Mushroom cloud in peacetime?

Like clockwork, not even dust had settled after the Earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale hit Myanmar; numerous announcements have emerged over the new social media outlets of well-meaning organisations offering services to collect donations for its victims. 

We have had all these so many times before. The earliest of these must surely be the Great Tsunami of Boxing Day 2004, which measured 9.1. The world saw a plethora of bodies going hyperdrive, bending backwards, trying to extract money from the well-meaning but unassumingly naive public. The collection, it seemed, was quite overwhelming. Ten years down the line, a documentary was made about the towns hit by the tsunami. It revealed that only one pledged housing project saw living daylight amongst all the broken promises; that too by the personal effort by an individual, the world-famous singer Ricky Martin.

The same thing happened in Haiti following its devastating 2010 hurricane. The Clinton Foundation jumped in to help its victims and help the island nation get back on its feet. Ten years after the storm, an assessment revealed no sustained improvement to its infrastructure. The only viable projects that seem to have been successfully developed were those that benefited the Foundation and the local cronies.

The latest donation drive to hit the nation is to help the victims of the recent Putra Heights gas pipe explosion. Even though footage coming out of the disaster area is scary, so far, no deaths have been reported; only property damage and bodily injuries have been reported. 

A third-person account provides scant information about the event. Firstly, very few Malaysians knew that we had a methane gas pipe gridline running under or near our houses. We had thought this only happened in Western countries. The line was apparently for industrial purposes. 

As in the case of MH370, the head does not know what the tail is doing. At least, that is the impression I get listening to the official press release of the committee appointed to investigate the disaster. The appointees of the sc-called panel expert to investigate the mishap remain opaque. Their representative does not exude brilliance or confidence that every rock will be turned to reveal the truth. I wonder if the services of academics were called for to get to the root of the explosion. Maybe everyone in power wants the whole fiasco to remain an unsolvable enigma so that none of their shenanigans in cutting corners does not come into the open.   The pressmen at the press meet were no better. Forget investigative journalism; they did not even ask the right questions. Instead of hurling difficult questions at the officious, they squawk random and meaningless questions that a primary student would squeal just to please his teacher.

One netizen pointed out that a leading political party started a donation drive to help the victims. Unfortunately, he also noticed that the given account was that of the political party, not a dedicated account set up for relief.

There are many examples of charity foundation abuse. A charity in the UK started during COVID-19 by the relatives of a 90-something war veteran who wanted to record his progress in recovering from a hip fracture. People were smitten by this nonagenarian, and they donated to his Captain Tom Foundation in droves. Soon, its assets became enormous, so enormous that unnecessary maintenance started showing up in its accounts. The veteran also wrote an autobiography, the proceeds of which went into charity but were taken out for personal use. Long story short, the old man died, The Captain Tom Foundation was investigated, and his daughter Hannah and her husband, who initially helped to establish the charity, were found to have benefitted from its mismanagement and blurring of private and charitable interests. The foundation is now defunct.

A mushroom cloud in peacetime

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In God's hands?

Bad Surgeon: Love Under the Knife (2023)
Documentary

Perhaps the media is the one that needs to take the blame. It may be people's fascination with the high life and their gullibility. Or the society's rules on the confidentiality of information or the restriction. Some have perfected the art of staying in the limelight to awe others with their stories so tall that they cannot be refuted. These do not make sense, but watching Dr Paolo Macchiarini's shenanigans, they would. 

Dr Macchiarini is an Italian maverick surgeon employed at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, between 2010 and 2013. With a long, impressive CV, including a stint as a visiting Professor at University College London and multiple revolutionary discoveries in regenerative medicine in Russia, he hit the headlines performing groundbreaking trachea replacement surgery using a plastic mould and stem cell technology. 

At the height of his success, he meets journalist Benita Alexander. She is swept off her feet, love blossoms and wedding bells will soon be rung. Everything is going well except for his frequent absence. After all, he is a globetrotting star surgeon flying from country to country, performing avant-garde top-notch operations. On top of that, world leaders like the Clintons, Obama and the Pope have Macchiarini on their speed dial. He is their personal physician.

The wedding is planned to happen at the Vatican itself, officiated by, of all people, the Pope himself. Yes, the Pope also does weddings.

One by one, news of botched surgeries comes to the open. His credentials turned out to be fraud. His colleagues at Karolinka start an investigation. An investigative journalist is roped in. Somehow, because the World Wide Web is in its infancy, the information from one part of the world either does not reach or is falsified when it hits the outside world until ... 

Benito Alexander, the journalist scheduled to marry Macchiarini, catches him having a wife and children. She exposes him in an article in Vanity Fair. Thus came the surgeon's downfall. One by one, Sweden charges him in court. He is presently serving jail in Sweden. Macchirianno used Benito's position as a journalist to springboard his own publicity. 

It is funny that at the dawn of the birth of information technology, we were promised knowledge accessible to all. People would be more empowered to make informed decisions after accessing all sides of the multifaceted monster called truth. Surprise, surprise. Humans can still hoodwink the system and abuse the system to fulfil nefarious personal interests. 

Information platforms further help these people to peddle fake news and whitewash things. Bragging and broadcasting tall stories have become much easier. 

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So much for 'rule of law'!

420 IPC (Hindi; 2021)

Director: Manish Gupta

So that is how it is. Everybody claims to be adhering to the rule of law. For a simpleton like me, that sounds like sound advice. The law is there to protect the little people against the tyranny of the deep-pocketed. I was nurtured to believe that the Truth will always prevail in the end. Lady Justice is supposedly blind to coercion, they say. As I grew older, I realised that all these are just bunkum. 

The people who frequently invoke the phrases 'rule of law' and 'by the book' do not mean what they say. What they actually mean is that they have masterminded the nooks, corners and loopholes in the legal system that they can literally get away with murder. They can legitimately proclaim that they can legally needle themselves away from being caught in a comprising position. They have got all their sides, frontal and posterior, all concealed.

When and if ever they are queried, they have the fortitude to use the same law used to persecute them to shield themselves instead. No matter how hard truth tries to prevail, nothing can challenge the best brain that wealth can purchase. The way law can be interpreted as much as the defender can afford to pay. Top dollars can buy top lawyers. 

Law is written, and its execution is as good as the words and nuances it is written. Words can be manipulated. The first teachers of this art were the sophists. Greek philosophers like Socrates and Plato did not have any nice things to say about them. They were viewed as prostituting themselves by selling the art of speaking and providing wisdom to convince the impossible. They must be the first to have sold ice to the Eskimos.  

This is an engaging film about a seemingly small-scaled chartered accountant, Bansi Keswani, who is initially arrested when his client is caught for money laundering. He is discharged, but Bansi is re-arrested for stealing some cheques two months later. This time around, he has to face the whole brunt of the law. Why would an intelligent accountant do something so amateurish like stealing cheques and falsifying the issuer's signature in such a novice way? The defence digs deep into his sleeves and all roads plainly seem to lead Bansi to a lengthy jail term.

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