It’s war – mostly online

We should be grateful that the war of words doesn’t actually spill blood because otherwise the cyber sphere would be strewn with dead bodies by now. Still, there must be a lot of wounded.

IN 1982, two largish nations went to war over a tiny group of islands. One of them, Argentina, decided to assert a long-standing claim over the islands they call the Malvinas. Unfortunately, the islands had long been a British “dependent territory”.

One country saw it as a “re-occupation” while the other saw it as an invasion. And so the Falklands War began, ending only 72 days later with 649 Argentine military personnel, 255 British military personnel and three Falkland islanders dead.

I don’t want to go into the politics of that war but it was between two countries trying to protect their sovereignty. Unlike the Iraq-Kuwait war in 1990, the war between Great Britain and Argentina remained between just those two countries.

Eleven years later, a group of people representing no country “attacked” the United States and set off wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and basically changed the world for the worst, with many deaths, mostly of innocent civilians.

All of this to me seems to point to one thing, which is that war doesn’t make sense. Which is why we should be careful when declaring war on anyone.

In the last few weeks, a ragtag band of people have occupied a bit of our territory mostly to draw attention to their alleged claims to that piece of land.

We took a while to realise that they were serious, and seriously armed, and once we did, suddenly it was war.

Now I use the word “war” loosely here, meaning that our authorities finally decided that they had to deal with this group aggressively.

We could not actually declare war on another country because no country had invaded us, only the delusional citizens of a neighbouring one.

This fine point seems to have been lost on some. All at once, “war” broke out, mostly online. We should be grateful that the war of words doesn’t actually spill blood because otherwise the cyber sphere would be strewn with dead bodies by now. Still, there must be a lot of wounded.

Suddenly, otherwise mild and liberal people turned belligerent and the baying for blood abounded. Patriotism morphed into nationalism, then into plain old-fashioned jingoism. Flags flew high and fervent prayers for victory were said.

Those of us who were shocked by the gall of these people scrambled around to get more information.

The appalling lack of it on our side pointed to one obvious deficit in our country: there is hardly anyone here who can explain what this is all about.

This invariably led us to scour the news sites in the Philippines for some explanation of these people and their claims.

While some of the Philippine media are just as sensationalist as ours, the more serious ones published several articles by academics with a good grasp of the historical background of those islands where the invaders come from.

On our side, we have only one academic who, at this time of writing, has done 26 interviews on the subject.

Unfortunately, not everybody is interested in nuance and historical background. Suddenly because it is “war”, everything becomes acceptable, including violent name-calling.

I began to understand the real effect and relevance of Bush’s “war on terror”, how it made jingoism in the United States acceptable and how demo­cracy could be so easily suspended. Already we are possibly seeing some “collateral damage”.

In times like these, talking about peace becomes politically incorrect. To be properly patriotic, one must shake one’s spears and not hold out bouquets of flowers.

Yet this was what a group of young people did last Friday in a project called Ops Bunga. They went to the Philippine embassy to place bunches of flowers as a gesture of peace towards our neighbours.

A tiny gesture but a much needed calming one, a moment of solidarity among Malaysians and a hand extended in friendship.

It is instructive that in moments of tension, it is almost always young people who think up positive ideas to smooth the waters.

Resolutely apolitical, these young ones refuse to allow any hijacking of the issue by politicians. Indeed, they could be said to be a response to the political grandstanding that often accompanies these events.

Meanwhile, I have to wonder where our usual rabble rousers are, the ones who are ever ready to pick fights with their fellow citizens, yet who have become strangely silent. Confused maybe?

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My shopping list

Though nobody has officially announced the date of the general election, an official announcement now seems redundant as some have already been campaigning for about two years.

ONE morning, my breakfast was marred by someone with a loudhailer announcing a political ceramah in my neighbourhood.

Then I found an infestation of political party flags and banners by the roadside near my house.

For a moment I thought I must have missed the news: Had the Parliament been dissolved already?

In a few days, the flags and banners disappeared. Apparently, they were put up by one party to coincide with the ceramah by another party. How this is meant to influence votes is unclear to me.

Despite so-called rules, it is clear to anyone that there are lots of people revving up to have an election.

In fact, some of them have been campaigning already for about two years.

Yet nobody has officially announced the general election. Indeed, an official announcement now seems redundant.

So let’s just say the general election is on but only the actual polling day is unknown, a fact that is the source of quite a bit of irritation since nobody can make plans for anything.

