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Today's Stories

December 28, 2007

Wajahat Ali
A Pakistani Requiem

December 27, 2007

Dilip Hiro
A Tragedy Foretold: Will Bhutto's Death be a Boost for Her Party?

Murtaza Shibli
Who Killed Bhutto?

Stephen Soldz
Fallujah, the Information War and U.S. Propaganda

Bill Quigley
Locked Outside the Gates

Paul Craig Roberts
The Great American Lock-Up

Omer Subhani
Killing Bhutto: What Happens Next in Pakistan?

Marjorie Cohn
The Torture Tape Cover-Up: How High Does It Go?

Allan Nairn
Cataclysm By Money Whim

Jacob G. Hornberger
Smearing Ron Paul: Shame on the NYT

Norman Solomon
Channeling Suze Orman

Patrick Irelan
Rumsfeld Spills the Ink

Ben Tripp
Pass the Razor Blades

Website of the Day
Quagmire, For What It's Worth

 


December 26, 2007

Charles Tripp
From One Saddam to Fifty

Paul Armentano
No-Knock, You're Dead

Rannie Amiri
Lebanon in Search of a Government

Stanley Heller
Brzezinski and Charlie Wilson's War

John Walsh
Two Unreasonable Men

Martha Rosenberg
The Strange Career of Scott Gottlieb

Norman Madarasz
Bolivia Amends New Constitution and Faces Mutiny from Within

Website of the Day
Cockburn at the Battle of Ideas

 

December 25, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
Conscience and Empire

December 24, 2007

Andrea Peacock
A Dark Ride on the Border

Tariq Ali
Thinking of Edward Said

Uri Avnery
Help! A Ceasefire!

Jill Jameson
Burma is Not Back to Normal: A Trip from Rangoon to Mae Sot

Steve Melendez
Russell Means Goes to Washington

Mike Whitney
The Big Fix

Chuck Munson
Not Getting It About New Orleans

John Walsh
Clueless Crusaders

Farzana Versey
Tony Blair and the Hawking of Religion

Richard Neville
Dreaming of a White House Christmas

Website of the Day
Back in the USSR


December 22 / 23, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Mike Huckabee's Ascending Chariot

Ralph Nader
Politics and Profits: How the Oil Cartel Gets Its Way

Andy Worthington
Intelligence Failures, Battlefield Myths and Unaccountable Prisons in Afghanistan

Ahmad Faruqui
The Comedian of Pakistan

Bill Moyers
Society on Steroids

Rev. William E. Alberts
Blessed are the Peacemakers

Timothy J. Freeman
From Kant to Lennon: Can War Really be Over?

Anthony DiMaggio
Democrats Continue to Capitulate on Iraq

Fred Gardner
Molecule of the Year, Cannabiodiol

Paul Krassner
Enhanced Hazing Techniques

Seth Sandronsky
17 Years of Meanness: Repealing California's Three Strikes Law

William Loren Katz
Christmas Eve Freedom Fighters: Recalling the Battle of Lake Okeechobee

Michael Dickinson
In the Dungeon of the Zabita

Ron Jacobs
Why Leon Russell Still Matters

David Vest
Doyle Bramhall's "Is It News?"

Poets' Basement
Orloski, Davies and Ford

Website of the Weekend
George W. Hates Santa

 

December 21, 2007

John Ross
New Massacres Loom in Mexico

Jacob Hornberger
Nothing Can Morally Justify the Invasion of Iraq

Dick J. Reavis
A Way Out of the Newspaper Abyss

Jeff Cohen
and Norman Solomon

The 2007 P.U.-litzer Prizes

Peter Morici
Business as Usual as Recession Looms

Jack McCarthy
Let Us Now Praise Judith Regan (Even If She Did Sleep with Bernie Kerik)

Raúl Zibechi
Sex and Revolution

Steve Early
How the Presidential Candidates Made Me an Atheist

David Macaray
Union Aftermath

Patrick Bond
Zuma, the Center-Left and the Left-Left in S. Africa

Lakota Freedom Delegation
A Declaration of Independence from the USA

Website of the Day
Solomon v. Beck: Tale of the Tape

 

December 20, 2007

David Rosen
Mitt Romney's Secret Life as a Pornographer

Alan Farago
The Huckster and the Wreckage: Jeb Bush and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis

Laura Carlsen
Standing Up to NAFTA

Ashley Dawson
The Return of the Bread Riot

Wayne Smith
and Jennifer Schuett
Cuba Changes, US Policy Stagnates

Website of the Day
How to Talk to a FoxNews Reporter

 

December 19, 2007

Saul Landau
Is the NIE Bush's Watergate?

