A bizarre episode occurred recently in Paraguay, which should remind us that we don’t have a monopoly on stupidity, that it exists throughout the world. Paraguay, we might recall, is in the south of South America, but not its southernmost. Recently, the chief of staff to its Agriculture Ministry had to resign after signing an MoU with Swami Nithyananda, who was representing the United State of Kailasa.
There were two major problems. One was with the MoU, which committed the Department to support Kailasa’s admission to the UN. I suppose the chief of staff was pretty confident, because he didn’t refer to the Foreign Ministry on whether Paraguay wanted to do this or not. The second was that the state of Kailasa didn’t exist.
Not just the state, but the very idea. I don’t what that guy was smoking, but it was probably the same stuff as was used by Ras Baraka, the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, who signed a twinning agreement between Newark and Kailasa. The man promoting Kailasa was Swami Nithyananda, who escaped from India in 2019, just ahead of arrest on fraud and sexual molestation charges.
Frankly though, we’re lucky he didn’t turn his attention to Pakistan. He seems exactly the sort of person who would have been welcomed with open arms by our government, whether that of Imran or Mian Nawaz. As food a military government, it is usually composed of carpetbaggers, who come in to Pakistan to have their talents recognized by being inducted into a martial-law cabinet, and who leave after elections are held, never to come back. And I hope this episode didn’t create doubts in the UAE and Kuwait, where caretaker PM Anwarul Haq Kakar was also signing MoUs.
But I suppose we have now got more important things to deal with than non-existent countries. Imran Khan has suffered a loss perhaps worse than the Prime Ministership, that of the PTI Chairmanship, an office he held since 1996. Since the 20th century in fact. Anyone 18 then, would now be 45. Anyone who can remember the 1992 World Cup win would now be 36, assuming that his five-year-old brain could absorb the information that Pakistan had won the World Cup. I would suspect it was more a historical memory, like I remember that England won the first Ashes Test back in March 1877. I have never claimed to have been there, for it happened several decades before I was born. Come to think, a couple of decades before my grandfather was born. But it is firmly fixed in my memory, as firmly as 1992, and Imran’s World Cup.
However, Imran’s replacement as chairman by Barrister Gohar Ali Khan, is the latest development. In ran picked one of those millions of PTI supporters who had never played for Pakistan, let alone been part of a World Cup-winning team. So it should be clear even to the meanest intelligence that he only fills the place until such time as Imran gets back on to the same page.
By the way, I see the Israelis have gone back to doing what they do best: kill Palestinian babies. And they only do it by bombing, not sending in ground forces. I had a comparable experience, because we have the painters in. Because of the strong smell of thinner in my room, I had to sleep in the TV lounge for a couple of nights. No possession was displaced. I went on using the same bathroom. But I felt like a refugee. I could not even begin to imagine the experience of sleeping under a strange roof, my home destroyed by Israeli bombing, having escaped somehow with my life, leaving behind dead children. Those people have gone through more than I can imagine.
I am reminded of the Tasmanoids, the Aboriginal people of Tasmania. They are now extinct/ You know why? Because they were all killed. The y were hunted by British colonists for sport, with rifles. The y used to make hunting picnics, where they would pot the beats who looked so much like people. I wonder how the Tasmanoids felt. Much like the Gazans of today. For me, that was perhaps the worst crime in the blood-soaked history of colonialism.
