Universally Positive, Radical Scope

Transsexualism and Sex Change in Islam

2011-09-17T07:13:00.000-07:00

Translation and transcription of the video:

DR TARIQ AL HABEEB

Do we judge on a person that he is a male or female from his external physical appearance ? Or from the internal feeling inside himself ? Most of those who i've conversed with said : HIS EXTERNAL PHYSICAL APPEARANCE.

But in... my view ,and maybe a lot will disagree with me,we judge the person if he is male or female from his internal feeling inside himself.What does he feel in himself ? What does he feel in his identity ?

If we ask anyone for example. why do you wear arabic scarf or dress ? is it because your physical appearance is a man so you did wear that ? Or is it because you felt inside you that you are a man so you did wear that ? the basic gauge is his feeling that he is a man made him follow that habit.We ask the women why do your wear such ? is it because of your physical appearance is feminine so u wear such ?Or is it because you felt inside you that you female so you do wear that clothes? The standard perspective ,if we observed and focused in ourselves , is because we feel inside ourselves that we are men so we wear that clothes,or because they feel they are women so they wear those clothes.Even in the national and the patriotic structure of the person,why he is following a specific attitude ? It is because he, inside himself, assume that assumption.

But i focus on the self structure , the identification , the personal , Am i male or female inside my self ?

Lets take for example the man who came to my clinic for example,he feels that he is a female.What should we do?We evaluate his body: we found that he is a man.Then we evaluate his hormones, to see what the structure of the hormones say about him ? in most cases ,from what i've seen in these condition , is that the hormones structure is for men but has been disturbed.If there was defect , we go for curing the hormone defect that causes that condition.If there no any defects,we look to the psychological side ,So we do the physical check up first ,external and internal ,We see if there is a uterus or not ,ovaries etc.Then we check his hormones if he is a man and has female hormone, we modify these hormones and then we see what happen next.The third condition , we found that his body is a man, and his hormones are male hormones,But inside himself he feels that he is a female.."I'm a female,not only i like to be with females,I'm a female inside my self,not only inside my self,i'm all a female.But why should i act like a man,and wear mens clothe...etc? it is because society imposed on me...i feel that i'm a female..

we ask now,should that person live as a female or male? what is the right that we should give to this person ? Should he live as a male or female ? in my personal evaluation this person must be a female...because the gauge is not the body,and its not the hormone,because the actual gauge is his internal feeling, his composition , if it was since he was raise while he was a child,and he feels that feeling,so he is a female with a male body and male hormones..but if it was something casual,so no,we don't accept that..!!!Maybe some while growing more with girl ,started from females behavior.That is behavioral conditioning ,but his self identity is a man.Feels like a man,but like some of females behavior THAT IS NOT THE ONE WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT..! Please don't get mixed up with what i'm saying,But a person since he came into life and he feels that he is a female so it is very limited percentage ,not every man who effeminate in his clothes or a woman who dressed like a man .No,not those whom we are talking about.WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THOSE WHO HAVE INSIDE FEELINGS THAT MAYBE LEAD HIM/HER TO DRESS IN A CERTAIN WAY OR ANY OTHER BEHAVIOR.That person according to my view should live as a female..And the woman that has a feeling of a man since she was born and came to the universe and that feeling strong inside NOT A PASSING OR TEMPORARY FEELING ,NO,Not that what we mean,but the complete feeling that she is male ,she deserve to live as a male ,and those whom i'm talking about those have the right to live ,the woman as a man,and the man as a woman .

And to pursue the appropriate medical decision,From THE ISLAMIC View some maybe against and say "HOW COULD THIS BE'? I Say:I HAVE EVIDENCE IN THIS MATTER,The intersex,whose body completely is mixed with female and male..What do the scholars say about this ? They said : To which ever he is close to, he or she should change...That person in front of me ,is two pieces ,one is physical and the other is the psychological i fix them together.What does that person feel ? what does he want ? what is attracted to ? we are talking about intersex..!! this is how we evaluate that person who is called in fiqih a intersex or hermaphrodite who is not matching one's assigned sex,but mixed sex in his/her reproductive organs ..what should we do to that person? we ask him/her where do you find yourself closer to? and see what is his/her body structure closer to..so we mix this with that ,and continue the treatment of making this person a male or female..i apply my idea that i'm saying ,and base it on that EVEN IF THE PERSON WE ARE TREATING ,FROM OUTSIDE HE IS A MAN ,AND HIS HORMONES ARE MALE,BUT INSIDE HIM IS A FEMALE,YES,HE HAS THE RIGHT TO LIVE AS FEMALE,AND I'M SAYING IT WITH ALL BRAVERY..He should live as a female,the society,the culture,and so and so don't judge on me as on that's how we found our fathers doing,don't judge on me based on theories,judge on me with science,converse with me.My parents have taught me to debate the idea by another idea,and argument by another argument,..But if i started saying..this and that and what should i do with the people ? That is not the language of science ,nor the language of religion..Never at all..But we evaluate that matter,and make the ideal psychological and surgical treatment for that person to live tranquilly..LET'S THINK ABOUT OUR FAMILIES AND SOCIETIES...

Many parents come to me saying:HE EMBARRASES US INFRONT OF THE PEOPLE....! How we could changed him ? COME ON GUYS,SHOULD HE SUFFER FROM WEARING MEN'S CLOTHES? OR SHOULD SHE FOR EXAMPLE SUFFER FROM THOSE WOMEN'S CLOTHES? YOU FIND A WOMAN LIVING AS A MAN,WALKING LIKE A MAN..She has the right to live as a man..We think about our interest and benefits..BUT WE DON'T THINK ABOUT THEIR RIGHT..It is his right to live as a woman,IF HIS PSYCHOLOGICAL COMPLEXITY SINCE ALLAH CREATE HIM AND HE FEELS INSIDE HIM THAT HE IS A FEMALE,IM REPEATING AGAIN...,Not a temporary feeling,so none misunderstand me,But A VERY STRONG & ROOTED FEELING INSIDE HIM,THAT MAKES HIM WORRIED AND ANNOYED FROM WHAT ? From his outer physical appearance and his clothes,that he wears male's clothes and HE FEELS INSIDE HIM THAT HE IS FEMALE..! OR SHE DID WEAR FEMALE'S CLOTHE ,AND SHE FEELS INSIDE HER THAT SHE IS A MALE.So after that evaluation,the physical and hormones,we move to the psychological side..If it was a strong and rooted feeling for that person,in my scientific opinion,It is favourable for that person to live as female ,that man and that woman,it is favourable to live as male.

