Zardari - Just what the Doctor ordered

In New York City, the melting pot of the world, where tourists get a 360 of what the world has to offer on one tiny island packed with over 9 million residents, Pakistan was being represented at the UN session by Asif Ali Zardari, one of the many rats we have fostered in our gutters for years. 

I can't spend a whole post dedicated to Mr. 10%, but he demands attention so I will honor his request. Instead of proposing that he has the potential to actually be our president and show some finesse and class,  he goes and hits on the Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin, less than a year after his wife was killed in a suicide attack. It is times like this one should pity Benazir and wonder how she tolerated him all the years that she did. Her policital turmoil aside, she had a hell of a journey being married to a man who was less educated than a GED from the US. Clearly he is incapable of civil interaction with people. The whole world is making fun of us, but we are all happy because he represents what we want in a leader, a jackass who can smile his way through allegations of corruption that are eventually thrown out in the bin. How does he do it without a college degree? Man, if you figure it out, I'd love a slice of that pie.

When he returned to Pakistan late last year after his wife died, he promised never to be in a political chair. Instead, he gets a fake degree from up north, puts a puppet Prime Minister in place, breaks his many commitments to his political alliance with PML-N, and to top it off, he somehow becomes the President of Pakistan. That last one is the fault of the donkeys in parliament who voted him in. 

There is an image going around showing his inscription at the grave of Pakistan's founder, Qaid-E-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah (perhaps the greatest man to touch the soil of this God forsaken country). He spelt God and Strength incorrectly, but made sure he gave it his full signature to ensure people knew he visited the site. I don't think I need to go on.

At the end of it all, I can't believe people think there is hope for Pakistan. This is one of those situations where you cut your losses and move on. Unfortunately, you can't cut this loss; all you can do is sit and wait for it to bleed dry until another one comes along to cut another, deeper wound in the system. 

Zardari is the epitomy of Pakistani mentality (the majority at least), and I'm talking about the people who live in the interior parts of the country, not the ones reading these posts. He is the man who represents the land lords who have prevented Pakistan from stopping the fuedal system, the ones who own most of the land and the people on it. The ones who don't have much of an education, but tons of money - showing that there is no correlation between the two since money is the ultimate purpose of life. Our basic level of education has deteriorated so much in the last 30 years that there is no way to measure it any more. When literacy rates are calculated, they are based on how many have completed secondary education, not accounting for the actual quality and content of that education. Falacy has allowed our literacy rate to increase over this period, yet we are dumber than ever. How is that so? Visit any interior region of Pakistan and you will find a majority of your youth either hanging out by tea shops smoking cigarettes, or whatever else is available, without worrying about being something bigger, better. Schools are empty, teachers don't go to teach because they aren't paid, students don't go because teachers arent there and yet here we are... 

I think we have but ourselves to blame and if we think that by funding NGO's and encouraging foreign aid to help our poverty stricken people, we are sadly mistaken. It only feeds the hunger that is inevitible self-destruction. There are some great examples out there that we can try and follow like the Acumen Fund and Kiva but only people who aren't already part of the system can see as clearly as they do. We only sit and pray to God to give us while we sit on our asses doing nothing. Shezad Roy, a famous musician from Pakistan, recently released a song called Laga Rahe (Keep it up) where he mocks the people who are metaphorically asleep and unaware of the damage they are doing by...doing nothing. There are messages, but are they enough for us?