Why did radicals in the 1960s and 1970s see armed struggle as necessary for progressive struggle? How was this was connected to debates on the class nature of national liberation/progressive struggle? Why is it relevant today? My latest in @jamhoormedia (link at bottom of thread)

Both this map and the conclusions being drawn from it are stupid, please move on with your life.

Except that a lot of what you now see as a lush green expanse was mostly desert and non-agricultural jungle before the 1900s; where semi-nomadic tribes of Punjab fought each other for territory and people, had warrior ethos and honour-bound codes, etc.

I think I assumed without really realizing it that a job as a professor would mean time and resources for learning and thinking and intellectual community.

Thank you for your service.

As if the rest of Pakistan's people haven't been pounded into the ground through US military and economic constriction over the past 25+ years.

Lots going on in the world but what's going on with @Hamzakk case? Why is he not already out, at least on pre-trial bail?

in America you need less evidence to kill thousands of Muslims than to arrest one member of an international sex trafficking ring

Bastani comparing Muslim veneration of self-sacrifice in the cause of justice to fictional drug dealer. Some explain the Bastani mindset to me.

Another reminder to place internal squabbles in the west in context. Very little supersedes, their racism, colonialism, and Islamophobia teach your students what this Canadian leader said a little while ago and what he is saying now:

This is a really good piece by Noaman and Syed - v brave for its time. Analyzes the role of imperialism and GWOT in Pakistani politics and the local left's failure to understand it, let alone oppose it.

If only Iran had allowed women's rights like education then Israel and US wouldn't have had to bomb a girls' school.

So it's important to be specific. Though few, there are many kinds of leftists in Pakistan, as in the rest of the world. And they are not all in the same organizations or parties, because they disagree with each other on many issues. 10/10

Earlier many pro-Soviet leftists had sought their 'liberation' through Soviet tanks and now after their conversions many leftists sought it through US warplanes and liberal parties. But there were plenty of leftists who were deeply opposed to US invasion of Afghanistan. 9/

for example, Omar Asghar Khan founder of Sungi, an icon of NGO/civil society, who joined his cabinet (he would likely have joined PTI like his father and brother). Many liberals/left-liberals saw the so-called 'War on Terror' as the great delivery from above ... 8/

Even NGO agendas became watered down and the left scattered, many of its middle-class workers becoming NGO employees or expecting NGOtic funding. That is a convergence of both ideology and material incentive. By the 2000s, Musharraf was seen as an enlightened liberal by many, 7/

Even leftists who did not abandon socialist politics fpften allied with NGOs in defence of, for example, labour rights. But this foreign money & attention actually weakened workers' and peasants' power from below, as instead it became about jockeying for proximity to funding. 6/

the US National Endowment for Democracy overtly took up the tasks that were formerly the covert operations of the CIA. This became an agenda of 'good governance,' 'rule of law,' 'democracy-promotion,' etc. which all liberal parties (PPP, ANP, etc.) agreed to, + left-liberals 5/

NGOs/civil society were the trendy concepts in the 1990s and 2000s, promising to provide a strong basis for liberal democracy throughout the world, while servicing now-sidelined working class populations through aid programs. That aid came from Western donors, & as for CIA ... 4/

They viewed military and religion as the main problems, abandoning the materialist analysis of society and opposition to semi-feudalism/semi-capitalism. Key: rather than seeing working classes as agents of liberation, saw them now as, at best, subjects of middle-class aid. 3/

In the 1980s Pakistan's left was underground and resisting martial law in alliance with liberal parties (PPP, NDP, etc.). But with the collapse of the Soviet Union many lost their socialist bearings and began to adopt social democracy and left-liberalism. 2/