Remembrance Day & ISA Vigils

Today is remembrance day in the UK, in much of Europe, and in many many countries in the Commonwealth of Nations. It is not celebrated in Malaysia, even though we are a member of the Commonwealth. Why don’t we have remembrance day on the 11th of November? Is it because we have no dead from the wars? Because we are trying to be different or because we are trying to cast off our colonial influence?

We know the first is untrue. We have many dead and we celebrate our remembrance on 31st July. Is it the second and third then? I do not know. If it is, then it is a very shallow reason to celebrate our remembrance day on a different date from our commonwealth friends. Remembrance day is a very powerful day. If you’ve ever attended a remembrance service, or even watched the national one on TV, you would know. We owe it to the dead to remember them. To remember history, so that we do not repeat it.

I have never attended or watched a Hari Pahlawan service. To me Hari Pahlawan was the day our teacher in school gave out forms for us to donate money. No one ever explained to me what it was. The history we learnt in school was a diluted version, designed so we will never forget who is in power. The history I learnt in school instilled in me, not a sense of pride, but a sense of frustration. Frustration that I spent 4 years learning  Malaysian history, yet not know the truth. Frustration that I spent only 1 year learning world history, and most of that on the history of Islam. Frustration that I do not know anything about the history of the world. Frustration that I do not know anything about the world wars. Frustration that at the end of 5 compulsory years of history studies, I did not know anything about history at all, be it world history or Malaysian history.

History was made a few days ago, when RPK was released from ISA detention. I wish I attended some of the vigils. I would have, if I was at home. I hope and pray that all ISA detainees will be released soon. I light, on this blog, not a candle, but a fire. A bonfire of hope. Hope that our country will be a better place soon. Hope that my fiance and I will be welcomed home with opened arms, that we will have good futures and good jobs. The hope will always be there, the hope that I can come home to a better place. Not just a place to have a vacation in, but to live in and start a family in, unafraid of racism, unafraid of corruption, unafraid of unequality, and most of all unafraid of the government.

I may not know much of Malaysian history beyond what I have read and heard. But on this remembrance day, I pay tribute to everyone who suffered on May 13th 1969, to all ISA detainees past and present, and to all victims of our very corrupt government. I pay tribute to everyone who died in the defense of Malaysia during World War Two and to all victims of the Japanese Occupation.  I also pay tribute to everyone who suffered the effects of the water canons and tear gas during the Bersih Demonstrations last February & March.

I believe we were fed a load of lies and bullshit in secondary school Sejarah. I am neutral on whether we are better off after independence than before. From what I know, the transition to independence was a bloodless one. I am not paying tribute to the people who brought independence to Malaysia, simply because I do not know if independence benefited Malaysia at all.

Happy Remembrance Day everyone.  Keep up the ISA vigils.  I join you in spirit if not in body.

1 million scouts……

or 1 million idiots in scout uniform??

This was in the news some time ago. Not hot news… but the jist of it is that someone ‘up there’ announced plans to increase the number of scouts in Malaysia from 200,000 to 1 million. My question to the people ‘up there’ is this: Are they planning on having 1 million scouts, or 1,000,000 poor souls who doesn’t know anything at all about scouting dressed in the scout uniform?

I’m not the most qualified person to write something like this…. but who is ever qualified to write a blog post? I’ve been a scout for 9 years and 10 months. 5 years as a scout, 4 years and 10 months as a leader, and 2+ years as a rover scout. (One can be both a leader and a rover at the same time). I haven’t spent very many years in scouting, but I have spent more years in scouting than the average Malaysian scout who enters in secondary I and leaves after secondary V. The success of the scouting movement is not in how many entry-level scouts there are, but in how many of those scouts stay in scouting, and how many of those scouts come back. For scouts to want to stay in scouting after adulthood, or to come back to scouting after they’ve left it, they must be imbibed with the scouting spirit, to have enjoy scouting to the core, to have been bitten by the scouting bug, to live the scout oath and law, not just while they are in uniform, but even when they are out of uniform.

It is easy to dress a person up as a scout. Just throw him a uniform. One can even memorise and recite the scout promise, but that does not always make one a scout. Just ask yourself if you live by the principles of the rukun negara. We all had to recite the rukun negara when we were in school, but how many of us live by those principles? If we did, if all the people did, if all the people governing our country did, then we would have a clean and fair judiciary. Do we? I’m not going to talk about the judiciary now, I’m just using it to illustrate a point.

