Our Earth is gravely sick!

With the climate change international conference in Copenhagen hotting up next month, I decided to dig out an old article of mine published in Malaysiakini on 6^th January 2007.

By Sim Kwang Yang

Astro-physicists have told us that our Erath is a middle-aged planet with a limited life span of a few billion years.  Some time into the distant future, the Sun will burn out and probably collapse into a black hole, swallowing all the planets in the Solar System.  All life forms on Earth will have disappeared long before then.

Scientists pioneering in various experiments in long-haul space travel and exploration of new hospitable planets are probably contemplating the indistinct probability of mass migration of the Earth’s population before that final cataclysmic event.

But it would appear that time is not on our side.  Long before the demise of the Sun, the new species of Homo Sapiens on Earth would face the very real possibility of destroying the natural conditions that engender and nurture life in the fist place.

Is BN Gaining on Pakatan?

By Kenny Gan

Is Barisan National gaining on Pakatan Rakyat? Ibrahim Suffian, the head of Merdeka Centre, which conducts opinion polls, seems to thinks so. Based on his centre’s survey results, he opines that BN would regain its two-thirds parliamentary majority and even the states lost to PR, except for Kelantan, if elections were held now.

I’ve always been a little wary of opinion polls conducted by Merdeka Centre. Their sample size of 1000 per survey appears to be rather skimpy to represent a population of 27 million. Their questions are sometimes biased to one side, rather than being framed to be as neutral as possible. Also, in this country, many people tend to shout out their support for BN while keeping support for the opposition close to their chests so the accuracy of political opinion polls may be suspect.

Nevertheless there must be a grain of truth in what Ibrahim is saying. It may not be far from the truth that support for BN has risen at the expense of PR since the tsunami of March 2008, although the question of BN regaining the status quo before the 2008 tsunami is highly debatable.

Happy 10th anniversary, Malaysiakini!

By Bunga Pakma

Malaysiakini has turned ten.  Every Malaysian netizen knows well just how much we all owe Steven Gan, Premesh Chandran, and all their colleagues.  Before M’siakini we were a people walking in darkness—I prophesy that history will one day reveal many, many dread deeds that never made it into print, when print was all we had.  M’siakini was the first light that dawned on us.  Let the light rise and shine bright!

This evening a whole bunch of good people will sit down to dinner and celebrate.  It’s a chance for loyal subscribers— a paper is only as good as its readers—to feel good about themselves, too.  My piece today pays tribute to M’siakini and all brave writers.

The pen is mightier than the sword?  In one sense, absolutely.  Has anyone ever drawn a sword, picked up a rock, hurled a fist—or a bomb—without plenty of words having prepared the way?  I am not referring to propaganda.  Books have started wars.  Hitler laid out his entire programme clearly in Mein Kampf and the book convinced enough Germans that the Nazi party and unlimited aggression were good things.

Landmines in Sarawak, Part 3

By Sim Kwang Yang

As thousands of Sarawakians of all races converge on Bintulu on Feb 21 for the ‘Friends of PKR’ dinner, the question in the mind of many people in the Land of the Hornbill is this: Can Anwar Ibrahim be trusted?

There are other similar doubts. For instance, even if the Pakatan Rakyat coalition can take power in the next general election, what is there to guarantee that they would not be as corrupt as the previous BN government?Can we find a single clean Sarawak leader to take office as the chief minister of Sarawak?

In his famous book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paolo Freire observed that in an oppressed society, the first aspiration of the oppressed is to join the rank of the oppressors. You find ample examples of these oppressed-turned-oppressors among the BN YBs in Sarawak.

I will now add a corollary to his proposition.

The second aspiration of the oppressed is to wish for a prophet or a revolutionary army to descend from the heavens and deliver them to redemption. Their top political leader must be completely trustworthy, honest, clean, courageous, and in short, perfect.

Landmines in Sarawak, Part 2

By Sim Kwang Yang

A reader sent me an email to enquire why Sarawak cannot secede itself from Malaysia and become an independent nation like Singapore. The same query has also been making the round on Internet postings in Sarawak, behind the safe veil of anonymity.

