Jungle rule: Trump's invasion of Venezuela

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For weeks, Donald Trump had been talking of invading Venezuela and arresting its president. Yesterday the unthinkable happened: US forces captured the Venezuelan president and his wife while they were asleep. This is pure jungle rule. Trump is behaving like the neighborhood bully. Last week he said that the US would bomb Iran if demonstrators in that country were killed by the government. Of course, if he does attack Iran again, the Iranians would become more united. But would he threaten the Saudis if they did the same thing?

What I don't understand is how the US could simply walk into Venezuela and arrest its sitting president. Obviously, there must have been agents on the ground who kept the US informed of the Venezuelan president's whereabouts. But why hasn't the same thing been done to Cuba, which is avowedly anti-US? Is it because the Cuban people support their leaders?

It seems that Trump wants to control all the oil left on earth. He doesn't realize how much fossil fuels are responsible for global climate change. 

Dealing with inflated utility bills

Living in a third-world country like Pakistan has its advantages, incredible as it sounds. For instance, you don't have to wait fifteen days before a doctor gives you an appointment. You can buy medicines without a doctor's prescription. You can get cheap smuggled auto parts and even car engines that have been stolen or taken from damaged vehicles. But the downside is that if you get an inflated electric or gas bill it's almost impossible to persuade the company that there is an error in the bill and it should be revised.

Of course this kind of thing was very common before the electric supply company and the telephone departments were privatized. I once got a bill from Karachi Electric (before privatization) for a phenomenal amount, which was revised only after I had paid a bribe equivalent to a quarter of the bill amount. As for telephone bills, almost every month I would be charged for calls made to Ireland or Australia, which I had to pay, otherwise the telephone would be disconnected. In some cases, I did manage to get refunds, as in the case of a "ghost phone" which was not in my use. But usually one had to suffer and wonder why one's father had to choose this country to live in when many had migrated to civilized countries like Uganda or Nigeria (in 1947).

So when I got an inflated gas bill the other day I lost no time in going to their office and got the bill rectified. This was due to the fact that the meter reading on the bill was much higher than in the photo of the meter on the day the reading was taken. It was only due to my education that I was able to do so. An illiterate Pakistani would have been shooed away and told to pay or do without gas for the rest of his life. 

The Taliban will never stop destabilizing Pakistan

Not a day passes by without a terrorist attack in the north of the country. It was Imran Khan who encouraged the Taliban by saying that they had broken the shackles of slavery when the US withdrew its forces from Afghanistan. Later he emboldened them further by allowing forty thousand Afghans to settle in KP. That's the main reason for our failure to rein in the terrorists.

Another reason is that the Afghan Pakhtuns believe that KP and Baluchistan belong to them. They have been aided by India since 1947 to destabilize Pakistan. The problem is, many Pakhtuns in Pakistan also want their province (KP) to be either independent or part of Afghanistan. The Taliban will never give up their claim on the two provinces, especially since they want to impose strict Islamic rule over the whole of Pakistan once they get the two provinces.

The rebels in Baluchistan want their province to be an independent country. Here too India has played a major role. Baluchistan is the most undeveloped province in the country despite its rich mineral wealth. The common people in Baluchistan did not get to share in the revenue the chieftains received for the natural gas they sold to the rest of the country. 

It's indeed a matter of shame that our governments have not been able to pacify the people of the two provinces.

The mysterious Mr. Jinnah

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Mr. Jinnah, the man widely credited with single-handedly creating a new country, has always remained a paradoxical figure. The original Jinnah was so different from the masses he led that it's unbelievable they loved him.

For instance, he couldn't speak Urdu. He was more fluent in English than in his native tongue (Gujrati). Yet he proclaimed that Urdu would be the national language of the new country. And he said it during a speech in English in Dhaka, the capital of East Pakistan, the population of which was greater than that of West Pakistan. In fact, even in today’s Pakistan, Urdu is spoken by less than ten percent of the people, but because it is understood by the majority of the urban population, it continues to remain the national language.

Jinnah also didn’t know much about what Islam means to most Muslims. He didn’t know the difference between Shia and Sunni Islam, as he joined the minority Shia sect when he married a Catholic/Parsi woman and had to leave the Ismaili sect (in which he was born). He also didn’t know that those belonging to the Ahmadi (Qadiani) religion are not Muslims, he said they are Muslims when asked why he had an Ahmadi advisor (Zafrullah Khan). Not only that, he even asked the Sikhs to join Pakistan, offering them to impose any conditions they wanted to become part of the new Muslim nation. If they had done so, more than a third of Pakistan’s population would have been non-Muslims. This disproves the widely propagated claim that Pakistan was created in the name of Islam. In fact, the first Pakistan Resolution explicitly stated that Pakistan would be a country where the minorities of India would be able to safely practice their religions.

Finally, there was his speech in which he said that all citizens of Pakistan are equal, that there is no difference between Hindus and Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, that they are free to practice their religion in Pakistan. Evidently, he didn’t know that most Muslims in the subcontinent hated non-Muslims, particularly Hindus.

Despite all his foibles, I believe that by creating Pakistan, he saved the Muslims of the subcontinent from extinction.

 

 

Rape case decision proves our judges are still living in the Stone Age

It's been evident for a long time that the state of education in the country has been worsening and the latest case involving the apex court's decision in a rape case proves that the mindsets of our judges is like that of those who were living in the Stone Age. Recently the same court ruled that taking DNA of a woman violated her dignity, while in another case, even though an accused woman had agreed to her DNA being taken, the court didn't allow it.

