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Clarity of purpose and vision: ABU!
What would Gandhi think of our world today?
Tubuh besar, duit banyak, pangkat tinggi tetapi tidak sihat

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 11:21 AM PST

He is clearly not a leader able to put two separate pieces of information together in his head – what more process the numerous inputs coming in from all angles and sources – and digest them before making the necessary decisions that would affect his party, his people and his country.

It is tragic for us and our country that this incompetent leader is advised by people whose vested interest overwhelms all other considerations. UMNO is obsessed with one thing and one thing only – how to hang on to power. There is no competent strategy of what to do with the malaise that has now overtaken our country because of this obsession for power over these last 50 years. No competent strategy of how to move on after the 13th general election. These UMNO goons have no plans beyond taking back power in the 13th general election. It would seem that should power be theirs again after the 13th general election it would be back to the orgy of plundering and pillaging of our country wealth and resources!

Who advises Najib? Mahathir? The same Mahathir that wants his so called 'legacy' wreck asunder by Pak Lah to now be 'protected' by Najib? What legacy? Abuses and incompetence would more appropriately describe the 20 over years of Mahathir's rule. This same Mahathir has already fast tracked his son into Cabinet! Now he stands poised to 'negotiate' with Najib his support for Najib in the coming 13th general election in return for what? The crooked bridge in Johore? A minister ship for his son? The protection of his crony business interest because without the OSA he would be exposed as having betrayed the trust put upon him by the people to safeguard the interest of the nation rather then to abuse it by giving lucrative IPP and other projects and contracts to his cronies? What sort of advise would Mahathir give to Najib? Surely no advise that would benefit our nations interest and its people!

He is advised by UMNO leaders? Take Isa Samad and Thamby Chik – what advise would they give Najib that would benefit the rural Malays that are under their purview? These are two UMNO rejects that has to be recycled because UMNO has need for Isa's proficiency in money politics and Thamby Chik expertise for gutter politics. It sickens me to the core to have these still titled dregs of human society in position of such responsibilities!

What advised has Najib been given to deal with the opposition – Pakatan Rakyat? His first foray into opposition territory was infamously successful with the taking of Perak from Pakatan Rakyat – not through the electoral process but through the baiting of opposition MP's to cross over to Barisan Nasional. I will leave it to your imagination to figure out what bait was used. Suffice to say that apart from that bait, the Sultan and the Judiciary were co-opted to come onto Barisan Nasional side. What the price was for the capitulation of the Sultan and the Judiciary is still to be tabulated but we have a fair idea what the final costs will be!

After Perak Najib embarked on a relentless vendetta against the opposition. At times even death, as in Teoh Beng Hock's, did not dimmed the enthusiasm of the offending mechanism used to harass the opposition. As if one death was not enough, it took another death before MACC began to get its act together – hopefully it will not regress to what it was before – a running dog for UMNO's political agenda.

And now it would seem that only the jailing of the opposition leader would satisfy Najib. What have we regressed to? Somalia, Chad, Zimbabwe or the Democratic Repblic of Congo? In these places arrest warrants and the judiciary are weapons of choice for the government to neutralize any opposition!

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 07:59 AM PST

To many people, the first thing that comes to mind when talking about Mahatma Gandhi is of course his doctrine of non-violence. I think by far this is his greatest contribution to the world, that rebellion against injustice can be achieved through non-violent means. That to protest against such injustices is a human right, because injustice itself is a violation of human rights. And because injustice is often violent, to protest in a non-violent manner is also a statement in itself.

Not that the world, despite its admiration for Gandhi, has been able to follow his doctrine in practice at all. When we look at the amount of violence today all round the world, we have to wonder what the Mahatma would have thought. Violence today has become more widespread, more sophisticated and more diversified. We are seeing every day different types of violence perpetrated by different people using different means. Are any of them justified and would all of them merit the same non-violent responses?

Violence in the world

In Gandhi's day, his main concern was the sort of violence perpetrated by colonisers against the colonised. This included both the British government's colonisation of India and the demand by Indians for self-determination as well as the social colonisation of the haves in Indian society over the have-nots, especially those from the untouchable classes.

Perhaps less well-known is that Gandhi was also an opponent of the formation of the state of Israel. Although he sympathised greatly with the plight of Jews who were being persecuted in Germany, nevertheless Gandhi thought the answer was not the setting up of a Jewish state in Palestine. "The Palestine of the Biblical conception," he said, " is not a geographical tract. It is in their (Jewish) hearts. But if they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the
goodwill of the Arabs. They should seek to convert the Arab heart."

