Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News
Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News |
- Umno leaders defend race-based policies, say Malays still need help
- Another religious insult on Facebook
- Pakatan will hold just fine, DAP tells Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew
- Zaid: Racial affirmative action tripping Malaysia
- Set up IPCMC, says Saifuddin
- Gullible’s Travels: Ringgit moves at faster rate to Africans posing as whites
- Malaysia Violent Crime Wave Escalates With Shootings, Car Blast
- The new religious fundamentalists? Millennial Christians
- China Fallout Hits Hard
- Indonesia's Religious Repression
| Umno leaders defend race-based policies, say Malays still need help Posted: 09 Aug 2013 05:44 AM PDT
(TMI) - Several Umno leaders have defended the government's race-based policies saying the Malays were still in need of help. Umno supreme council member Datuk Seri Noh Omar (pic) said the government is on the right track with its race-based policies as Malays were still lagging behind the country's other races. He said this was despite affirmative measures introduced under the New Economic Policy to address economic and social inequity in the early 1970s. "The 1969 racial riot was caused by the imbalance in economy among races and therefore, the Malays must be given the edge to compete, to ensure there is a level-playing field," said the former Agriculture Minister today. He was commenting on former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew's latest book, "One Man's View of the World" where he said Putrajaya's race-based policies had seen Malaysia suffer a critical brain drain problem. "They are prepared to lose that talent in order to maintain the dominance of one race," an excerpt of Lee's book read. He noted that Singapore had benefited, as "40 per cent of our migrants are from Malaysia." Noh said the Malays were still in need of help in the field of education. "Therefore the current system put in place pertaining to education policies especially, has to be continued," the Tanjung Karang MP told The Malaysian Insider. Noh said Lee's comparison of Malaysia with Singapore's success was flawed as "the republic has an entirely differing socio-economic landscape unlike Malaysia." Jerlun MP Datuk Othman Aziz said the government's policy is to only "balance the expertise of other races". "This is so that the Malays can stand on an equal pedestal with the other races in the country in terms of competition," Othman said. He added that it was natural for Malaysians looking for better opportunities to move abroad but it did not mean the country was doomed in terms of talent. "If the local expertise serving overseas are reluctant to come back home, those who are already in the country can make up for local needs. "Anyone would be interested in job opportunities which can guarantee lucrative paycheques, whether or not it is abroad or in Malaysia," he noted. However, Federal Territories minister Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said Lee was being unfair in his comments as the government was making amends.
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| Another religious insult on Facebook Posted: 09 Aug 2013 05:32 AM PDT
A Facebook page of an assemblyman's assistant shows a roasted pig's head sandwiched by 'lemang' and 'ketupat', with a caption inviting Muslims to enjoy the dish. (Bernama) - Another religious insult has surfaced through a Hari Raya card posted on the Facebook page of an assemblyman's assistant, showing a roasted pig's head sandwiched by 'lemang' and 'ketupat', with a caption inviting Muslims to enjoy the dish. A further search for the posting under the account of 'Alan Tang' found it missing. However, Alan Tang, assistant to Stulang assemblyman Andrew Chen Kah Eng (DAP) claimed through his latest post that someone had used his identity to upload the insensitive photo and caption. He further claimed that he received a death threat on his mobile phone about 9am yesterday, from a private number but had ignored it. He only lodged a report on the matter at the Taman Pelangi police station in Johor Baharu later at 4.30 pm the same day, after he found out about the posting. Johor CID deputy chief ACP Nor Azizan Anan confirmed that police had received the report and was working with the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission on the investigation. Meanwhile, MCA president Dr Chua Soi Lek expressed his disappointment with the latest incident and said it proved that the younger generations were unclear on the concept of racial and religious sensitivities. Met after attending Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin's open house at Kompleks Seri Pekembar here, he said it was a shame that despite more than five decades of independence such incidents were still occurring to threaten the country's peace and harmony.
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| Pakatan will hold just fine, DAP tells Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew Posted: 08 Aug 2013 03:09 PM PDT
Elizabeth Zachariah, TMI The DAP is not amused with former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew calling Pakatan Rakyat (PR) an "opportunistic and ad hoc group" which will break up or be paralysed if it was given the power to run the country. In retaliation, DAP's vice-chairman M Kula Segaran (pic) said if PR was just a coalition with no coherent set of ideas, it could not have inspired "so much of hope and confidence among the people". However, Barisan Nasional won 133 seats – 44 seats more than PR to form the federal government. "Give us time and we will prove that a future PR federal government will be workable, reliable and stable, one which will bring about a better Malaysia for all," said the Ipoh Barat MP. Commenting on Lee's observations in his book "One Man's View of the World" that the brain drain issue in Malaysia is caused by race-based policies, Kula agreed, pointing out that efforts by the government to woo back Malaysians from overseas could be too late. Lee had said in his book, which was launched on Wednesday, that "Malaysia is prepared to lose its talent through its race-based policies in order to maintain the dominance of one race".