Paul W. Lovinger
Hillary the Hawk

Norman Solomon
The Mad Corporate World of Glenn Beck

Dave Zirin
George Mitchell's Drugs of Choice

Marjorie Cohn
Bush Still Spinning Iranian Nukes

Sen. Russell Feingold
The Iraq War is Exhausting Our Nation

Sonja Karkar
A Christmas Reflection on Palestine

Anthony Papa
Open the Drug Gulags

Christopher Ketcham
Pave the Holy Lands with Good Intentions

Davey D
Britney's Little Sister is Pregnant: Should We Blame Hip Hop?

Website of the Day
When Republicans Use the F-Word on TV

 

December 18, 2007

R. F. Blader
The Politics of Teen Pregnancy

George Wuerthner
Gunning for Wolves in Idaho

Steven Higgs
Can the NAFTA Superhighway be Stopped?

Vijay Prashad
Encounters with Ghadar

David Macaray
The Free Rider Problem

Ralph Nader
Nine Books That Make a Difference: a Reading List for the Holidays

Eva Liddell
Privatizing War Abroad, Invading Privacy at Home

Martha Rosenberg
While the Bodies are Still Warm: Drugs, Shrinks and Shooters

Dave Lindorff
When Impeachment is Out of Print

Peter Morici
The Consequences the Trade Deficit

Website of the Day
Ron Paul: How Fascism Will Come to America

 

December 17, 2007

Mike Whitney
Staring Into the Abyss

Tom Barry
Planning the War on Immigrants

Uri Avnery
A Gaza Masada?

Greg Moses
Crossing the Line in Texas

Allan Nairn
Terrorism; Counter-
Terrorism: Excuses for Murder

Patrick Bond
South Africa's Fight Between Hostile Brothers

Stephen Lendman
Police State America

Charles Jonkel
Grizzly Right of Way

Laray Polk
An Inside-Out Crisis in Gaza

Stephen Fleischman
Pawns in Their Game

December 15 / 16, 2007

Peter Linebaugh
A People's Penny for the Magna Carta

Howard Zinn
Bomb After Bomb

Standard Schaefer
The Greening of Big Tobacco

Raymond J. Lawrence
Let's Take Christ Out of Christmas

Alan Farago
Down on Desolation Row: the Vultures and the Growth Machine

Saul Landau
Lord Byron and the Bad Tourists

Jenna Orkin
Lying to "Reassure" the Public: Bush's EPA and the Post-9/11 Toxic Air Cover-Up

Ahmad Samih Khalidi
Why a Palestinian "State" is a Punitive Construct

Robert Fantina
Politics By Photo-Op

Missy Comley Beattie
Resistance Amid the Ruins

Ramzy Baroud
Of Mormons and Muslims

James L. Secor
A Vision for China's Future

Elijah Wald
Ike Turner's Music Won't be Forgotten

Website of the Weekend
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies Needs (and Deserves) Your Support

 

December 14, 2007

JoAnn Wypijewski
The Dirty Cad: What Giuliani's Sex Life Tells Us About Him

John Ross
Iraqi Refugees Return: One Cruel Hoax

Jacob Hornberger
Terror Suspects Belong in Federal Court

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened?

Allan Nairn
"Shoot Them on the Spot": Rewarding War Crimes

Dave Zirin
The Mitchell Report: Absolving the Owners

Dave Lindorff
The First Cut is the Deepest

Misty MacDuffee
Toxic Grizzlies

Ben Terrall
What Happened to Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine?

Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi
Prerequisites for Peace

Website of the Day
Sen. Kit Bond: "Waterboarding is Like Swimming"

 

December 13, 2007

Paul Craig Roberts
Shrinking the Dollar from the Inside-Out

Mike Whitney
Dershowitz for the Defense--of Waterboarding

Ron Jacobs
Blank Check DemocratsL the Great War Funding Conspiracy

Norman Solomon
The USA's Human Rights Daze

Peter Morici
The Dragon and the Toothless Dog: China Doesn't Flinch

Sandy Mayes
Blocking the Strykers: 13 Days of War Resistance at Port Olympia

Franklin Lamb
The UN in Lebanon: Whose Mission Is It Fulfilling?