There is different composition in some people,even in their internal psychology,those no ,we see to which he/she closer and we confirm on it,not impose the opposite.there is also the person who has sexual orientation , a man who is attracted to both women and men (Bisexual),That is not whom we are talking about..That is call sexual disturbance...and actually i don't call it a 'disturbance' with all the meaning of that word,A person who attracted to the same sex, a man to man,a woman to woman,maybe it is disturbance..but both sex at the same time ,that is maybe because of some social habits make the person attracted to both sexes,A Man who is attracted to both sexes sexually,and feels inside him that he is a man,That is not the one whom we are talking about..or A woman who is attracted to both sexes sexually,or even is attracted to women only,and she practice lesbianism a lot in her life ,She is not the one whom we are talking about...unless she feels inside that she is a man..Even she practiced lesbianism,and she feels that is the dominant (top), and not the receiver (bottom),in this relationship,still,we ask does she feel she is a man ? or a woman and she want to practice that?If she felt that she is a woman,and continuously during that sexual act and after it and since very early time in her life,and with a strong feeling in my thought that lady is a man,she should live as a man...it is her right to live as a man,and our duty to support that orientation but by using the medical standard to control that issue..The time of the program is over..Assalamualaikum warrah matullah hiwabarukatoh...

Dr. Tariq Al-Habeeb is an Islamic psychologist.

I Think, Therefore I Am Dangerous

2009-12-31T18:35:00.000-08:00

New Book To Look Out For

2009-12-30T22:46:00.000-08:00

Got this email earlier, and I believe you guys would be interested to read about it:

I enjoyed visiting your blog today, and I thought that you might be interested to learn that a new edition of Napoleon Hill's classic book "Think and Grow Rich" has been published.

Its title is "Think and Grow Rich!" (subtitled) "The Original Version, Restored and Revised." I am the editor/annotator of this new 412-page edition, which is really an homage to Dr. Hill. (For several years I was the editor-in-chief of "Think & Grow Rich Newsletter.")

What I have done is this: to restore Dr. Hill's book to its original manuscript content (it was first published in 1937, but was abridged in 1960), annotate it with more than 50 pages of endnotes (most of the persons and events he discusses are generally unknown to readers today), index it thoroughly, add an appendix with a wealth of additional information about Dr. Hill and his work, and revise the book in ways to help remove certain "impediments" to reading the book today (language that today would be considered obsolete, sexist or racist). None of these things had previously been done with TGR.

If you would like to learn a little more about this project, a quick visit to www.tgr-restored-revised.com will give you some details. The "Editor's Foreword" provides more complete information, and the “Testimonials” page will demonstrate how well-received this new book is around the world.

Here is the book’s Amazon.com page...

http://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Rich-Original-Restored/dp/1593302002/sr=1-1/qid=1172004763/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-1493475-7148634?ie=UTF8&s=books

The book is available on all the Amazon websites and most other online sellers, it can be ordered by any bookstore, and it will start appearing in bookstores soon. We also sell direct, at steep discounts, to personal success coaches and motivational speakers who use it for back-of-the-room sales and to teach Master Mind Study Groups.

Our edition of TGR! is superior in every way to other versions on the market. It is a trade paperback, not a pocket-size mass market paperback. It is unabridged. It is 412 pages versus 230+ (depending on the edition). It looks better, feels better, reads better than any other version. It is fast becoming the "version of choice" among Napoleon Hill devotees and other students of success and high achievement.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Ross Cornwell, Editor

Well, what are you waiting for? Go get it, and read it from cover to cover. Here's to success.

Site of the week: House of Happy Furmily

2009-10-11T01:28:00.000-07:00

Am doing this to help an old acquaintance. She's the founder of this movement, and I'd like to see her succeed in her endeavor, since I'm a pet-lover myself.

House of Happy Furmily

Providing H O P E when it seems to be HOPELESS

Imagine all of a sudden your lovely dog was diagnosed with a critical health problem.

Or worse, your precious cat got hit by a car, and lost two of his/her legs.

Not only humans have medical problems but animals as well. If your pet encountered any of the similar misfortune, what would you have done?

Put your pet to sleep? Give away to a shelter?

You might be thinking that giving your pet away is the best solution because you cannot bear the high medical fees to help your pet.

“I can buy more than 1 new puppy with that amount of money, why bother paying for that sick dog’s medical fees?”

That kind of thinking is sick and insane, mind my language.

Will you push your family members like your mother/father to a shelter or even put them to sleep when you think of their medical bills?

But sadly to say, there are some people with such thinking in this wonderful world.

I have 7 adopted dogs and 1 rescued cat staying with me under the same roof. Most of them are either abandoned by the previous owners, with critical health condition, untamed or untrained. Even they are with such disadvantage, i doesn’t see them showing me their “giving up” face. They are still trying their very best to live a happy life, eat and play as hard as they could. It is a joy to have them around. Seeing them brings tear to my eyes because these are the true example of being grateful and happy for what you have despite your shortcomings.

I’m personally touched by their strong surviving spirits. Together with my friends; we are a group of pet enthusiasts who believe that helping pets is a necessity because pets have feelings like we do. If you abandon your dogs, they will be feeling the same way you would feel if someone abandoned you when you get sick.

Therefore, my friend and her partners decided to develop a charity fund catered especially for handicapped pets or those in dire needs of medical attention even those who are advised to “put-to-sleep” by certain vets, in other words, special pets. With this charity fund, there would not be any more cases of owners not being able to treat their pets because of financial constraints.

We want to help as many as we could! All our team mates behind this charity fund have a true heart to help these special pets. We want to be the ones that these special pets can turn to when there seems to be hopeless in their owners’ eyes.

Please support the House of Happy Furmily and be a blessing to those special pets. Let’s give them a hope and a chance to live a longer and happier life.

H1N1 Info: Kindly share if you care

2009-08-15T20:09:00.001-07:00

Pandemic Influenza H1N1 2009 is a disease that is caused by a virus that could affects your respiratory system.

The symptoms of Pandemic Influenza H1N1 2009 are:
i. Fever
ii. Cough or sore throat
iii. Body aches
iv. Headache, chills and fatigue
v. In some cases, vomiting and diarrhoea

Complications of the disease include pneumonia and difficulty in breathing. Death may occur in persons who have other medical problems or complications.

How does Pandemic Influenza H1N1 2009 spread?
i. Influenza viruses are mainly spread from one person to another through droplets released during coughing or sneezing;
ii. Sometimes people may become infected by touching surfaces or holding objects contaminated with influenza viruses (e.g., hands, door handles , handkerchiefs, tissue paper) and then touching their own mouth, nose or eyes.

How is Pandemic Influenza H1N1 2009 managed?
i. There is no vaccine available at the moment; however, studies are being conducted to produce a vaccine;
ii. Antivirals (medicines used for managing infection with a virus), can be used to treat the disease. Oseltamivir (Tamiflu) is one of the effective medicines currently being used;
iii. Antiviral medicines work better if started soon after getting sick (within two days of appearance of symptoms);
iv. Those treated with antivirals usually recover fully; so far, no resistance to the recommended medicines for Pandemic Influenza H1N1 2009 virus has been documented;
v. Health workers should make treatment decisions based on clinical and epidemiological assessment. Particular attention should be paid to patients with complications.
vi. WHO does not recommend the use of antivirals for mass prophylaxis.

