Time to get back to the blog again, hopefully it'll be a bit less compact this time.
As far as personalities are concerned I've often used Benazir Bhutto as an example for women i gender-oppressive societies. Marry someone with money who doesn't mind what you do as long as the public ceremonials are observed, and do as you wish out of the public eye.
But the personal aspect isn't very relevant in relation to the assassination.
It's not primarily about personalities, but about policies. There are enormous pressures being exerted on Pakistan by imperialism, and by the populist opposition to imperialism currently being channelled by islamism.
Bhutto's policy was to lead the regime best able to manage imperialism's interests in the country while siphoning off some of the riches for her own and for her more powerful supporters, with crumbs from the table for her mass base among the petty bourgeoisie.
The populist opposition is fuelled by democratic demands for national and cultural self-respect, but the distorted ideological representation this finds in islamism will lead up a blind alley. The weaknesses of individual terror tactics are symptomatic in this respect - it destroys your most enthusiastic supporters, and generates heavily repressive countermeasures by the state.
At least islamist populism stands in opposition to the West and its stranglers... so far so good... but since it also stands in opposition to the need of the mass of Pakistanis for food shelter health education productive work and a say in their own lives, it will be as contradictory as the regime in Iran. And far from attracting the solidarity of the mass of working people in the West, it tends to alienate them and provide fuel for the misleading demagoguery of Western politicians.
Only a revolutionary (ie anti-capitalist) socialist mass movement can stop the rot and end the bloodshed and despair. Obviously in a socialist union with the rest of the sub-continent - India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to start with.
For the moment we can note that Eppur si muove - nevertheless, it moves, as Galileo noted of the earth around the sun. History, and beneath its bloody surface, the class struggle, is moving, and after the tensions piled up by the collapse of Stalinism in the USSR, the explosiveness of its movements should surprise no one.
The End of History - my arse!
