A whole river of swear words..

.. And this coming from someone who doesn’t swear. (Other than the occasional ‘bloody’, I swear I don’t swear!)

From Malaysiakini:

Deputy Education Minister Mohd Puad Zarkashi has said that speaking English in the workplace is “weird” and harmful to the nation’s culture and identity.

[...]

“We are polluting our own culture and identity as a nation,” he said.

This is the Deputy Education Minister speaking here. The freakin’ Deputy Education Minister. This is the person currently second-in-charge of our entire future. The future of our nation. Why do I say so? Because it is through education that we get our future leaders. For better of for worse, it is through the education system that we mold and shape the leaders we get in the next generation.

And here we have the Deputy telling us that speaking English in the workplace is ‘weird’?! Harmful to the nation’s culture and identity?

What exactly is our culture and identity?

If I may say, from a Malaysian who has been overseas for 3 years now, foreigners think of Malaysians as people who can speak at least 2 different languages. At least. English being one of them. To them, speaking English as part of daily life IS our culture.

Sure, we might not speak enough of Malay, which is actually kind of sad. I am all for speaking Malay. In fact, I endorse the idea that every single Malaysian should be able to speak Malay like it is our native tongue. But to go so far as to claim that speaking English is ‘polluting our own culture and identity as a nation’?

Don’t kid yourself. English is very much part of urban culture in Malaysia.

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Then there’s also this, from the Malaysian Insider:

Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan today said those who questioned police action in shooting suspects should consider whether they wanted to support those who upheld the law or the criminals.

The value of life has suddenly been decreased to something insignificant.

I distinctly remember learning this nilai back when I studied Pendidikan Moral. Sayang kepada nyawa. The IGP might want to look that up.

Do I support criminals? Hell no. But can I not question the way the police dealt with this? As an individual, am I not allowed to think that the police have acted excessively? Am I not allowed to feel that a life is a life is a life, and that life should not be shrugged away so easily? Am I not allowed to sayang kepada nyawa?

Just because I sayang kepada nyawa, I support criminals?

*

This is why there’s a whole river of swear words running through my head. A torrential downpour of swear words.

Penan girls’ rape probe – What exactly is happening?

I am rather disturbed by this article in The StarOnline:

And now, the Sarawak police have confirmed that they will no longer investigate the alleged rapes any further after Deputy Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Ismail Omar issued a statement saying the police considered the matter closed.

On Thursday, Ismail said in Kuching that the police had done all they could, but the probe had gone nowhere due to lack of evidence and lack of cooperation from the alleged victims and from the non-governmental organisation that had exposed the alleged rapes.

“We did not push the issue away nor did we try to hide anything. We were very open about the investigations and have cooperated with the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as well as Datuk Seri Shahrizat’s (Abdul Jalil) ministry to uncover the truth,” he said.

When asked Saturday if the Sarawak police would reopen the case if there was new evidence, Sarawak Police Commissioner Datuk Mohmad Salleh said: “I will not talk about this Penan issue anymore’’.

[...]

The 22-year old Penan woman from the Long Item settlement lodged two police reports, in Long Lama and in Marudi, claiming an NGO had forced her to say that she was raped by the loggers.

She claimed they had duped her into going to Kuala Lumpur, confined her for three months and then forced to lodge a police report at Bukit Aman crying rape.

She further claimed the NGO and reporters had told her they could help her get medical treatment for her sick child in Kuala Lumpur if she followed them.

On Saturday, The Star called Marudi police chief Deputy Supt Jonathan Jalin for an update on her report but he declined to comment, saying he was outstation.

It is learnt however that the probe on the woman’s report has also reached a dead-end as police have failed to trace the people from the NGO concerned.

*My thanks to Choo for posting the link on Facebook.

What is going on?

It has been more than a year since this issue first surfaced. More than one year. And now, this is what happens?

Something fishy is going on. That this issue has carried on for so long without seeing any light at the end of the tunnel is already a very disturbing fact. Why does it take the authorities such a long time to clear the issue up? More than one year since the issue was made known, and even more years since the alleged incidents started happening. This is the kind of issue that does not permit any dilly-dallying. But evidently that’s what has been happening.

The Penan girls have been put under so much public attention and pressure over something that is so private and personal. Can anyone start to imagine what kind of stress they would have been put under? Does anyone actually care?

I don’t know about the ‘about-turn’ that one of the women made. I don’t know what it is, whether what she’s saying now is real, or what she was saying then is real.

But from reading the article, one can clearly see that this case is going nowhere. And the police have also announced in no uncertain terms that they are closing this case, and they “don’t want to talk about it anymore”.

Isn’t that a little too convenient? Are all cases supposed to be easily solved?

They may not want to “talk about it anymore”, but I surely do. I want to see this case closed, but closed with a definite conclusion. Not with “lack of evidence and cooperation”.

Commencement address by Paul Hawken

We were read this commencement address today during lecture. I found it so touching and meaningful, I’m going to share snippets of it here, and direct you to the website to read the whole of it.

