A wish list of freedoms

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday August 31, 2011
A wish list of freedoms
MUSINGS By MARINA MAHATHIR
newsdesk@thestar.com.my


We still need the fundamental freedoms that every human being desires, especially freedom of speech and expression. Our foreparents understood 54 years ago that we had a fundamental right to freedom and self-determination.

FIRST of all, let me wish everyone Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri. Also, as the days happen to almost coincide this year, Selamat Hari Merdeka. In many ways, this is very significant.

Raya is the day we free ourselves from a month of abstinence and restraint. Ramadan is a time for reflection on what good we have, or have not, done over the past year. It is a time to ask for forgiveness for our past sins and mistakes, and hurt we may have caused others.

Sadly, this Ramadan has hardly been an exemplary one. With insults galore, shouting and screaming, burning and threats, it has hardly been one of restraint and reflection, at least on the part of public figures. Nor was there any sense of shame at these violations of the good and holy month.

Since Raya coincides with Merdeka this year, I thought I would write a list of freedoms we should give ourselves in these coming months, besides the freedom to now eat.

First, let us have Freedom from Imagined Slights. I am sick and tired of the people who have nothing better to do than scour the media for all sorts of insults, while at the same time feeling entitled to slight others.

Some people’s skin is stretched so thinly over their rounded bulks it’s a wonder it hasn’t ripped. Every little imagined offence calls for protests and demos, almost always outside mosques after Friday prayers. One wonders if God feels slighted at this trespassing on His property, which should be oases of calm and tranquility.

As a corollary to that, let us also have Freedom from One-Sided Prosecutions. For example, some people seem to insist on having the monopoly on being sensitive. Everyone else is assumed to have thick skin, so much so that it is now apparently OK to insult people to their faces.

Thus, action is taken only when they have been offended, but never when they offend others. One has to wonder what is so great about displaying such thin skin? Won’t you wither under the sun?

Let us also demand Freedom from the Forgetful Politician, that is, those who forgot who voted them in. First off are those who insist that we should be grateful that they are there to lead us. Talk about a circular argument!

Then there are those who, although usually insisting that Malaysians are a unique species of people, totally different from everyone else in the world, are then quick to equate those same Malaysians with the worst of foreigners, those who riot, loot and destroy property.

Makes you wonder how that gels with our tourism campaigns. Are we supposed to be nice hospitable people or rioters?

One great freedom that I really wish we would give ourselves is Freedom from Snoopers, especially those intent on sticking their noses into our private lives. If one wants to create a moral society, then let’s widen that definition to include ethics instead of just keeping it totally focused on our sex lives.

A moral society is not just one where everyone behaves well sexually, if such a thing even exists, but also where people feel a strong civic duty to uphold the law, not be corrupt, treat the poorest and most vulnerable well, and protect and preserve the environment.

Instead, we have increasing official “busybodiness” coupled with the encouragement of society to be bu­sybodies. Thus our young feel that they are constantly under suspicion of doing something bad, even when they are not. Does this stop all sorts of social ills? Of course not.

Indeed we should also demand Freedom from the Ostrich, the stick-their-heads-in-the-sand attitude that insists that some things just don’t exist in our country. On the one hand there are people who see a conspiracy under every pebble and on the other there are those who just refuse to connect the dots.

For example, young people don’t have to become pregnant outside marriage if we educate them and provide the services they need to make the best choices. Instead, we refuse to educate them and then blame them for having babies out of wedlock. Some even insist that the solution is to marry them off early.

That’s where we need Freedom from the Short-sighted, those who only think in terms of short-term solutions and not the harm that will come many years down the line.

At heart, however, we still need the fundamental freedoms that every human being desires, especially freedom of speech and expression. Without these, the Snoopers, Ostriches, Short-sighted and all these others will continue to thrive and make our lives miserable.

Our foreparents understood that we had a fundamental right to freedom and self-determination 54 years ago. Let’s not forget that the next time we vote.

