| Lesson of 'listen, listen, listen' Posted: 16 Jan 2013 03:05 PM PST We are in an 'amuck-latah' mood. The nation, at least in cyberspace, is furious (amuck) of what happened, and the protagonist of the propaganda machine fumbled big-time (latah) assuming that the teaching techniques of the "top-down, humiliate-first, no-apologies later" of many a Biro Tata Negara speaker can still be deployed unreservedly onto university students at the time when amateur videos can go viral, when tweets can flow like a tsunami, and when Facebook pages can be created in a fraction of seconds.
That's the mistaken assumption - that the Frankenstein called "social media technology" will also not run amuck helping those silenced to have their poetic justice, and those humiliated to become an honourable being raised to the level of stardom, overnight.
It is said that at times, you do not need to find the revolution - for the revolution will find you. The revolution found both Bawani and Zohra in such an 'absurd' way, such as in many of the plots of French surrealist dramas like Eugene Ionesco's rhinoceros running wild on the city streets, and Kafka's character moving from desolation to awareness in "Metamorphosis".
The timing was perfect, like that storm brewing right after the almost-a-million Malaysian march to take over Putrajaya; after the Deepak drama which was over-played, overdosing even the older folks; after the successes of all those Bersih rallies, and many other watersheds upon watersheds of consciousness-raising events, and ultimately, after the last hurrah circa GE13 - all these ripened the relevance of the fateful "Bawani-Zohra" rendezvous.
Hence, Malaysians saw not only an explosion of anger, but one that fuelled tremendous amounts of creative products, mainly in the realm of multimedia (music videos, Facebook and Internet posters, audio and video materials, and the production of other forms of creative artifacts inspired by the mantra "listen-listen-listen...").
That is my observation, albeit too, as a 'participant-observer' who managed to contribute to the dialogue through my public writings here on Facebook, and in my other column in Malaysia-Today.
I have always found examples of the chaos and complexity theory at work in these kinds of phenomena; the "butterfly effect" of Malaysian public discourse, which must be framed in its most kaleidoscopic and multidimensional way.
Mind-controlling machinery?
In this case, a simple few minutes of verbal exchange in a dialogue on a campus situated way up in the "boonies" as the Appalachians in Ohio would say, can have far-reaching impacts up till now, leading to even the fall of the Barisan Nasional regime that has, for the last 30 years, been using the universities as a place wherein the human mind - of student, staff, and even faculty - would essentially need to "shut up and listen-listen-listen". READ MORE HERE |
| Surat dr PM Posted: 16 Jan 2013 09:55 AM PST Tetapi kami yang tinggal di Selangor tahu berita yg disensasikan di akhbar-akhbar dan media massa arus perdana tentang keburukan pentadbiran Kerajaan PR Selangor lebih banyak tohmahan daripada kebenaran. Penduduk luar Selangor mungkin boleh ditipu kerana mereka tak tinggal di Selangor. Bagi kami rakyat Selangor kami tahu MB kami tak ambil jam tangan bernilai lebih RM100,000 sebagai cenderahati daripada PKNS seperti amalan yang lepas, MB kami prihatinkan kebajikan rakyat, kami tak perlu bayar bil air sejak tahun 2008 jika isi rumah kami cuma 3 org dan bermacam2 lagi keindahan yang tak dpt Kerajaan Negeri Selangor di bawah BN berikan sepanjang lebih 50 tahun pemerintahan. Dulu kami nampak ramai pemimpin-pemimpin BN Selangor yang mewah-mewah, yang kaya makin kaya, yang miskin semakin miskin. Read more at: http://ikhlasmalaysia.blogspot.com/2013/01/surat-dr-pm.html |
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