Kitabı oku: «Cast Away : For These Reasons», sayfa 2

2
Kamikaze

"I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is I know nothing."– Socrates

A few years back, while I was walking down a cluttered and depressing street of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, the sight of a frail teenage mother and a sleeping filthy child wrapped on her back with a little piece of cloth instantly transported my mind back to my intellectual "Waterloo" defeat at Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi. It was then that it hit me - Eureka! Still, on that day, I was far from years of an investigative roller coaster ride to articulate a cure for social classes' decomposition tormenting every society.

After that, I invested time, money, and energy to get a real sense of the problems people face around the globe. To that end, Tara and I traveled as much as we could afford, read abundantly, and glued ourselves for hours to the television screen watching documentaries. One of my crusades took us across the Sub-Saharan and Eastern region of Africa (SSEA), and we were astonished by the region's many challenges, which transcend geographical boundaries. The overriding feature of the SSEA is an exotic mamba with two heads: corruption and repression. You can blame the region's dysfunctional governments, which are essentially being used as an apparatus to consolidate power and wealth within a few ruling families. In short, public services across this region are a disastrous joke.

There are many fingers to be pointed at the SSEA's organized chaos; these abysmal management practices are either of the SSEA nations' design or imposed on them from the outside, as I suspect, to impede both internal and regional development. While touring different cities in the western hemisphere, I noted the same gangrene as I find in African or Latin American countries. Seriously, you would think that the state of Illinois was in Nigeria when the former Governor Rod Blagojevich was sent behind bars for trying to sell the forty-fourth President of United States, Barack Obama, his former senatorial seat. The BRIC reported scandals are of epic proportion. I am not a big fan of fútbol, but I expected Brazilian contractors to make a mockery of the 2014 soccer World Cup, with overpriced stadiums and bridges that crumbled before and during the sacred festivity. What to say about the scandal in China's southern city of Hengyang that triggered the resignation of almost the entire city's People's Congress leaders? The prevalence of resource mismanagement and leaders' self-indulgence have resulted in globally unprecedented levels of financial waste.

"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith doesn't prove anything."– Wilhelm Nietzsche

On my tour du poor monde, I met dedicated westerner students who were on or getting ready for, mission trips to spice up their resumes or to boost up their chances to be admitted in a prestigious higher learning institution. I have caught myself glazing over by beautiful pictures of A-listed celebrities, or a charity spokesperson, who profoundly wanted to "save the people" (though sometimes the animals more than the people). The madness is nothing compared to graduate classes on public engagement or economic development that I have taken on the better side of the globe, where I found naïve characters who see themselves as miracle laborers and benefactors of third world countries. As talented as these individuals might be, the flaws in their conceptual approach is the bigoted view of less developed nations' challenges and needs. They base their models of development on the deep-rooted passion for Capitalism and sense of cultural superiority. This mindset reminded me of the aphorism "if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail."

What is more hazardous to poor nations than smart ass westerners? Immigrants from god forgotten countries; self-enslaved and adoring conformists, with the little access to modern amenities and western taste that they have acquired, who dare vocalize that living on a dollar a day is "just how it is" in their home countries. I have found a high concentration of these stupid individuals in England, where Engel's account of the living conditions only a century ago sent chills down my spine.

In the United States, which was not too long ago a shit hole with a putrid stench of racism, sexism, and bigotry (the stench still lingers in the air). Lastly, if you are one of those monkeys from a repressive authoritarian regime which is walking down lit up streets in the west, delighted from the addictive sense of protection and freedom and yet has a firm conviction that developing nations need a "strong man" for peace and development. Before you read the rest of the book, repent.

It has to be noted that, throughout time, a dominant society has always knighted itself the prestigious "exceptionalism" status. I would applaud this gut and bravura if their economists took on the leadership responsibilities of dissecting the world around accurately and, accordingly, prescribe effective interventions that would lift us all up.