Merdeka!

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We are always an ‘exception’

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday August 17, 2011
We are always an ‘exception’
Musings
By Marina Mahathir


Malaysian policies often state that we are different and therefore cannot be compared with others. Yet those who join peaceful marches are likened to British rioters. Suddenly we are the same?

ARE we getting progressively schizophrenic? Judging by current responses to events around the world, it would be easy to conclude that we are.

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that makes it difficult to tell the difference between real and unreal experiences, to think logically, to have normal emotional responses and to behave normally in social situations.

If you read up on Malaysian policies and statements on various issues, the one striking factor is our insistence on exceptionalism. That is, we are different and therefore cannot be compared with any other country.


Fiery aftermath: The violent riots in London left many properties in ruin. — AFP
In the early years of the AIDS pandemic, we thought we were protected because we were different. If non-Muslims in other Muslim countries use the word “Allah” for God with no fuss, ours can’t because we are different. We are apparently unique and incomparable to anyone else in the world.

Which is why it puzzles me that all of a sudden our citizens, or at least the ones who want to voice their opinions with peaceful assemblies and marches, are being compared to British rioters and looters.

If we are always different, how come suddenly we are the same?

Going by the statements of our leaders, basically we are nothing more than savages who would rob, rape, loot and pillage given half the chance. Therefore, we need all sorts of laws to keep us in check and not venture in groups of more than five outside our homes.

Now, this is why that schizophrenic inability to think logically comes into play. Despite evidence that none of the 30,000 or so peaceful marchers last July robbed, raped, looted or pillaged, our leaders insist that we would have. They must be looking at mirrors.

Just a few days ago the fellow who demonstrated how inconvenient a protest is by inconveniencing everyone in Penang declared that he would burn down two online news portals whose reports he disagreed with. Now if that’s not London rioter behaviour, I don’t know what is.

More disturbingly, after already having insulted all the good citizens who exercised their right to peaceful assembly, our leaders go on to insult them some more.

Instead of being proud that we did not have the type of violence that the UK experienced, instead of talking about how so much more civilised our people are, our leaders liken us to rioters who have vandalised, stolen and killed.

Talk about the inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy.

A certain amount of hypocrisy also rears its ugly head. What if Mark Duggan, the man who was shot by police in London and whose family’s peaceful protest became the original rallying cry for the rioters, was Mohamad Duggan?

Between 1987 and 1993 and 2000 and 2005, the Palestinian people went through two uprisings against the Israeli government, known as the First and Second Intifadas, respectively. Both Intifadas involved demonstrations, protests and, yes, a certain amount of violent rioting.

They were met with an even more violent response from the Israelis that resulted in many deaths and the eventual blockade of Gaza, still in force today.

Our government supported the Intifadas then. Does that mean that our government supports the right of Palestinians to demonstrate, protest and riot, but refuses its own people’s right to do much less, that is to just march peacefully?

Or is the logic that when governments are democratically elected, its people then lose the right to protest against them?

Conveniently ignored, too, is the fact that in the UK, protests and demonstrations are held all the time without the type of violence we saw recently.

One of the biggest was in 2003 when hundreds of thousands of people marched against the Iraq war. At the time we looked benignly at this because we had the same stand. Did we tell the Brits and others round the world that they should not demonstrate against the war?

So what is the message here? We may be trusted to peacefully protest as long as the subject of our protest is in sync with the Government’s. Otherwise, if we should protest for free and fair elections, against corruption or anything else that the Constitution gives us the right to, we are labelled as unpatriotic thugs out to disturb the peace and destroy the economy and image of our country.

Looking at the UK riots, are we even talking about the same thing? What cause was the UK rioters espousing?

Some wide reading instead of political posturing might be more beneficial here. The UK rioters did not loot bookshops, and some have suggested it’s because they don’t like to read.

Perhaps they are not unlike some of our politicians.