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| Zaid: Racial affirmative action tripping Malaysia Posted: 08 Aug 2013 03:04 PM PDT
Boo Su-Lyn, MM Malaysia is deluding itself into thinking it can become a developed nation with the existence of race-based preferential policies, Datuk Zaid Ibrahim (picture) said today. The former Cabinet minister also noted that "much as you don't like to admit it, Singapore is a success story" and called on Malaysians to examine former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew's remarks, instead of summarily dismissing them.
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| Posted: 08 Aug 2013 12:43 PM PDT
(FMT) - "I don't think we can blame the opposition. They had no hand in the shooting incidents but we are concerned about strengthening the police force," Saifuddin told FMT in an exclusive interview. Umno Supreme Council member Saifuddin Abdullah has supported the establishment of the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) to oversee the police force.The former Temerloh MP voiced his support for the commission as a response to the recent spike in shootings across the country. He also dismissed former Malacca Chief Minister Ali Rustam's claims that Pakatan Rakyat's calls for the Emergency Ordinance (EO) to be repealed had resulted in a high number of shooting cases recently, as criminals were now free to roam the streets. "I don't think we can blame the opposition. They had no hand in the shooting incidents but we are concerned about strengthening the police force," Saifuddin told FMT in an exclusive interview. "I think we should have established the proposed IPCMC much earlier to improve police policies," he added. Saifuddin said it was still not too late to establish the IPCMC and hoped the government would set up the commission. |
| Gullible’s Travels: Ringgit moves at faster rate to Africans posing as whites Posted: 08 Aug 2013 12:26 PM PDT
(TMI) - So what took conmen 12 months to make, now takes just 6 months. The rate at which Malaysians are losing their cash to conmen has gone up at a stunning rate.Just in the first six months of this year alone, the gullible lost a staggering RM1 billion. But what's just as shocking is that this figure is pretty close to the entire amount lost in all of last year. So what took conmen 12 months to make, now takes just 6 months. More than half of that lost billion this year leaked out of financial institutions through weak management systems – about RM580 million. But a shocking fact is that by and large, the scams, cons and tricks remain basically unchanged from last year, raising the fascinating question of just what will it take for some Malaysians to learn that when something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The Federal Commercial Crimes Investigation Department told The Malaysian Insider that losses amounting to RM987 million were reported from January to June - compared to losses of RM1.2 billion for the whole of last year.
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| Malaysia Violent Crime Wave Escalates With Shootings, Car Blast Posted: 08 Aug 2013 12:17 PM PDT
Forensic police carry the body of AMMB Holdings Bhd. founder Hussain Ahmad Najadi after he was shot dead in a car park in Kuala Lumpur last week. Photographer: STR/AFP via Getty Images By Barry Porter, Bloomberg One man was executed at a traffic light, another shot four times by motorcycle assassins and a third had explosives detonated in his Jaguar car in separate incidents around Malaysia, the Star newspaper reported today. While gun ownership is restricted, public shootings have surged to almost one a day since July 26, according to data compiled by police. Prime Minister Najib Razak pledged to boost resources for fighting violent crime and introduce additional legislation in parliament after AMMB Holdings Bhd. founder Hussain Ahmad Najadi was shot dead in a car park last week.Early today, a 37-year-old ethnic Indian man was gunned down at point-blank range at a traffic light while driving in Malaysia's northern city of Penang, the Star said, citing police Assistant Commissioner Gan Kong Meng. Separately, a 29-year-old man is recovering after being shot by motorcyclists while driving in Ipoh late yesterday, the newspaper reported, citing police Assistant Commissioner Sum Chang Keong. In Kuala Lumpur, the rear end of a Jaguar belonging to an unidentified restaurant and nightclub-owner was damaged by explosives on Aug. 6, the Star reported today, citing police. The case has been classified as attempted murder, it said. The surge in violence is partly due to the abolition of the Emergency Ordinance in 2011, which led to 2,600 hardcore criminals and gang members being released from detention, the malaymailonline reported July 9, citing Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi in parliament. Najib repealed the law, which allowed suspects to be detained for as long as two years without trial, in a bid to boost civil liberties.