If a person is in contact with or likely to be exposed to a sick person, how can he avoid being infected?
i. Regular washing of hands with soap and water is strongly recommended;
ii. Hand rubbing with alcohol is also advised where available
iii. Keep a distance of at least one step (one meter) from the infected person to avoid coming into contact with the influenza droplets;
iv. If contact with a sick person or with potentially infected surfaces or objects occurs, those involved must not touch their eyes, nose or mouth with unwashed hands;
v. Close contact with a sick person should be avoided; people are advised to refrain from handshaking, kissing or hugging during an outbreak;
vi. Those taking care of a sick person should use a face mask in accordance with guidelines provided by national health authorities;
vii. It is advisable to be physically active, drink plenty of fluids, eat well, reduce stress and have enough sleep.

What can infected individuals do to prevent spreading Pandemic Influenza H1N1 2009 to others?
i. They should cover their mouth with a piece of cloth or tissue paper when sneezing or coughing; the used tissue should be properly disposed of while the cloth should be washed with soap, dried and replaced as often as required;
ii. The infected person should wear a mask when in contact with others;
iii. Tissue paper, handkerchief or other material used by the sick person for wiping his nose or mouth, must not be used by others;
iv. If there is no tissue paper or cloth, the sick person should cover his face with his arm before sneezing or coughing, and not use his hands to contaminate surfaces or things that may be touched or held by others;
v. Hands should be washed with soap and water especially after sneezing, or coughing, and before touching door handles and other objects or surfaces so as to prevent contamination with droplets;
vi. Sick persons should stay at home and limit contact with others as much as possible.
vii. People should seek treatment immediately if infection is suspected, if symptoms occur or when advised by a health worker.

What should communities do to help prevent the spread of Pandemic Influenza H1N1 2009?.
i. Ensure community members know how to limit the spread of influenza, the symptoms of the disease and what to do if infection occurs;
ii. Ensure provision of care for those infected;
iii. Support social distancing, isolation or quarantine when requested by a health worker (or as determined by health authorities);
iv. Establish contact with the nearest health facility that will provide support in managing the disease;
v. Report suspected cases and deaths to a health worker or other relevant authority.

For more information about Pandemic Influenza H1N1 2009 , contact the Regional Office Pandemic Influenza H1N1 2009 Crisis Management Team (Dr Yada –yadaa@afro.who.int ) and visit the websites www.who.int or www.cdc.gov.

Wine as an investment class has become more appealing

2008-11-16T17:46:00.000-08:00

Here's a good article for the investors in these uncertain time:

By DALJIT DHESI

INVESTMENT in quality wine is fast making waves across the globe as an alternative investment class amidst plummeting equity value, extreme volatility and looming recession. It appears that many investors are diversifying their portfolio into premium wines and others, including teetotallers, are also jumping into the bandwagon.

Sure Holdings Ltd managing director James Pala says the biggest appeal of wine as an alternative investment class is that it is low risk, offers stable returns and has a low co-relation with stocks and bonds.

In addition, he points out that wine investment has also become increasingly attractive in recent years due to the fact that people do not have to pay capital gains tax when they sell their wines.

Vintage Assets Pte Ltd director Lionel Lau says the investment in this “liquid asset” is unique as once wine is produced in a certain year, it can never be repeated again in line with the famous saying in Bordeaux “Once in a bottle, never again”.
Pala

Bordeaux is a province in France and the mother of all quality and investment grade wines of the world.

From the world’s total production, only 1% is categorised as investment grade wine, out of which 80% comes from Bordeaux.

Lau says the longer a wine is held, the higher the price it can fetch and the higher the potential returns. During one of the great vintage years of 2005, he says the price of certain wines surged by over 148% between the pre-bottling stage (in June 2005) to the time they hit the market three years later.

General manager Chris Low says great vintage is a term used to describe the best harvest by the top critics of quality wines.

The top five performing wine brand of Vintage 2000, Low says, is Lafite Rothschild, Haut-Brion, Latour, Mouton Rothschild and Margaux.

Sure Holdings and Vintage Assets are believed to be the only two wine advisors and brokers operating in Malaysia. According to Lau, the higher consumption and demand is set to drive existing investment and collection of wines in the global market.

He says investment grade wines like Lafite has survived three recessions – of the eighties, nineties and the present one.

Annual returns on investment grade wines, says Pala, especially those from Bordeaux can typically rake in returns of between 12% and 20%, even though they have averaged far higher returns over the last 25 years.

Liv-ex, the world’s biggest fine wine index based in London, estimates the prices of the best vintages have currently increased by 50% since the start of last year, in sharp contrast to the global stock market, where prices had fallen by 15%. Over the last 12 months, he says wines traded on the Liv-ex 500 Fine Wine Index has increased by 14.4% as against a decline of 33% and 37% on the FTSE 100 and S&P 500 respectively.
Lau

Due to its close proximity with France, London is currently the wine hub of the world as it has the best bonded public wine warehouses equipped with high tech facilities and conducive storage temperature, amongst others.

The turnover on wine investment in Britain alone has currently reached over a billion dollars, not accounting for the US and Asia markets.

The trend in Asia is visible. Hong Kong recently abolished tax on wine and beer in a bid to become a wine hub in the region.

He says in Malaysia the market for investment grade wines was on the uptrend as investors were looking for safer investments to grow their monies.

Pala says he generally advises his clients to go for less risky and relatively short to medium term (two to three years) type of investment.

“We trade Bordeaux wines and part of it is the 1855 classification. Over the last three years, we have recommended 40 different wines to our clients with investments totalling £69,000, which have made returns of 43% (£98,000 in value) during the period,’’ he notes.

Vintage Assets was set up last year. Lau says the lowest return raked in by a client so far is less than 20% return a year.

Wine investors in Malaysia are generally high net worth individuals who are businessmen, CEOs of companies and banks, university lecturers and doctors.

Before investing, Lau says that he analyses his clients’ risk appetite and the time frame they expect to realise their investment returns, be it two, three or even in five years time. Both Pala and Lau advised their clients to store their wines bought at bonded warehouses in London to ensure its premium quality.

“It is not advisable to ship them to other parts of the world as it is risky and will affect the wines quality, leading to depreciation in value,’’ Pala remarks.

Source: The Star BizWeek Section

Notice

2008-11-14T16:37:00.000-08:00

Umm... Hi there. Wow, didn't expect to see people visiting this dilapidated blog haha. Yeah, the owner is a lazy bum, who would rather go out for a teh beng (or iced milk tea for the westerners) session than writing some useful stuffs in his blog. I will try to be more active in writing, though I admit, am very susceptible to distractions. Namely World of Warcraft, teh beng, gatherings, and MSN haha.

Anyway, hope you guys will visit my other blogs as well. For now, please visit my personal blog. Yes, this blog is not for personal purpose, though I tend to get things mixed up every now and then. The link is on the left-hand side bar. Drats... I need to update those as well. Sigh.