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The polarised world of politics

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday July 20, 2011
The polarised world of politics
Musings
By Marina Mahathir


Politicians of every stripe have two bad habits. Firstly, they think that those who don’t belong to any political party are incapable of having a single political thought. Secondly, when non-politicians think of a good populist idea, politicians of all stripes rush to hijack it.

George W. Bush, that giant of intellectuals, famously said after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks that “Either you’re with us, or you’re against us.”

Those words unleashed a world polarised by politics with no hope for peace, which necessarily requires a coming to the table of all sides to discuss common issues.

This “Us versus Them” mentality is an affliction that has befallen not only American politicians but many others around the world, including in our own country.

It creates an illness known as hyperpartisanship, which can be defined simply as “if you’re not on my side, you must be wrong.”

It’s the only explanation I can give for the consistently delusional statements that tend to come out from our politicians’ mouths.

To their minds, nobody can be right unless they’re on the same side.

Additionally, if you don’t agree with them, then you must surely be on the “other” side.

Politicians can’t seem to fathom anything but a bipolar world.

They can’t seem to get it into their heads that firstly, there may yet be a third (or fourth, fifth) way of looking at things, and secondly, that the ones with these different perspectives could conceivably be civilians.

Politicians of every stripe have two bad habits.

Firstly, they think those who don’t belong to any political party are incapable of having a single political thought.

They forget that every five years or so, it is they who insist that we think of politics when we go and vote.

Secondly, when non-politicians think of a good populist idea, politicians of all stripes rush to hijack it.

Non-politicians, otherwise known as civil society, then have to fight them off tooth and nail.

How many times have we had politicians turning up at big events organised by non-politicians and trying and making it sound as if it’s a big endorsement of themselves?

Some politicians are certainly more delusional than others.

Since Bersih 2.0 shocked them, they have been working overtime to demonise it.

It is one thing to badmouth the rally in the days before it happened but it’s quite shocking to see the pathetic attempts to paint it as a riot when it was clearly not.

From calling the teargassing “mild” to denying that the police had fired teargas into the Tung Shin Hospital, to trying to check the motives and bank accounts of those who went for the rally, our dear leaders insult us every day.

Yet all they have to do is, instead of surrounding themselves with sycophants who will only tell them what they want to hear, read all the heartrending and heartwarming personal accounts written by the many ordinary people who went to the Bersih 2.0 rally.

These were housewives, retirees and young people, all fearful of what violence they might encounter, but who steeled themselves to go and exercise their right to voice their opinions.

These were people who had probably never done anything more confrontational than argue with a salesperson in their entire lives, who faced teargas and water cannons fired at them by a government they probably voted in.

How much courage does it take to insult your own people from an airconditioned room compared to facing the FRU?

If our leaders think teargas is something mild, they should ask the FRU to try it on them.

I was lucky that day because I chose a route where the police decided not to deploy their gas and water cannons on us.

But many of my friends and colleagues were not so lucky. I feel ashamed that I suffered no more than tiredness, compared with what they so courageously went through.

And all our hapless leaders can do is call them names.

The people who went to Bersih 2.0 are Malaysians who will forever feel united and bound to each other because of that experience. Some may have been politicians and NGOs but so many more were just people of every race, religion, age and creed.

So many have said they never felt more Malaysian than they did that day.

At a time when everyone has been lamenting how divided we are, we came together. What more could we have wished for?

Perhaps we should take another leaf from Sept 11. In the wake of the death and destruction wreaked by the US government to avenge the World Trade Centre deaths, some of the families of those who died, horrified by such violent vengeance, started an NGO called Not In Our Name.

Perhaps those many decent Malaysians, the “silent majority” our leaders like to claim as their own, can come out and say that, even if they disagree with Bersih 2.0, they will not stand by and let their fellow citizens be insulted and abused in this way.

At least, not in their name

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Projecting the preferred image

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday July 6, 2011
Projecting the preferred image
Musings by MARINA MAHATHIR


Deliberately causing problems to solve a problem is an entirely ingenious idea, like blocking the Penang Bridge just to show how inconvenient a demonstration can be.