It is a tabooed subject in the nation’s public sphere. But I feel that our nation’s citizens are mature enough to discuss this issue openly, without resorting to panic mongering and witch-hunting.

Because of the lack of public discussion, we do not know how rampant this sentiment is. I have heard of talk pointing to Brunei as an illustration. The Sultan of Brunei decided not to join Malaysia in 1963, preferring to become an independent nation on its own. Today, because of the wealth from oil and gas, the Sultan of Brunei is the richest man in the world, and the wealth of the Brunei people is the envy of Asia.

The rhetorical question is: if Brunei can do it, why not Sarawak and Sabah?

Landmines in Sarawak Part 1

By Sim Kwang Yang

Being severed from the Malayan Peninsula by a vast expanse of water, the political sky over the fair land of Sarawak has very different hues and colours. Sometimes, the political quirks and kinks can seem incomprehensible to politicians and people from outside the state.

Part of the reason for this discrepancy is that the collective imagination of Sarawakians is not shaped by the national media entirely, but also by the local media in Sarawak in all forms, including and especially the radio which is often the only source of information about the outside world in much of the Sarawak rural heartland.

All the newspapers in various languages are pro-BN government of course. They are all owned by companies and business interests that depend on the state government for survival. The BN control over the formation of public opinions is water-tight.

In this way, the Sarawak BN is able to monopolise the content and the style of political discourse throughout the entire state. Alternative or dissident voices can hardly ever find the space to articulate their views. With telephone access limited to the towns and some semi-urban areas, the power of the Internet has yet to establish a foothold.

There is no such ‘thing” as a race

By Sim Kwang Yang

Since I almost write full time on the Internet, I have received a copious amount of commentaries on my writing on the Internet and through E-mails.  Naturally, I welcome them, since a writer’s task will be a lonely one without some echoes from the virtual wilderness out there.  Some comments that are completely off the mark tickle me to no end.

I would like to share with you one of those tangential comments that some blogger posted in his blog on August 21, 2007, in response to one of my articles I wrote for every Merdeka Day.  Since the article is about me, I did not bother seek the blogger’s permission to reproduce it below.

I have kept all his grammatical and spelling warts to give you the original sense of the piece.  You simply have to endure his bad English.

“Sim Case; Why It is Always Chinese who are Anti Social?

‘Sometimes I wondered , why it is always some Malaysia Chinese with hairy hand who dares to stir up the emotion of everybody in many issue arrogantly and they dont have much to back up their argument intellectually. The latest is a statement from a famous writer from anti social chinese clan , Mr Sim in Malaysiakini . He is a chinese who migrated to Sarawak to find a living and he dont want to endorse the independent date Malaysia to be 31 August 1957.

Letter from the Sarawak rainforest

By Sim Kwang Yang

THE disturbing news of the rape of Penan schoolgirls by loggers in Sarawak briefly caught national attention. But the flicker of conscience among Malaysians was soon doused by the deluge of reports of power struggles among the high-and-mighty in Malaysian politics.

It is hard to prolong our attention span on the Penans. They are so few in number: 12,000 in all. They mostly live in the remote, almost inaccessible, headwaters of the two greatest waterways in Sarawak, the Rajang and the Baram Rivers, far away from “civilisation”. There, they pursue their way of life: either settled, or so-called “primitive” nomadic.

They are of interest to few, such as the odd anthropologist from the West. Their lives and problems are incomprehensible to their fellow citizens living and working in the Klang Valley. Klang Valley would look, sound, and feel like a different galaxy to a first-time Penan visitor.

The letter

A Christmas Carol on a rainy day

by Liumx

Yup. I watched the Disney-cum-Image Mover remaking of Dickens’ novella last night, and spent a fair number of good old ringgit in a posh shopping complex in Damansara. Mind you, it was a 3D effect film, for a few ringgit more.

News of bad weather occupied the national front pages, and there were disastrous after-effects. As a humble city dweller, I endure the awful traffic jams while driving my own metal coffin daily. This petrol guzzling creature truly feels like a coffin in the rain.

I need some salvation badly, desperately. But a church is not my avenue of confession. Nor are mosques; besides, the issue of allowing infidels to enter remains unresolved. Nor are joss stick-burning temples my place of refuge. In the age of reason, the divinities hide.