Okay, RadicalScope signing off. Time to take a bath. I'm smelly :p

Be nice to people, as long as they are certified nice.

2008-09-27T17:33:00.000-07:00

I remember watching "Fruits Basket" the animation, and listened to the story of "The Foolish Traveler". This particular traveler, had a very good heart. Always wanting to help people, to the extend that he was manipulated by the people he met in his travel. He gave away all his possessions, after listening to their stories, even though they were lying. In the end, as he got not even a single article of clothing on him, he went into the jungle. There, he got tricked by the demons in the jungle, who ate everything save his head. The demons said, "Thank you for your kindness. We have a present for you." The traveler, since he never asked anything in return for his kindness, and never got anyway, was very happy. He keep on saying, "Thank you, thank you. I've never got a present before. Thank you, thank you." He said those words so happily, as he was dying. The present the demons left was a piece of paper, with "Stupid" written on it.

Lesson of the story: DO NOT BE NICE TO PEOPLE UNLESS THEY GOT PROOF THAT THEY ARE NICE TOO.

WANTED

2008-09-25T20:41:00.000-07:00

TELEMARKETERS CUM ADMIN

URGENTLY REQUIRED

WORK ALONGSIDE EXPATRIATES

NO EXPERIENCE REQUIRED, AS LONG AS YOU CAN SPEAK FLUENT ENGLISH

WE OFFER COMMISSIONS IN UK POUND STERLING

JOBSCOPE:
-DATAMINING
-COLD-CALLING
-DATABASE MANAGEMENT

BASE SALARY RM1500++, PLUS INCREMENTS IF YOU EXCEED THE TARGET KPI.

WORKING HRS: 8.30AM-5.30PM

OFFICE LOCATED AT THE HERITAGE HOUSE, JALAN YAP AH SHAK, KL (BEHIND SHERATON IMPERIAL HOTEL)

CALL NOW TO ARRANGE FOR AN INTERVIEW: 0166001609

We Are Hiring

2008-08-28T20:51:00.000-07:00

Do you want to build a long-term financial success?

We are looking for inspiring, hard-working, goal-driven, exciting sales people to help us market our provent investment portfolio. If you have what it takes and you need a new challenge, then get in contact with us now. Proficiency in English is a MUST and very crucial to our success in the business. Join a world class marketing team NOW!

The job:

involves telesales and/or face to face meetings with potential clients to introduce our wine investment portfolios.
working with sales presentations.
attending network evenings and exhibitions to expand contacts and promote the portfolios.

FULL TRAINING AND CONTINUOUS SUPPORT PROVIDED

The person:

strong telephone skills etiquette
aggressive, hardworking, able to work independently and willing to work extra hours when necesary.
good sense of humor and strong people skills.
fluency in English both written and oral, paired with good communication skills.
1-2 years of documented successful sales experience.
must be a self-motivated, disciplined professional.
knowledge in wines and investment jargon is an added advantage.

Fax or email your CV to:

Nor Ismat, HR Executive
Email: info@sureholdings.com
Fax: +603-2694 8416

An Age Old Argument on the Almighty

2008-08-19T15:21:00.000-07:00

Born into a Muslim family, my parents (like any other "rational" Muslim parents in Malaysia) would tell me not to question about God. Which, as I grow up, makes no sense as there are plenty verses in the Holy Quran that hinted that as Muslims we should. Not question in a negative manner, but question in a questing manner. We are supposed to question His existence in order to find Him, not to deny Him.

With that mentality in mind, I look around and sure enough, I found that intellectual people who argues about the divine spirit with the intention of seeking the truth found them, whereas those who seek to deny the truth will not. You gain what you seek. So how should we argue about something that we never seen, cannot be touched, never been heard, cannot be tasted, and has no smell? The following conversation might give you an idea:

An atheist professor of philosophy speaks to his class on the problem science has with God, The Almighty.
He asks one of his new students to stand and.....

Prof: So you believe in God?
Student: Absolutely, sir.

Prof: Is God good?
Student: Sure.

Prof: Is God all-powerful?
Student: Yes.

Prof: My brother died of cancer even though he prayed to God to heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But God didn't. How is this God good then? Hmm?
Student: (Student is silent.)

Prof: You can't answer, can you? Let's start again, young fella. Is God good?
Student: Yes.

Prof: Is Satan good?
Student: No.

Prof: Where does Satan come from?
Student: From...God...

Prof: That's right. Tell me son, is there evil in this world?
Student: Yes.

Prof: Evil is everywhere, isn't it? And God did make everything. Correct?
Student: Yes.

Prof: So who created evil?
Student: (Student does not answer.)

Prof: Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things exist in the world, don't they?
Student: Yes, sir.

Prof: So, who created them?
Student: (Student has no answer.)

Prof: Science says you have 5 senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Tell me, son...Have you ever seen God?
Student: No, sir.

Prof: Tell us if you have ever heard your God?
Student: No , sir.

Prof: Have you ever felt your God, tasted your God, smelt your God? Have you ever had any sensory perception of God for that matter?
Student: No, sir. I'm afraid I haven't.

Prof: Yet you still believe in Him?
Student: Yes.

Prof: According to empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your GOD doesn't exist. What do you say to that, son?
Student: Nothing. I only have my faith.

Prof: Yes. Faith. And that is the problem science has.

Student: Professor, is there such a thing as heat?
Prof: Yes.

Student: And is there such a thing as cold?
Prof: Yes.

Student: No sir. There isn't. (The lecture theatre becomes very quiet with this turn of events.)

Sir, you can have lots of heat, even more heat, superheat, mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat. But we don't have anything called cold.
We can hit 458 degrees below zero which is no heat, but we can't go any further after that.
There is no such thing as cold. Cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat.
We cannot measure cold. Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.
(There is pin-drop silence in the lecture theatre.)

Student: What about darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as darkness?
Prof: Yes. What is night if there isn't darkness?

Student: You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is the absence of something.
You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light....But if you have no light constantly, you have nothing and it's called darkness, isn't it?
In reality, darkness isn't exist. If it were, you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn't you?
Prof: So what is the point you are making, young man?

Student: Sir, my point is your philosophical premise is flawed.
Prof: Flawed? Can you explain how?

Student: Sir, you are working on the premise of duality. You argue there is life and then there is death, a good God and a bad God.
You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure.
Sir, science can't even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one.
To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing.
Death is not the opposite of life: just the absence of it.
Now tell me, Professor.
Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?
Prof: If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, yes, of course, I do.

Student: Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?
Prof: (The Professor shakes his head with a smile, beginning to realize where the argument is going.)

Student: Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavour, are you not teaching your opinion, sir?
Are you not a scientist but a preacher?
Prof: (The class is in uproar.)

Student: Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the Professor's brain?
Prof: (The class breaks out into laughter.)

Student: Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor's brain, felt it, touched or smelt it?.....No one appears to have done so.
So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, sir.
With all due respect, sir, how do we then trust your lectures, sir?

