[Reader-list] Next time , throw a book-Saima Shakeel in The Dawn

[shuddha at sarai.net]

Dear Rashneek Kher, 

Thank you for forwarding this excellent article, I really enjoyed reading it,
it's take on Zardari reading Machiavelli is spot on !

best

Shuddha

On Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:50:27 +0530 rashneek kher <rashneek at gmail.com> wrote

> Along with a shoe, one wishes someone would throw a book or two at some of
> our newsmakers. Maybe, just maybe, it would do a world of good to them and
> to us, the 175 million Pakistani people who are affected daily by their
> words and (mis)deeds. However, in the case of some newsmakers, it appears
> that they are already hard at work studying some old classics ….
> 
> *What they are reading*
> 
> President Asif Zardari: *The Prince* by Niccolo Machiavelli
> 
> Granted, the sixteenth-century treatise on statecraft will read like a
> virtual autobiography to the man who could very well write its updated
> version when he finally retires to his sixteenth century chateau in France,
> the Manoir de la Reine Blanche.
> 
> Machiavelli, a public servant, based his famous work on the political
> machinations of the Medicis and Borgias, the two most powerful families in
> Renaissance Italy. Many critics argue that The Prince is a political satire
> and meant to be read as a tongue-in-cheek account. Others disagree, and the
> fact that it was first published five years after Machiavelli’s death makes
> one think that he, for one, did not consider it a laughing matter.
> 
> Why am I convinced that this treatise must be the president’s bedtime
> reading? Well, mostly because the similarities between him and the prince
> are too astounding to be mere coincidence.
> 
> Machiavelli’s prince does not wish to preserve moral good or spiritual
> integrity; he simply wants to attain and maintain his power. Having come to
> power through sheer luck or the blessing of some powerful figures, he has an
> easy gaining power but must work hard to keep it. His power is dependent on
> his benefactors’ goodwill which is a fickle thing at best.
> 
> Also, consider the following excerpts from the treatise:
> 
> “A man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin,
> since there are so many men who are not good.”
> 
> “The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a
> necessity of the present.”
> 
> “The wish to acquire more is admittedly a very natural and common thing;
> and
> when men succeed in this they are always praised rather than condemned. But
> when they lack the ability to do so and yet want to acquire more at all
> costs, they deserve condemnation for their mistakes.”
> 
> See what I mean?
> 
> Fauzia Wahab: *Gone with the Wind* by Margaret Mitchell
> 
> Anyone who has seen the PPP’s central information secretary in action
> cannot
> doubt that she has been working hard learning a trick or 10 from that queen
> of melodrama, Scarlett O’ Hara. The South may have swept through by the
> victorious Yankees and Tara, the O’Hara family estate, burnt to a crisp,
> but
> Scarlett stubbornly refused to budge or face reality. She was determined to
> do anything (and I do mean, anything) to defend her landowning,
> slave-keeping lifestyle.
> 
> Our own Ms Scarlett has been seen snorting, snickering and screaming on TV
> channels to defend what in any civilised society would be considered
> indefensible. This includes a president who takes off on a ‘joyride’
while
> the country is drowning to host what can only be described as his son’s
> ‘coronation’ in Birmingham. The same president who later said in the
speech
> he made to supporters in Birmingham that his late wife and her father spoke
> ‘from inside him’ at a very critical time in the country’s history and
> urged
> him to declare ‘Pakistan Khappay’.
> 
> Dear Scarlett, just like Rhett, we frankly don’t give a damn.
> 
> *What he should be reading*
> 
> Bilawal Zardari:  *All the Shah’s Men* by Stephen Kinzer
> 
> It’s not too late. While he is still completing his education, the young
> man
> would do well to read Kinzer’s gripping account of how the arrogant and
> corrupt regime of the US-backed Shah was overthrown in a bloody revolution.
> The book gives details of how the Iranian people, who’s benign lord the
> Shah
> claimed to be, finally turned against him with such ferocity that the royal
> family and their cronies were forced to flee the country in order to save
> their lives.
> 
> Even today, despite their many differences of opinion and dissatisfaction
> with the rule of the ayatollahs, the one thing that the Iranian nation
> agrees on is that there can be no return of the monarchy. The only way that
> the late Shah’s only son, Reza Pahlavi, who continues to style himself
> ‘heir
> to the throne of Iran,’ can hope to re-enter the country is through foreign
> backing. And we all know what that leads to.
> 
> Reza Pahlavi at least has claim, however flimsy, to be the scion of a royal
> dynasty. (His grandfather Reza Shah was commander of the Persian Cossack
> brigade who became king as the result of a coup.) Bilawal Zardari has no
> such claim.
> 
> He claims that his late mother always taught him that, ‘democracy is the
> best revenge.’ Well, the Oxford-educated lad should know that there is no
> place for a dynasty in democracies. India is learning that at its great
> expense. Bilawal must discourage demagoguery within the People’s Party and
> encourage other, more senior, party leaders to take over the reins.
> 
> 
> --
> Rashneek Kher
> http://www.kashmiris-in-exile.blogspot.com
> http://www.nietzschereborn.blogspot.com
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