The scouting bug, the scouting spirit, isn’t as simple as reciting a promise. Not even attending and completing a woodbadge course during a tenure in a maktab perguruan can make a true scout out of a teacher. And the knowledge passed on from these teachers to the scouts will not make the scouts scouts, not unless the teacher has been inbibed with the scouting spirit.

In order to increase the number of scouts in this country to 1 million, the country would need 125,000 scout leaders (I’m using the 8:1 scout:leader ratio). To be a scout leader, one needs more than a woodbadge. One needs scouting experience. Scouting is more than uniform and a promise. Scouting is about loving nature, about understanding the patrol system and implementing it, about camps and hikes, about breating, eating and living the scout promise, about teamwork, leadership, cooperation, about passing on knowledge from one generation to the next, about being independent, about knowing how to play when its playtime, to work when its worktime to know what is good for oneself, and what is bad. Voluntarism is a very important part of scouting. Volunteer scout leaders participate in scouting because they enjoy scouting, because the are happy when scouting knowledge and spirit gets passed on to the next generation. Volunteer scout leaders never every get monetary returns, they do scouting because they have the BP spirit deep in their hearts.

Can mass production produce the same result as the scouting bug? Can monetary incentives produce the same result as years of enjoyment, years of happiness and experience gained from scouting? Can mass produced scouts really be called scouts? It is easy to dress-up. It is not so easy to be a true scout.

KUALA LUMPUR: The Scouts are coming. Soon, that familiar Scout’s uniform will be seen in every housing estate, village, Felda scheme, Pusat Giat Mara and Institute Kemahiran Belia centre.

The Scouts Association of Malaysia also plans to introduce the Rover Scouts (for those aged 18 and above) at private and public institutions of higher learning, national chief Scout commissioner Colonel Prof Datuk Dr Kamarudin Kachar said.

He said the organisation wanted to increase its Scoutship from the current 200,000 to one million in three years.

“We started the Scout movement in Felda schemes in Johor, Negri Sembilan and Perak some five or six years ago. Now we want to take it nationwide,” he said after a dialogue session with Youth and Sports Minister Datuk Seri Azalina Othman Said at the Scout headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.

“We are now moving from school-based to community-based. The idea is to instil social integration and national unity and to reduce social ills. This is most important,” he said.

Introducing Rover Scouts at the community level, he said, was also geared towards community development, increasing environmental consciousness and advocating peace.

He added that the Rover Scouts would also be introduced in countries with a large number of Malaysian students.

“We have Rover Scouts in Indonesia and the authorities in London have agreed to us setting up a troupe there as well.”

The association is also planning to introduce Rover Scouts in Australia, Russia, Egypt and the United States.

“The objective is to instil patriotism among Malaysian students overseas, and to increase their leadership qualities, living skills abilities and upgrade their working skills,” he said.

The International Scouts Academy of Malaysia will also function as a leadership and skills-training hub for uniformed bodies from all over the world, he said.

Brunei, Singapore and Indonesia have already indicated interest in sending Scouts here for training. There are 18 million Scouts in the Asia-Pacific region.

A variety of activities have been planned for the 100th anniversary of the Scout movement in Malaysia from May 12 to 18 next year.

The star event will be the 100th year jamboree at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). Commemorative coins and stamps will be issued as well.

“Six thousand Scouts, including 1,500 from Asia-Pacific countries, will attend,” said Kamarudin, adding that the association had applied for a RM2 million grant from the Youth and Sports Ministry.

Source: NST – 2007/10/09

Note to readers: I wrote this a few days ago, many times, and I was a lot more mad about this, and the post was a lot angrier… but streamys kept messinag about and I kept loosing my post… the more i lost the post, the angrier the post got…. but in the end strymyx won… and here I write it again… but it probably doesn’t get the point across as well as my last post did… but it may be a better read since its not so angry… either way… at least I wrote something I guess… heh.. Regards…

RANT : First aid : another reason not to live in this country.