Prof: (The room is silent. The professor stares at the student, his face unfathomable.)
Prof: I guess you'll have to take them on faith, son.

Student: That is it sir.. The link between man & God is FAITH. That is all that keeps things moving & alive.

Chicken Soup for the Malaysian Soul

2008-06-10T00:23:00.000-07:00

Hi there . Now, how long has it been since the last time I posted? Well, life has been a bit harsh on me. But I know, it is because life is preparing me for something bigger. Something that the current me can never comprehend. Thus, all the hardship I'm facing right now. But hey, we're talking about being positive here, so let's put the depressing talk aside.

What I wanted to talk about today, in this post, is about something that has been in my mind since last year. Have you guys read the book Chicken Soup for the Soul? When I was younger, they even made a TV series based on the stories featured in that book. Since then, there had been various other chicken soup books published, due to the impact brought by the stories featured. So a thought came into my mind, "Hey, it's about time we have a Chicken Soup book for Malaysian." Now, I'm not looking for an avenue for profit. I just want to have an avenue where people share their most motivating, life-changing, inspiring stories with other Malaysians, as well as the world. So the most I can promise for now is a Teh Tarik session at a mamak stall of your preference.

So, I need you to help me to:

Send me 1 (one) motivating, life-changing, and inspiring story that you had experienced PERSONALLY. It must be a true story, not an adaptation of any sort. Please include your personal details (name, contact number) as well, so that we can have the teh tarik session I promised. Stories are to be sent to my personal email: radicalscope@gmail.com.
Next, recommend me 3 people whom you know would be able to provide me with stories of the same or greater impact. All I need is their name and email address. If they don't do emails, a phone number would do as well.

The stories, once compiled, will be sent to Jack Canfield, the original author of the Chicken Soup series. If he lets me publish the book under my name, or with me as the co-author, I'll share with you all whatever I get from the book. But the teh tarik session is a confirmed promise.

Okay, that's all for now. Looking for ward for the wonderful stories that you have in store for me, and the people you'd like me to meet for more stories. And thank you in advance. Lord bless you all with happiness beyond imagination.

'Dieting ruined my health'

2007-12-02T15:32:00.000-08:00

Jane Elliott
BBC News Online health staff

An eating disorder in her teens left Dr Anna Richman with a legacy of ill-health.

Aged only 32, Anna has osteoporosis - a condition usually associated with menopausal women twice her age.

Formerly a statuesque six footer Anna, used to be taller than her sisters, but the osteoporosis has taken at least two inches from her height.

"The irony is that I wanted to lose weight to have a better-shaped body.

"When I lost the height from my spine my waist actually disappeared and I was left with a protruding stomach.

"I will never get that height back. It seems to have gone from the top half of my body and it affects the way I dress."

As well as osteoporosis, anorexia can have further drastic effects on the body.

A lack of food deprives the body of protein and prevents the normal metabolism of fat.

The effects of this can include an irregular heart beat caused by a change in the heart muscle - which in turn can lead to heart failure and death.

Other problems can include ceasing of menstruation, dehydration, kidney stones and kidney failure.

Some anorexics also develop a fine, downy body hair, called lanugo, on the face and arms and their muscles waste away. Some suffer constipation or bowel irritation.

Teenage diet

Anna, who now works as a hospital doctor in Liverpool, started to diet in her late teens.

"I was only dieting for 18 months, but the implications have gone on for years," she said.

It wasn't long after Anna started dieting that her weight got out of control.

Very soon she was hospitalised with anorexia.

"It did just start off as a bit of a diet. I lost a bit of weight and then it went from a diet to anorexia."

When Anna was first hospitalised her weight had plummeted to just seven-and-a-half stone.

Doctors helped her build her weight back up to over 10 stone.

But then she relapsed and needed hospitalisation as it slumped again to just six stone.

Rebuilding life

Watching her friends leave her behind as they gained their A' Levels and then university places, Anna struggled to take charge of her life again.

She took her exams and started to study medicine, but the damage had been done.

"When I was 19 I was just getting over the anorexia and had taken a part-time job in a nursing home.

Risks

One in three woman and one in 12 men over 50 have osteoporosis
Treating broken bones due to osteoporosis costs the NHS about £5 million a day

"I had a backache and was just told that everyone at the home used to get these.

"But then one day I was in excruciating pain with my back and I just fell to the floor. I could not walk and had to crawl back to bed."

Eventually doctors diagnosed Anna with osteoporosis and spotted that she had two compression fractures in the spine.

Her bone density was low and doctors recommended a high-dose pill to boost her levels.

But she found taking calcium tablets and doing weight bearing exercises worked better.

Fragile bones

Emma Burrows, of the National Osteoporosis Society, said young women like Anna are at an increased risk of osteoporosis.

"Oestrogen is essential for healthy bones in women. Over-dieting can cause a drop in oestrogen levels similar to that experienced at the menopause and can result in fragile bones that are liable to break easily.

"It is essential that we all protect our bones by eating a healthy, well-balanced and calcium rich diet, and that doesn't mean it has to be fattening.

"Low-fat dairy products, such as skimmed milk, actually contain more calcium than the full-fat varieties, and calcium can come from non-dairy sources too.

"Young women who miss their periods for six months or more as a result of over-dieting or over-exercising are at an increased risk of suffering a broken bone due to osteoporosis and should talk to their GP about a possible bone scan or treatment."

Diet is not an answer; it's a mean. Use it wisely or it will devour you.

Malaysia keeps its tiger caged

2007-11-30T03:24:00.000-08:00

-------------------------------

William Pesek

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Those wondering where Malaysia is headed should keep an eye on Tony Fernandes. Perhaps no one personifies the promise of Asia's 10th-biggest economy better than the 43-year-old entrepreneur.

In 2001, he created a budget airline, beating the odds in a place dominated by government-linked companies that tend to abhor competition. AirAsia has been

turning heads ever since.

It was another airline magnate, Aristotle Onassis, who said the key to succeeding in business is knowing something others don't.

Fernandes knew that not only were Asians ready for no-frills carriers, but so were investors.

Fernandes is often called Southeast Asia's answer to Richard Branson. It seems highly appropriate, then, that the two men teamed to launch AirAsia X, a long-haul budget carrier that this month made its maiden flight.

Branson's Virgin Group is among its key backers.

For all his success, Fernandes also is a microcosm of why Malaysia's economy isn't on the upward trajectory it could be. Politicians' efforts over the years to protect the turf of Malaysian Airline System backfired, leaving Kuala Lumpur lagging behind in the

race for Asia's travel hub. Malaysia has effectively tied one hand behind its back to help out national champions at the expense of the bigger picture.

'I'm asking this for national interest, not MAS's interest or anything else,' says Fernandes of his battle to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore. 'The consumers have suffered enough.'

Politicians continue to dither over another national champion: state- controlled carmaker Proton Holdings. While talks on an alliance with Volkswagen are

progressing, the saga is a reminder that Malaysia's leaders are wasting time the nation doesn't have.

