| October 9, 2003 | Thursday | Sha’aban 12, 1424 |
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Needed: a humanistic approach
CPR training in medical colleges
Killing of another journalist
‘Poverty reduction: two views’
Why Israel wants war
‘Army behind Musharraf’
Senator’s car number plate
Sale of govt securities
Plea to restore hoardings
A pat on the back
Inzamam’s captaincy
THE government is promoting corporate agriculture. It is generally thought that it will boost the traditionally low yields by bringing in new technologies. Its proponents believe that by cultivating large tracts of land the big industrialists will achieve economies of scale and make farming more efficient and profitable.
The model that the supporters of industrial agriculture follow is that of America. I would like to explode some of the myths of industrial/corporate agriculture as expressed in the book Fatal Harvest — The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture. This book contains articles by some of the greatest workers of sustainable agriculture in the US and has been published by the Foundation for Deep Ecology in California.
Myth 1: Corporate agriculture will feed the world. The hunger that we see today is not created by the lack of food but by poverty and landlessness, which denies access to food. Corporate agriculture contributes to hunger by raising the cost of farming and by forcing millions of farmers to abandon their lands and by growing mostly high-profit export and luxury crops.
Myth 2: Industrial food is safe and nutritious. Industrial agriculture contaminates our fruit and vegetables with pesticides, our land and water with poisonous chemical fertilizers and puts genetically-engineered growth hormones in our milk. No wonder that cancer, food-borne illness and obesity are at an all-time high.
Myth 3: Industrial food is cheap. If the cost of industrial food — health, environmental and social costs — are added to the market price, not even the richest can afford to buy it.
Myth 4: Corporate agriculture is efficient. Small farms produce more per unit area than large ones, which also tend to be less diverse and require greater mechanical and chemical inputs. These inputs have a devastating impact on the environment, thus making the large corporate farms less efficient than smaller, sustainable ones.
Myth 5: Industrial food offers more choices. When we go to the supermarket, what we see is an illusion of choice. The labels on the containers do not tell what pesticides have been used on our food or what products have been genetically modified. The myth of choices masks the tragic loss of thousands of crop varieties sacrificed on the altar of corporate agriculture in the name of conformity.
Myth 6: Corporate agriculture benefits the environment and wildlife. In fact, it is the largest single threat to the earth’s biodiversity. Their fence-row-to-fence-row planting and harvesting techniques are devastating wildlife habitats. The heavy usage of chemicals poisons the soil and water, killing off countless animal and plant communities.
Myth 7: Biotechnology will solve the problem of corporate agriculture. It will not, rather it will compound them and consolidate control of the world’s food supply in the hands of a few. Biodiversity and food security will be destroyed and self-sufficient farmers will be driven off their land.
So, we must learn from what is happening in the US, whose example we want to follow. Our scientists must do research on sustainable methods and bring these from their test plots into the farmer’s field.
AKBAR KHAN
Scarborough, Ontario, Canada
AFTER the massacre in Karachi, the murder of Maulana Azam Tariq and his bodyguards is yet another shock.
Religions have been grossly distorted and even perverted. Christian fundamentalists, Islamic militants, Hindu fanatics and Jewish extremists are commonplace words. The neglect or denial of religion is one thing, its distortion and perversion is another. The former is at least straightforward and unequivocal: it leaves the soul empty. The latter is subtle and confused: it fills the soul with poison.
Paths leading to a summit are widely separated near the base, but they get nearer together as they rise. The wise climber takes the path on which he finds himself and does not worry too much about people on other paths. He will waste an enormous amount of his own time, if he keeps on trying to find where others are going, rather than pursuing his own path and other people’s time if he tries to persuade them to abandon theirs, however sure he is that his is the best.
Professor Toynbee says: “In order to save mankind, we have to learn to live together in concord in spite of traditional differences of religion, class, race and civilization. We must learn to recognize and understand the different cultural configurations in which our common human nature has expressed itself.”
Man is much more than a mere thinking animal. He is privileged above all other creatures by the gift of reason and free will. By virtue of his inborn intuitive ability to discern between right and wrong, true and false, man has attained a level of intellect where he is free to make a choice.
Religions need to be freed from centuries of stagnation and made more humanistic, democratic and tolerant. While religious faith and doctrine cannot be changed, it is only the ethical or moral aspects which need to be strengthened to make the world a more pleasant and peaceful place to live in.
FAQIR AHMED PARACHA
Peshawar
I AM a fourth year student at Dow Medical College, Karachi, and my younger brother is a computer science student in the UK and was visiting the US when he observed a sad incident.
My brother was taking care of my uncle’s shop in New York City when a woman collapsed outside on the street. A number of people collected around her but no one came forward to help her, either because they were too scared to do that or because they did not know what they could do. Ambulances turned up five minutes later and tried to resuscitate her, but to no avail. The woman had passed away owing to cardio-pulmonary failure.