What would you do if this were real? Or any of the other images below this. Would YOU know what to do? Can anyone in Malaysia, ANYONE, predict how long it’d take an ambulance to arrive if you called for one? We all know Malaysia is far from a developed country. The Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in Malaysia is far from the quality or even quantity of many other countries. Knowing this, shouldn’t it even be more necessary for us, the citizens of this country, to be adept at first aid? The awareness of first aid in this country is, to put it in a nice way – DISMAL.

I re-attended an empact (emergency patient care training) course a couple of weekends ago. When I took leave off work to go for it, a few questions was asked. Things like “WAH, who are you going to save?” or “What are you going to do with it?” or “Know first aid got benefit ar?” On top of that, on Saturday night (after half of the course was completed), when I told a close relative “Did you know 80% of CPR…..”, she attempted to finish my sentence with “kills the patient” I just went “……………………………………………………………………………………..”

The awareness of first aid in this country is dismal. CPR awareness is worse than dismal. I’ve got a false sense of security, in the sense that I’ve been exposed to first aid all my life, and have always had (and still do have) the secret dream of becoming a paramedic. Formal exposure to first aid knowledge came when I was 15, when I spent 2 year doing various life-saving/life-guarding courses. I also got a St. John. basic first aid qualification during that period. The few years after that was pretty quiet, but first-aid exposure was still pretty much constant, though more practice than training. Quite often, I was the most experienced/qualified person to perform first aid when I’m at scouts/buddhistyouth/other voluntary bodies/activities.

Receiving comments like that from the general public actually pissed me off quite a bit. First aid isn’t about ‘who’ I want to save, or ‘who’ I want to perform it on. First aid isn’t about benefit to oneself, even though it IS important to one’s own wellbeing if the situation arises. Knowledge which saves lives is knowledge better learnt than not. 80% of lay-person CPR is performed on a family member. Which means that if I, a person who isn’t a professional healthcare provider, were to perform CPR one day, there is a four in five chance that it would be on a parent/sibiling/child/grandparent/aunt/uncle.

So, to answer their questions. Who am I going to save? Anyone who needs me to perform CPR, who is more likely to be a family member than not. What am I going to do with it? I’m going to help people with it. What benefite can I derive from it? I may save lifes with it, my own, my family, my friends, who knows. Lay-person first aid is important, especially in a country where healthcare professionals are hard to find. They are few and far in between, especially in non-clinical settings. I may need to splint a broken leg halfway down Mt. Tahan. Or I may need to treat a snatch-thieve victim for shock on the way to work. Or I may need to safe a chocking neice. Who knows?

Do onto others as you wish that they should do to you. I learn first aid because I may need it one day, and so may others. (heck, I’ve been in plenty of situations where good knowledge of first aid and infection control would have save me and others some pain and some trouble). I learn first aid because I hope, in some bizarre twist of karma, that if I ever need medical help, someone suitably equipped will be there to help me.

WHAT is wrong with people!!!! HOW can anyone not understand the importance of first aid and cpr and heimleich and c-spine immobilisation and etc etc etc!!!! HOW can anyone think ’someone else will know it’. Gosh…. people…. sigh…. (is it people of the world in general? Or is it just the tidak apa attitude of Malaysians? Probably a bit of both, but I encounter a lot more ‘tidak apa’ (couldn’t care less) from Malaysians than I do elsewhere. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Kopitiam

I was having lunch in KL with some friends today, and by and by we ended up drinking chinese tea and discussing Malaysian politics. The session evolved into an intriguing Q&A session with some interesting questions. One of them was concerning the racial harmony we had around the Merdeka years and whether we’ll ever have that level of communication, cooperation and friendship between the races ever again.

A friend then mentioned that she liked going to old chinese kopitiams, specifically the ones where she can see her grandfather with his Malay and Indian friends who may’ve worked in both the government and private sectors sitting around one table and talking about everything under the sun. That sight used to be pretty common 20 years ago, and it was a dime a dozen 40 years back. But as that generation of people decrease in numbers, so too do these picture perfect sightings of true friendship between the different races. The only other place we can think off where we’ve encountered these sightings are in overseas Malaysian communities. In cities like London where there are large numbers of Malaysians working, it is also common. They would generally be aged above 25 and have a stable job. Some may be married with young children. The most common topics of conversation for these two groups are the same. They reminisce about Malaysia and the past, and they talk about the current state of Malaysia – its shortcomings and its politics.