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| The new religious fundamentalists? Millennial Christians Posted: 08 Aug 2013 11:26 AM PDT
But, what I haven't heard many talk about is the fact that my generation can actually be quite prideful. Quite self-centered. Quite addicted to what's newest, quickest, fastest and easiest. And because of those things, if we are not careful, we will turn into exactly what we are critiquing. By Jefferson Bethke, The Washington Post There's been a lot of craze about Millennials leaving the church the past couple weeks.All the articles going around centered around the church being the problem (or the fact that it isn't). But, and I know I might get Internet stones thrown at me (boulders for that matter) for saying this, what if we Millennials were just as much to blame? In this conversation about young people's faith lives, I think that we put all the blame on the church. Sure, the church has, in the past, become servants of GOP, to 'family values', to sin gerrymandering, rather than being followers of Jesus. But, what I haven't heard many talk about is the fact that my generation can actually be quite prideful. Quite self-centered. Quite addicted to what's newest, quickest, fastest and easiest. And because of those things, if we are not careful, we will turn into exactly what we are critiquing. (We also have to notice, by the way, that we aren't the first to critique our mom's generation. Every generation of late thought their mom's church was lame. That's youth; that's not Millennial.) My peers and I have too quickly caricatured "fundamentalists," without realizing we are eerily close to becoming what we say we hate. We can think fundamentalists only wear suits and play boring Christian music, or we can address fundamentalism for what it is—an issue of the heart. An easy way to define fundamentalism is adding rules to the Bible, or elevating things beyond how Scripture elevates them. It's an attitude of pride. It gets in shouting matches (or tweeting matches) with anyone who disagrees. And in American Christian culture, I still see a lot of that. There is a weird subsection of young Christians today who are almost reverse fundamentalists, but they are still fundamentalists. They look at the older generation who say in good conscience Christians shouldn't drink beer, and they respond, "We are definitely drinking beer. Freedom in Christ!" Or they see those Christians who say you have to dress up for church service, and they say, "We are only going to wear skinny jeans and v-neck T-shirts in church." They are better defined by what they are against than by what they are for. They are doing the exact same thing as what they are defining themselves against. They are elevating behavior, clothing, and other secondary issues as requirements to gain access to heaven. It's a sickness in all of us to put our righteousness and dependence in absolutely anything except Jesus, and if we think we aren't doing that, it usually means it's even worse. |
| Posted: 08 Aug 2013 10:55 AM PDT
Anthony Fensom, The Diplomat China's impressive growth over the last two decades has helped commodity prices hit new highs, adding billions to the national income of mineral exporters such as Australia and Indonesia. But with the resource boom turning to bust, just how bad could the flow-on effects be for the region? One warning of the consequences has come from ratings agency Standard & Poor's, which has forecast that even a mild slowdown in China's economy could send Australian unemployment skyrocketing, hitting housing prices as well as commodities.S&P's "doomsday scenario" of a hard landing in China of just 5 percent growth in gross domestic product in 2014 would cause Australia to fall into recession for the first time since 1990, send the jobless rate to double-digit territory and cause property prices to sink by 25 percent. While the agency sees the most likely outcome as a China slowdown to 7.3 percent GDP growth next year, analyst Craig Michaels asked: "Are we now seeing the beginning of the end of Australia's economic run?" Japan's largest brokerage Nomura has forecast that weaker Chinese growth could reduce Australia's GDP by up to 0.7 percentage points, given that China buys around three-quarters of Australia's iron ore exports and nearly a quarter of its coal. The result would be the nation's weakest growth since the global financial crisis, of just 1.4 percent. READ MORE HERE |
| Indonesia's Religious Repression Posted: 08 Aug 2013 10:42 AM PDT
Jakarta's official ideology of tolerance is a myth, as persecuted Shias and Christians can well attest. (The WSJ) - The number of attacks on religious freedom is growing year on year. These include violent attacks on religious minorities, imprisonment of religious leaders, and the closure of Christian churches and of mosques belonging to the minority Ahmadi sect. The Setara Institute, which publishes annual reports on religious freedom, documented 264 violations in 2012, up from 244 in 2011, 216 in 2010 and 200 in 2009. According to its guiding political philosophy, Pancasila, Indonesia is a land of religious tolerance. The country's six recognized religions–Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism and Hinduism–supposedly enjoy equal protection under the law and equal right of worship in the Muslim-majority nation. Pancasila is Indonesia's official ideology: Children nationwide have been taught to believe it since the country's independence in 1945. Pancasila is also a myth.Although Islam has never been the state religion, radical Islamism is not a recent phenomenon. Indonesia's independence year of 1945 saw the near-passage of the Jakarta Charter, which would have established an Islamic state with sharia law. It was only through the improvisations of Indonesia's founding President, Sukarno, that Pancasila prevailed. Over the past decade, hovever, radical Islamist voices have grown louder and more aggressive, and as a result they have gained influence over policy makers. The number of attacks on religious freedom is growing year on year. These include violent attacks on religious minorities, imprisonment of religious leaders, and the closure of Christian churches and of mosques belonging to the minority Ahmadi sect. The Setara Institute, which publishes annual reports on religious freedom, documented 264 violations in 2012, up from 244 in 2011, 216 in 2010 and 200 in 2009. Apologists paint these events as isolated incidents, largely confined to conservative areas such as West Java and Aceh where sharia law has been introduced. The ugly truth, however, is that intolerance has spread nationwide. In West Java, East Java, North Sumatra, West Sumatra, South Sulawesi and Lombok, I hear stories of violence and hatred—not one-off incidents, but patterns of intolerance.
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