So, I turn to film, that entertainment business, whose name brings to mind the Chimera, the mythical monster, for an unreal comfort. My kids live under the influence of TV, and doubtless they know Mickey and Donald better than our Rentap.

“bait and switch.”

Bunga Pakma

Are you hooked, reader?  The title and first line of an article should be bold, striking, catching your attention, piquing your interest, whetting your appetite, giving you a thirst for more.  Starting a piece can be the hardest part of it to a writer, and it helps you, the reader, and me, the scribbler, to begin with something completely irrelevant to the body-topic.  One Dayak blogger whose short thoughts I enjoy prints pictures of pretty young ladies in short shorts and tops before his postings, and headlines them “Two Guinness stouts give you better sex!” and things like that. Then he follows with a report of the state of the drains this landas.  The technique is known as “bait and switch.”

Sigh.  I’m learning the hard way that sensationalism and burning passion drives more journalism—and more types of journalism—than I had ever imagined. And right now I’m plumb out of sensations. It’s time for some reflection.

After a puzzling drought of mail, I finally got the 2 Nov. issue of the New Yorker, the most literate and intelligent magazine in America that still can be called “popular.”  Elizabeth Kolbert ( Photo top right )contributed a thoughtful article on the way errors, lies, and distortions enter Cyberspace and won’t go away.  This had been on my mind for some time. Why, I’ve always wondered, if half of people is for something, anything, the other half is always against it?  Pak Bui’s recent article here raised the subject in my consciousness, Kolbert’s put it to the fore.

Oil royalties: black deeds and black gold

By Pak Bui

Oil royalties have long been a subject of a sensitive and emotional debate in Sarawak, and in Malaysia in general. In the last two weeks, the national debate surrounding oil royalties has heated up, producing clashes in Parliament.

PM Najib has told Kelantan’s PAS government that the state has no more claim to income from oil. In his pompous Jabba-esque hangdog voice, Najib announced in Parliament that Kelantan would only receive “wang ehsan” instead, loosely translated as “a compassionate fund” or “goodwill money”, from next year. He said it would replace the oil royalty Kelantan received in previous years, since 1974.

Najib did not reveal the amount of charity he would send Kelantan’s way. Kelantan MPs were furious, saying that the oil royalty is Kelantan’s rightful share of the income generated from the petroleum industry off its coast. Kelantan’s exco claims the Federal Government still owes Kelantan RM1 billion, as its 5% royalty of oil revenue extracted from Kelantan since 2004.

Husam Musa, Kelantan exco member and one of the most articulate voices in PAS, condemned Umno’s discrimination against Kelantan as politically motivated. He accused Najib of trying to mislead the public by saying Kelantan was not entitled to an oil royalty, because the oil is produced more than three nautical miles offshore. Husam pointed out that Terengganu, Sabah and Sarawak all receive oil royalties, not “wang ehsan”, even though petroleum is produced more than that distance offshore, outside state waters.

A third force in Malaysian politics?

By sim Kwang Yang  @ This article first appeared in thenutgraph.com in September 2008

THE departure of the Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) from the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition in recent days could have impregnated our body politic with far-reaching consequences, even if top BN leaders have brushed the incident aside as something they long expected to happen.

With only two Members of Parliament (MP) and four state assemblypersons, the SAPP may be regarded as a “mosquito” party. But it has played a critical role in Sabah’s complex state politics, ensuring thus far the continued grip on state power by the Sabah BN.

The president of the SAPP, Datuk Yong Teck Lee, is a particularly respected political leader in Sabah, especially among the Chinese community. To date, he is probably the most articulate spokesperson on the neglect of Sabahan woes by the federal government in the last few decades.

Dreams of 1Malaysia

By Kenny Gan

What is 1Malaysia? Does it mean racial harmony, national unity or equitable treatment of all races in sharing the nation’s resources? Is it just a huge public relations exercise or does the Prime Minister, Najib Razak intend to put any substance behind it?

1Malaysia has been described in Najib’s official website as “a roadmap to Bangsa Malaysia”.  But the definition of Bangsa Malaysia is as elusive as 1Malaysia. Isn’t Bangsa Malaysia by commonsense supposed to denote an end to the differentiation of the races into “bumiputra” and “non-bumiputra” and the rights and privileges that go with it?