We are, indeed, in a world today where things are a-changing. No more are we so isolated that we only care for those immediately related to us. Nor are we so detached that we couldn’t care less what was happening on the other side of the world.

Here are some snippets:

If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.

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What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.

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We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.

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The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful.

**

Read that last quote I pulled out. Then read it again. If that ain’t beautiful, I don’t know what is.

The whole commencement address can be found HERE. Read, think, and then be hopeful. We’ll get there.

Long term planning

I’ve been bad at updating the blog regularly. There have undoubtedly been many things occuring during the time I was ‘absent’. And though I haven’t been writing or posting anything, I honestly do care about what has been happening.

What’s prompted me to post something today, is this small part in an article I found on The Nut Graph:

There has been no lack of intentions and planning to overcome the problems relating to transportation and infrastructure in Malaysia.  As stated in the Ninth Malaysia Plan, “[m]easures will be implemented to improve multimodal public transport, particularly in urban areas, to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution” and “[p]ublic transport facilities and services will be graded and further integrated to encourage a modal shift from private vehicle usage to public transport.”

It should be good news, really, that the Malaysia Plan will include improvements to the current public transport system. What I find disturbing, is the whole focus of improving public transport is to “reduce traffic congestion and air pollution”.

I’m not saying that those aren’t problems. But there needs to be a little bit of perspective here. Traffic congestion and air pollution aren’t the only things that trouble us. There is also this issue of burning too much fossil fuels.

In other words, petrol is not something that doesn’t run out. Despite reassurances that we will be able to find more sources to extract petroleum, there is only so much left for us to find and extract. Petroleum is a finite resource. But we’re using it like as if it’ll last forever.

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Reading this part of the article, I can’t help but be reminded of when I was still in secondary school, and we were asked to write essays about issues like this. Things like ‘traffic congestion’ and ‘air pollution’ were almost always found in everyone’s essay. We didn’t know anything more than what we could see in front of us. Almost none of us bothered to think about generations after us, when they would have to live with the residue of our way of living today.

It feels odd, if not disappointing, that our ministers and representatives have visions that go only as far as secondary school students’ visions.

It is not enough for them to only see the problems that we’re facing today, and come up with solutions that fix those problems. We need people to be able to project 10-20 years into the future, see the problems that could exist, and come up with solutions that can be implemented now, so that those problems would not exist 20 years down the road.

We need leaders who can tell us what the impacts on future generations are if we continue living the way we are today. We need urban planners who can create places that not only look nice, but actually function as urban centres that people enjoy being in. We need smarter solutions to problems such as flash floods other than just building massive drain after massive drain.

We need long-term plans.

We need people who can come up with long-term plans.

Where is the love?

From the Malaysian Insider HERE (highlights my own):

A group of Malay-Muslim protesters claiming to be residents of Section 23 have threatened bloodshed unless the state government stopped the construction of a Hindu Temple.Amid chants of “Allahuakbar,” the group also left the severed head of a cow at the entrance of the State Secretariat here as a warning to Selangor Mentri Besar Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim.

[...]

“I challenge YB Khalid, YB Rodziah and Xavier Jeyakumar to go on with the temple construction. I guarantee bloodshed and racial tension will happen if this goes on, and the state will be held responsible,” shouted Ibrahim Haji Sabri amid strong chants of “Allahu Akbar!”

Ibrahim identified himself as the Deputy Chairman of the Resident’s Committee against the building of the temple in S23 here, which is perceived by some as being a Muslim majority area.

[...]

Mohd. Zurit Bin Ramli, who claims to be the secretary of the “Coalition of Malaysian NGOs” echoed Ibrahim’s stand on the matter, saying that it was irresponsible on the part of the state government to approve the construction as there was apparently a “90 per cent” majority Muslim population in Section 23.“With a temple on our residential area, we cannot function properly as Muslims. The temple will disrupt our daily activities like prayers in the Surau. We cannot concentrate with the sounds coming from the temple,” stated Zurit.

There is absolutely zero decency in this.

This group of individuals give Islam a very bad name. The Islam I know is nothing like what they are exemplifying here.

I may not be Muslim, but I know that Islam does not condone violence. Islam does not condone racial or religious segregation. Islam encourages acceptance and respect amongst different people who are of different faiths.

Islam is not like this.

I am now so disturbed, words fail me.

They actually brought a severed head of a cow to the State Secretariat building. They wouldn’t have done that if they didn’t know that the cow is sacred in Hinduism. And yet they did that, knowingly disrespecting those of the Hindu faith.

They said that with the temple in the residential area, they ‘cannot function properly as Muslims’. I don’t believe this. I believe that Muslims who believe strongly in their own faith can and will find it in themselves to respect the need of people from other faiths to fulfill their religious obligations. I believe that they can and will find in themselves their connection to Allah, whether or not there is a temple nearby.

I believe Muslims who believe strongly in their own faith will not do something like this.

Islam is. Not. Like. This.

This is beyond any damned line we can draw. It’s beyond political, beyond racial, and beyond religious lines. Human decency crosses all those lines. This action crosses all lines of human decency.

Where is the love?