The intent of both socialist and capitalist nations has been to globalize its influence and inclusive reach. Socialism in the political militaristic fashion, while Capitalism choose to do it through business hegemony. Globalization has no more benefitted the socialist enterprise than the capitalist endeavor. For the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics neighborhoods received their first sewer systems and running water, 100 years after the great socialist victory in St. Petersburg. In shocking similarity large areas of capitalist nations in the western hemispheres both north and south have large populations in not so dissimilar situation. This while St. Petersburg and Moscow enjoy gold encrusted bathroom fixtures to be rivaled only by those in Paris, London, New York and Los Angeles.

While socialist athletes enjoy all the benefits of stardom and wealth their western counter parts do, the western athletes rising up from shoeless beginnings bed themselves in palaces that pale those of African, Asian, and Caribbean national palaces.

What do we have right now? A total fuming global mess where Cost-effectiveness and Gross Domestic Product (an insane way to gauge citizens' life betterment) are at the center of leading initiatives. I have to underline the overused excuse, "globalization," since it has added elements of scope and speed into the mix. What to say about humankind when, time and time again, leading nations turn a blind eye to the imposition of inhumane practices, which was slavery in past centuries and now Self-deprecating is added to the load, as long as it benefits them?

I get angry when westerners are surprised that development programs, which are shoved down the throats of problematic countries, do not lead to prophesied outcomes. I become angrier when solutions for inhabitants' needs can be addressed in an integrated way. Instead, from their desks in Washington, DC, economic druids clean the data up and develop simplified models, which abstract from the complexity of observable reality.

Time and time again, critical studies conducted by no other than the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank insiders have poured out evidence of the leading international financial institutions' programs effectiveness¹. These guilty consciences decry how a country economically faint is treated as a coma, rushed into an international organization emergency room, locked into unplugged financial incubators, and knocked out by an addictive overdose of aid, is then molested and gangbanged by frantic necrophiliacs and is used as a testing ground for irrational experimental reform programs. God forbid, a vegetated nation shows any sign of life after these unnecessary open-heart surgeries as what the Argentine Republic did; it will be at the mercy of ferocious vultures who would try to pull its eyeballs and intestines out.

The Failed State Solutions of the UN

What is the standard antidote injected into a nation once deemed as a "failed state?" Let's look at Haiti after Hurricane Sandy blasted through this voodoo nation that was already socio-politico-economically wobbling for a century. First, it was quarantined and put under the supervision of spooky eyes of international trusteeship. After what powerful nations imposed via douceur (democratic elections) to millions of illiterates, a charismatic buffoon whose brightest idea was to organize carnival celebrations all over the smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, while serious decisions were taken solely by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund emissaries. The social, commerce and trade, and political crimes committed in Haiti are far from being an isolated case; international assistance funds have been used by predator nations to extract that sort of concessions from the crippled nations, which often are not willing to offer in healthy times.

What we have seen in Haiti and in other black holes where those same approaches were taken is that remedies produced a worse net result than the problem itself ever did. Primarily because these nations' kleptomaniacs and technical "partners" often implement contradictory dogmas and reforms that cause poor countries to fall further behind. I should not be the first one to tell you that John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White offsprings and other international financial institutions act at the whim of their backers and backers' backers' interests. This, in turn, leads to another round of despicable resource waste and mismanagement. If you are craving to get a sense of the magnitude of this mess, please take a tour of Cite' Jalousie, Port au Prince, Haiti, and compare it to villas rented by United Nations "peacemakers" a few miles away.

It matters little, socialism, or capitalism, greed is greed, avarice is contagious with power and the political pathway to the ability to have it makes little difference. The end result is the glorification of heroes’ feet be they in the athletic shoes of Nike or the Wingtips of a politician. The result is the continued suffering under a disparate economic system that consistently shells out to the privileged few and discriminates against the disadvantaged many. What to say about humankind when, time and time again, national leaders turn a blind eye to the continuance of inhumane practices. Slavery still exists. It isn’t as open, there are no ships full of black or brown retched incarcerated humanity, now days they are transported in containers aboard ships freely traveling the high seas finding homes in the most fashionable cities of the world.