Is there anything in common which unite these two very different groups of people, who do the same thing in similar surroundings?  Yes.  Neither are very much affected by current government policies.  One group is retired and has nary a worry in the world, and the other group have pretty much migrated out of the country.  They do not feel the recent racial tensions caused by keris-wavers, nor the gender-inequality by the bumbung-leak-commenters, etc etc.  In short, they are unaffected by it, and thus they can talk about it among themselves without feeling stressed out or wound up.  The people who are affected by it talk about it too, but only in little groups they feel cormfortable with, because there is no longer any communication, cooperation or friendship between the races.

What happened to the frienship?  Why are the only people who can maintain these friendships people who are unaffected by the government policies.  Is the lack of racial harmony a reflection of what 50 years of Merdeka has done to the country?  Are we better off for it?  Tepuk dada tanya selera……

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

Not Always Boleh

As we reach our 50th birthday and cries of “Malaysia Boleh” ring out, we should really reflect on this a bit. I am one of those who always find the constant shouts of “Malaysia Boleh” a bit tiresome. Not to be a spoilsport or anything, it’s just that sometimes our focus on what we boleh (can) seems very shallow.

I cannot express how much I admire Malaysians who can sail solo around the world, climb Everest, explore Antartica and brave the English Channel. These truly great feats and the glory achieved by many of them reflects on us, and motivates others to try and do similar things. I do however, have a problem with are the types of Malaysia Boleh feats that have to do with creating the longest popiah, the most number of teh tarik pulls, the most number of satay eaten, etc. No doubt everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame, but after that, what ? Will the person who ate the most number of durians ever be featured in Hari Ini Dalam Sejarah ?

As we scramble to get into some book of recordsfor things we boleh do, I wonder if we ever reflect on the things we tak boleh (cannot) do ? Here is a partial list, in no particular order :

• We tak boleh talk about so many things because they are deemed too sensitive for some unknown people’s ears. Thus there are so many things swept under the carpet now that we can hardly walk without tripping.We tak boleh complain about the govrnment on many issues.
• The women tak boleh feel safe in public because if something happens to them, it’s always their fault.
• We tak boleh be trusted to decide for ourselves whether a movie is good or bad.
• Young people tak boleh be given information about the many bad things that could happen to themeven though this could safe their lives.
• Universities tak boleh be left with more women students.
• We tak boleh ask why the government have some ruling or other.
• We tak boleh, tak boleh, tak boleh talk about religion even though sometimes the implementation of religious rulings can make our lives miserable.
• We tak boleh coplain when cars are triple parked and blocking traffic on Fridays because, hey, what is a human law when it is broken to commune with God ?
• We tak boleh be sure if anything we do will be judged on its own merits; we must get some dato’ or VIP to help us.
• We tak boleh point out contradictions in our society.
• We tak boleh act as if we know how to think and give our opinions.
• We tak boleh trust our young people even though one day, whether we like it or not, they will take over the country.
• We tak boleh deny the fact that Siti Nurhaliza is a lot more influentioal than most politicians. But then Siti tak boleh make us feel miserable.

Every day it seems we are encouraged to do things to prove we are the best, biggest, brightest. But rarely are we ever encouraged to be thinking and compassionate Human beings with opinions of our own, especially if those opinions are different from the norm.
Are we to show Malaysia Boleh only in harmless non-threatening ways even though these often have no long term benefit ? Or should we really be challenging ourselves in our minds and hearts, so that we can make a better Malaysia ?

**Adapted and modified from an article published in The Star (2003) **

Fantasies and woes

Disclaimer: This post is a hypothetical fantasy. Any resemblance to real life people or events are coincidental and unintended.

I have an imaginary friend. He is a malay. His got 3 or 4 degrees. He speaks fluent English, Spanish, Italian, Malay, and some french too. He volunteers at the local chapter of an international organisation. This organisation is pretty multiracial at grassroots level. It has roughly 250,000 youth (below-18) members in Malaysia. The top rungs of the organisation however, have quite a strong malay presence. Many of them are politicians. It has come my knowledge that many of the top brass doesn’t like my friend. They do not like him because he is hardworking, he loves what he do, he doesn’t do it for money or fame, and he basically does not subscribe to their crooked values and politics.

