Bugs Bunny - Part 1

Courtesy of cartoonandstuff.wordpress.com

Because sometimes, life looks too much like a cartoon, this series of blogs will look at the cartoon characters affecting our lives in one way or another.

Today I’ll start with our favourite “hare” raising story: what would happen if Bugs Bunny ruled the world. In my opinion, in some ways, he already is. He’s walking around in his military outfit and coming to me for advice: “What’s up, Doc?”

Bugs Bunny is quite persuasive and secretive, always in the background. He lets Daffy Duck make a fool of himself, while he’s always in the shadows. Whenever Bugs Bunny is in a boardroom, he always looks for rabbit holes and loop holes. When he finds one, he jumps inside wholeheartedly, leaving everyone guessing what his position on a matter was.

However, he always gets lost after his disappearing act and causes more mischief. I believe we should strip Bugs of his military stars and use him as a Buggy, a vehicle to move the community forward.

The carrot and the stick should function in this case as well and only then we can make our Carrot-Boy part and parcel of the community and keep the bugs away.

Meanwhile, Daffy Duck... (to be continued).

The trouble with skyscrapers...

Quite often I find myself in meetings in skyscrapers around the world. This bothers me, as whenever I look out through a window, I only see clouds and fog. The atmosphere prevents people in skyscrapers from seeing the real world. For example, when I wanted to look at the sun or the moon, I couldn’t. When I wanted to look at the stars, I couldn’t.

The trouble with skyscrapers is that they keep your head in the clouds all the time and make you lose your vision. This is why my decision was to come down to earth. If we don’t come back to earth, we find that we become like overinflated balloons, going ahead and above with no direction, which can be harmed by any pin prick. Then we pop and produce nothing but useless hot air.

When you come back to earth, you can see what is around you, without the need to see it on TV. You can look at the stars and get involved.

In my opinion, if we want to tackle climate change, we cannot do it from the position of a cocoon in a skyscraper, letting life go past us below. If we want to change the world and the people, we cannot do it from in front of a TV screen. Keeping our heads off the clouds ensures we will keep grounded and help those who need it most.

We are in partnership with the grass, with the animals and the environment. To make a better world for all of us, we have to step out of the cocoon of the skyscraper and act, instead of watch.

The road to success

While I was dropping my daughter off the other day, I made the acquaintance of two very interesting people, Dino and Jila. They offered me tea and biscuits and enquired politely about my health.  I told them about my recent trips to various countries and we started to talk about their recycling business.

They asked for my opinion. They said they wanted to expand their business and cover the whole of the UK. I told them that, in my view, this is good, but more needs to be done. I believe they have the capacity to outgrow the UK market. We need to marry somehow the horizontal growth of society development with the vertical thoughts of society change. After all, development is a long term process of implementing a slow, stable mechanism. The worry is that this process could become quite traditional and somebody else could beat you to it.

In my opinion, to achieve this and be well on our way on the road to success, we must bring innovation to the table. You needn’t be a genius or have a tremendously high IQ to innovate. History shows us that the ones who succeed are those with a strong belief in themselves and those who persevere without losing hope. History also shows us that those who succeed often overcome barriers of any kind, including lack of resources.

Let us think of Nobel Prize winners – they have achieved this honour on the basis of their belief, determination and hope. Let us think of millionaires like James Caan, whose rags to riches story talks about determination, belief and drive.

If you want to change our society, the development process must include innovation. If there wouldn’t be any innovation, we would all look the same, eat the same food, drink the same water and wear the same clothes. Innovation nurtures diversity, complementarity, partnership and excitement.

Are you ready to walk down the road to success?

Love is in the air...

The Humanitarian Forum held an accounting and compliance training for small charities the other week. It was very successful but what caught my attention was the idea of the existence of a “suspense account”. When I found out that it meant money left “up in the air” somewhere, I immediately thought of a song from the 70s, I’m sure you’ve heard it:



It’s a very nice song, talking about love being in the air for everybody. In my opinion, before you leave things suspended in the air, you must know some facts. For example, you should ask yourself: what sort of air will it be? Will it change the climate in any way? Will it impact the environment?

The same thing should happen with the “suspense account”. Due to counter-terrorist measures, banks and bank managers have been granted special powers to refuse transfers because your name might start with the letter S, Z or V or you might be from a country starting with the letter A. I believe that such a power being given to individuals will deprive communities in the long term. It will destroy communities, fragment society and create more terror, radicalism and extremism and even lead to extinction.