In Proton's case, the exercise is about finding a partner to help revive sales and return the 24-year-old company to profit. Yet this, like Fernandes's fight to expand his innovative airline, is emblematic of how politicians often don't grasp that

Malaysia's place in Asia is rather tenuous.

The world has lots riding on multi- ethnic Malaysia. It's a place where micro-miniskirts comfortably exist next to women in headscarves. Yet the next 50 years will arguably be even harder than the last. It wasn't one of the original Asian tigers, yet Malaysia became one over the years. Now, amid Asia's boom, the economy

has its fair share of blemishes with which to grapple.

'The world is moving ahead at a rapid pace, and it won't wait for Malaysia,' says Razlan Mohamed, chief executive of Malaysian Rating Corp. The nation needs

to work harder and faster, he added.

Chrisanne Chin, finance faculty head at MIMS Business School, Malaysian Institute of Management & INTI University College, puts it this way: 'It's not so much what Malaysia is lacking, but that China, India, Vietnam and even Thailand and Indonesia have improved so much that they are very capable of leapfrogging Malaysia in a short span of another five years because of specific comparative advantages, from low costs to human capital to technology.'

Human capital is a particular concern. The government needs to do more to train the leaders of tomorrow and import the talent that firms require to thrive. It also has to win more of the foreign direct investment flowing elsewhere in Asia.

There's much backslapping about how the US$147 billion (HK$1.15 trillion) economy may expand 6 percent this year and 6.5 percent in 2008. The real picture can be

found in the World Economic Forum's latest competitiveness survey, in which Malaysia slipped two spots to 21st.

A huge obstacle for Malaysia is something that can barely be discussed: a 37-year-old affirmative-action program favoring the predominant Malay community. It alienates non-Malays, limits foreign investment, stifles competition and keeps the economy from moving toward a meritocracy.

Yet it's a third-rail issue. Most Malaysians won't even discuss it without first looking around to see who is listening.

A sense of political drift doesn't help. Four years in office, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has spent more time trying to solidify the influence of his party, the United Malays National Organization, than bringing the economy to the next level.

Investors and entrepreneurs complain that Abdullah, who, oddly, also serves as finance minister, hasn't attacked subsidies on products such as oil, or tackled

corruption as promised.

Malays are angry too

2007-11-30T03:20:00.000-08:00

Umar Mukhtar

Nov 28, 07 6:22pm

The Indians are unhappy and angry. So are the Malays and we know it is pretty much the same with the Chinese, Kadazans and Ibans. What they are unhappy about is pretty much the same: A government that does not listen, an electoral process that is so questionable that it is not a real hope for change and the eventual destruction of a nation through the abuse of power by people in government.

By this measure, never have Malaysians been so united in the single cause of changing the way the nation is governed, no matter how much BN tries to spin communal tensions into this. It does not matter if Hishammuddin Hussein brings a million government supporters to the streets Mugabe-style. Like all simple-minded, self-serving myopics, he has missed the point. This is a democracy. Whilst numbers decide a lot, the government in power is still the government of all the people.

Just in case Khairy Jamaluddin and gang has not been made aware, by now they should have gotten the message that people are angry enough to risk their freedom and limbs.

A police force, with members who bullies, kills with dynamites and is corrupt at the highest levels, may be feared but certainly not respected enough for it to be an effective protector. An election that is a farce can never be a hope or even a valve for frustrations. Nor can a judiciary that can be bought and sold or a prime minister who sleeps on the job.

Of course, we can expect the government to listen only to its cronies and continue to believe the lies told to the simple kampung folks. But the people will find ways to make the government listen. In the absence of a fair electoral process, street marches are only one of the many avenues that the downtrodden have resorted - all over the world, throughout the centuries - including my forefathers in their fight for independence.

People like me are thankful to Bersih and Hindraf, not necessarily because I support their causes. Their bravery are the barometers of the people's anger and desperation. The government should listen hard or risk the consequences of a chaotic society when people lose hope. My family and I should not have to bear the inconvenience caused by a government that pushes the people beyond the limit.

Every decent Malaysian, with enough sense in his head, finds the government's lies in its media revolting and insulting our intelligence. The rest of us are blinded by some misguided sense of nationalism, racism and patriotism - messed up into some cheap rojak, spiced up with fear, insecurities and a huge ego that hides an inferiority complex. Every now and then, an expensive and glossy Petronas commercial is commissioned to tug at our hearts as if they depict real life in Malaysia today. How I really wish.

I have no time to justify a renters' economy, rationalise my leaders' indiscretions in the name of my race or turn a deaf ear to their arrogance so unbecoming of my culture.

I am a Malay and proud of it until you guys made into a lunch ticket. I am angry.

2007-11-26T06:03:00.000-08:00

A lot of truth in this

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.

My confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, "Merry Christmas" to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu . If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her "How could God let something like this happen?" (regarding Katrina) Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"

In light of recent events...terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about. And we said OK.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "WE REAP WHAT WE SOW."

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in. My Best Regards.

Honestly and respectfully,

Ben Stein

A Thankful Thanksgiving by Jim Rohn

2007-11-21T15:51:00.000-08:00

You may be wondering why I would call this article a Thankful Thanksgiving. Aren't all Thanksgivings Thankful? Unfortunately, no. As a person who has experienced over 70 Thanksgivings, I recognize that being thankful is something that we have to work at, even on Thanksgiving.

If your home is like most, your Thanksgiving day will be very busy, with either traveling to where you want to go or preparing your home to have others over for the day. Either way, that can be very hectic and emotionally trying, which doesn't lend itself to preparing your heart to be reflective and thankful. In fact, Thanksgiving weekend is the most traveled weekend in America. Airports are full, and not always providing much room for contemplation of your good fortune.

This means all the more that if we want to be the kind of people who are characterized by thankfulness, then we must make sure that we focus on it, and not just on Thanksgiving Day, but at all times during the year.

Here are a few key words as well as some thoughts that are simple and practical to apply; something you can use right away in your quest for becoming more thankful:

Time. Set aside time regularly to be quiet, to reflect. We live in the fastest paced time ever. From the moment we awake to the moment we collapse into bed, we have the opportunity to go at full speed and never slow down. If we schedule time every day in which we can be quiet and reflect, we will free our hearts and minds up from the tyranny of the urgent and rushed.

Thought. Give thought to the many blessings that you have. Living in a consumer culture, most of us are fully aware of what we do not have and how we absolutely must have "it". But how often do we reflect upon that which we already have? Take some time each day and think of one or two things that you have that you may typically take for granted and then take a moment and give thanks for those. In fact, I make it a part of my reflection time to review a list of things that I'm thankful for.

Generosity. Be generous toward those with less and not envious of those with more. We tend to look at others who may be wealthier than ourselves and think, "I sure wish I had what he does." That kind of thinking breeds envy and jealousy rather than contentment. What can we do to break that cycle? I would suggest being generous to those who are less fortunate than yourself. Go to work at a food bank. And not just during the holidays - everybody works there then - but on a regular basis during the year. That will remind you of how good you really have it.

