How did this road get built ...

Since we’re talking about Mao... Between 1949 and 1976, life expectancy in China rose by 32 years – the fastest improvement ever recorded by any country in human history. Adult illiteracy fell from over 80 per cent to 33 per cent by 1978. Land was redistributed. Women were emancipated. A complete industrial base was built from near-zero. The treaty ports were abolished. The country was unified after a century of fragmentation. youtube.com/watch?v=4LuBmu87…

I have been advocating for making F-9 Park in Islamabad more vibrant and people-friendly. It is an amazing green space, with thousands of trees and rich vegetation. It also serves as an important environmental buffer for a city that is rapidly being polluted with more highways and underpasses. We must protect this. But we also need to improve how people experience and use the park. The park should be well-lit, with walking paths connecting all sides, allowing people to cross it safely. It should not just be a place for morning and evening walks, but also part of people's daily commute. We also need wide, pedestrian-friendly footpaths connecting nearby residential sectors to the park. People living in these sectors should be able to walk to the park instead of taking their cars (If they are blessed to live in the nearby sectors). All of this can be achieved without cutting trees or reducing vegetation. I also believe that a sustainable model for street food and other small vendors can make the park more vibrant, accessible and safer. Of course, this must come with proper environmental, waste management and food safety protocols. Street vendors are not necessarily a threat to public spaces. When properly managed, they bring activity, social interaction and natural surveillance. However, there is a much bigger issue: public trust in CDA. I don't think citizens trust CDA to undertake such interventions without damaging the park's ecology or compromising its public character. This distrust has developed over years of decisions about trees, public spaces and urban design. Therefore, even if the government has good intentions, it cannot approach the improvement of F-9 Park in an authoritarian, top-down manner. There must be meaningful public consultations, involvement of urbanists, environmental experts, nearby communities and citizen groups. The process should be transparent, with clear commitments to protecting the park's green cover. Most importantly, this initiative must be citizen-led, not driven by the Interior Ministry or the Chairman CDA. F-9 Park belongs to the people of Islamabad. They should have the leading role in deciding its future.

Disagree here. No state that issues 30% of baseline capital and over 60% of infrastructural investment from public banks controlled by a communist party that bars oligarchs from politics can be called fully 'capitalist'. It's a hybrid economy. Its so-called imperialism is restricted to border-state disputes, not the long-distance overseas colonialism, extraction and debt-peonage of the Western empires. One doesn't need to be romantic to acknowledge these qualitative differences.

"translated from Hebrew" will make an anti-Semite out of me yet...

I wish Islamabad had a bit more of that Shanghai going on 🤔

everyone chill out

The border was announced as open again when Asim Munir visited Iran, & from day 1 of the closure, both sides framed it as temporary & due to technical difficulties / security (impt to also consider the massive spike in attacks in Iranian Balochistan recently). Tehran Times is a better source than western & Pakistani non-state owned media when it comes to this stuff. Most others are just using sensational headlines for clicks

We have once again the Lib-In-Chief of Pakistani society here to reaffirm her deeply held belief that Pakistani society is religiously fanatical and morally worse than their "secular" Indian counterparts (she also enjoys pushing the myth of genuine Indian secularism pre-Modi, drinking the Nehruvian Kool-Aid with the all the enthusiasm of a native propagandist). I am surprised at how much of a "gotcha 🤪🤪" Pahalgam is used as in a world where Oct 7 happened. Violent retaliation in response to occupying Indian government that unveiled fun new tricks like the world's first mass blinding is somehow, for Sabahat, random and gratuitous Islamic terrorism. This is also precisely where her shallow politics break down. She thinks that religion is the source of this violence. She cannot reckon with the reality of decades of irreligious resistance (doubtless she'd call it terror) across the world, because that would require acknowledging the sameness of the violence and its causes.

a fake country with a population smaller than NYC, spending less than 1% of all US lobbying, and 100% dependent on constant US support/protection doesn't even partially "control" the US. Wake up from your fantasy world and join us in material reality. Is it really so hard to see the US government/system/culture as the source of the problem considering its history of genocide, war, and expansionism - which includes creating toxic proxies like Israel?

India, a QUAD member (& even beyond that, a crucial U.S. partner in countering China), I*srael’s largest arms importer, a country that receives a majority of its arms from U.S allies (I*srael, France, South Korea, & the U.S.) is not a close U.S. ally. And, Modi is currently facing a U.S. regime change op. Meanwhile, Pakistan—so dependent on China that in 2019, George Soros called the Pakistan Army “beholden” to it & voiced hope in Imran Khan’s “ambivalent” stance on China—is likely closer to the U.S. & ousted Imran Khan at the behest of Washington. MashAllah brother, you cannot get dumber than this

RT @BrianJBerletic: 🇺🇸🇮🇱/IRAN - On "Israel" Planning Attacks, But "Trump" Saying "No" ▪️First of all, people need to make up their minds -…

The problem here is seeing state and non-state actors as I) moral categories II) inherently distinct and exclusive. In reality, all states emerge from NSAs, so the methodological distinction is vague and unhelpful. The better question is how the dynamic of being a state or NSA relates to the goals that the movement wants to achieve - with the question of the desirability and achievability of those goals being the primary frame through which to investigate.

a tankie is a marxist who has the temerity to pass from "capitalist ideology is really bad" to "i probably hold some false beliefs about the world that i should rid myself of"

Probably the most damning visual illustration of Pakistan's economic & fiscal crisis I've ever seen. That cluster of flags on the left is the rest of the world. To compare historically, our int payment/revenue ratio was 35% in 2008 (at the height of the global financial crisis).

Perhaps it's time to call for US drones to rescue you, the way you did in Waziristan. But I won't hold my breath.

Feudalism constrained incentives for technological progress. Capitalism unshackled several of these incentives, but is unable to move past new boundaries as progress increasingly fetters the system. But it was still a critical historical step for the development of productive forces.

One of the side-quests of my book is to demystify the anti-China influence machine. If you're talking about shadowy cabals with dark money, handlers and CIA color revolution, you've already lost. You look like the guy with the tinfoil hat. The truth is out there, and it's so much more banal. It's a whole class of people with social and professional incentives to keep reproducing itself. The Great Wall of Disinformation is built through peer pressure, access gatekeeping and excommunication for those who stray from the party line. When @noahsmith brands me in pubic as a CCP asset or @JeremiahDJohns calls me a "handmaiden to genocide", what you are witnessing is an immune response. They are like White Blood Cells swarming to isolate and neutralize the "infection" before it can spread to the rest of the host. Like individual blood cells, they don't need to be aware of any higher plan. They certainly have no curiosity about whether the new information is true or false. The pathogen is any evidence that contradicts the consensus.

Now, if Lashkar kills a few Indian tourists in an occupied land (like Hamas did), or even JKP, BSF, or anyone who is a part of the architecture of occupation, this whole country would go berserk, like they went in Pahalgam. Even the military chickened out, lol.

They were non-combatants. The Indian state keeps dissolving the civilian-combatant binary when it comes to A/JK. Yet, our fellow countrymen are the first to condemn and dissociate from the resistance when they respond in kind.