"I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men."– Richard Baxter

Nowadays, economists claim that a theory can't be developed except in a purely numb way; any phenomenon that can't be reconstructed in a mathematical model is deemed illogical and trashed. If in a sense, nothing is explained unless everything is stated in a mind-bending equation frame, this book is read as a suicidal letter. I am not depressed enough either to jump in front of a subway train or to make a journey to a Buddhist monk temple. I have to thank the classical and prodigal political economists who were not inclined to this constraint and who aesthetically birthed essential principles and, unfortunately in most cases, robust diabolic treatises.

In third world countries, the contrast between the misery and despair of the many and the level of opulence and waste of the few is not a complex abstract, but rather an observable reality on an insane scale amounting to a moral abomination.

Western revered revisionists under the umbrella of international organizations such as UNDP (United Nations Development Program) are suggesting that third world countries nightmares have nothing to do with colonization. The pathetic excuse is held as the truth even when we see post-colonial social layers mirroring the caste system inherited from colonization’s ruthless exploitive social construct. Little has it done, other than imposing a maniac head of state, to help the marginalized evade a bleak future. Social, commerce and trade, and political anthropophagy (Capitalism) is an exogenous concept proven not fitting for developing countries' realities and potentials.

In the global Capitalism arena, a nation’s ability to race against others of at least the same size predetermines its prospect for growth and development. The Republic of Burundi and the Kingdom of Belgium, two countries of roughly the same size and population, cannot be further apart economically. Burundi’s GDP is half of one percent that of Belgium. Other than racking debt higher than the tiny Kingdom’s GDP, how else did Belgium achieve this prowess?

The historians tell the story of Belgium’s comparative advantage over Burundi beginning in the 19th century. Belgium’s King Leopold II² applied the well-traveled path of, “if you don’t have resources, go grab some.” Through this, just like The Netherlands, Britain, France, Italy and Germany they were able to amass personal and national wealth. Colonization was not a self-defeating drain on the domestic economy. Quite the opposite.

While Germans were decimating Burundi’s socio-cultural structures, from 1887 to 1965, King Leopold II of Belgium, and subsequently Belgium as a nation, was quietly plundering the natural resources from a territory eighty times its size, known today as the Democratic Republic of Congo. After World War II, Burundi was wrenched from Germany’s grip and given to Belgium by the League of Nations for enduring the temporary hardships of war by their big neighbor.

Developing countries are not the sole sources of evidence of the global malfeasance by politicos and their economist stooges. On the one hand, centralized economies have failed by imposing a uniform basket of needs for the ninety-nine percent of the population at the bottom. The defunct Soviet Union implemented Communism by plundering the wealth of the ruling class and then ate the middle class when the wealthy were extinguished. The intelligentsia filled Gulags who knew how to run a nation and economy no matter how poorly, or who quickly deserted the nation of their birth for France, England, Germany and America. This left the Soviet Union with management at every level with no knowledge of how to run a nation let alone a war-torn bankrupt economy.

Whereas on the other hand, the free market is failing us with a morally bankrupt rules of survival of the fittest, catering to the new investor classes of fractional class elite. The defunct Soviet Union implemented Communism correctly until it hit a wall, literally. Whereas on the other hand, the free market is failing us with an unethical rule of the survival of the fittest, catering to a small group of the one percent at the top. The only time, in recent memories, The United States Congress came together in bipartisan fashion was to bail out numerous "too big to fail" U.S. banks and insurance companies. In contrast, in 2013, the same Congress slashed billions of dollars from the food stamp program that had kept a chunk of The United States population noses above the poverty level³.