Ask. Ask a friend what they are thankful for. The next time you are at lunch with a friend, ask him or her what they are most thankful for. You will be amazed at the answers you receive and you will create a meaningful bond with your friends as you focus on this powerful question.

Acknowledge. Lastly, tell those you love how thankful you are for having them in your life. So many times we neglect to take the time to craft the words to express to those closest to us what their presence in our lives means to us. Take the opportunity of Thanksgiving Day to write them a note or sometime during the day put your hand on their shoulder, look them in the eyes and tell them. Let them know what they mean to you, and in return you'll begin to create the possibility of deeper, richer, more fulfilling relationships with those you love.

Of course we should do what we can to make the most of the day we call Thanksgiving, but wouldn't it be a shame if the only time we reflected on our blessings was that one Thursday in November? And the answer is, of course! So let's do our best to be aware of the many great gifts that we have each and every day of the year. As we do so we will see our hearts soar and our minds will experience more and more at peace as we regularly remember and remain aware of our good fortune.

Happy Thanksgiving!
Jim Rohn

Learn another language.

2007-11-19T20:53:00.001-08:00

Guys and girls, I'd like you, especially those who fancies Spanish, to take a look at these two sites:

Learn Spanish
http://www.webspanish.com

Thanks to this revolutionary advance in education you can now learn Spanish one-to-one from anywhere in the world that has access to a broadband Internet connection.

Spanish tests online
http://www.practicespanishonline.com

Practice Spanish Online is an informed, thorough and up-to-date review of the main online Spanish learning resources available. Now you can check the quality of online Spanish resources with just one click!

I assure you that by visiting these sites, and following the system they've come up with, you'd be able to master the language. I wouldn't say in no time, though, as language requires just 3 things: PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!!

Update in Life

2007-11-14T21:37:00.000-08:00

Hi there,

It has been quite sometime, hasn't it. Sorry for the long hiatus. Had
been quite busy. Especially when you have an employer who is looking
at you as his successor. I guess life is being more and more generous
to me.

Currently I am working with Sheffield Resources Sdn Bhd, a HR
solutions company. It is a wholly owned by a New Zealand-based
company. 3 years old, with a staff of less than 10 people including
myself. The office here is being headed by Chris and Vignes. The two
of them has a cumulative HR experience of over 40 years. I really
enjoyed working with them, since the working environment is more or
less like a family. With me being the eldest son hehe.

So far I've been working on 3 positions, with 2 of them busted due to
the lack of cooperation from the client. But along the way, I managed
to secure some new contacts, mostly HR Managers and Directors.
Hopefully, in the long run, my dream of being a freelance consultant
will come true. With their guidance of course.

Today, I'm going to Gemas to help my boss to conduct a training
program. He actually asked me to design some game activities for the
program, and conduct them.

As for the future planning, they wanted to create a newsletter, as
well as conduct a forum periodically. And looking at the current
composition of the staff, I might be the person in charge for them.

As for the pay, I don't get any basics. The commission is quite
lucrative, though. 20% for executive search, and 10% for training
programs.

Do look up the company for more info as to what we have to offer:
www.sheffieldresource.com

Your Achievement Article

2007-11-14T21:16:00.000-08:00

Your Thoughts Brought You Here
by Vic Johnson (excerpted from Day by Day with James Allen)

"You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you." - Above Life's Turmoil

This principle was not easy for me to accept and I fought it for a long time. As miserable as my life was at the time I learned this concept, I was certain that there was no way that it was due to the thoughts that I had held. There were too many other reasons why things had gone bad: my ex-spouse, the economy, a client who had wronged me, and on and on and on. Since I wasn't responsible for my "bad luck," then certainly my thoughts had nothing to do with it.

But I was wrong. Like the biblical Job who said, "the thing I feared most has come upon me," I, too, had thought myself to the situation I was in.

Dr. Walter Doyle Staples, writing in Think Like a Winner! says, "I credit one simple concept with getting me started on my journey into self-discovery. After a great deal of study and contemplation, I came to the conclusion that people have in their lives today exactly what they keep telling their mind they want."

Like Dr. Staples, it was a moment of great illumination for me! The logical side of me said, "if you and you alone can think yourself into such a mess, then surely you and you alone can think yourself out of it."

And that I did. It wasn't overnight and it wasn't easy, but it was a sure thing! And by accepting all of the responsibility for where I was, and all of the responsibility for where I was going, I experienced a tremendous joy and freedom. I knew in my knower that if I got myself into the predicament, I could get myself out.

Of course, I had some great inspiration along the way. And I will always remember Les Brown's three steps to take during "hard time:"

1. Have Faith (didn't Paul say, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for...")
2. Remind yourself: "No matter how hard it is or how hard it gets, I'm going to make it!"
3. Have patience and engage in consistent action.

And that's worth thinking about.

Small Update

2007-08-10T22:56:00.000-07:00

Got the job :p. Grueling working lif starts on Monday. Working 7-7, a.m to p.m. And I think someone is trying to use my comment space to spread mayhem. By the way, I'm looking for a new house for rent. Any help?

Suryakanta

2007-08-03T19:57:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this on behalf of a dear _____________ (fill in the blank).

Suryakanta is a song composed by Sharon Paul. Lyrics by Fedtri Yahya and Ihab Ismail (THE Ihab Ismail listed in my blog). Vocals by Zehra Zambri. World Music rocks, Mawi sucks.

Here's the song: Suryakanta. Right-click to download, left-click to listen.

And please, leave a few words of comments.

One Down, More To Go...

2007-07-26T23:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, Marcus Evans' interview done and over. And Winnie, the officer who interviewed me asked to call her back at 4pm today to confirm whether I'm qualified for the second interview. My presentation didn't go that well, although she did praise me for the efforts I put in. I got a rating of 6.5 out of 10, which is a B-. Oh well, I did my best, and if I failed, I'll just apply again. I don't think I want to work with another company. Other than Marcus Evans.

Dani had tagged me, but I think I'll do the tag after my return. Have to finish my clearance first. See you guys soon.

EDIT

I qualified for the second session. ROUND 2, START!

Raja Petra summoned to Dang Wangi 11.00am today

2007-07-24T20:01:00.000-07:00

Raja Petra Kamarudin has been summoned to the Dang Wangi Police Station, Jalan Stadium, at 11.00am today (25 July 2007) for his statement to be recorded with regards to the police report made by the Umno Information Chief. It is believed a second police report has also been made with regards to the article Raja Petra wrote called ‘See you in hell Muhamad son of Muhamad’.

Hmmm... Bloggers! ASSEMBLE, AND FORM MAGNA-BLOGGER!!

Wish me ALL THE BEST

2007-07-24T19:39:00.000-07:00

3 days, 5 interviews. Reminds me a lot of my varsity years. The exam period, to be exact, where the unlucky gets double exam on a day. Wait, I've heard that some got triple exams on a day...

