whom he characterised as representatives of the ruling class, who have obvious cursory differences, but are fundamentally there to preserve the exploitative capitalist system and the imperialist hegemony.

The notion that Islamic fundamentalism, religious terror and neofascist black reaction can be crushed or eliminated without challenging the status quo is not only false, but also deceptive. It actually amounts in practice to supporting the rotten bourgeoisie in the name of “democracy”, “secularism”, “human rights”, “women’s emancipation” and “freedom”.

On Friday 17 October a condolence meeting was held for 23 year old Comrade Sajid Alam, area secretary of The Struggle for Malakand, who was killed in a tragic road accident. Killed by the intensely barbarous conditions found in Pakistan generally, and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in particular. As if this were not heartbreaking enough, the local Taliban tried to disrupt his funeral, calling him an infidel, making his grieving family's life an even worse hell on earth.