Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News
Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News |
- The opportunists' utopia
- Penang: Getting back its mojo
- Malaysian PR Move Backfires
- British rioters the spawn of a bankrupt ruling elite
- Militant groups fuel the fires
- Less political rebellion, more mollycoddled mob
| Posted: 11 Aug 2011 10:31 PM PDT
MAS in the hands of Tajuddin saw an unprecedented RM8 billion in the red. And the pathetic state of the national airline today has been a legacy of its mismanagement dating back to that time. MySinchew Malaysia is indeed a paradise for opportunists. Tajuddin Ramli has received an early Raya gift. All the GLCs have been "advised" to strike out their legal suits against him. In other words, MAS, Danaharta and other government-linked companies will no longer be able to seek compensation and liabilities from him through legal channels this moment on. Everything that is on-going and pending in court will now be put to an abrupt halt. But who is this Tajuddin? He is an icon of bumiputra entrepreneurship during Mahathir's time. When Mahathir was in power, this Tajuddin had his enormous wealth registered all over. From the national airline, land transport to telco (Celcom) he had a stake in everything, thanks to the bestowment of the one in control. Under Mahathir's economic doctrine of grooming bumi entrepreneurs and creating nouveaux riches, the country's wealth was distributed among a handful of people in the likes of Tajuddin Ramli, Halim Saad and Wan Azmi. Imagine, even a profitable national airline could be sold off to become the private asset of a handpicked individual. During the first half of 1990s, Tajuddin was the person to watch, and his money game saga made a textbook subject in Malaysia's corporate circle. The regional financial crisis in late 1990s nevertheless exposed all the feigned substances beneath the glorious skin. MAS in the hands of Tajuddin saw an unprecedented RM8 billion in the red. And the pathetic state of the national airline today has been a legacy of its mismanagement dating back to that time. Miraculously, Tajuddin tossed the loss-making airline back to the government, transferring all the liabilities and obligations to the nation and its people in so doing. Over ten billion worth of asset vanished in Tajuddin's hands, and yet he could still bow out in grace. After Mahatir and Daim Zainuddin stepped down, the new owners of these doomed GLCs filed applications in the court to seek compensation from Tajuddin, and that was when the MACC also stepped in to probe. Call that a belated justice or anything, but whatever amount that could be recovered was at least some consolation. But now, before the case even gets settled, the government has announced that it has reached an out-of-court settlement with Tajuddin. Reason unknown. The government fell short of explaining what had actually happened. The legal pursuit against Tajuddin attested to the fact that the rule of law was still very much in order and that no one was allowed to mess up things. To get back the money from him was to seek justice for the society, barring irresponsible individuals from shunning their obligations. The government owes the nation an explanation even if it wants to let Tajuddin off.
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| Posted: 11 Aug 2011 11:46 AM PDT By The Economist Adapted to the national stage, such policies could transform the way that the Malaysian federal government conducts business. Mr Eng says that the savings he has made by ending the "old systems of patronage" allow him to spend money on new social programmes instead, such as modest handouts for the elderly. These policies are popular, and the assault on corruption pleases foreign investors. Little wonder, then, that Penang has become a political weathervane as much as a lesson in economic development. IF YOU are going to have a heart attack, have it in Penang. So one might think, to the see the hospitals in George Town, the capital of this north-western Malaysian state. Patients are flocking in. Ted Mohr, the head of the venerable Penang Adventist Hospital says that he will admit 70,000 medical tourists this year. The hospital specialises in heart procedures and it will perform roughly 23,000 of them this year, including 550 open-heart operations. Such is the demand that the hospital is doubling its number of beds. Mr Mohr gives two main reasons for Penang's success with the coronary crowd. First, it is relatively cheap. Open-heart surgery that would set you back $100,000 in America costs only about $10,000 in Penang. Second, Penang's hospitals are as well-equipped as many in the West. The combination of low cost and high technology is the main reason why industries across the state of Penang, made up of the original island and a larger bit of the mainland, are prospering again after more than a decade of decline. Their revival is important to Malaysia's economy—Penang and the surrounding region account for 21% of the country's GDP. But the renaissance could also have important political consequences for the country. Since 