SINCE the subject has come up so often recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about our country’s image.

In the first place, why do we even think anyone else spends much time thinking about us? And secondly, when they do, why do we even care?

Obviously we do care since we seem obsessed with it.

And the main reason seems to be that if we did not have a good image in the eyes of foreigners, they won’t invest in us or visit us and therefore we’ll become poor.

Our standard of living, therefore, depends on what people think of us.

It rather reminds me of those days, when some people said we should not have any public campaigns on HIV/AIDS in case foreigners think we DO have the epidemic here and therefore won’t come.

We never thought that maybe foreigners might think better of us if we admitted we might have a problem but we are doing something about it, rather than be yet another country which prefers to sweep things under the carpet.

When it comes to the image of a country, it really depends on who you talk to.

Of course, we should be proud that we are almost a developed country with almost first-world facilities: great airport, great roads, good shopping malls.

We also have fantastic food and fairly hospitable people, especially to foreigners with money.

We may not be very nice to those without money, such as migrant workers and refugees, but we don’t care about them.

Unless, of course, their governments decide to stop sending domestic workers and we face the grim prospect of having to clean our own toilets.

On the other hand, we seem pretty unconcerned when our image gets a battering all round the globe for attempting to whip women for drinking in public, actually whipping them for having babies out of wedlock, forming clubs for obedient wives and sexually harassing women for allegedly breaking immigration laws. Or declaring poco-poco haram in one state out of 13.

I guess we don’t mind people laughing at us, as long as they still spend their money here.

So image, just like justice in this country, is a moving target.

It’s whatever we make it out to be.

While we complain about men who ride their motorbikes dangerously on the streets when nothing is happening, when we need them we simply put red T-shirts on them and call them patriots.

We should really send them to international conventions overseas as patriotic examples of Malaysian citizens. They must surely do wonders for our image.

We should also send those fine people who blocked the Penang Bridge the other day just to show how inconvenient a demonstration is, to conferences on innovative ways to solve problems.

Surely, deliberately causing problems to solve a problem is an entirely ingenious idea!

Yes, Malaysia’s people, especially its leaders, really do wonders for our image overseas.

Apparently as a moderate Mus­lim country, we have absolutely no qualms about behaving just like the less-than-moderate ones, the ones who are quite happy to turn thugs and tanks onto their own people.

We jeer at Western hypocrisy that supports tyrants and dictators when it suits them, but we don’t seem to be much different ourselves.

Our image of ourselves must sometimes mirror the image of those we want to attract.

We want to attract the deep-pocketed tourists from the Middle East and China, governments who also don’t look kindly on demonstrations.

Therefore, not tolerating demonstrations here is just part of our marketing strategy, just like providing airport announcements in their languages, encouraging little Arab villages in the middle of the city and other amenities to make them feel at home.

Perhaps we should mention it in our travel ads: “Come and shop in Malaysia.

“We shall ensure nothing will block your route to the malls”.

Our leaders are such intellectual giants that the concept of freedom and human rights has been distorted and diminished to only mean freedom and the right to shop and make money.

I love it when certain leaders defend their right to shop in places they have not stepped into for decades.

The sudden concern for the petty traders, mostly foreigners, who have not benefited from their wallets all this time, is so touching.

So it depends whose image we want to emulate.

In developed countries, millions can march peacefully and nothing happens to the economy.

In fact, their economies have been devastated more by smart-suited bankers than any street demo against the ensuing austerity drives.

Perhaps, in defining patriots and traitors, we should look at suits rather than T-shirts

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Struggling with ambiguity

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IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL
The articles are captured from the original writer, MsMarina (with her permission). SambalBelacan is just compiling articles to make easier to find. Any comments received will remain un-respond because it's not mine.Reach her at her very own blog at http://rantingsbymm.blogspot.com/ Please.
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Wednesday June 22, 2011
Struggling with ambiguity
Musings
By MARINA MAHATHIR


Not everybody assumes the best in other people. Some people say that if you let people demonstrate their wish for clean and fair elections, they will surely riot.