The wily Mahathir managed to propagate his Bangsa Malaysia without having to define the empty shell, or answer for the contradictory racial policies that highlighted his regime.  How did he manage it?

Justice delayed, is justice denied – Mariam Mokhtar

Published here with kind permission of the author. This article first appeared in The Malaysian Insider on 15.11.2009

NOV 15 – Some of you might be forgiven if you missed the few inches of column in a national paper that screamed out for attention, “Investigations into sexual abuse of the Penans reach dead end”.

And if you hadn’t, I bet most of you shrugged your shoulders, flicked to another page and thought, “Huh. We knew that. We’ve always known that and why wait one year to be told that? Why waste taxpayers’ money on this investigation?”

So, should we be bothered? Should we care? Should we even be moved?

Corruption – the Malaysian pestilence!

By Sim Kwang Yang

Eleven public officials from the Ministry of Youth and Sports as well as some businessmen have been charged in court for alleged corrupt practices as reported in the Auditor General’s report.

Visibly pleased during an official visit to the Anti-Corruption Agency HQ, the PM praised the management and men of the agency for their good work, and encouraged them to go after the corrupt, no matter what their rank and status.

Have these high-profile anti-graft cases restored the confidence of the ordinary street-wise citizens, especially those who live and work in large urban centres? Has the BN government therefore displayed their political will to rid the nation of this crippling scourge forever? The answer must be an emphatic “no”!

Even the very pro-government national daily, the New Straits Times, shares my scepticism. In an editorial that appeared on 25.10.2007 under the title “Delivering the goods”, the paper has this to say:

“As it is, while there has been a very conspicuous campaign to curb corruption, this has not been matched by public progress reports in terms of proven cases, litigations, and court hearings. In the fight against corruption, the bureaucratic preference for washing the dirty linen behind closed doors should not apply. When the seeming reluctance to do anything which can be construed as undermining the morale of the civil service is taken as an indication of the weakness of enforcement and the lack of political will, it can only reinforce the perception the anti-corruption drive has been long on rhetoric and short on delivery.”

Pray that Umno will not come to Sarawak

By Sim Kwang Yang

Sarawak is the only state in Malaysia where Umno has not established any presence. Within Sarawak itself, the talk is not so much if, but when Umno will make a grand entry, as it did in Sabah.

Now, the conditions seem riper than ever before for Umno’s foray into that vast eastern state on the northern shores of the Borneo Island, as Sarawak is on the verge of plunging into a leadership vacuum.

The Chief Minister of Sarawak, Abdul Taib Mahmud, has been in power for slightly more than a quarter of a century in that resource rich territory. (Pardon me for mentioning him by name. His string of titles is too long to be cited in full for a column of limited length like mine.)

But Taib is in his 70s, and rumours of his ailing health have been rife like wildfire in Kuching. I have heard various versions of his struggle with his cancer problem within some part of his internal anatomy, but like a good Sarawakian, I will not spread the rumour further.

Changing the head hornbill in Sarawak

By Sim Kwang Yang

Should Abdul Taib Mahmud – the chief minister of Sarawak – step down, after 28 years at the helm,with near-absolute power, in the resource rich state?

Does PBB – his party that holds half the number of seats in the Sarawak State Assembly – bully the other component parties of the Sarawak Barisan Nasional?

The answer to both questions is a resounding yes!

But this kind of questions is only relevant to members and supporters of the Sarawak BN. Other Sarawakians know very well that Taib will not step down on his own accord.

He has to cling on to the throne in Sarawak, to protect the future of his gargantuan family conglomerate CMS (an acronym that could designate the company Cahaya Mata Sarawak, or the title Chief Minister of Sarawak – an interesting coincidence).

Mysterious super-rich Malaysian in New York, Kuwait, and Sarawak

By Bunga Pakma

‘‘On and on it flows like this! Never ceasing, day or night.’’  When Confucius said that (Analects 9.17), he was referring to rivers and time.  Here—without any disrespect but with crude irony—I’ll apply the same thing to the news in Malaysia.

