A day with the IS Pak comrades

A day with the comrades, half a dozen of them doing a mini day school. Riaz starts with a talk on left parties. With the ever worse corruption of the ruling parties, there are attempts to bring the left together (*). Riaz makes good use of Gramsci’s distinction between ‘good sense’ ands ‘common sense’. This comes, perhaps from reading and translating into Urdu the ‘Rebel’s Guide to Gramsci’ which I’ve brought together with other books. (**) I speak on imperialism. Bangash talks about Afghanistan and the systematic sabotage by the Karzai government to cultivate relationships with could be called the moderate Taliban and at the same time to persecute any left or secular politics. Malalai Joya, former Afghan woman MP, is the best known example here. Afterwards we go for an ice cream - awful flavours apart from vanilla and get some much needed exercise walking round a small park.
Riaz makes lunch: curried chickpeas cooked in an earthenware pot and yoghurt salad. Rather good. Despite being a men only day school in a men only flat, it is all very civilised even if we only go to bed very late.

(*)(**) National Workers Party, the Workers and Peasants Party and the Communist Workers and Peasants Party.With further developments more recently:
"16 progressive parties discuss merger"

(**) By mid December, the Rebel’s Guide to Lenin has also been translated http://issuu.com/ispakistan/docs/rebelguidelenin-final2009?mode=a_p