I HAD always assumed that as I become older, things would become much clearer. The whys and wherefores of life’s big questions become obvious, I will have more “Aha!” than “What?!” moments, and I will stop struggling with ambiguity and confusion.

Unfortunately, thanks to a short, fat little man with permed hair and straightened teeth, this is not happening.

I grew up thinking that fairness was a good value to have. Not fair skin, but being fair to one and all. Children have a natural sense of justice; they know when they are being unfairly treated. It’s only when they see people benefiting from injustice that their natural values start to adapt.


Civic-conscious citizens: It’s amazing that one million and more fiery hot-blooded Egyptians could turn up in Tahrir Square to protest against their government peacefully, even in the face of government tanks. Then after they succeeded in ousting their President, they turned up the next day to clean up the square. — EPA
Maybe something happened to that little man in his childhood. Did something happen somewhere in his murky history where he had to resort to underhanded means to get something?

Because it puzzles me enormously why anyone should be opposed to fair and clean elections. Has the world changed so much that dirty and unfair elections are more prized?

Say, if my child wanted to stand for election at school, should I tell her that she should do everything she can to win, including undermining her opponent? Is this the lesson I should be teaching her?

This year, I told her she could have a nice holiday if she did well in school. Lo and behold, she did. So, now, I have to fulfil my promise. This is fair, as my old values tell me. But under these new-fangled values vaunted by some loud people, I should not do this. I should instead find some excuse to not uphold my side of the deal.

Although upholding my promise will be expensive for me, I still win because it confirmed my faith in my daughter, that she can do well in school with a little push. I can’t imagine assuming that she would fail no matter what.

But not everybody assumes the best in other people.

Another thing that befuddles me is how some people say that if you let people demonstrate their wish for clean and fair elections, they will surely riot.

In the first place, I would have assumed that those who want dirty elections are more likely to go crazy in public places. Mostly because the rest of us won’t be able to help laughing at their banners that say “Dirty is good!” or “Who wants to fight fair?”

On the other hand, who would show anything but respect for people who may be shouting “Let us restore our dignity: keep our elections clean”. After all, dirty elections are more associated with very much less-developed countries, which, surely, we are not.

It’s such a Boy Scout thing, wanting fair elections. Have you ever known Boy Scouts to riot? Only thugs who have never sworn to do their best do that.

It is a bit disingenuous to suggest that those simply wanting something good like clean elections are likely to be doing things like throwing stones, overturning cars and maybe looting shops.

There is nothing that drives good things away more than fear-mongering, is there?

So, therefore, to stop this, the forces of, I don’t know, Anti-Clean want to go down there and ensure security. Sounds like the George Bush School of Pre-Emptive Strikes to me. Let’s bomb them before they bomb us.

Equally disingenuous is to say that wanting clean elections is playing politics. But, isn’t everyone playing politics these days? And is politics confined only to politicians?

So, if I wanted to have a big demo to say that “No child should go hungry”, is that or is that not a political act? And therefore, will there be a counter-demo that says “Who cares if some children are undernourished”, just because my demo might cause traffic jams? That’s how crazy the thinking has become.

I find it amazing that in mild-mannered conflict-avoiding Malay­sia, we assume that any gathering of more than five people will naturally turn into a riot.

Yet one million and more fiery hot-blooded Egyptians could turn up in Tahrir Square to protest against their government peacefully, even in the face of government tanks. Then after they succeeded in ousting their President, they turned up the next day to clean up the square!

So why not just make a deal with Bersih 2.0 to bersihkan the street the next day?

The confusion these days arises from the fact that thugs are given lots of leeway while perfectly normal people are made to feel like criminals, even before they do anything.

If that’s the norm these days, can someone make it official that justice and fairness are no longer values we uphold?

Then I’ll know what to teach my child.

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