Now learn to differentiate between right and wrong
Those who don’t believe in God the Almighty Creator should desist from reading this further for they will find that their time has been wasted.
An American scholar/analyst of sorts recently wrote that he fears a ‘Black Swan’ event in Pakistan. Americans love giving fancy names to harmful occasions and procedures, natural or manmade, like hurricanes or to deliberate events with nefarious ends in which they have often played a part. It is more properly called a ‘False Flag Operation’.
A Black Swan is a huge unexpected and impactful event that becomes a watershed moment that changes countries, regions, the world and society’s way of thinking and functioning. A false flag operation was earlier used by Hitler to justify his invading another European country and is now used by American governments and many others, like possibly 9/11 to justify the launching or the so-called ‘War on Terror’ kicking off with the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.
Hitler was thrashed in Europe and World War II and America has been thrashed in Afghanistan and in the ‘War on Terror’ against stupid and supine Muslim governments. Such things are more often than not called Black Swan events to grab a gullible public’s imagination. They are masters of strategic communications and perception management. Muslim rulers don’t even begin to understand them.
More unpredictable and impactful is what is called the ‘Butterfly Effect’, something ostensibly so insignificant that few notice it or realise how far its waves would soundlessly reach. The phrase is often used in cosmic or astro physics, usually in climate change. Carbon dioxide factories spewing smoke have a disastrous impact on the world’s climate by eventually melting the Arctic icecap or stopping the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic along north America’s western seaboard. A butterfly flaps its wings in Panama and its shock waves reach thousands of miles afield causing great change, cosmetic or structural. That is just what we saw happen in Pakistan when Nawaz Sharif was disqualified-for-life by the Supreme Court and became a defunct prime minister never to hold public office again because of the offshore companies that were revealed to be registered in Panama (and other tax havens) in his children’s names by the Independent Group of Investigative Journalists or ICIJ comprising journalists from over 150 countries. One night Nawaz Sharif and cohorts went to sleep with their ‘royal’ derrieres firmly in the saddle that he had usurped by rigging the ballot; the next morning his world came tumbling down because of a completely unexpected event, a butterfly flapping its beautiful wings in far away Panama.
That was over lying about his untold corrupt wealth stashed away in overseas real estate in off shore companies in Panama. It was nothing most Pakistanis didn’t already know or suspect, but to be found out by the Supreme Court is another matter. He could not even account for his humongous wealth or furnish the money trail for the purchase of four apartments in London or account for his wealth in Pakistan and abroad. It matters little in which child’s or family members he is hiding his wealth in: he is the money bags or one look at his children will tell you that they are stupid to even find their way out of a brown paper bag leave along legally earn such huge wealth. All the Sharif family businesses were in loss, begging the question: where did all his and his family’s wealth come from?
It became obvious that for Nawaz, Shahbaz, Asif Zardari and people like them in their and other parties as well along with their abhorrent cronies who are morons if asked to operate in a framework of honesty. To them, politics for power acquisition to accumulate the maximum illegal wealth is not public service but a Mafia-style business. Those from any vocation who support them and their misdeeds and crimes have got to be the most shameless people on earth. The wings of the butterfly in Panama had had huge impact on many other shores as well.
In Pakistan — so far — the Panama butterfly’s effect has led to only cosmetic, not structural, changes, meaning that only the prime minister has been changed. That makes little difference in a short-term (providing grist for the mills of drawing rooms and chai khanas) and no change in the long-term for the man-eating system will continue throwing up other corrupt, debased and immoral rulers with sickening regularity. Structural change may come if and when the odious man-eating political system is changed for the better so that such corrupt and idiotic leaders and rulers are never elected again, that no more political mafias are born and leaders are leaders, not godfathers and dons. Who or what will do it, you may well ask. It will happen only at the point of a sword held by God’s vicegerents, the people, downtrodden humanity, the wretched of the earth.
Thus this cannot be the end of it: every Pandora’s box begets more Pandora’s boxes. Now Nawaz Sharif and cohorts are going to be tried in cases of corruption and alleged murder as well. References (cases) against them have been filed (and even more are likely to be) but we don’t know the import of them yet, because the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has become part of the political mafia and its chairman is a selection of the Nawaz Sharif’s and the Bhutto-Zardari Combine’s respective mafia’s charged with protecting them and their misdeeds.
Anyone with even half a brain would behold the glory and wrath of God and learn lessons. But not so, it seems, our sacked defunct prime minister. The Mafias are already striking back. God have mercy on them.