2008 Penang has been one of only four states (out of 13) run by an opposition party. If its politicians can claim the credit for the recent success, that should greatly help the opposition in the next general election, expected within the year. Penang was founded as a free port by the British in 1786. Occupying a position between India and East Asia, the island drew merchants and middlemen keen to make their fortunes. Chinese, Indians, Armenians, Arabs and more all traded alongside each other. With its racial and religious mix, and dedication to the pursuit of free trade, Penang was in many ways the first custom-made city of globalisation. The island's fortunes sank as it lost business to its arch-rival, Singapore. In the post-colonial period Penang fell victim to the rise of nationalism. The region's freshly minted republics chose to develop their own ports. Penang enjoyed a revival during the 1970s with the setting-up of Malaysia's first free-trade zone (a "free port" by another name); this attracted big names in electronics, like Intel and Bosch, which built some of the first offshore assembly lines. But this boom was founded on cheap labour, and as Malaysia became richer other emerging economies, such as China and Vietnam, drew the assembly work away. To recover its prosperity, Penang has sought to reinvent itself. With the rise of India and China, Penang's location again looks very handy to foreign companies as a place to invest, as in the 18th century. It is relatively close to both big markets—yet offers advantages that trump Asia's giants'. Penang's own "Silicon Valley" companies know that the rule of law in Malaysia gives them the sort of protection for patents and intellectual property they would not enjoy in China, and an ease of doing business that they could not find in India. Wages are higher than they were, but no more so nowadays than on the Chinese seaboard. The federal government has also spent liberally on bridges and the airport, making Penang better connected to the rest of Asia. And old George Town has been smartened up, which helps to bring in foreigners to live, work—and have surgery. The result is another boom. Last year more investment poured into the state than any other in Malaysia. Scores of new electronics firms have swooped in to join the pioneers, along with an expanding cluster of 20 or so medical-device manufacturers. Crucially, most of the new jobs are in research and development rather than assembly. An American chip-designer, Altera, has a new facility with 1,100 workers in Penang, 800 of them engineers. Its head says that almost all the engineers are locals—which is good for Malaysia. Whom to thank? When the Democratic Action Party won the state's legislative assembly three years ago, it became the first opposition party to triumph in Penang in more than 40 years. The victory presented a direct challenge to the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition that has ruled the country continuously since independence in 1957. Penang's new leader, Lim Guan Eng, says that the federal government has an "ambivalent" attitude towards him, cutting off some funding but not undermining his authority. "They don't want us to get any credit, but they can't afford to see us fail". The revival of Penang was already under way in 2008, but Mr Eng's new policies have helped it along. He has become the first governor in Malaysia to open up all state tenders to competition. This has entailed dismantling the special preferences for ethnic Malays that have underpinned the BN's rule since the early 1970s. That was when the Malay majority institutionalised affirmative action for themselves, to the disadvantage of ethnic Chinese (a majority in Penang), who were perceived to have got unduly rich. Mr Eng claims that by reforming the system he has ended the cronyism and corruption that wasted money under previous regimes. Adapted to the national stage, such policies could transform the way that the Malaysian federal government conducts business. Mr Eng says that the savings he has made by ending the "old systems of patronage" allow him to spend money on new social programmes instead, such as modest handouts for the elderly. These policies are popular, and the assault on corruption pleases foreign investors. Little wonder, then, that Penang has become a political weathervane as much as a lesson in economic development. |
| Posted: 11 Aug 2011 01:44 AM PDT
Government effort to plant stories tarnishes major TV networks worldwide Taib, who has served as Sarawak's chief minister for three decades, said he would step down after state elections earlier this year. Reportedly, both Najib and former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad have urged him to leave office. However, after his party won the state elections, he reportedly is balking at stepping down. Asia Sentinel The Malaysian government and Sarawak state Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud have been spending millions of dollars to plant favorable stories on some the world's most influential television news networks, according to a Sarawak-based NGO.