Jacob Hornberger
Don't Reform the CIA, Abolish It

Nadim Rouhana
An Interloper in My Own Land

Dave Zirin
On Pigskin and Petrol

Website of the Day
Rachel's Needs (and Deserves) Your Support!


December 12, 2007

Allan Nairn
US Intelligence is Tapping Indonesian Phones

Alan Farago
How Sprawl Eats Its Young

Ray McGovern
Torture, Lies and Videotape

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Phony Pentagon Budget Cuts

Evan Jones
The Raid on Great Western: Why an Australian Bank Might Spell Doom for the US Farm Belt

James Petras
An Open Letter to Sarkozy on the Exchange of Political Prisonsers

Joel Hirschorn
The Horserace Fiction: Clinton, Obama and the Democratic Machine

Joshua Frank
Why Ron Paul Deserves Our Attention

Sherry Wolf
Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul

Dan Bacher
Survey of a Fish Graveyard

Website of the Day
Men Eating Bugs

 

December 11, 2007

Patrick Cockburn
What's Really Happened During the Surge?

Diana Johnstone
The Next Kosovo War

Paul Craig Roberts
It's Waco All Over Again: Preventive Detention and the Constitution

David Macaray
Impasse in Hollywood

Ralph Nader
Gail Collins Versus the Underdogs

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Britons to be Released: a Mixed Result

Martha Rosenberg
No Holiday for High Risk Sex Workers

Steve Champion /
Anthony Ross

Words for Our Brother, Tookie Williams

Kim Nicolini
Tangled Up in Dylan

Michael Dickinson
Say Goodbye to Purgatory: Pope Rat Gets Indulgent

Website of the Day
A Charming (and Worthy) Pitch


December 10, 2007

Uri Avnery
How They Stole the Bomb From Us

Debbie Nathan
The Perils of Journalism and Child Porn

JoAnn Wypijewski
Is There a Left Here Left? If So, What Can It Do?

Steve Kelly
Cheap Chips, Counterfeit Wilderness

Donna J. Volatile
Welcome to the Revolution

 

December 8 / 9, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Coup Against Bush and Cheney

Brenda Norrell
Seize the Land, Chain the Peace Activists

Saul Landau
The Ruins of Empire

R. F. Blader
A Rape in Every Drink?

Ray McGovern
Spinning Iran's Centrifuges

Allan Nairn
Imposed Hunger in Gaza, the Army in Indonesia

Linn Washington, Jr
Spotlight on Death Row

Paul Craig Roberts
When Will Bush Come Clean?

 

December 7, 2007

Sean Penn
Piano Wire Puppeteers

Arthur Versluis
Mining Water in the Desert

M. G. Piety
Racism and the American Psyche: Some Thoughts on Race and Intelligence

Pam Martens
Banksters Gone Wild

Alan Farago
Will the Free Market Kill Suburbia? Sprawl and the Credit Crisis

Allan Nairn
It Takes (Out) a Village

Col. Dan Smith
Bush, Iran and the Politics of Doomsday

Alice Slater
The Iran Opening

Robert Weissman
The Story of Stuff

Website of the Day
Something About Mitt

 

December 5, 2007

Mike Whitney
Why the CFR Hates Putin

Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Enablers: Tom Hayden and the Dead End Democrats

James Petras
Venezuela in the Aftermath

Ron Jacobs
The Iran Charade

Dave Zirin
Kicking a Dead Man: the Sliming of Sean Taylor

John V. Whitbeck
Two States or One? Time to Choose

Peter Zinn
Covered in New Orleans

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Impeach Pelosi Instead

Alan Farago
The Credit Bomb Detonates in Florida

Heather Gray
US Meddling in Australian Politics

Website of the Day
A Donner Summit Night Before Xmas

 

December 4, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Jackboot State Stubs Its Toe in Ann Arbor

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the Supreme Court

Paul Craig Roberts
The Lies at the End of the American Dream

Ray McGovern
No-Nuke Iran

Winslow T. Wheeler
Admiral Mullen and the Defense Budget: When White Elephants are Too Small

Allan Nairn
The Regime Still Stands in Burma, Where "the People Just Want Food"

Russell Mokhiber
The USA v. Al Arian

Nikolas Kozloff
As Chávez Falters: Raising the Stakes for the South American Left

John V. Walsh
Peace Movement Paralyzed

Ghada Ageel
Will Peace Cost Me My Home?

