From the ‘Land of the Pure’ to the ‘Land of the Apes’

At the turn of the year one is not happy. Last year was as bad as the ones preceding it. The one positive thing was the Rangers operation against militant and economic terrorism in Karachi and Operation Zarb-e-Azb to root out terrorists in North Waziristan, but there is a long way to go. The most negative was that we have sunk deeper in debt, so deep that pulling oneself out now defies the imagination.

Pakistan has become the ‘Land of the Apes’ from ‘Land of the Pure’ ruled by apes who misrule and mistreat lobotomized humans. In the movie ‘Planet of the Apes’ humans first destroyed their planet with weapons of mass destruction, then apes evolved to run the world, made humans their slaves by lobotomizing them and taking away whatever sense they had left.

Pakistani humans have destroyed their State by supporting and electing apes to office, apes who have effectively lobotomized them with brainwashing so that they no longer have the power of rational thinking and free will. Meantime, the State degrades faster than a corpse.

Harsh, yes, but what do I say when people keep asking: “Where I think Pakistan is going?” How would I know? How would anyone? See the trend. Or ask a soothsayer. Better still go to the man with the parrot in of Karachi’s Old Clifton. The parrot will pull out a card and tell you your future. Instead of Faith in the Creator, we Pakistani humans have descended to looking for answers from parrots, shamans, tarot card readers, palmists, astrologers, tea leaves, coffee dregs, whoever, for they are unable to read the writing on the wall. Our perennial catharsis is a constant babble of complaints getting louder, placing the blame on everyone and everything without admitting that our decline is primarily our own fault. Everyone is to blame except us so let apes rule the land of the ‘pure’. Charles Darwin would have been amazed to look upon our ‘reverse evolution’ – ‘devolution’ really.

Going to parrots of various kinds is a sure sign of desperation that happens when people have no answers themselves. Why bother the parrot? Use your heads. Have you ever seen Pakistan on the path of true progress? The first and last army regimes proved to be but mirages that look good because the politicians apes before them were so bad. Despite significant economic improvement they too landed us back behind square one into the hands of the rapacious ruling apes. They couldn’t handle ape politics camouflaged in democracy’s clothing.

In our latest spasm of sham democracy, first the pardoned Asif Zardari ruled us humans for five years followed by the ‘elected’ pardoned convict Nawaz Sharif to finish off the degradation job left undone by him. Having lost our sense of proportion, many lobotomized humans wouldn’t have Mohammad Amer in the Pakistani cricket team because he spot fixed despite having paid his dues to society, yet Pakistani humans happily accept a self-confessed money launderer as their finance minister and pardoned corrupt convicts and murderers to lead their country. Not just that, lobotomized humans applaud the success of ‘democracy’, not realizing that alien political systems masquerading as democracy are the latest weapon of the hegemon to get pliable and obedient rulers ‘elected’ to office who do their will. Its easy to take your frustrations out on a young cricketer and difficult to rebel against criminal apes.

That the army is still the only institution of consequence left that commands more worldwide respect than any other underlines the complete and utter ruination of the Constitution and all branches and institutions of government. We’re going round in a descending spiral of ruin towards Hades. So all I can tell you is that things will get worse before they get better, if at all, for there’s no guarantee. Not unless we as a people realize that our future lies in our hands. If we do something about it, God will help us too as He has promised – “I help those who help themselves first.” But I still stick to my inner feeling that Pakistan will start improving from this year. Let’s see, for it’s just a feeling, wishful thinking perhaps, born of desperation.

When Bisma, a 10-month old girl child died (was murdered really) because police did not allow her father to enter the hospital that had been sealed off for the protection and ‘protocol’ of the kid chairman of the people’s party Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, I wishfully thought that this might be our “let them eat cake” moment. Not a bit of it, though people in London, Pakistanis mostly, were moved enough to stage a protest march. No problem for our ruling apes: Bisma was only a worthless human.

In a striking similarity Charles Dickens has Marie Antoinette saying in his novel ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ “Let them eat cake” after a girl child was killed under the wheels of her carriage and she asked why people don’t buy bread if they are hungry. Her protocol stooges told her that. It sparked off the French Revolution (circa 1789-1790s). Though Marie Antoinette never really said, “Let them eat cake” when her protocol stooges told her that bakeries no longer baked bread because people couldn’t afford it so they only baked cakes only. Though she never really said it, “Let them eat cake” has come to symbolize the trigger of the revolution and underlines the alienation and callousness of the ruling French aristocrats.

It’s the same here. When the media started broadcasting Bisma’s callous murder, Sindh Minister Nisar Khuro (I thought he was educated) said: “the life of our chairman is precious to us. Its protocol: if we don’t protect our leaders, who will?” The question is: “Who will protect humans?” The obvious answer: “no one, for human life is worthless. Only ape life is precious.” Apes in ‘Apeland’ nod their heads wisely. But if, dear baby ape, you are so scared to venture out without harming humans, why venture out at all? Hide in your fortress like a mouse.