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| British rioters the spawn of a bankrupt ruling elite Posted: 10 Aug 2011 06:03 AM PDT
THE riots in London and elsewhere in Britain are a backhanded tribute to the long-term intellectual torpor, moral cowardice, incompetence and careerist opportunism of the British political and intellectual class. British youth leads the Western world in almost all aspects of social pathology, from teenage pregnancy to drug taking, from drunkenness to violent criminality. There is no form of bad behaviour that our version of the welfare state has not sought out and subsidised. Theodore Dalrymple, The Australian They have somehow managed not to notice what has long been apparent to anyone who has taken a short walk with his eyes open down any frequented British street: that a considerable proportion of the country's young population (a proportion that is declining) is ugly, aggressive, vicious, badly educated, uncouth and criminally inclined. Unfortunately, while it is totally lacking in self-respect, it is full of self-esteem: that is to say, it believes itself entitled to a high standard of living, and other things, without any effort on its own part. Consider for a moment the following: although youth unemployment in Britain is very high, that is to say about 20 per cent of those aged under 25, the country has had to import young foreign labour for a long time, even for unskilled work in the service sector. The reasons for this seeming paradox are obvious to anyone who knows young Britons as I do. No sensible employer in a service industry would choose a young Briton if he could have a young Pole; the young Pole is not only likely to have a good work ethic and refined manners, he is likely to be able to add up and -- most humiliating of all -- to speak better English than the Briton, at least if by that we mean the standard variety of the language. He may not be more fluent but his English will be more correct and his accent easier to understand. This is not an exaggeration. After compulsory education (or perhaps I should say intermittent attendance at school) up to the age of 16 costing $80,000 a head, about one-quarter of British children cannot read with facility or do simple arithmetic. It makes you proud to be a British taxpayer. I think I can say with a fair degree of certainty, from my experience as a doctor in one of the areas in which a police station has just been burned down, that half of those rioting would reply to the question, "Can you do arithmetic?" by answering, "What is arithmetic?" British youth leads the Western world in almost all aspects of social pathology, from teenage pregnancy to drug taking, from drunkenness to violent criminality. There is no form of bad behaviour that our version of the welfare state has not sought out and subsidised. British children are much likelier to have a television in their bedroom than a father living at home. One-third of them never eat a meal at a table with another member of their household -- family is not the word for the social arrangements of the people in the areas from which the rioters mainly come. They are therefore radically unsocialised and deeply egotistical, viewing relations with other human beings in the same way as Lenin: Who whom, who does what to whom. By the time they grow up, they are destined not only for unemployment but unemployability. For young women in much of Britain, dependence does not mean dependence on the government: that, for them, is independence. Dependence means any kind of reliance on the men who have impregnated them who, of course, regard their own subventions from the state as pocket money, to be supplemented by a little light trafficking. (According to his brother, Mark Duggan, the man whose death at the hands of the probably incompetent police allegedly sparked the riots, "was involved in things", which things being delicately left to the imagination of his interlocutor.) Relatively poor as the rioting sector of society is, it nevertheless possesses all the electronic equipment necessary for the prosecution of the main business of life; that is to say, entertainment by popular culture. And what a culture British popular culture is! Perhaps Amy Winehouse was its finest flower and its truest representative in her militant and ideological vulgarity, her stupid taste, her vile personal conduct and preposterous self-pity. Her sordid life was a long bath in vomitus, literal and metaphorical, for which the exercise of her very minor talent was no excuse or explanation. Yet not a peep of dissent from our intelllectual class was heard after her near canonisation after her death, that class having long had the backbone of a mollusc. Criminality is scarcely repressed any more in Britain. The last lord chief justice but two thought that burglary was a minor offence, not worthy of imprisonment, and the next chief justice agreed with him. By the age of 12, an ordinary slum-dweller has learned he has nothing to fear from the law and the only people to fear are those who are stronger or more ruthless than he. Punishments are derisory; the police are simultaneously bullying but ineffectual and incompetent, increasingly dressed in paraphernalia that makes them look more like the occupiers of Afghanistan than the force imagined by Robert Peel. The people who most fear our police are the innocent. Of course, none of this reduces the personal responsibility of the rioters. But the riots are a manifestation of a society in full decomposition, of a people with neither leaders nor followers but composed only of egotists.
