Order and Anarchy

Auntie Condi was given a fitting talk: she’s not welcome anymore in the Middle East. The way the Americans, probably the only ones to be having power to put a stop to the miseries of the innocent people of Lebanon, acted at Rome and continue to follow the same line, suggests of them being poodles on Israeli laps. More than that, the deep slumber in the corridors of power in the Muslim world is incomprehensible given the popular support amongst masses for the guerilla struggle raging in the middle East. Eighteen days have passed, and passed in nothingness, and no concrete action has been taken by any Muslim country in support of the Lebanese people. The OIC wants to sit together, and that too in August, to talk. All it can do is talk and talk and talk and do nothing. It talks, issues declarations and then sits back. The same has to happen this time around. Already, the OIC has issued a singular press release in condemnation of the attrocities being inflicted upon the innocent nation of Lebanon.

The most hypocrite have been the Americans. They want to give all the time in the world to the Israeli warmachine to slaughter a people before doing anything. They couldn’t feel a situation to be more urgent than the current one, and rush jet fuel and laser – guided missiles to the Jewish allies to enable them to continue this slaughter ferociously. On the other hand, they feel a humanitarian commitment unto them to help the slaughtered in terms of wartime aid.

Hizbullah, in my opinion, is wrongly blamed to have started the Lebanese misery by way of Israeli bombings. They say that the abduction of the two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah sparked the current situation. Here, we should remember that Hizbullah has committed itself to help the Palestinian movement, apart from confronting Israel directly. Now when Hizbullah picks up two Israeli soldiers and wants to demand the release of a certain number of Palestinians locked up in Israeli prisons – persons whom Israel picked up prior to the Hizbullah act, you can’t really say that Hizbullah was the first. But they say that the guerillas were the first and Israel reacted. Come on! stop this nonsense. It is Hizbullah who retaliated in the face of Palestinians’ kidnappings at the hands of Israel. So basically, it is Israel who started the offensive; infact, the Jewish state never ended the offensive.

But as we know, Israelis are more powerful and it’s always the powerful who sets the rules of the game specially if the powerful happens to be an imperialist, expansionist bully.

The rest of the world is begging Bush to ask Israel to cool down, but Bush thinks that Syria only can stop this shit. But why should Hizbullah, through Syria, be told to back down? They are not on the offensive, but on the defensive. However, the Bush Administration seems to be absent minded. The American act makes one feel that the U.S. is keeping itself out of the whole picture deliberately; like they don’t want to seem to the world that they are subservient to Israel. But even if the U.S. did tell Israelis to stop this shit, there is more probability of the Israelis’ not listening to the call. History bears witness to this.

Whatever there may be, the fact is that innocent civilians are paying the price of this war and Hizbullah reigns supreme in the hearts of these very civilians. Hizbullah is from amongst them. There has something to be done about the state of affairs, but measures that Israel is suggesting would not help things in their entirety.

Israelis insist on placing the Labenese army on the Labenese border. What and how would this be achieved? The Labenese army is not a very active army and probably wouldn’t stand an Israeli assualt in the future, if any. Neither should it be expected to fight against Hizbullah as it must comprise of a lot of Shi’ite servicemen who may simply not stand against the Shi’ite Hizbullah. The Israelis would love to have an international force that replaces Hizbullah along the Labenese border with Israel (infact, Israel would love to have anything that replaces Hizbullah). Now this would mean a guerilla war against the international force that Israel would want over there.

The whole thing is surely quite complex, but not impossible. But if the rest of the world, specially America, recognizes what can be done, it wouldn’t prove that much difficult to put an end to the bloodshed. It is imperative upon the U.S. administration to get its act right and stop playing second fiddle to Israel. Otherwise, they shouldn’t blame the world of hating them for nothing.

Lately, since a couple of months, I’ve noticed a sudden flood of spam directed towards this weblog as comments. I have now gotten sick and tired of continuing to moderate and delete spam comments. I have tried so many methods to restrict this muisance, but this menace seems to compound as and when anything is done to restrict it. My moderation list now runs into hundreds of phrases, alongwith my blacklist section, but it always seems to be not enough.

I currently am restricted to implementing methods that are provided by the host. Although these measures are normally enough, as is evident from the number of spam comments killed and/or held for moderation, but there still remains a lot of traffic that manages to pass through the filters. And I really don’t know what to do.

The Pakistani ruling elite spares no word for praising the miracles that the current dispensation has brought to the poor Pakistani nation in the shape of an economic turnaround, highlighting the “fact” that the myth of the lost decade is over now and bright sunshine lies ahead. Well, in a way, these guys aren’t incorrect. How? The evidence is quite visible on our roads and in our various neighbourhoods. In days bygone, untill the “lost decade”, the trademark of the Pakistani road was elaborately decorated minibuses and colourfully painted trucks alongwith that ubiquitous devillish creature of human intelligence, the ever noisy and smoke emitting auto – rickshaw. This scenic collage of the Pakistani road now has a different, more contrasting element: the hi – end luxury car. To be more specific, Porsche.

Some time back, the coming up of a Rolls – Royce dealership was announced. Soon after, there was news of Porsches starting to be sold to Pakistanis. And I write this post after witnessing it in reality for the first time in this godforsaken country, and I’ve learnt from people who have a strong interest in cars, that these toys of the rich are being sold for a starting price of Rs. 5,773,000 ($95,770). No doubt, this affords credibility to the elitist claims that the Pakistani economy has now taken off. No doubt, the GDP showed a growth of 8.4% (second behind China) and 6% in the last two years and the foreign exchange reserves now stand at a record high of $13 billion plus, but the economy still stands on fragile foundations. The so – called growth is consumption driven, fuelled by easy bank credit. What has it resulted in? The culmination is record inflation, acute supply shortages, increased hopelessness and exploitation and never ending menace of poverty caused by unemployment.

Let’s not get into details of the 9/11 bonanza, the main reason behind the “turnaround”; it’s been already talked about much. But the Porches, the Rolls – Royces, the Creek City, the high – rise craze and the megalomania of all sorts isn’t benefiting the common man – you and me. A number of reasons are cited for this paradox and the primary amongst them is the highly skewed distribution of assets, causing the rich to get richer and making the poor to stand where they initially were. The resultant increase in prices of essentials makes decreases the purchasing power of the have – nots, increasing the rich – poor gap and the rich wouldn’t care enough.