As we know, nobody listened then to Gandhi and the Palestine issue is still with us today. As indeed colonialism still is, and taking on more violent forms than ever before. Today we have at least two countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, with hundreds of foreign soldiers on their soil attempting unsuccessfully to bring peace to those countries. Instead of development, both Iraq and Afghanistan have been laid waste to violence and are unable to govern themselves for some time to come. Furthermore the violence perpetuated is today much more sophisticated, operated from a distance and causing many more deaths and injuries on civilian populations than ever before. How many times have we seen reports of drone attacks causing many civilian deaths in Afghanistan or suicide bombers killing and injuring innocent people?

Weapons of war

Today too we have seen more diverse forms of weaponry, not just more technologically sophisticated ones but also chemical weapons, even those declared illegal by the international community. In Gaza, doctors treating the injured reported the use of white phosphorus, which burns the skin as long as oxygen is available. These doctors also reported the use of Dense Inert Metal Explosives (DIME), a type of bomb fired from Israeli planes, which hit the ground, bounce up again and then explode sending out hundreds of sharp blades and shrapnel. The injuries caused by these shrapnel include amputated legs, arms and heads; needless to say, DIME does not differentiate between adults and children, soldiers and civilians.

Let us not forget that the threat of nuclear weapons still looms over us today. Despite the global anti-nuclear movement, today there are still several countries that insist on having nuclear weapons including the United States and Israel. Additionally, the conventional arms trade is today estimated to be valued at USD1.5 trillion yearly or 2.7 per cent of the world's GDP. The United States alone accounts for 42.8 per cent of the world's defence spending and 4.8 per cent of its GDP. It is also the largest exporter of armaments, thus spreading violence and death all round the world.

As the director Michael Moore pointed out in his documentary Bowling for Columbine, in an environment where it is not considered unusual to manufacture, buy and sell weaponry, violence becomes an idea that seeps into the community and the minds of individuals, with fatal consequences for many innocent victims.

The Nobel peace laureate Oscar Arias Sanchez, former President of Costa Rica, a country without an army, noted the same phenomenon: "When a country decides to invest in arms, rather than in education, housing, the environment, and health services for its people, it is depriving a whole generation of its right to prosperity and happiness. We have produced one firearm for every ten inhabitants of this planet, and yet we have not bothered to end hunger when such a feat is well within our reach.

"Our international regulations allow almost three-quarters of all global arms sales to pour into the developing world with no binding international guidelines whatsoever. Our regulations do not hold countries accountable for what is done with the weapons they sell, even when the probable use of such weapons is obvious."

Thus the world in 2011 is much more awash in the means to violence than in the days of Gandhi, even though he lived to see the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and was a sharp critic of the use of nuclear bombs. In 1946, he remarked: "I regard the employment of the atom bomb for the wholesale destruction of men, women, and children as the most diabolical use of science." Sadly this diabolical use of science continues unabated today.

Causes of violence

What about the causes of violent conflict today? No longer is it just colonisation that is causing conflict but different issues have arisen of late that may not have existed in Gandhi's day. Globalisation has linked the countries of the world as never before but its benefits have not been evenly distributed over all countries. The divide between rich and poor nations remains large; developing nations still suffer a bigger share of the world's poverty, illiteracy and ill health. They are less able to cope with shocks in the world's economic system; if the developed world to which they export suffers a recession, they suffer worse from the effects of those cutbacks.

These types of economic inequalities lead to a new phenomena, human migration, where people move from their own region or country to another to seek a better life. If badly managed, this can lead to conflicts with the native people of the host countries. Migrants now make up 214m people who leave their countries for work or to seek refuge from crises in their own countries, including conflicts. According to the International Organisation for Migration, this means that one in every 33 people in the world is an international migrant. As displaced people and refugees, or even simply as foreign workers in a country, these migrants become vulnerable to violence as well as other disadvantages such as lack of access to health care.

Additionally there are the effects of relatively new phenomena such as climate change. When people are displaced by environmental disasters caused by climate change such as drought or floods, they encroach on other people's land. Conflicts arise when more people are forced to find food from the same limited resources. Refugees forced to live in deplorable conditions invariably rebel and start to fight with both fellow refugees and their unwilling hosts. What is happening in Somalia is a case in point where hundreds of thousands of famine-stricken people have been forced to move in search of food, sparking an immense humanitarian crisis.