When you pay attention to the global financial transactions’ postcard, you should be able to see how the Capitalism model has confined lucrative international financial flows within the same economies. Other countries are reduced to mere providers of raw material and cheaper labor. However, the fat lady is about to stop singing very soon; she is getting too plump to stand on her feet. In 2010, General Motors shut down their plant in Antwerp, Belgium, because of the excess capacity in the European car industry. Subsequently, other plants across different industries in Europe and North America have since closed their doors.

"Koketsu ni irazunba koji wo ezu."– Japanese Wisdom

Although by respective economic doctrine, the Republic of Cuba and England are recklessly doing right. At the assessment of the two existing economic lines of attacks (poverty, pollution, war, etc.) suggests to our sense of humanity that neither approaches are the right thing to do. I had a glimmer of hope when the former Soviet Union and China decided to go cold turkey, breaking out from the communist penitentiary institution, until they ran straight into the psychiatric Capitalism facility, which is a pure form of insanity!

Currently, the world lacks full-bodied alternatives and, after multiple frantic financial crises, acknowledging Capitalism's barbarism and flaws should not be a mortal sin. In the light of recurrent facts, financial cataclysms' austerity and spending have shown not to be sustainable solutions, but rather a lampooning of the struggling class. I allow myself here to say in the most simplistic way, new markets need to be promoted to rejuvenate the global economic system, but in doing so, new trends need to be developed to avoid the final cataclysm. This change requires applying the appropriate social, commerce and trade, and political form that will not only move "poor" countries into the international trade system, as to say from exploited bystanders to active producers and buyers but also break current markets' affairs from the old order and the New World Order.

Creative as humans are, I used to wait on the side for a superwoman to save us all. Then I learned that in 1945 when American and British battleships and aircraft carriers were getting close to the Japanese mainland, ordinary young people were asked to make the ultimate sacrifice to save the empire of the rising sun - their lives. The pitch of victimhood built on the atomic attacks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki romanticized these young men's fearlessness. I took an offense when called a kamikaze for my attacks on Capitalism only after I learned about the Nanjing Massacre, and women forced into sex slavery for the Japanese military.

Tired of waiting for a whistle that will halt our deliberate destruction, I am not going to bore you with the same crybaby wailing that you have come to associate with critics of Capitalism or social, commerce and trade, and political injustices. To burst your bubble, the solution is neither increasing the minimum wage, give a dog a bone, nor building up tax barracks, Nezumi kozo. These two are nothing more than economic palliative remedies. To your delight or indignation, I am going to expose your few remaining neurons to a new social, commerce and trade, and political form that potentially transposes general notions by propelling the ninety-nine percent to the top and take care of the one percent less fortunate at the bottom. And Caesar, ahem, you the reader, would have to decide my fate!

3
I see poor people

"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of."– Confucius

In my view, by far the creepiest social site out there is the one dedicated to M. Night Shyamalan by one of his diehard followers. For an Indian-American to achieve such a high level of success as a screenwriter, film producer, director, and A-listed star of Hollywood without relying on the clichéd dancing and chanting in Bollywood cinematographic format is impressive. I am, myself, a huge fan of his breakthrough and most celebrated movie The Sixth Sense (1999). This movie's box office gross suggests that there are not many homo-sapiens who have not watched it. For the rest of you who were still living in cages around that time, the superb plot is around a boy, Cole, who has the ability to communicate with spirits that don't know they are dead. He seeks the help of a depressed child psychologist, a role superbly played by one of Hollywood's biggest stars at the time, Bruce Willis. The movie's good bumping moment comes when the camera slowly zooms to the boy's face, then-unknown child actor, Haley Joel Osment, and he whispers, "I see dead people," turning the line instantly into one of the most used catchphrases of that time.