The river I have in my mind’s eye to represent Malaysian Events is the Sungai Kelang which winds its muddy way in a concrete trough through Muddy Confluence.  In the dry season it can resemble a trickle; when the rains come it swells and boils.

The Klang River in KL feels no influence from the far-away sea.  It flows continuously downwards, without the back and forth of tides to cleanse it.  Its water is opaque and stinks, and it carries along with it all sorts of curious objects.

Now and again a real eye-popping oddity comes bobbing along.  I refer of course to the “Mystery Man” gazillionaire playboy/financier Low Taek Jho, who has been painting New York City red with such unparalleled abandon that his behaviour has startled New Yorkers themselves, a pretty blasé bunch who view celebrity and megabucks  with bored cynicism.

Big spending Malaysian in New York clubs

A fleet of black Cadillac Escalades hums outside Chelsea hot spot Avenue — the A-list watering hole of such celebrities as Justin Timberlake and Lindsay Lohan.

As the car doors open, a dozen men emerge and a bouncer whisks them over the club’s threshold, past a group of shivering models behind the velvet rope.

“Who is it?” one of them wonders out loud. “Is it P. Diddy?”

But the man at the center of the entourage isn’t a celebrity. He isn’t even a mogul. He’s Taek Jho Low, a 20-something Wharton grad from Malaysia who has burned through hundreds of thousands of dollars at the city’s hottest nightspots in the last three months — and shows no signs of stopping.

Dictators have feelings, too

By Pak Bui

 

 

This weekend’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Singapore will see a US President sit down for talks with all ten Asean leaders, for the first time.

A glance through the list of leaders meeting Barack Obama yields a substantial number of dictators and authoritarian leaders.

Najib “Mr Nine Percent” Razak helms a corrupt, racist party and relies on the courts, the police, the MACC and the media to suppress dissent.

Thein Sein is leader of Burma, the tormented country whose name was changed to Myanmar in an attempt to erase its history, and to build a new, reclusive, brutal dystopia. Thein Sein is the public face of a military junta that jails, tortures and kills political dissidents and ethnic minorities.

Another BN clown joins the Jabu circus

By Zhang ML

Hasan Sui (photo right) was a member of the Task Force set up by the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development, which concluded categorically that the allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation of Penan women in Baram are true.

In fact, he was roped in by the state government to the Task Force as a representative of the Penan. As such he was supposed to represent the challenges and interests of his “own people”, the Penan, in the task force. He was meant to participate in the work of the Task Force, originally set up to investigate the allegations and to make recommendations for protection of the girls and women.

However his statements made in the Borneo Post on November 7 make for nauseating reading. It would appear he has tried to undermine the credibility and importance of the findings of the ministerial Task Force.

He said “recent allegations of sexual abuse of Penan women and girls in Baram were obvious examples of how outsiders had once again meddled in the affairs of the ethnic group”.

Malaysian literature in English, anyone?

By Sim Kwang Yang

The naiveté of half-cooked patriotism knows no bounds.  A reader wrote in to the NST, questioning why Malaysian students should study English literature.  Why, he wondered, should our children not study Malaysian literature instead?

The obvious problem is with the very existence of anything that we can recognise as Malaysian literature.  Obviously, there is a body of Malay literature, especially that promoted by the Dewan Pustaka dan Bahasa.  All the Chinese newspapers give plenty of space for aspiring writers to develop their talents.  I am sure the Indian community also have some literary activity. But do we have a Malaysian literature – for all Malaysians?

Strangely enough, the most robust English dailies have done little to encourage literary creativity in English.  Does it mean that there is no market for it, and that English-educated Malaysians of all races are simply not interested in literature?

We tend to think of literature as the product of highbrow intellectual activity, a kind of self-indulgence bandied about by the very educated elite to display their superior taste.  But literature in the modern sense became a mass phenomenon only after the arrival of what Benedict Anderson described as print capitalism.  Literary successes depend very much on market demand.  Writers, poets, playwrights, and novelists must be paid, or else they would simply starve.

Politics bottom up or top down?

By Sim Kwang Yang

Internet writers like me have a cushy job. We stare into the blank wall, try to imagine the audience out there in cyberspace, and bang out a string of connected ideas at break-neck speed to beat the deadline.