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| Militant groups fuel the fires Posted: 10 Aug 2011 05:57 AM PDT
THE media coverage of the British riots and the political response reveals an inexcusable incomprehension of the internal forces that are destroying Western societies. Central to this strategy is the rapid mobilisation of agents provocateurs such as the Black Bloc cadre, with their dark clothing, hoodies, ski masks, scarfs and helmets, who appear rapidly at such incidents to initiate violence and property destruction. Merv Bendle, The Australian It would be laughable, if it weren't so serious, to hear the cliches about poverty, racism, police victimisation and budget cuts cited as the causes of this violence and criminality, as if this narrative of oppression explains or excuses the wilful self-destruction of these urban communities. The dismissal of the rioters and looters as criminals is also lazy and short-sighted. Such violence is increasingly common in Western societies as their social structure slowly disintegrates. And it particularly reflects the volatile situation that exists among the urban underclass in large cities that have suffered de-industrialisation in the past 50 years and now house various marginalised and alienated communities of unemployed people of various ethnicities, many of whom survive on welfare and come from families that have not been in the mainstream workforce for generations. This situation has occurred also because of a failure of governance in Western societies, illustrated above all by the impotence of the police and the legal system, as most of those apprehended will escape with minor if any penalties. However, these riots and their rapid escalation are not spontaneous but reflect the co-ordinated efforts of self-styled revolutionary groups determined to incite and escalate outbreaks into urban insurrections. Central to this strategy is the rapid mobilisation of agents provocateurs such as the Black Bloc cadre, with their dark clothing, hoodies, ski masks, scarfs and helmets, who appear rapidly at such incidents to initiate violence and property destruction. The police and media are only now noticing their highly co-ordinated activities in Britain, despite their high profile in demonstrations against globalisation. At this stage, these groups don't aspire to lead a revolution, but the riots serve two functions. First, they confirm their radical theoretical analysis of Western society, which makes the urban underclass central to their revolutionary strategy. Second, the riots are seen as playing a vital role in the radicalisation and empowerment of this underclass, which learns how to organise and that it has little to fear from the police or the state. Western society is doomed, rotting from within, according to such groups and the post-Marxist revolutionary theory that is pervasive on the radical Left, especially within the anarchist, anti-globalisation and radical environmental movements. According to this perspective, the squalor and alienation of the urban underclass constitutes a "pre-revolutionary condition" that can be exploited by an organised revolutionary elite to mobilise a mass uprising. A representative manifesto of this militant tendency, The Coming Insurrection, attributed mysteriously to "The Invisible Committee", was published in French in 2007 and in English in 2009. The Invisible Committee sees itself as a successor to ultra-left terrorist groups of the 1970s and 80s, including the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Weathermen and the Red Brigades. The Coming Insurrection sees Western civilisation in apocalyptic terms. The West is "clinically dead [and] kept alive [only] by all sorts of life-support machines that spread a peculiar plague into the planet's atmosphere". Consequently, "what we're facing is not the crisis of a society but the extinction of a civilisation . . . its clinical death". What is required is "to decide for the death of civilisation, then to work out how it will happen". All that is needed is the "decision that will rid us of the corpse", and that decision is to join the coming insurrection and launch direct action against the system. The book identifies components of a rapidly emerging revolutionary situation in Western societies: the global financial crisis and high-profile crimes and scandals associated with the rich and powerful; climate change and escalating environmental destruction; the alienation of youth, the failure of the educational system and widespread unemployment; political corruption, incompetence and inertia; urban degradation, irreversible demographic changes, anti-migration sentiment and ethnic conflict; the accelerating collapse of the welfare state; and spreading social chaos in many countries. It sees these factors as components of a systemic crisis that will overwhelm liberal democracies. Central to this insurrection will be an alienated generation