Not having learned a thing, Nawaz Sharif placed a stooge called Shahid Khaqan Abbasi in his stead. He too doesn’t smell of roses and has a sword of Damocles hanging over his head. Like his boss, he too is in danger of being disqualified before his time. And the guy Shahbaz, Nawaz’s brother, who was said to be slated to take over from Abbasi once he gets elected to the National Assembly also brings many swords of Damocles hanging over his head, including alleged mass murder in Model Town, Lahore. He has already become a discard, making way for Nawaz’s wife Kulsum to contest the bye-election for the National Assembly seat forcefully vacated by her husband. Joke, after joke, after macabre joke.
Abbasi made a sad speech on taking over, reinforcing the notion that he is Nawaz Sharif’s stooge, making tall promises that no one believes. He is the warmer of the odious seat for someone from the Sharif family, not mafia who is not family, unless God has other plans. God help us, we have been punished enough for our sins, heavily indebted to our lenders who will soon call the shots openly and make us crawl. At this rate the whole house cards glued together by myths, legends and wishful thinking is in danger of crashing down.
I wish our so-called liberals and moderates — ‘Liberal fascists’ some call them — would sometimes have an original thought. Such people are born contrary. They sing behind a western conductor a western tune with words most progressive most progressive but ends most retrogressive — the classic fascist methodology. They have trained their guns on the very Supreme Court they screamed and kicked so hard to restore to independence. Serves them right that the chief justice they helped back to office tore the independence of the judiciary apart, not just with his demented actions as judge but, like Nawaz Sharif, by hiding behind his son to hide his corruption. Now that the Supreme Court has finally (seemingly) become independent and claimed back a lot of its lost respect by sacking a powerful prime minister for malfeasance, the liberal fascists openly suggest that it is a ‘military coup’ in the guise of a ‘judicial coup’, whatever that is. I should have realised that justice is a coup against the charmed beneficiaries of the system so obviously they will revile and ridicule it. They say Nawaz’s ouster is on “flimsy grounds” i.e. for not revealing his work permit for the UAE while holding the office of prime minister. One crime proved out of a plethora of crimes is enough to punish a man: you cannot hang him a hundred times for committing a hundred murders. Al Capone springs to mind.
The wheels of God do grind slowly but in Pakistan they seem to grind ever so slow. God’s wheels are said to grind exceedingly fine, but so far not so fine in Pakistan. Actually, historical forces move according to natural time for they are created by nature and the constant and ever so unstoppable movement of space-time according to the cosmic calendar, not according to the movement of man’s time on earth. There is a long way to go before He grinds the destroyers and demons of Pakistan into the finest of flours. There’s a long way to go yet, with the constant danger looming that we will fall off the Correct Path and return to our bad old ways. But happily the process has begun, and with a vengeance. Like Rome, a true modern Islamic state cannot be built in a day.
One of our two biggest Mafia godfathers has been sent packing in ignominy for being an untrustworthy liar and facing a plethora of criminal charges against himself, his family and his cohorts. It has taken over three decades according to man time, just the blink of the eye or the flapping of the butterfly in natural cosmic time. It will take still more time but please God it should happen.
Next to be tried should be former President Asif Zardari whose tales of corruption and money laundering are legion: it’s a toss up whether he is more corrupt or Nawaz Sharif. Not to forget that poser, the former Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. And Fazlur Rahman and so many other scumbags. Wait. There’s more to go. To be tried are also all those named in the Panama Papers and those ‘pardoned’ by Musharraf including in the NRO. Plus businessmen, feudal lords, civil and military bureaucrats, media moguls with their cohorts. Actually, the list is even longer. Seventy years is a long time to destroy a country; seven years might just be enough to clean out the filth and muck.
All this will come to naught if, most importantly, we don’t realise that just changing prime ministers will not be enough; another as bad as Nawaz Sharif will turn up. He has before. The most important task is thus to change the system for the better that does not throw up such corrupt and odious politicians. What the new system could possibly be belongs to another article.
Consider Surah-e-Fateha, Man’s prayer to God to show him the Correct Path also known as Sirat al Mustahqeem. Surah Fateha forms the first surah or chapter of the Quran.
“You do we worship, and Your aid we seek. Show us the straight way. The way of those on whom you have bestowed your Grace; not of those whose portion is wrath and who go astray.”
The rest of the Quran is God’s answer to that prayer in which the first sentence of the second chapter, Baqarah or Heifer, is: “This is the Book; in it is guidance sure, without doubt, to those who fear God.” (Translation Allama Yusuf Ali). Or, “Surely this is the Book of Guidance about which there can be no doubt.” (Interpretation mine).
Pride and arrogance displease God and He wipes them out in a flash. Pride has a fall. I hope all corrupt rulers the world over can hear the clamour of the Day of Judgment because for them it is nigh.