Writing is a lonely business. Thank God, I do get some feedback from readers sent to my email address every week. Otherwise, I would have stopped writing out of boredom. I try to answer them all.

The messages accumulated over the six or seven years of my service with Malaysiakini amount to a huge pile. Most are friendly, but there are a few that are very critical. Of course, one has learned long ago the art of agreeing to disagree with mutual respect.

Then, there are readers and bloggers who cut and paste my articles all over the Internet. I am not sticky on the issue of intellectual property rights, so that is okay too. Any idea of mine, once it is out there, for better or for worse, is public property.

While googling my own name one day, I came across a self-proclaimed ‘Al Muslimin NGO’ blog commenting on my writing.

Whom should we trust?

By Sim Kwang Yang

On the eve of polling in the March 8 2008 general election, a close friend enquired whether Anwar Ibrahim could be trusted or not, given his chameleon-like political career that saw him change his affinity in rather dramatic ways several times.  This question about Anwar Ibrahim’s trustworthiness has become all the more topical now that he is scheduled to come back to our Malaysian political arena on full steam next week.

Even before the general election, there was widespread mistrust for Anwar Ibrahim among the Chinese electorate, because of his perceived sins committed against Chinese education during his tenure as Education Minister.  One could argue that, as Education Minister, Anwar Ibrahim was implementing the education policy of UMNO, but that would still not diminish the burden of his rather huge political baggage.

The Chinese community has always had ambiguous feelings for Anwar, even from the early days when he was involved with ABIM as a young radical Islamic activist.  His Islamic credentials may have been an asset for his career, first in UMNO, then as an ally of PAS when he was banished to the political wilderness ten years ago. But for many Chinese who suffer from Islam phobia, Anwar Ibrahim is often perceived by many as a mildly threatening enigma.

In the ten-year existence of PKR, right up to the time of the general election last month, I was constantly bombarded with the question of whether Anwar Ibrahim would return to UMNO, just like Ku Li did in the 90s after fighting UMNO in vain with Semangat 46 as his political vehicle.

When will the 13th General Election be?

By Kenny Gan

Ever since the epic 12^th general elections, which saw a realignment of the political landscape, the average Malaysian,  normally apathetic to politics due to the boring regularity of BN’s sweeping victories, have started to take an interest in elections, especially the next general election.

Pakatan Rakyat supporters who can’t wait to see BN swept out of power are notably impatient for the next general election, even though the last one was held a mere 20 months ago. As general elections are held every 5 years, the next one is not due until March 2013.

However it is the usual practice for the incumbent government to hold elections earlier, rather than wait until its term expires. This allows it to choose an opportune time, such as a booming economy, when its support may be higher. To wait until the last months deprives it of the freedom to choose a favourable timing or the ability to wait for scandals to cool, if any should pop up unexpectedly.

Another reason for holding early elections may be to clear the way to institute an unpopular policy which may harm its chances in the next election. Abdullah Badawi held the 2008 elections a full year before his term was to expire in March 2009, because he wanted to raise the price of oil drastically. True enough, Malaysians were hit with the steepest ever increase in oil price barely 3 months after the election.

An Evening with the Ibans

By Sim Kwang Yang

The small band of mud-caked near-naked young boys were tearing through the lalang and the undergrowth from the direction of the river bank, shrieking and laughing as they stumbled over one another towards the foot of the staircase of this lone kampong house.

I was alarmed by their state of unusual excitement, and moved to the doorway to investigate. Gasping for breath, they fought among themselves for the chance to report their discovery, “Uncle, a crocodile! At the river bank!” Arms were flung apart at various lengths to indicate the size of the feared reptile.

This was a matter of grave concern indeed for the Iban communities living along the placid Stutong River meandering around the outskirts of Kuching City. The dozen or so adults sitting in the room behind me immediately exploded into an animated discussion.

The scorching heat of the day had waned, and the stilted wooden hut with its thatched roof was basking in the afterglow of the sun. The evening dusk descended upon the surrounding rubber trees long abandoned to grow wild. Visitors had drifted into the hospitable shade of the little hut in small parties. The visitors were on their way back from their gardens, where they worked the land as their ancestors had done for countless generations, even though they no longer needed to.