Stephen Soldz
The Facts be Damned!: Psychologists' President Defends Psychologist Involvement in Interrogations

Website of the Day
Hands Off the People of Iran

 

 

December 3, 2007

Tariq Ali
Venezuela After the Referendum

Bill Quigley
New Orleans: Bulldozers for the Poor, Tax Credits for Developers

Eric Walberg
The Bible and Middle East History

Uri Avnery
After Annapolis

Marjorie Cohn
Operation Iraqi Freedom Exposed

Dave Lindorff
Vengeance Isn't Sweet

Stephen Fleischman
Homeless in Paradise

Martha Rosenberg
Perp Walks for the Mink Clad on Chicago's Mag Mile

Website of the Day
So Just Lead!

 

December 1 / 2, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
Emblems of the Bush Age: Adrift in a Sea of Booze

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Bear Minimum: the Grizzly and the Future of the Rocky Mountain West

Mike Whitney
"Iraq Doesn't Exist Anymore": an Interview with Nir Rosen

Shemon Salam
A Visit From the FBI

Roger Burbach
The Battle in Bolivia

Benjamin Dangl
New Politics in Old Bolivia

Brian M. Downing
The Quiet on the Middle Eastern Front: How Much Credit Goes to the Surge?

Greg Moses
Night of the Living Redneck: a Texas Horror Story

Sonja Karkar
The "Never-Never" Peace Conference

Saul Landau
Ethics and Evil in South Boston

Margaret Kimberley
Black America Left Behind

John Ross
What are the Prospects for a New Mexican Revolution?

Reza Fiyouzat
Exit on the Left: When Che's Children Visited Iran

Judith Scherr
Berkeley Turns Right for the Holidays

Lance Olsen
Of Forests and Finance: Logging for the Wealthy

Christopher Brauchli
Mr. Bush and the Despots

Robert Fantina
Iraq as U.S. Colony

Dan Bacher
Fish Triage on Prospect Island

Michael Donnelly
Remembering How to be Human: John Trudell and the Music of Urgency

Website of the Weekend
Appalachian Voices

 

November 30, 2007

Peter Stone Brown
The Re-Packaging of Bob Dylan

Wajahat Ali
The Volatile Mistress: an Interview with Javed Jabbar, Pakistan's Former Minister of Information

Allan Nairn
Cold-Blooded Celebrity: Thomas L. Friedman and the Bali Bombers

Alan Farago
The Sorrows of Suburbia: Politics, Sprawl and the Housing Crash

John Ross
The Death of Latin America's First Revolution

Corporate Crime Reporter
America's Corporate Crime Capitals

Lucia Alvarez
Diego Gonzalez
Argentina's Political Future

James Rothenberg
The Iraqi Miracle

Website of the Day
Bio-Bling?

 

November 29, 2007

R. F. Blader
The Most Dangerous Kind of Bribe

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Distorting Fascism to Demonize Iran

Stephen Soldz
War on the Couch: Fear, Aggression and Empire

Sheldon Richman
Iraq 3.0

George Wuerthner
Forest Fires, Lies and Chainsaws

Felice Pace
Did All Things Considered Self-Censor on Annapolis?

Col. Dan Smith
The Meaning of Annapolis

Harvey Wasserman
Terror Target Nukes

Nikolas Kozloff
Primetime Hate Debate: Lou Dobbs, Immigration and Campaign '08

Paul Krassner
Huffington Post Bloggers Go On Strike!

Dave Lindorff
News Not Fit to Print: US Coup Planned for Venezuela?

CP News Service
The One State Declaration

Website of the Day
A Native View of Yellowstone Bison Slaughter

November 28, 2007

James Petras
CIA Destabilization Memo Surfaces on Venezuela

Jeff Halper
Annapolis: When the Roadmap is a One Way Street

Pam Martens
Crashing Citigroup

Peter Morici
Economy in Crisis: Avoiding a Recession

Mohammed Khatib
Separate and Unequal in Palestine

Helen Redmond
The Horror and the Hope: Health Care in America

William S. Lind
In the Fox's Lair: Quiet Before a New Iraq Storm?