Everyone is adopting a wait-and-see attitude because they don’t know what will happen.

Recently, Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia announced their next general election date a full nine months ahead of time.

Her reason was that it “enables individuals, investors and consumers to plan their year. It gives shape and order to their year.”

No doubt our year has been bent out of shape because of the constant speculation. Maybe it does make sense to have a designated date for the elections like the Americans.

Then nobody can pretend that they are not campaigning when in fact they are.

Having put up with all manner of ridiculous political one-upmanship for the past year or so, now we have to tolerate even more.

There may be many who made up their minds a long time ago but for some of us, it ain’t much of a choice.

Perhaps that’s why I’m one of the few people who have not received any SMS greetings, invitations to gatherings or boxes of oranges by my local friendly potential candidates.

They all know doing any of these things is likely to raise their irritability factor with me.

If any potential government is at all interested in what this one person thinks, I will outline a few things I would tick against their box if I were comparing my choices.

You can call it my comparative shopping list.

Firstly, I am looking for leadership, a statesman or woman who is ready to make a stand about what’s right and what’s wrong, someone who’s not scared of every shadow in case shadows vote.

I’d like someone who knows how to draw the line between good behaviour and bad, and doesn’t throw up his or her hands to disclaim responsibility when other parties behave badly, obviously on his or her behalf.

I cannot possibly teach my children good manners and ethics if there are public bad examples like these.

Secondly, I am looking for bridgebuilders and peacemakers, the sort of people who know how to turn down the temperature, not raise it up for political expediency.

I’d like to see someone who reaches out and builds bridges with sincerity, and doesn’t feel the need to bring along lots of media when he or she does it.

Thirdly, I really want a politician to say out loud that he or she believes that men and women are equal. Really, is it that difficult?

Fourthly, I’d like to hear someone say that we are part of the community of nations of the world and we will stop thinking we are different and better in everything.

There are global standards that we should adhere to, and some so-called “poorer” countries are doing better than us in some areas. Otherwise, no need for participation at international forums or even study tours. What would be the point?

Fifthly, when people say they want us to be progressive, they really mean it in every way. Not just in terms of technology and hardware but also in attitudes towards education, towards women and young people, towards those in need.

And sixthly, I’d like “moderate” to mean in terms of spending, in terms of politicking, in terms of word and deed. And that moderation is not just for foreign consumption but also for us at home.

Surely that’s a shopping list that isn’t too difficult to fulfil?

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It’s possible to be a builder of bridges

For so long we have managed to live together quite happily, regardless of race or religious differences.

THEY say fact is often stranger than fiction. Well, real life can often be better than slogans.

Long before we had this slogan about being all one, Malaysians already were.

We went about our lives familiar with diversity, used to being citizens of many different hues.

I suppose it’s true when we say that we are not in fact a racist people, just that when something happens – an economic crisis, political insecurity – then we express ourselves through racist behaviour.

In Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, he shows how inter-racial or inter-tribal conflict often arises out of some economic issue, over land, food or some other ingredient essential to survival.

But the point is, when everything is going fine, people are not really racist and would probably remain so, even in troubled times if opportunists did not stir things up.

After all it is as much a choice to explain things through economics as it is through a racist lens.

I for one generally believe that our people are essentially good, especially if left alone.

For so long we have managed to live together quite happily, regardless of race or religious differences.

And we have numerous real-life examples to prove it.

A friend was telling me about a family he met in Sabah that comprises a brother who is a Christian priest and a sister who is an ustazah.

Both had made conscious choices to take these paths in life, and they remain loving siblings.

In Sabah and Sarawak, it is not a situation that anybody bats an eyelid at.

In the peninsula, in urban areas I think there are many more of these mixed families than we really know.

While it may be unusual to find such a situation among siblings, it is not unusual inter-generationally.

That is, the parents may be of one religion and the children another.

Nor would it be unusual among cousins and in-laws.

I know one family where each daughter married a Christian, a Muslim and a Jew, respectively.

Thus, their children would be all cousins of different religions. Last I heard it wasn’t an issue.

When I worked in HIV, too, neither race nor religion was an issue in our everyday work.

Since we were dealing with a virus that doesn’t care what anyone believes in, neither could we discriminate against anyone if we wanted to be effective.

We are all human with a common enemy.

It did not make any sense to fight it individually in our own little corners.