A certain group of people in the top brass labels my friend as ‘bukan melayu tulen.’ They label him thus because of his good values. Is that ridiculous? You decide. There is also another imaginary character in this story.. Call him the villian if you will. He is a school principal sometimes masquerading as the coffee boy of the top brass. Yep, he has been entrusted by the government of the country to impart knowledge and values to children. He can barely communicate in English, and when he visited England recently, he had to hang on to my friend, or other members of the delegation, because he could not communicate. Because of his shortcomings, he hates and resents my friend not only for speaking English, but for speaking Spanish and half a dozen other languages as well. He is a big big fan of the ‘bukan melayu tulen’ movement.  By his definition, the melayu tulen cannot speak any other languages besides malay fluently, do not love their work, resent everyone who are smarter than them, did not study abroad, did not volunteer abroad, and must have an IQ lower than 100.  The top brass are exempted because, well, they are the top brass… right?

He isn’t the top brass, but he supports the top brass. I imagine that the top brass don’t really care about melayu tulen or not. But they support the sentiment in their coffee boys because it helps them. It helps them to have stupid people under them who label their peers. Its bad politics and does nothing for the development of the organisation or the country, but they support it because it keeps them in power. People who do not question and do not doubt also do not stage uprisings, so they are good to keep below them. But people like this also do not think, do not improvise, and do not solve problems.

A ship requires a crew who are trained, disciplined but also intelligent. A ship with old brass growing older and a crew of coffee boys without brains would be hard asked to sail. It hunches when asked to stand straight, it speaks manglish with no sign of embarassment, even though everyone around them cringes, and it will crumble at the first sign of true adversity. The 250,000 builders may keep the ship from sinking, but will it sail? Or will it remain moored in dry dock, with no hope of ever entering the international arena?

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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Gender Segregation in National Service

All-female training camps for National Service may be available soon. This idea was apparently suggested by parents. Yep, you heard me – PARENTS. These concerned guardians think that gender separate facilities are not good enough. The gender separation needs to be complete and encompass the whole camp. Female trainees, in their eighteenth year of life, undergoing national unification and integration programmes, will soon be made to do it in an all-girl environment by their parents. Will boys be given the same privilege? Or rather, will the parents of male trainees be given the choice of whether or not their sons go to male-only camps? Right now, the trainees do not have a choice whether to go for the service or not (with exceptions). For the majority, if you’re picked – you go. For a national programme desgined for unification and integration, the authorities are going to allow parents to impose segregation and separation.

The objectives of NS, according to the website, are to increase patriotism, promote racial integration, build good character, encourage volunteerism and to produce an active, intelligent and confident generation. Patriotism is to love and support one’s land and country, together. Racial integration cannot happen without gender equality. Good character, involves appropriate behaviour around everyone. Volunteerism in an equal society means you have to interact with people of both sexes! And lastly, an active, intelligent and confident generation should be able to display all three traits in everyday life. If we women are not cormfortable in the presence of men, how are we to be active, intelligent, and confident? Unless we segregate everyone and everything we do from birth till death (which will be a disaster for national unity and integration), segregation in national service will NOT benefit anyone.

The phenomena of cotton wool parents is a common one, and while I can comprehend it, I cannot empathise with it. The national service trainees are in their 18th year of life. At least half of them will turn 18 before or during their service. These trainees are only a few months away from becoming legal adults. The service program is as much about preparing them to face life and its adversities as it is about unificaton and integration. What sort of message are we sending them through gender separation? That the world is divided into male and female? That while the city and its building are moving to the future, society is moving to the past? Are we? Please let us not return to the days when doctors examined patients by poking around with a pencil because they were of the opposite gender.

Excerpt from original article:

Training camps for girls only?

25 Mar 2007
Alang Bendahara

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KUALA LUMPUR: Female trainees for the National Service may soon have the option of checking into an all-female training camp.

This is provided the proposal by NS Training Council chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye is accepted by the government.Lee said he had submitted the proposal to Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, who is also Defence Minister.”The council decided the idea is feasible and has suggested an experimental camp be established soon,” Lee said after attending the Malaysian Crime Prevention Foundation annual general meeting in Bukit Aman yesterday.

Lee said the idea was mooted by parents who felt it was wise to have an all-women NS camp.

He said the proposal called for all trainers and even the camp commandant to be women.

 

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.