Ben Tripp
We, the People: a Trope for All Seasons

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan: First, Restore the Constitution and Reinstate the Judges

Jeff Berg
Holbrooke Says Bush Won't Attack Iran

Website of the Day
The Lies of Joe Klein

 

November 27, 2007

Joe DeRaymond
On the Road to the Torture School

Paul Craig Roberts
Meet the Only Two Candidates Worse Than Bush and Cheney: Hillary and Rudy

Marjorie Cohn
Remembering Victor Rabinowitz

Mike Whitney
A Dollar the Size of a Postage Stamp

Ron Jacobs
The Myths of Military Progress

Col. Dan Smith
The Pentagon's "People System" Still Doesn't Work

Ralph Nader
Family Learning

Karim Makdisi
Annapolis and the Unholy Alliance: the View from Beirut

Christopher Ketcham
Memo to Hollywood Writers: Strike Until You Drop

Ronan Bennett
Martin Amis Does a Coulter

Website of the Day
Celebrating the Uncensored Media

 

November 26, 2007

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Heading for Annapolis

Paul Craig Roberts
The End of All That

David Macaray
Enter Mediator

Sameer Dossani
Pakistan's Wounded Dictator

Roger Burbach
The Final Battle in Bolivia

Mark Scaramella
Guns and Greed in the Emerald Empire

Brian McKinlay
Howard's End

Rick Kuhn
The Fall of a Racist Union Buster

Binoy Kampmark
Ruddslide and Dull Alec

Monica Benderman
What Do You Know of War?

Brenda Norrell
Return to Alcatraz

Website of the Day
Ghostworld by DJ Spooky

 

November 24 / 25, 2007

Alexander Cockburn
The Ordeal of Catherine Wilkerson, MD

Robert Fisk
Darkness Falls on the Middle East

Saul Landau
Norman Mailer will Not R.I.P.

Jeffrey St. Clair
Justice Stephen Breyer, Cancer Bonds and the Origins of Neoliberal Environmentalism

Rannie Amiri
Beirut's Black Friday

Christopher Brauchli
Iraq Embassy as Gilded Palace

Daniel Gross
The Gap and Black Friday

Mike Whitney
"A Generalized Meltdown of Financial Institutions"

Marjorie Cohn
Iran and the 2008 Elections

David Rosen
Senior Sex: the Real Sexual Life of Aging Americans

David Michael Green
If Conservatism is the Ideology of Freedom ....

Kenneth Rexroth
When Euripides Played the Hindu Kush: Greeks and Buddhists in Afghanistan

Muhammad Iqbal
Trans. Shahid Alam

Ghazal

Website of the Day
Aerial Footage of Delta Fish Kill


November 23, 2007

Gary Leupp
Killing the Buddha in Pakistan's Swat Valley

Laura Carlsen
Coming to Terms with Diversity in Bolivia: an Interview with Alvaro Garcia, Bolivia's VP

David Macaray
Keeping Labor Unions Out

Andy Worthington
Former Guantánamo Detainee Seeks Asylum in Sweden

Clifton Ross
Trashing Chavez: Keith Olberman's Toxic Rant

Seth Sandronsky
Battling Sodexho

Dan Bacher
Death in the Delta: Thousands of Fish Stranded by Bureau of Reclamation

William A. Cook
The Myth of Middle East Peace

Website of the Day
Waiting for the Guards: Stress Techniques as Torture, a Short Film

 

November 22, 2007

Alan Farago
Who Lost America's Everglades?

Greg Moses
A Thanksgiving Basting

Dave Lindorff
Impeachment is Back on the Table

Mike Ely
Native Blood: the Myth pf Thanksgiving

Omar Azfar
Gore for President of Pakistan?

 

November 21, 2007

Vijay Prashad
Our Dictator, Their Democracy

Martha Rosenberg
Undercover at a Turkey Slaughtering Plant

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Epiphany on the Glacier

John Ross
The Last Days of Mexican Corn

Brian McKenna
Cancer Terrorists Unmasked

Stephen Soldz
Isolation Torture Routine at Guatánamo

Monica Benderman
Needing Peace

Ben Terrall
Slavery in the Fields: The Real Price of Sugar

Website of the Day
Mercy for Animals

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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December 28, 2007

Not Dead Yet

The Pakistan People's Party Will Survive

By AYESHA IJAZ KHAN

If Musharraf had an iota of sincerity, he would step down. He would apologize to the nation for having embroiled it in bloodshed. He would acknowledge his mistakes and his powerlessness. And then, maybe, we might forgive him. But that is not likely to happen.

