Haitus

I think its about time I declared that this blog is in a state of coma. Previously it was mainly for theo and myself to do some social commentary on Malaysia itself. In light of the fact that theo no longer blogs and that we would most likely get our asses in jail for saying the right thing, I think its best we close thi blog for now.

It was fun while it lasted tho

You know how our ministers and conservative knuckleheads keep saying we must be decent and sex in any other context besides procreation would bring you to hell and all that? Why is it then that most conservative people and paper based media can’t stop talking about sex?

They rant about abstinence and how listening to western music makes you unnaturally horny. They rant about how seeing a woman’s hair or pretty much any part of the female body would bring onto yourself ungodly lust and you would inevitably bring your awesome sperm squirting hot rod to bear on her and ask her whose her daddy?

Has it ever occurred to them that all of these sins come from men who think with their dicks and not their heads? Are they conceding the point that their methods of imparting values have all but failed and they resort to these measures?

A woman’s body is a god given thing and how she flaunts it is pretty much her own god dammed business. So what if she wears a tube top and a g string below? Does that mean men should revert to their animal states and play rape the indecent chick?

If the guy has got no self control, shouldn’t he be blamed for his lack of control and his family for not being good at imparting good values?

Damn chauvinists.

* I may have exaggerated certain things here to make the post more interesting

A little rant about Malaysian politics/culture in general. Why is it that Malaysians tend to do things half assed and get the priorities all wrong?

A good example would be Proton. The newer cars such as the Persona, Neo and all that tend to focus on the Lotus heritage and cool ass design. Now all that coolness is great BUT at the core of every car’s function would be getting you from A to B in one piece.

The issue with Malaysian cars is the getting there in one piece part and it happens to be a core feature. Same thing with out political initiatives. I applaud the government’s move to make English more widely used in Malaysian Primary and Secondary education but as with all political moves in Malaysia, saying we did it is more important than actually doing it. Our teachers and incompetent at it and openly admit it and whats more important the crowd that ‘deserve’ affirmative action appear not to see that the government is trying to save them. They would rather NOT learn something new and very useful.

Folks, Chinese culture is a culture so old and rich which also means the Chinese language is at least equally as rich anything the west has and yours truly here thinks its richer. Guess what they used to communicate with the athletes in the 2008 Olympics? English. What language are the people who ‘deserve’ affirmative action in Malaysia consistently not doing too well at school? English (mind you the English thought in our school is a joke when compared to Singapore). What is the reason HP, IBM, Dell and a whole host of other big companies coming to Malaysia and not cheaper countries like say Vietnam? English.

Now who would in the right mind would want to squander Malaysia’s edge against other countries of the region? Half assed Malaysians. Life is peachy ain’t it?

What do you think theo and dear readers if any?

The Final Frontier….

I remember falling in love with the concept space travel when I watched my first episode of Star Trek : The Next Generation. The idea of going into the unknown and seeing things for the first time enthralled me and it was also one of the reasons I got into technology.

Many people I know of are very proud that we got somebody up there but is it really a great thing? In my books it is just like a millionaire paying big bucks to be a space tourist. True, there were experiments conducted but it just doesn’t give that ‘I am so proud to be Malaysian’ or ‘Malaysia Boleh’ thing.

What makes a space program of any country great is not really the destination but the road there. The engineering challenges of creating a space vehicle breaking earth’s gravity and all the logistical issues in maintaining it are what makes it a monumental achievement for the Americans, Russians and more recently the Chinese. We on the other hand bought some Sukhoi fighters in exchange for a scientifically oriented taxi ride.

I think it is great that we have somebody up there but is it truly something of monumental proportions that it is being made out to be? It also doesn’t help that prior to the launch that some idiot in the government also wanted us to make Teh Tarik and play Batu Seremban there.

Maybe one day when we have a space program that is vertically integrated from rocket to astronaut I’ll be proud but not today.

Overcriticism Anyone ?

