
Source: shc.edu
Maybe we are missing something as humans. What we are really missing is realizing that we actually are animals and that we started out in the wild. Agriculture was not always there and neither were sophisticated cooking techniques. No doubt that resorting to the wild survival instincts would be frowned upon in the civilization. But why in the world would anyone do that when you have no other choice? After all, you need to survive.
Maybe it is a little audacious to declare that it is something humans are missing. Well, not all of them are. Maybe it is taken for granted in the civilized world, where food is abundant. But it doesn’t matter as you could always get the food in the wild, unless you are living in a desert, or worse, a drought-stricken land. Hey, people have been surviving in the deserts for centuries. All you have to hope is that life exists there in one form or the other, because that is all you can eat. You eat life.
After all, animals eat and survive too and why expect that humans would be any different? No one is supplying them food, or even caring about how they get them. They survive, or they die.
Why do people get to the point of starving to death anyway? Why do they let themselves get to that point of no return? The point when someone from the civilized world has to come to them and feed them and photograph them and to publish the pictures around to collect funds for paying for their food? Why don’t they simply go hunting in the wild like their ancestors and eat anything that moves.
I think food is the most basic necessity that you could think of. It is the most basic of the basic human rights. Wait, not just human rights. Food is the right of any living entity, even bacteria. Nature, that is anything that is beyond the control of humans, provides for that right. It is just that humans have enough power to take that right away from their fellow creatures.
Yes, human beings are the only creatures who put a price on food.
Alright, I am not implying that those who grow and produce food must not get their share . Certainly, I don’t mean that the farmers who grow their food and the traders who sell it should be deprived of their rightful share of money, no doubt about it. But that does not take away the responsibility of those who have willing created a system that deprives millions of humans of enough food.
Just imagine that for a second. People starving to death. What good is a government if it cannot feed its people? To my mind any government that is not able to feed its people or offer them peace, freedom, medicine and security, has no reason for its existence. What other justification do we have for a government?
Humans are certainly not the only creatures to hoard food. We are just the only ones who hoard to deprive others of it and to store much more than the needs of a particular group of people responsible for it.
What we must remember are the most fundamental things and stop confusing ourselves with the completely unnecessary complex concepts that we are bombarded with everyday. Every human being is important, no matter where they live and every human being deserves food.
Food is more important than ideology.
Food is more important than politics.
If you are not feeding people, do not expect them to behave in a civilized manner. Because behind every civilized being is a wild creature who would do anything to survive.
But feeding people, like the ones starving in Somalia, is just not a priority of our species. Our priority is to pay for filthy, unnecessary and completely avoidable luxuries, but not feeding the starving. Imagine that, as a species, we do not have spare money to feed those who are dying of hunger and would surely fall prey to dangerous epidemic if no action is taken.

Source: bellirosa.com
We could fund to send man to Mars. Yes, we have money for that. We also have the funds for building a supersonic jet that travels from London to Sydney within an hour. Yes, we have money for that. We even have money to build the most useless and the most ostentatious, tallest building in the world. You know where it is. It is like an erect penis, but sterile. Yes, a lot of money for that. Alright, I would not even mention wars. it is more or less a justifiable expenditure, wouldn’t you think. At least it relieves a lot of people of their misery.
Without any difficulty, the entire population of the world can be comfortably fed for a sum making up a very tiny fragment of the entire wealth of the world and only just a little more can be dedicated to agricultural research to boost productivity. If a unified global effort is made in this direction, not a soul in the world will go hungry, ever. You don’t even need to go and check any statistics to verify this fact. However, what you should go and verify is whether the leaders of the world have any intention to put this matter on their priority list.
It just simply isn’t there.
This means that we actually want people around the world to be hungry. To starve to death. There are initiatives like the World Food Program from the United Nations which is doing an excellent job but yet not doing enough. But then again, who runs the WFP? We do and it is anything but one of our top priorities. That is just one way. There are several others and providing food is just one little dimension. But at the end of the day, it is food that matters.
Then there are naïve questions such as why people live in barren lands where there is no hope. Actually the question makes sense but not a single answer to it would. The questioner should be told that relocating costs money, that no one likes to leave their home even if it is barren, and if they do, who would accept those people? Which country in the world would accept a migrating population of starving people? If even a single country actually does that, I would be pleasantly surprised.
Also, they don’t figure out that conditions have deliberately been created to cause the hunger in the first place. They would rather choose to die in their homes with dignity and peace by avoiding insult to injury. Furthermore, it is a myth that hunger is the problem of countries going through drought in Africa only. The problem is actually worldwide and even seemingly prosperous countries have considerable starving populations. The severity, however, varies.
But it seems that it is in our interest to create conditions that lead to the starvation of certain populations in the world. Politics remain the greatest hurdle and it will continue to be in the future. Not that anything can be done about it. We cannot even agree on simple objective facts, let alone solving any complicated and difficult problems. Maybe we should try eliminating the starving population once and for all by creating a great war instead. But wait. We are actually doing that, but it is a slow and painful death.