In many cases, compared to Gandhi's day, the perpetrators of violence have also diversified. Where before it was often states that inflicted violence on people, today there may be non-state actors or even communities that may cause such violence. For instance, the existence of networks of people who believe that violence is the only response to injustice, thus leading to events such as 9/11, the Bali bombings and other violent events such as the suicide bombing of houses of worship. Gender-based violence has also been well-documented for example in Bosnia, in Indonesia in 1998, and more recently in the Congo and in Libya. The targets of such violence are also diverse; sometimes it is certain communities, sometimes the more vulnerable sections of the population such as women and sometimes targets are randomly picked.

Posted: 30 Dec 2011 07:20 AM PST

Kecuali seorang yang lainnya memberikan galakan untuk saya menyertai parti yang sinonim dengan transparency, rule of law, multiracial, ketelusan dan tidak ada isu rasuah besar serta tidak terlibat dengan menggunakan duit rakyat hampir rm 2 billion untuk menyelamatkan perniagaan anaknya yang gagal dalam perniagaan.

Ada yang berkata, "bro, saya mencemburui saudara kerana saudara bertegas dan berani berfikir di luar kotak. Saya belum lagi mampu untuk berbuat seperti you sebab maklumlah, saya masih berkhidmat dengan kerajaan. Tapi bro, ramai yang menyokong jika lebih ramai orang Melayu menyertai DAP sebab DAP telah berjaya membuktikan kemampuan untuk mengambil berat terhadap semua kaum macam dia tunjuk di P Pinang"

Seorang lagi pula berkata, "Kalau saudara menyertai DAP maka saudara dapatlah menghindarkan diri dari menjadi ahli parti yang terlibat dengan NFC, Air Asia dengan MAS, parti yang membawa imej Islam tetapi menggunakan wang zakat dan banyak lagi isu-isu yang tidak semenggah lain"

Seorang ahli yang betul-betul sedang bergiat memberi tahu, "Eloklah tu bang, Letih saya bang. Di kalangan kita sendiri bergaduh. Setengah membantai saya kerana kata mereka saya penyokong Khairy dan marah-marah kerana tak menyokong Mukhriz. Mereka mengatakan Khairy mesti di habiskan politiknya kerana kalau Khairy diberikan tempat, matilah politik Mukhriz. Bila saya dengar abang nak masuk DAP saya pun terasa kebenaran dengan apa yang abang beritahu saya berbulan yang lalu yang ahli-ahli UMNO menembak kaki mereka sendiri"

Sesungguhnya apa yang diperkatakan oleh mereka ini melambangkan keadaan sebenar yang berlaku dalam UMNO hari ini. UMNO begitu besar keahliannya, dan saiz keahlian benar-benar membunuh UMNO itu kerana ia membawa padah yang buruk terhadap parti itu.

Begitu besar jumlah keahlian UMNO tidak mampu memberikan hujjah dan penerangan yang baik kepada ahli-ahli mereka di cawangan-cawangannya. Akhirnya jutaan ahli-ahlinya telah menyeberang kepada parti lain di peti undi semasa pilihanraya umum yang lalu dan PRU yang akan datang ini.

Saya menyebut tentang keahlian ini kerana saya memang dari dulu menyatakan bahayanya parti yang mempunyai ahli yang besar. Dengan keahlian yang besar ia akan memberatkan parti diperingkat pentadbirannya dan akan berlaku pertembungan diperinkat cawangan yang banyak itu. Saya berpendapat yang dalam politik ini, ia merupakan 'game of perception' dan ia merupakan peperangan mental, bukannya peperangan bersenjata dua belah pihak.

Banyak parti-parti yang berjaya tidak mempunyai keahlian besar. Parti-parti ini menumpukan tenaga untuk membina dasar yang baik yang di hormati oleh rakyat yang mengundi. Parti-parti Republican, Democrat di AS dan parti-parti Buruh dan Conservative di England tidak mempunyai keahlian yang besar. Parti0parti ini telah memerintah dan mentadbir negara bergilir-gilir mengikut keadaan sewaktu pilihanraya. Parti-parti ini menawarkan dasar kepada rakyat dengan jelas. Kalau rakyat tidak bersetuju parti-parti ini bersedia untuk duduk dipihak pembangkang di dewan-dewan legislative.

Di negara kita DAP tidak mempunyai keahlian yang besar. Begitu juga PAS.Sebaliknya UMNO mempunyai keahlian seramai lebih dari 3 juta tetapi hasilnya tidak seberapa. Hasil yang besar yang UMNO perolehi hanyalah perpecahan dan perbalajan di antara ahli-ahli yang berebut jawatan.

READ MORE HERE

Kredit: www.malaysia-today.net

Sabtu, 31 Disember 2011

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

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