 I really CAN NOT STAND some of the folks here. They keep comparing Malaysia to western countries and Singapore and makign them sound like a utopia without any problems. These people are VERY ill informed about things overseas and besides, these countries being high and mighty (in Singapore’s case, just plain kiasu) do not really make it a habbit of announcing their problems for the world to see and the local papers would not report it since most of them bear no relevance to our country.

Take Singapore for instance, granted they have alot of things that leave us looking primitive but they do have their fair share of problems. They have a political system that would almost make a them a dictatorship, albeit a benign one. Unlike here they do not have a very open political system whereby any criticism will be handled very harshly which is apparent in their parliment with their apparent lack of proper opposition as well as the inability of the newpapers to say anything bad about the government. We on the other hand have a more open press whereby writers are allowed to write critical stuff about the government within boundries of the law and we have what resembles as quite a substantial presense by opposition parties who do speak their mind, at times too far but hey, thats the price of freedom.

Another example would be America which our less than informed friends love to compare to. America is a great nation and was one of the first successful democracies and boasts one of the most open societies in the world. Now don’t you morons think having such a open democracy and society here can actually be counter productive? Do we want our youth shooting people in our education institutes? Do we want morons running around preaching hate in the name of free speach? Do we want their kind of public health system where most people without medical insurance do not get the care they need since most of their hospitals are privatized? Our society is not stable enough for such openess since people in our country is nowhere close to their level of development and per capita income. We can not risk having extremists openly preaching hate in our country since the majority of our people are easily incited to do crazy things thanks to the relegious fervour of the race that holds the position of majority here. 

Those are a few examples of the problems faced by those countries you people so love to compare to and make thdem seem so perfect. I can list a whole lot mroe problems faced by these nations and my point is there is no such thing as a perfect country and while it is nice to follow the good points of the aforementioned counties always bear in mind are we capable of doing what they do and are we ready for such things. 

p.s – I know this is not on par with my usual posts but I am really tied down with my college work :s

The Bumiputera Divide

While reading through a book known as “IBM & The Holocaust“, I found some interesting parallels between the Third Reich, and sad to say, the Malaysian Government. As we all know Hitler was convinced that the Jews were to be blamed for Germany’s hard times. He instituted  the idea of a master race into most of the German population’s hearts and minds  which caused what we know know as World War II. The persecution and wholesale slaughter of Jews in the hands of Germany numbered in the millions (the validity of the figures is disputed by some quarters but that is a story for another time).

According to the book, not only did they do racial profiling but they did religious profiling as well. All this was to benefit those deemed true “Aryan” Germans because German Jews, like a certain minority here in the present, held a lot of important professional, business and financial positions in Germany. Jews there controlled a substantial chunk of the German economy. During the hard times on post World War I Germany, people needed someone to blame and the Jews were a great target due to the fact that antisemitism hads been around for centuries in Europe. The wealth of the Jewish people didn’t help since they easily became the object of hatred for the unemployed and underpaid Germans. This made the German SA or Stormtrooper Brigades very popular and made them commit acts of violence to the Jews in the hopes of displacing them so that “pure blooded” Germans can take their jJobs.

In the present, the Malaysian Government does religious and racial profiling of its citizens possibly so that they can dispense economic & social aid to the “Bumiputeras” who are the indigenous people of Malaysia(that again is disputed but lets leave that out for the time being). This is akin to the policies of Nazi Germany albeit a less extreme one since we of the minority races live relatively comfortably and we co-exist with the bumiputeras relatively well. I, personally, have very good Malay friends whom I consider more closer than some of my relatives.

The priorities given to the Malays are a necessity in fact. They are still a tad behind when it comes to economic and academic stuff. They are much better off in those two aspects today but they still have a long way to go. What concerns me is that they seem to be taking it for granted and relying heavily on Government help. This is despite the fact that the incentive program should have ended some twenty one plus years ago but yet  the plan keeps going on. This is all well and good when times are great but when push comes to shove in bad times, all we need is one maverick radical racist on either side of the bumiputera divide to incite violence.  It may or may not be a repeat of May 13th, which happened because of race politics. The politics of some of today’s politicians seems scarily similar to what Hitler did. I really feel that the government should start trying to integrate Malaysians into a single cohesive race rather that profiling people via the bumiputera divide. They could easily revamp it for the less fortunate Malays, or even better,for the  less fortunate Malaysians. I do agree that the NEP must still go on but it needs major changes since the conditions when it first started out were very different from today’s. I do not believe labeling some people more Malaysian than others does anybody any good except for the politicians.

