The Pakistan Maelstrom, by Tariq Ali.

October 11, 2001 4:20 AM

The Pakistan Maelstrom, by Tariq Ali. Analysis of the situation in Pakistan and the Middle East. Inludes a hilarious description of an attempted football match between Afghanistan and Pakistan last year...
posted by talos (8 comments total)

A good, interesting read - thanks
posted by twistedonion at 4:35 AM on October 11, 2001

Read what this professional Trotskyite has to say - veteran of the International Marxist Group, leader of violent demonstrations outside the US Embassy in 68 "Victory to the NLF!", one-time apologist for the provisional IRA, now portraying himself as just a senior radical trustworthy Pakistani academic - with care. Personally, everytime the British media wheel him out as almost the only well-known non-muslim radical Pakistani they have on their list I vomit. But it's up to you. Maybe he has matured. I'm just an old Stalinist myself...
posted by terrymiles at 5:38 AM on October 11, 2001

Good article on the Battle Hymn and John Brown also on that site. Good post.
posted by computerface at 7:13 AM on October 11, 2001

terrymiles - Don't suppose you'd care to - gasp - address any of the points in the article rather than attacking the author?
posted by andrew cooke at 7:23 AM on October 11, 2001

Tariq Ali, for my money, is the most loveable lefty around. He should have married Polly Toynbee and had gazillions of children.
The football match account is priceless as an example of a culture clash to those of us who thought Celtic vs.Rangers was dissonance enough:

Perhaps it was felt that the rippling thighs of the Pakistanis might cause upheavals in the all-male audience. Who knows? The Pakistani players were arrested, their heads were shaved and they were all flogged in public while the stadium audience was forced to chant verses from the Koran.

*still reeling*
posted by MiguelCardoso at 8:19 AM on October 11, 2001

did not know that Osama was the son in law of Mullah Omar.
did that football game really happen?
Love that site talos!
posted by redhead at 12:19 PM on October 11, 2001

I don't want to be a Metafilter curmudgeon, but content-free comments are discouraged here. "Good post!" is a Free-Republicanism that is about as useful as "Ditto!" or "Bump!"

I'm also rather astounded that there are actually regular Metafilter readers who have only discovered Counterpunch through this post.

Maybe a culture clash on the order of the soccer game? For the record, I'm not volunteering to shave my head.

It's unclear what relationship(s) Osama bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar have. I've seen at least three possibilities: Osama is married to Omar's daughter (making him Omar's son-in-law); Omar is married to Osama's sister (making them brothers-in-law); and Omar is married to Osama's daughter (making Osama Omar's father-in-law). It would not be impossible, or even necessarily unusual, for both of them to have married the other's daughter, given their adherence to traditional Islam's emphasis on polygamy and the tribal exchange of marriage as the cementation of an alliance.

The one thing we're really sure of is that one of Osama bin Laden's sons married the daughter of his Egyptian right-hand man, al-Masri, in a wedding broadcast on al-Jazeera TV.
posted by dhartung at 1:27 PM on October 11, 2001

"I'm also rather astounded that there are actually regular Metafilter readers who have only discovered Counterpunch through this post."

dhartung,
Why are you astounded? I am a rookie, that is precisely why I signed up for MeFi. To learn from the masters ( such as yourself) about where to find all the good stuff.
posted by redhead at 3:24 PM on October 11, 2001