Nobody knows how many bank transfers have been stopped, frozen and suspended. The deprived are even more deprived as they’re left up in the air. Love might be in the air, as the song claims, but money definitely isn’t. I wish that wasn’t the case and that the process would be more transparent and accountable.

For example, what happens to the money in the suspense account? Does it just sit there for years and years, gaining interest? Who stands to benefit from that interest?

Because these questions are unpleasant and cannot be answered in all honesty, I leave you with a pleasant image:

War on Poverty!

A kiss!

Because poverty is such a “hot” topic, I feel it’s time to ask some questions.

Firstly, how does it feel to be a poor adult? How does it feel to be a poor child? Does poverty mean loss of dignity or does poverty mean less of credibility?

Would you be happy to live in a poor area or neighbourhood? Would you be happy to mix with poor people and be in their midst?

Would you be able to feel what poor people feel? Would you be happy to wear the same things as poor people do? Would you eat their food and live in their houses and sleep on their furniture? How can you get acquainted with poor people when you only invite rich dignitaries in?

In my view, poverty is not just a by-product of the system but a phenomenon that has to have its root causes treated.

For each rich individual, there are 10 or more poor people. We need to try and override the desire of our selfishness, greed and individualistic approach. The causes and solution of poverty live inside us.  We keep on making the rich, richer and the poor, poorer.

The solution to poverty is not a governmental one, nor an institutional or organisational one. The responsibility of caring and sharing is individual.

It’s the responsibility of each and every one of us to make poverty history. It is up to us to declare War on Poverty.

Into the Mud...

Recently, I was visited by a couple of my daughter’s colleagues from university. Both of them are studying for their Master’s degree in Development. We started discussing the current situation in Egypt. Mina, one of the visitors, described the situation as “muddy, sticky and slippery”.

In my view, mud can be either good or bad, depending on what you make of it. For example, clay in skilled hands can make the loveliest ceramic. On the other hand, my wife wouldn’t thank me if I came in the house with muddy shoes.

My question to the students was: “How can we make something useful out of mud?” They accepted my challenge and immediately thought of a solution to separate the water from the dust. They thought of a machine to separate the vapour and change it into energy to produce distilled water, in order to serve the community. On the other side of the machine, the dust will come out, for people to use for other projects (bricks, mortar etc).

I then challenged them to think what sort of a machine we would need. Is it a car? A lorry? Maybe an engine? Or a generator? Or is it a battery? Vito then said: the machine is what we call a civil society. This civil society will be able to dive smoothly between the particles of dust and atoms of water at the ultra-microscopic level of the grass-root community level. With its limited resources, it will be able not only to separate the water from the dust, but also change the vapour into a dynamic action, producing distilled water to save the community.

The discussion around the situation in Egypt shouldn’t be centred on politics, but on how to utilise the social resource of 85 million citizens (over 50% of them are under 35 years old) in a most productive effective way.

My guests and I agreed that the only way forward for a country at the beginning of the 21st century is to empower the civil society organisations and to enable them to become guiding watchdogs on behalf of the dust (the people) and the water (resources).

We may come from dust ourselves, but good things can come from the mud as well. 

My new name

The long-awaited and dreaded date of Friday, 11/11/2011 is all but a memory today. We are still here, the world is the same.  Just like it was on 11 /11/1, in the year of Jesus’s birth (PBUH), or on the same date in year 111, or 1111 and even 2011.

In my view, this is a fantasy, created by idle minds. Every so often there’s an 11/11 and no end of the world. Every so often there’s a 12/12 or a 9/9 and no big news.   If you see a black cat in the middle of the road, there’s a demon. If you wake up and look outside at the garden and you see a black bird, there’s another demon.

When you buy a house, it most certainly won’t be number 13, because it might be haunted. Some “banana” airlines remove the seat number 13 from both sides of the plane. It would be funny if you could somehow jump through thin air from seat 12 to seat 14, don’t you think?! Even in elevators, in some buildings, if you are going to the 13th floor, you will find it doesn’t exist. Who knows, maybe the elevator travels through void to reach the 14th floor!

I’m not sure you knew that Friday the 13th is the day of the devil and therefore we must all stop inside and not go to work, lest something happens!

I believe that we must put all this aside and get on with the job of being human beings. If God wanted a special day (11/11/11), let it up to HIM to announce and up to us to follow.  Please save your time, energy and money by looking forward with objectivity at how you can save others, less fortunate.