Instead, in his short and disturbed address to the nation, he continues to ask Pakistanis for their support in fighting terrorism. With suicide attacks at on an all-time high and the judiciary under house arrest, we find it difficult to trust Musharraf's sincerity. The major political parties, Ms. Bhutto's PPP as well as Nawaz Sharif's PML (N), are blaming the government for the lapse in security that led to the tragic assassination of Ms. Bhutto.

Whether it was the religious extremists, elements within the government/intelligence agencies, external forces wishing to destabilize Pakistan or any combination of these three responsible for Ms. Bhutto's death, an independent and thorough investigation is essential before any conclusion is reached. This is only possible if an independent judiciary conducts the inquiry, one in which the people of Pakistan can repose their trust. The credibility of the Musharraf government is so low that nobody in Pakistan would trust its investigative measures.

In her final days, Ms. Bhutto hinted at the complicity of certain elements within the Musharraf administration in threatening her life. At the time, the allegations were dismissed as political point scoring. But in the aftermath of her shocking demise, many Pakistanis are left questioning whether those allegations may have actually been true.

In the absence of any sort of confidence in the current administration, distraught political workers have taken to the streets. Infiltrated by criminal elements, they have burned tyres, blockaded roads and set ablaze banks and government buildings. The police, so effective in beating up the peaceful and democratic protestors of the lawyers' movement, appear helpless in the face of hooligans and looters running loose on the streets of our major cities.

If the aim of the assassins was to eliminate Ms. Bhutto and the Pakistan People's Party from Pakistan's political landscape, they seemed to have forgotten that in death there is eternity. Like her father, Benazir, by her untimely death, has been redeemed in the eyes of even those Pakistanis who did not vote for her or did not agree with her political approach. She will be remembered as a courageous woman who made the ultimate sacrifice, braved the threats and paid for it with her life.

In the immediate aftermath of this heinous tragedy, her party workers will certainly face shock, confusion and disarray. But every tragedy has a silver lining. And, the PPP must galvanize itself and come back with a vengeance against the perpetrators of this crime. The elections scheduled for January 8, which most of us believed would be a sham, are now unlikely to take place. Mr. Nawaz Sharif, leader of the other main opposition party, has rightly decided on a boycott of the electoral exercise. The PPP must join the struggle undertaken by middle class civil society and lawyers' movement and stress unequivocally the restoration of the deposed judiciary and implementation of rule of law so that an environment can be created whereby first, Ms. Bhutto's death can be investigated by an impartial body, and second, Pakistan can move to a free and fair electoral process.

Too many Pakistanis have been haunted by suicide bombings and witnessed death too closely such that a party with a liberal and progressive past, like PPP, would stand a great chance in a free and fair election. The loss of Ms. Bhutto's life is tremendous. But there are still some great leadership prospects for the PPP. In Aitzaz Ahsan, lead counsel in the internationally-publicized Chief Justice case and long-time PPP member, we have a very well-respected and nationally-recognized liberal man who could play a key unifying role.

The PPP could in fact emerge on a sounder footing, not just on the basis of one personality or family, but an ideology of a vibrant and democratic Pakistan. A party more in tune with the aspirations of the new generation, one that could bridge the increasing gap between political parties and the average citizen, one that has internal elections to decide on party leadership, an example for other political parties. In that scenario, the PPP could re-attract some of its key members who had recently abandoned it because of disillusionment with the party's alienation from some of its historic power base, that of the liberal middle class intelligentsia.

Ms. Bhutto's unfortunate and premature death is a great blow to the people of Pakistan. But we are not willing to accept some of the headlines in the western world commenting on the terrible tragedy as the "day that democracy died". Instead, we, the people of Pakistan, are determined to revive, resuscitate and take ownership of the Pakistan People's Party. We are prepared to march on in the path of true democracy.

Ayesha Ijaz Khan is a London-based lawyer and writer and can be contacted via her website, www.ayeshaijazkhan.com

 









 


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