that "has known nothing but economic, financial, social and ecological crisis". "Everyone agrees," it begins, "it's about to explode." Suitably led, this force will exploit "the truly revolutionary potentiality of the present" to implement "a new idea of communism", conceived as "the matrix of a meticulous, audacious assault on domination", led by alienated youth, marginalised groups such as European Muslims and the radicalised underclass. In the face of this revolt, "the future has no future". The front line will be the metropolis, "one of the most vulnerable human arrangements that has ever existed" and susceptible to a "brutal shutting down of borders . . . a sudden interruption of supply lines [and] organised blockades of the axes of communication", so that "the whole facade crumbles [as it] can no longer mask the scenes of carnage haunting it from morning to night". The Coming Insurrection and others like it showcase the tradition of radical extremism shaped by prominent post-Marxist theorists such as Michel Foucault and Antonio Negri, who was imprisoned on serious terrorism charges but still was allowed to publish a series of radical diatribes against the West -- Empire (2000), Multitude (2004) and Commonwealth (2009) -- all extremely influential in radical circles and academe. According to these books, the US is at the top of a global capitalist "Empire", assisted by NATO, the G8, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organisation and similar agents of oppression and exploitation. Beneath them is the economic oligarchy of multinational corporations and subservient nation-states such as Britain or Australia. All of these are targets of direct action, sabotage, terrorism and so on, along the lines detailed in The Coming Insurrection. The objective is to achieve "true democracy" as exemplified by the UN and international non-governmental agencies such as Greenpeace, parliamentary democracy being a sham that perpetuates capitalism. The British riots provide fertile ground for the promotion of this ideology and we are making a great mistake if we ignore the role played by these highly motivated militant groups. Merv Bendle is senior lecturer in history and communications at James Cook University.
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| Less political rebellion, more mollycoddled mob Posted: 09 Aug 2011 07:16 AM PDT
What we have on the streets of London and elsewhere are welfare-state mobs. The youth who are shattering their own communities represent a generation that has been suckled by the state more than any generation before it. Brendan O'Neill, The Australian MANY commentators are on a mission to contextualise the riots that have swept parts of urban London and other British cities. "It's very naive to look at these riots without the context," says one journalist, who says the reason the violence kicked off in the London suburb of Tottenham is because "that area is getting 75 per cent cuts [in public services]". Others have said the political context for the rioting is youth unemployment or working-class anger at Prime Minister David Cameron's cuts agenda. "There is a context to London's riots that can't be ignored," says a writer for The Guardian, and it is the "backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures". The "mass unrest" is a protest against unhinged capitalism, apparently. These observers are right that there is a political context to the riots. While the police shooting of young black man Mark Duggan may ostensibly have been the trigger for the street violence, there is a broader context to the disturbances. But they are wrong about what the political context is. Painting these riots as some kind of action replay of historic political streetfights against capitalist bosses or racist cops might allow armchair radicals to get their intellectual rocks off, as they lift their noses from dusty tomes about the Levellers or the suffragettes and fantasise that a political upheaval of equal worth is occurring outside their windows. But such shameless projection misses what is new and deeply worrying about these riots. The political context is not the cuts or racist policing, it is the welfare state, which has nurtured a generation that has no sense of community spirit or social solidarity. What we have on the streets of London and elsewhere are welfare-state mobs. The youth who are shattering their own communities represent a generation that has been suckled by the state more than any generation before it. They live in urban territories where the sharp-elbowed intrusion of the welfare state during the past 30 years has pushed aside older ideals of self-reliance and community spirit. The march of the welfare state into every aspect of urban, less well-off people's existences, from their financial wellbeing to their child-rearing habits and even into their emotional lives, with the rise of therapeutic welfarism designed to