The face of war has changed, or maybe it has not. Maybe people never realized the kind of war that has been waged on them for centuries. It is the war of inequality, deprivation and injustice. Not that there is any justice, or ever will be, but at least people can be provided with their fundamental rights, which fellow beings, just like them, with no other superior evolutionary characteristics except for money and power, enjoy for no other apparent reason.
We all share responsibility for the fact that populations are undernourished.
– Pope John XXIII (May 3, 1960)
We are responsible for it. We have created it. Not some God, unless humans are one.
So it seems.
It is just another ugly fact which we may choose to overlook, and we will.
It is genocide. It is ethnic cleansing. And of not just one race.
A Holocaust that has been going on for centuries.
It is mass murder. It is a crime against humanity.
We commit it every day.
We are putting a price on food.
We are putting a price on life.
Filed under: Commentary | Tagged: Africa, death, education, food, genocide, God, government, human rights, humanity, hunger, life, money, murder, politics, power, price, responsibility, Somalia, starvation, war, WFP, world | 2 Comments »
The Caliph Syndrome
Source: Pakistan Today
Cheif Justice Saqib Nisar is determined to make an important contribution to world history. He knows he will not get this chance ever again.
When he was appointed as the Chief Justice of Pakistan, by none other than the very Prime Minister whose demise has been caused by the infamous Panama Papers verdict, he knew that he had to leave a mark on the world. But more than that, he was motivated by a philosophy of governance deeply ingrained by the traditional Islamic upbringing. I call it the Caliph Syndrome in the case of Pakistan but actually it is nothing more than Messiah Complex. This mindset, if not megalomania and delusional narcissism, has led to judicial activism the likes of which were not even reached during the term of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary, the first one to go into this territory, euphoric after his restoration after a dismissal by dictator President Pervez Musharraf.
This Messiah Complex is further fed by the notion of expecting a savior, which has been In Islamic tradition, there is a ridiculously puritanical and idealistically exaggerated concept of governance in the pattern of Caliph Umer II. Some people attribute that style of governance to Umer I which holds that the Caliph or the emperor is supposed to be answerable for the death of even a lamb in a remote corner of the domain. While this sounds all good, the person who is supposed to be infatuated with this idea is the governor of the land, not the ombudsman who is supposed to ensure that law and order are kept. However, what if this zealotry actually leads to the ombudsman violating the lines set by the law and general ethics?
The Chief Justice has not only been consistently interfering in the operations of the administrative branch but has been on a rampage in terms of making ridiculous statements. This does not mean that his intentions are not good even though politically speaking he is being dubbed as the stooge of the military and bureaucratic establishment. To push this theory even further, you would find the media taking all opportunities to highlight his heroics on national TV and encouraging him to indulge further in judicial activism, with the exception of a few responsible journalists. This Chief Justice, like Iftikhar Chaudhary, has particularly been concerned with the way he is portrayed in the media.
It is perhaps the Caliph Syndrome, which so easily persuades otherwise responsible civil servants to take up the role of the Messiah, and it is perhaps the same factor that makes people so attracted to such figures. There is no surprise that the Messiah Chief Justice is the hero of many who cannot help but admire his visits to the local hospitals to inspect their operation. Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif doing that was so 2010s.
He talks about a lot of things that the people want to hear, such as the delivery of speedy trials, public servants making the most of their time for official duties, and respecting the law and the constitution. However, his good words are undermined by the fact that he is a loudmouth with a broken filter and even that is understating the chaos that his words are causing. A person who loves to hear his own voice and who loves flaunting his old school literary chauvinism, he attracted flak with the use of his sexist analogies.
Sometimes, the lack of filter on his speech can even take darker turns, which show a glimpse of bigotry in this custodian of the Constitution and the Rights of the People. His hate for the Hindu community is evident from his Urdu language comment cited in the following clip from a Pakistani talk show.
However, there is a reason you see no other judge around the world inspecting school and hospitals.
The very fact that he lectures and his role of fatherly advice that is a problem in terms of law and order. His use of the bully pulpit is precisely what is wrong with his understanding of his role. And going out of his way for skirmishes with the leaders of a certain political party make his apolitical role controversial and partisan.
What makes the entire “Baba Rehmatey” phenomenon so ironical and hilarious is that fact that the preacher himself is violating the principles he is preaching others to follow. The most responsible person in the society is performing his job, as hardworking and sincere he may be, with utter irresponsibility.
But if Saqib Nisar thinks he is unique in this contribution, he is not the first person who considers himself Caliph Umer I in Pakistani society and he most certainly will not be the last.
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Filed under: Commentary, Videos | Tagged: bully pulpit, bureaucracy, Caliph Syndrome, Caliph Umer I, Chief Justice, Chief Justice of Pakistan, Constitution of Pakistan, judge, judicial activism, law, Messiah, Mian Saqib Nisar, military establishment, Pakistan, responsibility, The Messiah Complex | Leave a comment »