I know of one story that truly illustrates how Malaysians can be caring without looking at people’s race or religion.

It also shows how the lack of political interference can allow people to be easily humane and compassionate.

Several years ago, our army and police peacekeepers in Timor Leste befriended some orphans and took their orphanage under their wing.

In the course of this, our medical corps realised that some of these orphans were in dire need of medical treatment that could not be found in that very poor country.

So they arranged for them to be flown to Malaysia and one by one, each got the treatment they needed and most of them recovered very well.

Today, 12 of the original 17 are still here studying because the Malaysians who cared for them realised that for them to have any chance at all in life, they had to be educated here.

And here’s the best thing of all: these orphans are being looked after by a whole array of Malaysians who have simply ignored any racial or religious differences in order to do the best they can for these kids.

Timorese are very devout Catholics but the army and police personnel who have been looking out for them are mostly Muslims.

They organised their medical treatment and since they have been living here, often take them out for treats, invite them for Hari Raya open houses and lavish much affection on them.

Additionally, a group of ladies from a Buddhist society helps to fund their groceries while others from various religious and social backgrounds assist in fundraising for their schooling and other daily needs.

A local doctor – Muslim – lets them stay in a house he owns rent-free and doesn’t fuss when they hang up religious pictures or builds a nativity scene at Christmas.

Every time I visit, my heart swells with pride at how generous and hospitable Malaysians have been towards these kids.

Not only are these orphans getting a school education, they are also learning that people of different races and religions can live in peace together and not have to descend into civil war like their home country did.

It is possible to be bridge-builders. As long as we don’t listen to politicians.

■ If anyone would like to help the Timorese kids in Malaysia, please contact Touch of Hope Charitable Society (Secretary: Ms Chua Lay Choo at melakanyonya@yahoo.co.uk).

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Not slogans but action

Both sides seem to campaign on the premise that voting for the other side means a dubious future. But what I would really like to know is how voting for any side would lead to a bright future.

SOMETIMES I am prone to wonder what politics, and politicians, are for. Are they there to make life better for us by leading us, or are they there for some other reason which has very little to do with us?

I ask this because despite the ever-shifting election date, there is no doubt that election campaigning has begun. Every day we get told by one side that voting for the other side is a very bad idea.

If we vote for one side, we are told, our lives will become even more miserable although it is neither clear how, nor why it would be even more than it is today.

The other side, on the other hand, then tells us that voting for the incumbent means more of the same misery.

What is beginning to be obvious to me is that if we vote for either side, we’ll wind up miserable. That’s hardly what I would call a choice.

The default setting for all our politicians, regardless of who they are, seems to be to automatically disagree with whatever the other side does.

Indeed one of our esteemed ministers was quoted to have said that it is the duty of those on his side of the bench to oppose whatever those on the other side says.

That, to me, sounds as if he is also saying ‘leave your conscience and your brain to one side and just do what you’re supposed to do’.

Which really makes me wonder where that leaves the rest of us.

We are wooed like reluctant lovers every five years with every conceivable goodie thrown at us by the incumbent.

The other side, not quite having the wherewithal, tries to persuade us that more of the same is not really what we want. They may be right but on the other hand they can’t really tell us what it is that we need either.

There are plenty of issues that I don’t trust either side on.

For a start, I don’t believe that either side is good for women, both being equally conservative. Neither side, for instance, has promised to put more women in ministerial positions.

In fact, neither has even mentioned that they would put more women candidates up for election, obviously thinking that this would mean fewer places for male ones.

Even if they did have women ministers, what’s the bet that they would still hold the ‘soft’ and ‘feminine’ ministries, like the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry or Tourism Ministry instead of the more prestigious ones like Finance, Education or Trade and Industry?

Both sides seem to campaign on the premise that voting for the other side means a dubious future. But what I would really like to know is how voting for any side would lead to a bright future.

In fact I’d like them to sketch out that bright future for us all, one where we would really be united, working towards some common goals. I’d like to be able to have some hope instead of all the doom and gloom that voting for the ‘wrong’ side will inevitably bring us.

Right now voting for anyone makes me feel like I’m caught between the proverbial devil and the deep blue sea.

It would be great if some of our political leaders would say “if I were elected, I would bring us all together because we have no time to be disunited.”

And really mean it, with real action instead of hiding behind sloganeering.

But why do we even leave our future in the hands of politicians?