Thinking about blogging and making hats…..on a lazy Malaysian Sunday.

By Sim Kwang Yang

Ever since we launched this blog over seven months ago, I had only one promise made to myself: there must be a new posting everyday.

Everyday, as the sun sets, if there is no new story in my email, then I will have to bang out something on the computer. After a while, it gets to be quite tiring, especially when I am almost a full time writer for a few publications as well.

At the end of the evening, my mind would be having mental cramps from overwork.

That is why I began to upload my old stories published in Malaysiakini in the past, for my mental relief, as a kind of stop-gap measure. At first I worried about the copyright issue, since Malaysiakini does pay me for my writing. But everyone else is cutting and pasting my Malaysiakini articles on their blogs anyway, so I might as well join in the crowd.

Claude Lévi-Strauss, he will be mythed.

By Bunga Pakma

Malaysia’s MSM, too, briefly noted the passing of a great man a week ago, and this observance does Malaysia an honour, for he was an anthropologist—a discipline here under the eye of official suspicion—and a humanist intellectual of the loftiest sublimity.  The world rarely remembers this breed still lives among them.

Claude Lévi-Strauss died in Paris on 31 October.  If he had hung on for four weeks he would have reached the great age of 101. We can feel joy when a distinguished man passes away after a long life filled with fruitful work, love, much seen and felt, and honour. He was a member of the Academie Française.  Such a person has won at life, if anybody can be said to win at life.

Lévi-Strauss was destined to be a profound thinker, whichever way he took.  He entered the University of Paris as a student of philosophy, and after a few years determined that “…philosophy, as taught at the Sorbonne, exercised the intelligence but left the spirit high and dry.”  (Apologies to SKY.) The career that faced Lévi-Strauss, after he took his degree, consisted of repeating the same lectures year after year.  In horror, and with the help of a few lucky encounters, he escaped to anthropology and in 1934 sailed to Brazil.  An academic post gave him a base from which to travel to the deep country, rainforest or savannah, and do fieldwork among the Indians.

Umno-haters’ and Barisan-baiters’ Club

By Pak Bui

The explosion of political blogs and internet news sites over the last five years has left our Ministry of Information hacks and our mainstream Malaysian TV and news editors staggering, dazed and confused.

The pent-up emotions of the Malaysian public have been suppressed for half a century under a BN mass media mafia. Now set free by greater public access to the Internet, these emotions have swept over the blogs and comments sections of internet news portals.

Any glance through my favourite sites, the usual suspects like “Hornbill Unleashed” and the various Malaysia news portals (Today, Kini, Mirror, Insider and the Nut Graph), yields a huge chunk of readers’ comments. I admit many of these are repetitive, ignorant and even bigoted, hidden behind pseudonyms. But there are some carefully considered and informative views and heartfelt appeals for justice too.

The world of ageing

Kaypo Anak Sarawak is a Columnist  of  Hermit Hornbill at The Borneo Post Online , His article is  published  in The Borneo Post every Sunday. (Used by permission of the Author )

ACCORDING to the definition established by the United Nations, an aged person is one who has reached or exceeded 60 years of age. That makes me an aged person. Of course, when you have passed the magic hurdle of 60, you think sometimes of the ‘Grim Reaper’, for there is no way of getting out of this life alive. But according to the national statistics for life expectancy, I should have 16 years more to go, if I am careful.

But life is hard to tell. A friend’s son aged 49 just died from a heart attack three days ago on the badminton court; he was given a clean bill of health 6 months ago by his doctor during a regular medical check up.

So I consider myself blessed, living in relatively good health, except for the mandatory conditions of the aged like diabetes, high blood pressure, and creaking joints.  I still contribute to the national GDP growth by my writing, a task I can do as long as I am sane and have two hands to do the typing on the computer keyboard.

The contribution to the GDP by the aged is an important issue for national economic planner.

I can eat with you at the same table

By  Sim Kwang Yang

On a recent visit to my hometown Kuching City, I chose to stay at the Holiday Inn overlooking the limpid water of the lazy Sarawak River.