This incident moved my brother so much that he called me that very day to report the incident and to ask me to teach him cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) when he comes to Karachi next. At that point in time, my inability to perform CPR myself stuck me. Had I been in the situation my brother was in, I would never be able to forgive myself. If four years of medical school have not taught me first aid and CPR, then I think of this as a failure of the medical education system.
Students at Dow Medical College are given a theory class on CPR during their fourth year anaesthesia rotation and this by no means prepares the student for an emergency situation when all prior knowledge needs to be applied to a patient in need of immediate help. Even medical students at the Aga Khan University do not fare any better. They too get CPR training during the anaesthesia rotation in the fourth year and not earlier.
With the new MBBS session to start within a few days at DMC, it is my request to the principal, Prof. S. Tipu Sultan, himself an anaesthesiologist, to ensure that the new class receives CPR and first aid tutorials as well as demonstrations on dummies and/or human subjects within the first week of college. This, in the long run, may help save a life that would otherwise be lost.
VINOD MOTIANI
Karachi
ANOTHER voice has been silenced. Yet another journalist has fallen victim to the bullets fired by unknown assailants. It is indeed a great tragedy. Only a year ago, the journalist community mourned the ghastly murder of Shahid Soomro, a young journalist, and now it is Amir Bux Brohi, a reporter of Daily Kawish and TV channel KTN, who was killed in Shikarpur on Friday last.
These incidents bring to light how dangerous it is for journalists to work in a society besieged by violence and lawlessness. It is more so in the north and the northwest of the province of Sindh. The region has been turned into a land of terror and a no-go area by tribal gangs and the inhuman jirga system. Members of the tribal mafia commit reprehensible crimes and then the cases are taken to the tribal leaders, the so-called sardars who actually are the patrons of these criminals.
The outrageous tribal, feudal system is playing havoc with the lives of a large number of people and a more distressing thing is that there is no light in view at the end of the tunnel.
Shahid Soomro was killed in Kandhkot in October last year. The case couldn’t go to court as his killers belonged to the family of an influential tribal sardar. It was decided by a tribal jirga. One doesn’t know what the fate of the recent murder will be.
It is time the journalist and human rights organizations in Pakistan and the world over took notice of the lawlessness and high rate of crime in Sindh, where the government has utterly failed to provide security to the people. There are hundreds of cases of honour killings, kidnappings for ransom, murders and other heinous crimes reported in the press.
AZIZ NAREJO
Corpus Christi, TX, USA
THIS refers to Mr S. Akbar Zaidi’s column (Sept 15) under the headline “Poverty reduction: two views”. His advice to the managers of our economy is sincere. Much has been debated about growth-centric policies, coupled with macro-economic stability. And now the rhetoric of the term stability can well be substituted with “sluggish pace of public expenditure”.
Perhaps we have forgotten that poverty and economic disparity had increased despite the so-called “decade of development” when phenomenal growth in a large-scale manufacturing sector, agriculture sector and GDP were witnessed.
Poverty alleviation needs some bold and dedicated measures like restructuring the economy by eliminating concentration of resources, giving the masses access to factors of production more emphatically, to land, and disseminating extended and improved basic necessities of life like health care facilities and quality education.
Our economic managers, like many of their predecessors, perhaps, want to seek an easy escape and would not like their fingers burnt. It is of paramount importance to have a strong will and missionary zeal to float the economy to safe waters and pave the way for the poor to take a sigh of relief. Genuine and deep-rooted structural problems are to be identified and addressed.
But, at the same time, I am convinced that it is almost impossible that anything substantial will happen. Pakistan’s is an elitist economy and a number of powerful elite classes are operative in the corridors of power. They know very well how to put themselves on guard and will never compromise on their vested interests, nor will they pursue the policies detrimental to their privileges. After all, nobody will axe his own foot.
ABRO SHOUKAT ALI
Larkana
UNABLE to repress the Palestinian struggle for liberation, Israel is now trying to transform it into a regional war, for which its army is better equipped. That spells more disaster for the whole Middle East, including Israel. What more is needed to show that Israel’s “defence” policies are nothing but international terrorism? Let’s be clear. First, Israel attacked another country without provocation. Second, Israel attacked a civilian target in that other country. It was clearly not an act of self-defence.
But Israel’s madness has a context, too. Within the world view of Israel’s military junta, every problem has a military solution, and every problem that doesn’t seem to have a military solution can be transformed into one that does. It seems obvious to most observers that Israel has no military solution to Palestinian violence. The junta refuses to contemplate a political solution, which requires a measure of justice and the ability to compromise over land. The Israeli public is growing disillusioned with Sharon’s government.
The background for the decision to attack Syria is, therefore, Sharon’s beleaguered position and absence of options. By attacking Syria, Israel is hoping at the least to frighten the world, including the US and Europe, and “punish” it for daring to impose limits on its use of force. The message is that Israel will react to international pressure by causing greater instability throughout the Middle East. In considering this strategy of blackmail and its ramifications, one should remember that Israel is a nuclear power that has already used threats of nuclear war to blackmail the US.