It has been quite some time since I found myself entangled in a dilemma similar to Cole's. No doubt that the crusade I have embarked on has drawn me to experience life as I never thought I would. Let me assure you, the life of a hermit monk has not sounded appealing to me, yet. I have to say that the emotional expedition has broken my myopic life lenses, which forced me to observe my surroundings, relying on all of my senses, and upped my state of consciousness. After enlisting new priorities in my daily life, nowadays, I have a hard time sleeping all through the night. My mind fly miles away in the middle of dull seminars and conversations. When you have voices nagging in your head, pointing left and right, life becomes a wild roller coaster ride. I came to wonder when the devil had possessed me? I cannot afford to hire my own disheartened shrink, even less so Bruce Willis (I tried). In the goal of exorcising my demons, I hope that pinning down critical events in my ordinary life will help me trace the original trigger that led to my obsession with caring for the less fortunate. I cannot stop seeing poor people!

Tara's parents, Haitian immigrants, ran away from the hard knock life of New York City to raise their newly born child in The United States retirement epicenter in South Florida. From the time Tara and I met, she was boiling to reverse her parents' migration cycle and talked my ears off about the "Big Apple." When you add my wife's inducement strategy to the list of egotistic New Yorkers I had met in Florida, you start imagining the city as if it was the land of milk and honey; a nirvana where opportunities and excitement are waiting on every corner. It came as a huge disappointment to my wife that we did not move to her dream city, but rather into a quaint little town in Massachusetts. Ironically, I commuted routinely to New York City for school. The graduate program I matriculated into was situated smack dab in Manhattan, right in the mix of historic skyscrapers and not far from the around-the-clock and year-long tourist-infected Times Square. Learning from my experience, I have to caution folks out there dying to get a large bite of the "Big Apple," before moving up north, to scrutinize the madness diligently older and rich folks are running away from.

New York City is home to the world's boldest financial delinquents: the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, and the most mismanaged international organization headquarters, the United Nations. New York has an estimated Gross Domestic Product higher than Saudi Arabia, and almost twice that of Switzerland. It has had a billionaire as a mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and larger than life unofficial multi-millionaire mayor of the blacks in the city, Sean John Combs aka Puff Daddy. Everything is glamorously portrayed in vivid 4k, except such things as the city’s rodent problem and crime ridden bloodbaths in Brownsville, Brooklyn. The poor exist everywhere and the rich are hardly there, and hardly better off. They exist among the towers in self-delusion that living higher up the concrete structure in a gilded cage with fingerprint ID for entry makes them better off somehow. Why is the city not able to take care of the poor?

As I pushed amongst the crowds, the seemingly too busy to stay still, what I kept bumping into on every corner were the beleaguered faces of the poor. It is a constant draconian knot to my mind how a city awash in capital is not able to find a humane solution to the disparities of its inhabitants. Some walk in ragged shoes while other leap off the top of the skyscrapers in helicopters only to land at private airports and fly away in private jets to private islands to do private things if known would bring scorn and reproach upon their heads. Is this not poverty? Poverty of the mind, the soul, the flesh-eating disease from within that consumes them along with the physical diseases they keep contracting that only their wealth allows them to fight with antibiotics. If the trickle-down theory can ever be successful it must surely begin as dew, or rain, and start at the top would find minds less consumed with tower living, helicopters and private jets.

I find it torturous walking out of the New York City central station, dodging the overlooked mentally ill, and avoiding eye contact with those who are laying on the floor. This morose spectacle has turned me into a good priest passing the Eucharist or in my case, my lunch money. When winter came, I realized that there were fewer and fewer beggars around my usual crucifixion path. At last, I could get a decent meal without the burning guilty sentiment lodged in my gut. I was unable to silence my suspicions for long and questioned where the lava of homeless had gone that I had become accustomed to. In reality, no miracle had happened - just the weather. As ol'man winter makes its grim appearance, the homeless try to find warm shelters and, inevitably, have to retreat into invisibility.