In the latest rape case, the poor victim was not believed as she didn't provide torn clothes or other evidence to prove that she'd been raped. Her contention that the rapist forced her at gunpoint was not believed, and the judges held that it was not a case of rape but consensual sex. The poor woman will have to live the rest of her life as a shameless woman because she failed to pass the two-finger test (which has long been discarded as proof of women's promiscuity).

Perhaps the judges thought that it wasn't rape because she got pregnant. An American senator once said that a woman cannot get pregnant if she's been raped, and can get pregnant only if she's agreed to have sex. Perhaps our "honorable" judges also believe this, as the rape victim did get pregnant. Whatever the case, our judges should be selected only after being vetted thoroughly.

What it means to be married for 52 years

It's been fifty two years since I signed on the dotted line. Those were traumatic times, just two years after the country was sundered and half of it was lost. At times it seemed that Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was doing his best to divide the country again, there was intense bitterness between the Urdu speakers and the original inhabitants of Sindh, and quite a few days were spent at home due to curfews. 

My friend, the late Abid Shaikh, never married and five years before his death he told me that he should have done so when he was 35. I have two relatives who have no children, and they've regretted it. 

When I married, some of my distant relatives felt the marriage wouldn't last for more than three years. In fact, during the early years I also doubted if it would last, as I was struggling most of the time to earn enough to feed my family. Fortunately I had taken up meditation in 1979 and it helped me a lot.

Looking back, I think I've been lucky in having had a successful marriage. 

Trump's million dollar gold and green card

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I'd never have guessed that the US economy is in such a bad state that it needs foreigners to get US citizenship for a million dollars (which is equivalent to 300 million Pakistani rupees. I know a few people among my near and distant relatives who have that kind of money, but I can't understand why anyone like that would like to live permanently in the US, now that we know how unstable that country is. But then, there are gangsters in Russia and Africa who would definitely love to settle there. In fact, as Trump said, there are about 40,000 who have applied for the gold card, some of whom may be Pakistanis.

Come to think of it, I've never wanted to live anywhere other than in Pakistan, even though I could have gone to the US in the 1960s, even though most of my life has been spent in struggling to survive. If I'd gone to the US and spent 50 years working in jobs I didn't like, I'd have gone crazy. So I suppose it's been a good decision to remain in the country I grew up in.

It's almost imposssible to enforce the minimum marriage age law

The Peoples Party deserves praise for trying to protect women in the country. It has passed the minimum marriage age bill for girls, requiring them to be married only after the age of eighteen. The only problem is that it's virtually impossible to ensure that this law is observed. One reason for this is that people in the rural areas of the country do not register the births of their children. But the main reason is that people believe that Islam requires that girls should be married as soon as they reach puberty (which most do at the age of twelve).

I once heard a judge say that he has no choice but to allow marriage of underage girls as that is the law of Sharia, even if the country's law prohibits the marriage of girls who are not yet eighteen. Naturally, if an educated man has this opinion, what can a layman say?

There is another reason: the sale of female children by men who don't earn enough to survive or buy narcotics. A maid servant once decided to go to the court for getting a divorce from her husband. the man came with ten others, demanding that his three female children should be handed over to him. He didn't want his wife back. It turned out that he'd already sold the girls and wanted to get the money from the buyers so he could continue buying drugs. In such a scenario, it's impossible to protect Pakistani girls. 

Finally, army confirms what I said long ago about Imran Khan

I think it was in 2017 (before Imran Khan was elected prime minister) that I tweeted about Imran Khan being a psycho and a security risk. It was retweeted immediately by an eminent journalist and read by more than 50,000. The journalist (Omar Qureishi) received a lot of flak from Imran Khan's followers.

In yesterday's press conference, the DG (ISPR) said the same thing repeatedly. The question arises, why were some army generals and judges not able to discern what even a layman like me could see plainly? Why did they openly support him in destabilizing the government of the day? I don't know if it'll happen in my lifetime, but a commission should be formed to find how a psycho was able to fool the establishment and formed a government that could have led to the country disintegrating again.

In the two years and three months that he's been in jail, Imran Khan has repeatedly proved that he's a mentally unstable person. Of course, there is more evidence to prove it, like his marriage to a woman who is said to believe firmly in black magic and such mumbo jumbo. But sad to say, many people I know still think he's a messiah who will lead Pakistan to greatness.

Why is Trump pardoning criminals?

President Trump is behaving like a modern-day Julius Caesar. Not only does he think he's above the law, he's apparently thinking that he can do anything illegal and get away with it. His bullying tactics to coerce the president of Venezuela to resign prove that he's mentally unbalanced. His order to attack all boats on the Venezuelan coast, his order to all airlines to stop going to that country is not something that the president of a democratic country should do. Yet he's doing it, and apparently no one can stop him.

His latest is a string of pardons to hardened and convicted criminals. The president of Honduras was serving a 45 year jail sentence, but Trump simply pardoned him. Then there was the Ponzi scheme guy who defrauded 17,000 Americans of 1.2 billion dollars. He has been pardoned after serving only 12 days in prison. The latest is a senator belonging to the Democratic party (Henry Ceullar) who was scheduled to be tried next month (together with his wife). Yet he too has been let off by Trump. Obviously, Trump is not doing such things because he loves them. There must be something in it for him too. We'll know soon enough.