A second “benefit” of the attack is that it can potentially push forward the confrontation between the US and Syria, and possibly Iran. The war in Iraq has raised new hopes for getting the US embroiled in war in Syria and Iran. While the US is acting toward these countries with belligerence for reasons of its own, Israel is impatient. From Israel’s perspective, the US needs prodding to act sooner rather than later. Finally, the attack on Syria has a serious potential to lead to a regional war, which, compared with the unwinnable intifada, would give Israel a chance to maximize the strength of its army and perhaps win, or so the Israeli junta hopes, another reprieve from the Palestinian problem.
This importance of the last point needs to be assessed in light of the fact that Israel has used war before to defuse international pressure and avoid tackling the question of Palestinian rights. All these wars began with unprovoked and unjustified Israeli attacks on its neighbouring countries.
Israel’s strategy of escalation is based on a good insight that the Israeli army is the best and most successful in open war. Israel has indeed won all its wars, and is likely to win the next one, too. Yet with each “victorious” war, Israel in fact grew weaker, and the justice of the Palestinian cause more obvious. The next war is unlikely to change that pattern.
RAHIM PANJWANI
Karachi
RICHARD Armitage, the US deputy secretary of state, has given a clearance certificate to Gen Pervez Musharraf that the army is behind him 200 per cent. I guess it was necessary as doubts were being raised.
Similarly, Gen Ziaul Haq and his bunch did avow in 1977 their pledge to ZAB (I am not sure about the percentage as it was not given) and a month or so later the prime minister was in their custody. The rest, as they say, is history.
What I want to stress is the opinion expressed by a former ambassador to Pakistan, William B. Milam, through an English daily on Oct 7, about the “hybrid democracy” or “militarized democracy”. He says if Pakistan has to become a modern state, it has to spend on education and on that account Gen Musharraf has not delivered in the last four years. The ambassador has urged the US to help Pakistan spend more on education, but with Bush in the White House, the prospects are dim.
He also opines that democracy and modernism go hand in hand. Our general has failed us on that too. F-16s and armaments worth one-and-a-half billion dollars will not get education for our children, nor will they promote democracy. If the general has any sense of history and future of this country dear to him, he would heed the advice of the ambassador.
ASLAM MINHAS
Karachi
THE other day I saw a brand new Toyota Corolla parked under a ‘No Parking’ signboard in front of Metropole Hotel in Karachi. The depressing and frustrating point to note was that the original number plate of the car could not be seen as it was hidden completely by another green number plate which stated in bold capital letters ‘SENATOR’.
Obviously, it was a privately-owned vehicle of a senator who broke two apparent laws. One, he/she hid the original number plate by pasting the SENATOR-illustrated plate, thus not leaving any chance for anyone to note down the number if the vehicle is involved in any criminal activity. Second, it was parked under a ‘No parking’ signboard which gives the message to the public and to the law-enforcement agencies: go to hell, I am a senator and I have got the licence to break the law.
M. KHALID
Karachi
I AM much disappointed to hear from my Standard Chartered Bank manager that I cannot purchase special savings certificates or any government securities through them.
I have been living in the UAE for 31 years and I am an employee of the UAE government. I study the finest procedures of other countries, for example Canada, the UK and the US. They have a social security scheme and various investment schemes for their residents.
Our government has raised the unproductive expenses instead of decreasing them, which are a burden on the government exchequer. On the other hand, the government has been constantly cutting down the profits/interest on the people’s hard-earned savings. It is indeed very regrettable for us as a nation that instead of poverty alleviation you are forcing people into poverty.
The salaries of the government employees are revised to make up for the inflation but for the people employed in the private sector, they only have their savings to rely on and they try to invest in schemes like these for savings which, in turn, generate some profit for them. If these are also taxed, reduced and subjected to such conditions, then people will start looking elsewhere for investment.
I request the government to allow all private banks to sell the national savings certificates. It will not only make it easier for the people to buy the certificates but also increase their sale.
AFTAB AKHTER ALVI
UAE (Via email)
IT is hard to find a billboard in Lahore with the face of a woman model not blotted. No marks for guessing whose ‘liberal’ thoughts provoked this idea.
As the Pakistan Hoardings Association collects all funds from these advertisements, it should, therefore, restore these hoardings.
May I suggest use of plastic sheets, either laminated or pasted, on the billboards so that the next time if someone throws ink balloons on the hoardings, only the plastic sheet will have to be replaced instead of re-doing the entire board? This will save both time and money.
CH. OMER FAROOQ
Lahore
IT is official now. Every Pakistani ruler has sought a pat on the back from America, but Mr Jamali is the first public figure to officially acknowledge that. Thank you for being so honest, Mr Jamali.
M. ASLAM KHAN
Karachi
INZAMAM-UL-HAQ’S winning streak as captain of the Pakistan cricket team is becoming very interesting. He has won seven games straight so far. He is a good player and nice person. That’s what Pakistan needed as a captain.
I am sure he will put the Pakistan team together under his captaincy. Good luck Inzamam.
RAJENDRA MALLA
Nepal (Via email)
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