As for religious profiling, I have nothing against it since it just says what we believe in, it also assists with the implementation of Syariah Law. While it does bear some resemblance to the religious profiling done by the Nazis, I have enough faith in this government not to commit genocide based on religion. It may even help the government to do a proper census so that they can plan ahead and not affect it’s citizens religious sensibilities. Although some people have likened the zealousness of the Syariah enforcers to Nazi Stromtroopers but I feel that it is a isolated case and religion does make people do stupid things but lets leave that out from this post as well.   

I really do hope that cooler heads prevail and yes I do agree that this post is a little too far fetched  but then again, people thought landing on the moon was far fetched…

I really hope I do not get my ass in jail for this. In my humble opinion, what I wrote is no different from   what a political science student might have written in a tutorial but  if I get into detention for this , says a lot about my rights now doesn’t it?

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A Cease and Desist Letter (or at least a not too legal one)

The Cease and Desist Letter

A fellow Malaysian blogger got a extralegal cease and desist letter from none other than our much loved ISP known as Streamyx or at least one of their employees.

This really saddens me since the government now has to deal the card of fear to keep us in line, this dude probably has been dealt that card too many times indirectly thus making him think this way. He should have just taken what the blogger said for what it is, the open secret that you can bribe a cop to let you off minor offenses. To those pro government bucket heads don’t even bother trying to defend “the nation’s image” since foreigners, particularly expatriates are very aware of these things. One expatriate spreads this knowledge, slowly it becomes two, tree and so on ’till they have a comunity probably the size of a small town knowing it. Then two small towns, then three as time goes by and by the way they can spread this when they go back without you bucket heads even knowing it and if I am not mistaken the almighty ISA has no jurisdiction there to put a bona fide real cease and desist letter to those folk the expat know back in their own country. America in the past tried to hide behind the facade of “every man being equal” for awhile and guess what? They aren’t equal and open racism was removed when they embraced the truth, NOT silencing it.

The moron who posted the mail should have just told his supposed relative and the cops taking proper action to sooth such sentiments rather than silencing it like some KGB directorate by creating fear based on several well publicized public examples such as high profile arrests. The police is meant to protect and serve the people, not arrest people for speaking the truth. I admit its not as bad as Soviet Russia or the fictitious “finger men” from the V for Vendetta movie but such dissatisfaction is not doing the police any good. My mom was forced to pay a cop a sum of money to let her off the hook and the cop took her only 50 dollar note leaving 2 dollars behind in her wallet when she showed him her wallet. Why we did not report you might ask? Well, it is simply because there is this impression that the blue boys look after their own @ the blue wall, so what is the point?

Folks, do not judge our cops too harshly. They are frankly speaking one of the best law enforcement outfits in Asia and they have been internationally recognized for their prowess in stamping out major crimes such as drug trafficking, murder cases, armed robberies, etc. They were even kind enough to help calm my mother down when a burglars stole things from my house. The actions of a few (although seemingly large) unscrupulous individuals should not tarnish the people who actually do their jobs which is to bring the hammer of justice to those who break the law. There is no such thing as a perfect law enforcement organization as they are manned by people prone to human nature. I just hope the PDRM (Royal Malaysian Police Force) can stamp out this problem and make these corrupt officials less ubiquitous and make them more of an abnormality rather than a norm.

p.s –

pohhar@stramyx.com, you are welcomed to defend your relatives on the net since we are all equal here but we bloggers who are under attack do not take kindly at being intimidated and it does not help your “letter” sounds…..weak to say the least. If you just stuck to defending the police force for all the good it does, it would have been a great way of making Amy take back her coments on the force.