In 2013, alarming news emerged of the spike in the number of homeless arriving at shelters, and due to housing's limited capacities, adults and children alike had to be turned away every night. What to say about the number of the United States veterans who are homeless? If the United States, currently ranked as the wealthiest nation on Earth, doesn't move Heaven and Earth to care for those who have answered the call to honorably serve the country and abandon noble beings who have put their life at risk to protect the nation, I can't think about anyone else it can show empathy to.

Not to pick on the United States alone the World Bank estimates that more than half of Mumbai residents live in slums that are otherwise by any standard unsafe and uninhabitable, and yet 11 million souls exist day to day¹. The "Slumdog Millionaire" is how most people of the western world got a sense of life in Mumbai, and several scenes from the movie were recorded there. Mumbai is a city of contrasts, which is home to some of the country's wealthiest businessmen and Bollywood film stars. I cannot help but wonder if the archaic caste system and deep-rooted religious faith have made the common Indian susceptible to accept disparity in their society as a work of divine force: destiny.

I could not find any public outcry against the Indian space program's (I.S.R.O) budget that gradually boosted up to 1.3 billion dollars in 2013. The I.S.R.O. budget figures triggered countries such as India's former colonial power, the United Kingdom, and one of the nation's best buddies, the United States, to cut aid fund to India. The amount is evidently small compared to the I.S.R.O budget, but it was a huge hit taken by diverse programs that provide needed services to an estimated 421 million of poor Indians. This number is higher than in the twenty-six poorest African nations. What was India's response to the aid cut? "We do not really need the aid," said Palaniappan Chidambaram, India's finance minister at the time.

In November 2013, my Indian-American friends celebrated when India's space program confirmed that the Mars Orbiter had debuted the planned ten-month journey. The Indian Mars probe has raised some of my most profound suspicions. It was orbiting the Earth for some time. I imagine that Indian scientists got depressed looking at the Indian slums and decided to turn their telescopes away. Is the mission's real goal to find a new hide-out for the Indian elite or a dump/final solution for the poor inhabiting places like the slums of Mumbai? If it happens to be the latter, the few clauses on the ratified agreement between the Federal Republic of Nigeria and India about space programs regarding slums scattered around Abuja should be fascinating!

Now try to Google the most expensive house in the world's history. Surprisingly, it is not located in Manhattan or anywhere in Paris, but it is in Mumbai, India, and is valued at more than one billion USD! The twenty-seven-story skyscraper has six underground parking levels, one level dedicated to a health center and requires about six hundred staff for its maintenance. This gargantuan residence is home to the Indian billionaire, Mukesh Ambani, his wife, his two sons and one daughter. It does not pain me as much that in a nation where many children go hungry and live in slums as much as he chose to spend a billion dollars building his residence on land owned previously by an orphanage. The land was allocated to educate underprivileged children. I guess that he wanted to have a beautiful view of the city, and its slums.

Talking about a beautiful view, the Gulf of Florida has some of the most immaculate beaches on the planet. Anyone who desires an urban lifestyle and quick access to splendid beaches, the city of Tampa is the right place to live, because of its proximity to the coastal city of Saint Petersburg. Now, any tourist is going to have a lovely time wandering around under the caressing sun, tasting some authentically fattening American gourmet food at the center of the town and stopping by the beach for ice cream.

Once the sun goes down, it is advisable for any caring soul to avoid venturing into the vicinity of the city center. I have found myself downtown late at night, waiting for the Greyhound bus to take me back to Tampa. I swear criminality is not what people have to worry about. The upsurge of homeless laying their boxes down, trying to find shelter around the imposing local Catholic Church building and the central park is heartbreaking. Adding to that humiliation, the homeless are constantly being harassed by the police on patrol, enforcing what I call a zero-tolerance of the poor decree passed by the local council. As a tactic to get rid of the poor, once arrested and released, they are given a Greyhound ticket out of Saint Petersburg to any destination of their choice, which is usually Tampa. I do think it is one of the most creative and diabolic measures taken with the goal of safeguarding the city's quixotic image.