On this occasion, I would like to inaugurate my new name:

BlackbirdbornonFriday13thwholiveswiththeblackcatatnumber13on13thstreet.

Do you like it?

End Poverty?

It’s been a loooong time since we started to “make poverty history” or lobbied the G8, G20, G100 and every other gathering. Poverty has become a reality of our time and a part of the future of our children. Since we launched the Millennium Development Goals, 11 years ago, how many of these have been achieved?

Have we truly made steps to eradicate poverty? When we visit such places as Sub-Saharan Africa, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Columbia we see that is not the case. Let me ask you something else: do you think we have managed to eradicate poverty in our own countries – Europe, America, Australia, New Zealand or Japan?

We want to achieve this not by talking, but by doing. Our boardrooms are full to the brim, while people out there build houses out of dust and mud.  We dust our bags, our offices, our homes, while people have dust in their food, drink, breath and life.

If we won t make poverty history, we have to start sharing what we have at home with the people whose real life is history.

One big, happy family

In the previous blog before my Eid message, I was talking about how difficult it is in some countries to give and receive aid. How would you feel if I told you that, in some countries, aid has been “nationalised” and kept in the family? How would you feel if I told you that in some countries, the distribution of aid is run exclusively by members of the military, security or the ruling class?

In my view, this gives the freedom to give to the few, while the others are being deprived. Counter-terrorism humanitarian policies and the War on Terror are feeding monsters globally. Sometimes, it can be that our policy can become our monster. Our monster, without anything or anyone (!) to eat, will eat us instead.

Enough talk of monsters. Let us look at the bigger picture. If we do not accept and collaborate, we will never be one big, happy family. Local,  global, big and small, from the northernmost point to the southernmost point, from east to west, spanning different cultures and beliefs, it is time to join hands for the sake of those in need.

Eid Mubarak!

The Bus Stop

Courtesy of Flickr

Counter-terrorism is, at long last, on the international agenda. Two years ago, The Humanitarian Forum organised a meeting to talk about this issue (which has been on the table for the past 10 years or so).  I must admit that it wasn’t the pleas of the Muslim or Arab charities suffering from War on Terror or Counter-Terrorism Policy which surprised me. The pleas of Western International NGOs surprised me more!

A colleague told me a wise story. He said that, once upon a time, a poor person was waiting at the bus stop. And they waited, and waited, and waited, for years. Then, a wealthy, influential person came to the same bus stop. The bus came then.

I believe financial counter-terrorist measures are not only affecting the humanitarian space of NGOs, but they are shrinking the humanitarian space of every individual Muslim or Arab donor. The donors from that part of the world are scared to wire their donation. They are scared to even talk about donations. They are scared even to support any fellow human being. 

I visited a few donor countries very recently. In one of them, the locally registered organisation was unable to publicise a fundraising leaflet. They weren’t able to advertise on any public media. Even worse, the organisation could not transfer money to regional offices to run their humanitarian programmes.

Let all the people waiting at the bus stop get on the bus and the driver to take us to our destination: the fulfilment of people’s needs!

The umbrella

As I watch the rain falling down in London, I can’t help but think that sometimes umbrellas can cause more harm than good. Umbrellas can shelter us from the rain, but they can also be weapons, to take each other’s eyes out.

For example, imagine four dynamic international stakeholders, the pillars of every state and every community. Each has their own boundaries and address different social needs. Each must be transparent and have its own umbrella.

What would happen if someone gathered these four under a single umbrella? Some might say: “more economical – one umbrella, instead of four”. Some might say: “I’m glad they’re working together, it’s all about partnership”.
In my view, four under one umbrella means that at least one will be left exposed, out in the rain. What if I was to say to you that these four major stakeholders are: politics, security, military and humanitarianism? Poor humanitarianism would be the one standing half under the umbrella and half in the rain.

In any conflict, our lines of demarcation have to become thicker than ever, not be blurred by the umbrella. Humanitarianism doesn’t (or shouldn’t) have any political, security or military agenda. However, if we all share the same umbrella, how can someone standing at a distance see us?! They will only see some kind of uniform, even if we are wearing civilian clothes. This will endanger further humanitarian workers in conflict zones.

While decisions are being made looking at TV screens on the 25th floor of a skyscraper in a major city, aid workers are at risk of being kidnapped, or even worse, killed.

Let us each have our own umbrella and keep safe, out of the rain!