A recent survey by a public relations company found that most people have very little trust in their politicians, corporations and media.

Yet we are still stuck in a system where the running of our country is still entrusted to the very people we mistrust.

Every day I find this making less and less sense. There are non-politicians who have much more common sense than the average YB. And really, do we need any special skill beyond common sense to run this country?

I guess what I wish is for normality to return rather than this hate-filled divisive climate that we have to endure these days.

If Mitt Romney’s campaign sounds like a war on women and anyone who isn’t white and rich, our election campaigns sound like a war on everybody, even though it is the same ‘everybody’ who has to vote our government in. If that makes sense, I don’t get it.

Maybe what we should do is instead of the political parties putting up candidates, we the people should just name whom we want and vote them in, regardless of affiliation.

I bet we’d really get a good team there.

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The fuzzy side of human perception

We often like to believe what we want to believe, often because the real facts challenge us too much. It is far easier to wallow in our prejudices than to seek out the truth in anything.

LANCE Armstrong is no ordinary cyclist. He has won seven Tour de France trophies after having recovered from testicular cancer.

By all accounts that would make him superhuman. Unless you believe he doped himself with high-performance drugs.

Recently, he gave up the fight against the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) to prove his innocence, which meant that although he had already retired from cycling, he was banned from any competitive cycling and stripped of all his titles.

To many, his giving up meant that he was guilty. But as one US columnist pointed out, he had passed 500 dope tests already.

It was only the testimony of 10 people who said they saw him taking the drugs that kept the USADA on his back.

The whole case illustrates how fallible any human endeavour can be.

On the one hand, cycling is a sport riddled with doping scandals. So it is normal to suspect any super-achiever of cheating.

On the other hand, it is also a sport where drug tests are routine.

So either the tests are no good or Armstrong did not cheat. We can’t have it both ways.

And sports is a field where the means of testing are extremely rigorous.

The poor Chinese swimmer who won a gold medal at the Olympics and then immediately faced accusations of doping also passed her test. But what really shut people up was when people like Michael Phelps stood up for her.

Either they’re all in on it, or she simply was superb.

Human perception can therefore be fuzzy.

We often like to believe what we want to believe, often because the real facts challenge us too much.

It is far easier to wallow in our prejudices than to seek out the truth in anything.

Now imagine a field that is as impossible to subject to empirical testing like politics.

There is probably no field more vulnerable to the vagaries of human foibles and prejudices than politics, except perhaps religion.

And in some cases, the two fields are conflated allowing for even more vulnerabilities.

There are many people who refuse to believe that religion can be subject to human interpretation. They believe that whatever they believe is true.

That is often because they have been told that by someone else whom they believe has some authority.

Therefore, if that person tells them something that is in fact incorrect, they will not verify it. Nor will they believe it could ever be wrong. In this way, myths work their way into beliefs and then are difficult to challenge.

For example, for years many Muslims believed that the recently deceased astronaut Neil Armstrong heard the azan when he was on the moon and that made him convert into Islam.

There has never been proof of either phenomenon and the man himself repeatedly denied it.

But as soon as he died, the myth is repeated all over again.

Similarly, once an E-mail went around with photographs of the graves of the supposed giants that once roamed the earth.

This E-mail circulated among lots of otherwise well-educated people but all it took was a little research into the origins of the photos to show that it was a clever photoshop exercise. But how easily we can be fooled when we so want to believe in something.

Perhaps we are so easily fooled because we are often too lazy to check on anything.

This is why it is so easy for some people to pull the wool over our eyes, or the kepiah to keep things localised.

Someone just needs to have a facility with words, preferably in a foreign language, throwing in some difficult to challenge “facts” and they’ve got us.

Furthermore, we all like to think of ourselves as objective persons, able to assess everything in a clear rational way.

I can’t count how many times men say things about women’s issues, without the slightest inkling how insensitive and crass they sound.

One had the gall to attend a women’s conference and then talk about how much he loved women.

I guess he assumed we would all smile and be grateful.

Similarly, when talking about politics, everyone thinks they are being absolutely objective and rational.

But with few exceptions, I have to wonder.

Few people spend time with people with different views from them so they rarely get any insights into alternate perspectives.

Sometimes people can even be persuaded to believe in things they used to oppose if someone they believed in persuaded them to.

Which goes to show that just as in cycling, stringent tests dealing with facts mean very little when it comes to politics.

Worse still when one stirs religion into the brew.

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