I sauntered over to a small shop selling books, magazines, and cigarettes. Paying for my purchase, I struck up a conversation with the petite young lady in tudung, something that I did rarely in KL.

After a brief chat on the weather and the high price of the Star in Kuching, I told her how much I loved Sarawak because of her friendly people. Thinking that I was a Chinese from West Malaysia, she smiled proudly and said, “Yes, we are friendly in Sarawak. I can even eat with you at the same table.”

Our national grand narrative on national unity and racial harmony are couched in sweeping abstract slogans like 1Malaysia. The real racial harmony is actually to be found in the little narratives of daily life in Sarawak and Sabah.

Police under fire for inertia over Penan rape

By Keruah Usit @ Malaysiakini

The national task force report on rape and sexual abuse of Penan girls in Baram was released on September 8. The report by the

Ministry for Women, Family and Community Development, was compiled by a high-level task force, comprising government officials, a police representative and women’s groups.

However, nearly two months later, no arrests have been made, despite continuing pressure from civil society and the international community. The police have said they have no leads and that the NGOs supporting the Penan have refused to co-operate with them.

According to the Borneo Post, a newspaper owned by a local logging company, Mohd Bakri Mohd Zinin, head of the national Criminal Investigation Department (CID), complained on October 22 that the police could not gather enough evidence.

Sarawak’s renewed political hopes

By Sim Kwang Yang

SARAWAK’S Dayaks seldom feature with any significance in the national imagination of Malaysia, and certainly do not make headlines in the national media. This reflects the political marginalisation of the Dayaks in their home state.

The Dayaks collectively make up nearly half the state’s population, and by the logic of communal politics, they should dominate politics in Sarawak. They did, briefly, during the early years of Merdeka, when their political vehicle was the Sarawak National Party, or SNAP. The president of the party then, Datuk Stephen Kalong Ningkan — an Iban — was the first chief minister of Sarawak, serving from July 1963 to September 1966. He was removed from office by a federally initiated Declaration of Emergency and a constitutional amendment resulting from a protracted constitutional crisis. Since 1970, the office of the chief minister has been held by two Melanau Muslims.

The dream of Dayak leaders since has been the restoration of what they consider their political glory: the installation of a Dayak chief minister. Formed in 1983 as a splinter group from SNAP, the Parti Bangsa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS) was the vehicle for this mission. The PBDS applied and was accepted as a member of the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition.

The Chinese enigma

Kaypo Anak Sarawak is a Columnist  of  Hermit Hornbill at The Borneo Post Online , His article is  published  in The Borneo Post every Sunday. (Used by permission of the Author )

WHILE driving from Miri back to Kuching some time ago, I stopped for a rest and a spot of refreshment at a roadside stall, sitting right smack in a sprawling oil palm plantation somewhere near Bintulu.

I joined a few young Iban men who were probably workers on the plantation, seeking a reprieve from the merciless mid-day sun. We started a friendly conversation, as is the custom during such chance encounters in rural Sarawak.

For some reason that escapes my memory now, the chat turned to the Chinese phenomenon. One of the young men there expressed his puzzlement at the Chinese enigma best. He said, “When a Chinese finds a ten sen coin on the floor, he will pick it up and save it. Years later, he will save enough, open a shop, and become a rich Towkay!”

As we approach the Chinese New Year of the Ox, I suddenly recall this short though pleasant conversation that took place in the middle of nowhere. It seems like an appropriate time to reflect on the Chinese enigma again.

Another insult to our parliamentary democracy?

By Sim Kwang Yang

Finally, after months of confusion and uncertainty, the PKR elected state rep for Port Klang Badrul Hisham Abdullah has finally resigned from his party and declared himself a “BN friendly” independent state assemblyman.

In doing so, he has betrayed his party and above all the thousands of voters who elected him into office.

If he is honourable, he should resign from his seat and let a by-election choose his replacement.

Honour is not a commodity found in abundance in Malaysian politics. So Badrul will “serve” to the end of his term I suppose, adding yet another insult to our fledgling parliamentary democracy.

For months now, we have heard that this fellow is a “non-performing rep” in PKR; top leaders have been calling for him to resign.

Then, there are those who claim that whether an elected rep of the people performs or not is a matter of subjective judgement.