ensure that the poor remain "mentally fit", has undermined individual resourcefulness and social bonding. The antisocial youthful rioters are the end-product of this antisocial system of state intervention. The most striking thing about the rioters is how little they care for their own communities. You don't have to be a right-winger with helmet hair and a niggling discomfort with black or chavvy yoof (I am the opposite of that) to recognise that this violence is not political, just criminal. It is entertaining to watch the political contortions of commentators who claim the riots are an uprising against the evils of capitalism, as they struggle to explain why the targets have been Foot Locker sports shops and why the only "gains" made by the rioters have been to get a new pair of trainers or an Apple laptop. In the Brixton race riots of 1981, looting and the destruction of local infrastructure were largely incidental to the broader expression of political anger, by-products of the main show, which was a clash between a community and the forces of the state. But in these riots, looting and smashing stuff up is all there is. It is childish nihilism. Many older members of the urban communities rocked by violence have been shocked by the level of self-destruction exhibited by the rioters. Some shop owners have got together to defend their property, even beating up rioters who have turned up with iron bars. In one video, a West Indian woman in her 50s braves the rubble-strewn streets to lecture the rioters: "These people worked hard to make their businesses work and then you lot wanna go and burn it up. For what?" On Twitter, the hashtag #riotcleanup is being used by community members to co-ordinate some post-riot street-cleaning, to make amends for what one elderly Tottenham resident described as "the stupid behaviour of the young". But it is more than childish destructiveness motivating the rioters. These are youngsters who are uniquely alienated from the communities in which they grew up. Nurtured in large part by the welfare state, financially, physically and educationally, socialised more by the agents of welfarism than by their own neighbours or local representatives, these youth have little moral or emotional attachment to their communities. Their rioting reveals not that Britain is in a time warp in 1981 or 1985 with politically motivated riots against the police, but that the tentacle-like spread of the welfare state into every area of people's lives has utterly zapped old social bonds, the relationship of sharing and solidarity that once existed in working-class communities. These riots suggest that the welfare state is giving rise to a generation happy to shit on its own doorstep. This is not a political rebellion; it is a mollycoddled mob, a riotous expression of carelessness for one's own community. And as a left-winger I refuse to celebrate nihilistic behaviour that has a profoundly adverse affect on working people's lives. Far from being an instance of working-class action, this welfare-state mob has more in common with what Marx described as the lumpenproletariat. Indeed, it is worth remembering Marx's colourful description in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon of how that French ruler cynically built his power base among parts of the bourgeoisie and sections of the lumpenproletariat, so that "ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie rubbed shoulders with vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, brothel-keepers, organ-grinders, ragpickers, knife-grinders, tinkers, beggars and from this kindred element Boneparte formed the core of his [constituency], where all its members felt the need to benefit themselves at the expense of the labouring nation". In very different circumstances, we have something similar today where the decadent commentariat's siding with lumpen rioters represents a weird coming together of sections of the bourgeoisie with sections of the underworked and the over-flattered, as the rest of us, "the labouring nation", look on with disdain. There is one more important part to this rioting story: the reaction of the cops. Their inability to handle the riots effectively reveals the extent to which the British police are adapted to consensual rather than conflictual policing. It also demonstrates how far they have been paralysed by the politics of victimhood, where virtually every police activity gets followed up by a complaint or a legal case. Their kid-glove approach to the rioters only fuels the riots because, as one observer put it, when the rioters "see that the police cannot control the situation, [that] leads to sort of adrenalin-fuelled euphoria". So this street violence was largely ignited by the excesses of the welfare state and intensified by the discombobulation of the police state. The riots tell a very interesting story about modern Britain.
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