Another Sindh minister placed the blame on God, saying that such things happen because of His Will. Yes, always put God in the dock when something goes wrong and take all the credit in the rare event when something goes right. Our ruling apes need to change their anti-human mindset to a pro-human mindset and reinvent their security procedures to make them more sensible. It’s got so bad that not only unknown ministers who will be forgotten in a few months after losing power, but their wives and children are going around with obscene ‘protocol’ that is not due to them under any rules and make a nuisance of themselves. Protocol is meant only for true celebrities and heads of state while security is meant only for those who genuinely need it and are running scared. But ‘protocol’ has become a status symbol, thus its acquired nuisance value. Such people should venture outside as little as possible and remain secure in their labyrinths, caves and holes.

The dead child’s father accepted some paltry compensation because he knew that he wouldn’t get justice in this benighted ‘Islamic’ Republic. If he hadn’t he could have endangered himself and his family. When you are a helpless poor human you take whatever you get from gangster apes or else. Whether this “let them eat cake” moment leads to revolution I cannot say, for Pakistani humans seem too hopeless to expend more energy and lives to oust a rapacious ruling ape class only to replace it by another.

What Baby Bilawal needs to do to get his mother’s ‘legacy’ is to follow in her footsteps. She kicked out her mother from the leadership of the Peoples Party and grabbed. He should kick out his father as co-Chairman and de facto leader of the Peoples Party and grab it too. She kicked out all the uncles bequeathed to her by her murdered father and acquired her own team; he should kick out all the cackling aunties bequeathed to him by his mother and make his own young team, preferably below 50. That might breathe some life into the dying PPP.

Imran Khan announced that henceforth no protocol would be provided to the prime minister when he visits KPK, but his chief minister tore his promise to shreds by sealing a hospital and patients and family couldn’t enter after a terrorist bomb blast had injured 68 humans. It was like King Louis, the chimpanzee in ‘Jungle Book’, was visiting to a hospital. And this party claims that it wants revolution and change – though the revolution word is getting dimmer and dimmer.

We have some happy moments though like the opening of Imran Khan’s cancer hospital in Peshawar. At least he is one person who is a human, not an ape.

Then I thought that when the principal staff officer of a Punjab minister Rana Mashood (the one we saw on Mubasher Lucman’s show taking bribes) raped a 15-year old girl along with his cohorts, this might become Pakistan’s ‘Tunisia Moment’ when a human fruit seller set himself on fire after being humiliated by a female ape police officer. His flames have engulfed the Middle East in an inferno that only revolutionary change will douse. Not a bit of it here – yet. She was only a worthless human.

So my dear human friends: add two and two and discover what’s in the works, if not now, sooner or later. You don’t have to ask the parrot. The situation in Pakistan is the same as Dickens described in France: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” Liberté, égalité, fraternité, where are you? We need you now.

Attention got diverted when Mr. Modi paid a “sudden” visit to Lahore, ostensibly for attending Nawaz Sharif’s birthday and his granddaughter’s wedding, but essentially to symbolize the beginnings of a thaw in Pakistan-India relations. ‘Sudden’ it certainly was not for both countries had been working on it. Surprising it certainly was for lobotomized humans caught unawares. We South Asians can melt ice in high winter, what? We’ve had such moments before but they have sadly come to naught because the way forward is long and treacherous, fraught with thorny issues that could derail the process yet again. Let it continue before coming to any judgment on it.

As 2015 was closing the most diverting issue as the physical fight between two mullahs, on the chairman of the Islamic Ideology Council and another, according to Channel 24 TV anchor Mubasher Lucman a drunk, gambler and womanizer, who is not only a CII member but the head of Pakistan’s mullah council too. We remember watching him drunk on a GEO television show not long ago. The anchor couldn’t wipe off his smile. Time to close this nonsense. Is Islam merely an ‘idea’ morphed into ideology or is it a Faith ordained by God? Does it need a council of comical mullah’s to define and guard, mullah who would take us back to the wailing and gnashing of teeth of the Dark Ages. They have allowed underage girls to get married. Happily Apeland has not legalized it.

To round off the year, a Punjab feudal lord ape called Rana Israr Khan chopped off the hands of a 16-year old human boy Abu Baqr for refusing to work without wages. All he got in return was a visit from the Punjab chief minister, Rs. one million (less then $100,000), a promise of prosthetics and a job. That is what humans are worth in the Land of the Apes. Takes us back to the days of the kidnapped slave Kunta Kinte, does it not, who got his foot chopped off for daring to escape?

Let me end by reminding you of what Jesus Christ, may the blessings of God be on him, said as related in Matthew verse 19 in the Holy Bible: “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle then for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.” This is a warning that apes wealthy-by-corruption have ignored at their peril. We’ll discuss this in detail some other time.

Meantime, A Happy New Year to you all, especially the apes who partied the night away.