27th July:

8.30am - Marcus Evans: Sales Executive
2.30pm - Recruit Express: Admin Assistant

30th July:

11.00am - Pacific Powerhouse: Business Development Trainee
2.00pm - JTM: Trainee Manager

31st July:
10.45am - Creative-KT: Fresh Graduate Business Development Trainee

I expect to leave for JB on 1st August. For the position with Marcus Evans, I need to do a presentation. A sales presentation. On such a short notice... Oh well, time to put my rusty brain to the test. Anyway, I need a lot of prayers from you guys. Hopefully one of the position is meant for me...

A Secular State or an Islamic State?

2007-07-23T18:05:00.000-07:00

Written by Chandra Muzaffar
Monday, 23 July 2007

Malaysia is not a secular state within the conventional use of the term. Neither is it an Islamic state in the classical sense.

It is not a secular state since the Malaysian state formulates policies and organizes activities from the building of mosques and the administration of the Hajj, on the one hand, to the establishment of Islamic schools and the dissemination of Islamic awareness through public broadcasting channels, on the other, which demonstrate that it is actively involved in sustaining and strengthening the position of Islam in society. Judicial pronouncements and political utterances from the past which suggest that Malaysia is a secular state do not in any way negate the fact that the state has functioned in a non-secular mode, especially in the last three decades.

Nonetheless, for the majority of contemporary Muslim jurists, Malaysia is not an Islamic state since its constitution does not state that governance is based upon the Qur’an and Sunnah (the way of the Prophet Muhammad). Neither is shari’ah the supreme law of the land. Hudud (the Islamic criminal code) is not in force anywhere in Malaysia. These are legal and political attributes of state which are found in almost all those countries that are acknowledged as ‘Islamic’.

More than the actual situation prevalent in Malaysia, there are perceptions of what a ‘secular state’ is, and what an ‘Islamic state’ will be, which have shaped the outlooks of both Muslims and non-Muslims in the country. For a lot of Muslims, the term ‘secular’ connotes antipathy towards, or worse, rejection of, religion in the life of the nation. Since Islam encompasses all aspects of life, including government and politics, the idea of a ‘secular state’ has become anathema to them. Similarly, for many non-Muslims, an ‘Islamic state’ conjures up a frightening vision of Malay dominance reinforced by religious dogmatism. These perceptions – even if they are misconceived – carry tremendous weight and impact directly upon inter-ethnic ties.

This is why it is unwise to insist that Malaysia is a secular state or an Islamic state. There is no need to do this. It will only widen the chasm between the communities. It will exacerbate ethnic tensions.

Why is it necessary to categorize Malaysia as a secular state or an Islamic state when the character of the Malaysian state, its guiding principles and goals, and its vision of the future, have already been spelt out with such lucidity and clarity in the three fundamental documents that were meant to be our signposts in the last 50 years? The most important of these --- the Malaysian Constitution--- embodies a dozen or so basic principles which tell us what this nation is. In a nutshell Malaysia means;-

A parliamentary form of government based upon the concept of one person, one vote.
A federal system of governance.
A constitutional monarchy.
The supremacy of the rule of law.
An independent judiciary.
Protection of fundamental liberties.
Malay as the national and official language.
The right to use and study other languages.
Islam as the religion of the Federation.
Recognition of the right of non-Muslims to practise their religions.
The special position of the Malays and other indigenous peoples.
The legitimate interests of the other communities.

These principles enunciated in 1957 when we achieved Merdeka were reiterated in one form or other in the Rukunegara, the nation’s charter, in August 1970. It is significant that the first of the five principles of the Rukunegara is Belief in God. Young Malaysians recite this and the other four principles in school every morning but what is not emphasized at all are the five goals of the Rukunegara--- the goals of a united, just, democratic, liberal and progressive nation. Twenty-one years after the Rukunegara, its principles and goals were further elaborated in the nine strategic challenges of Vision 2020 which include the creation of a moral and ethical society.

If we reflected upon the Malaysian Constitution, the Rukunegara and Vision 2020, it would appear that they represent a trajectory in the evolution of the nation’s identity and character. It is as if the three documents embody the steady maturation of the Malaysian state and society.

It is important to emphasize at the same time that most of the principles and goals articulated by the three documents do not in any way contradict the universal values of the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Indeed, in certain respects, they seek to give meaning to some of the eternal concerns of the religion about justice, accountability and ethical conduct. Likewise, those who subscribe to a secular vision of society which is not antagonistic to the Divine, would applaud the fact that the Constitution, the Rukunegara and Vision 2020 uphold such principles and goals. In other words, when we go beyond labels such as ‘secular’ and ‘Islamic’ and connect with the substance of our three principal documents we will discover that there is a degree of congruence between the two positions.

This is why as we observe the fiftieth year of our Merdeka, we should reiterate our trust and confidence in the three documents that speak to the spirit of the Malaysian people and their shared destiny. To embroil ourselves in the unending controversy about whether we are a secular state or an Islamic state is to forfeit our future.

A Case of a Pot Calling a Kettle Black?

2007-07-23T16:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, one of the bloggers whom I respect, the loudest, bravest, and most resourceful, got a police report lodged against him by UMNO (or so the person who lodged the report claimed to be acting on behalf).

Umno lodges police report against Malaysia Today

By IZATUN SHARI

KUALA LUMPUR: Umno has lodged a police report against Malaysia Today for carrying a series of comments and remarks that it deemed as insulting the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, degrading Islam and inciting hatred and violence in Malaysia's multi-racial society.
Party information chief Tan Sri Muhammad Muhammad Taib lodged the report at 12.57pm at Tun H.S. Lee police station here Monday.
He said the comments and remarks, consisting of criminal elements and inciting religious and racial sentiments which could affect the country’s security, were carried by the blog on July 11.
The report was lodged under Section 121 (B) and Section 123 of the Penal Code, Section 4 of the Sedition Act 1948 and Section 263 and Section 266 of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998.
"I think they are very irresponsible," he told reporters at the police station. (And so were you.)

And here's the reply and refutation and revelation by that blogger:

See you in hell Muhamad son of Muhamad
Raja Petra Kamarudin

It seems there is a certain ex-Menteri Besar who made a police report against Malaysia Today and me. This ex-Menteri Besar who has two Muhamads is his name does not have even half the qualities of Prophet Muhamad S.A.W. let alone twice the qualities although he carries two Muhamads in his name.

This is the Muhamad who started life as a schoolteacher but does not speak a word of English. When caught carrying millions of dirty money into Australia, he pleaded ignorance of the English language and was acquitted by the Australian court the crime of smuggling money. What many people failed to realise is that when he resigned as a schoolteacher to contest the general election, the government made a claim of RM80,000 against him because he was on contract and was bound by this contract to serve the government to pay off what he owed.

You see, Malaysia has this unique system of giving underprivileged Malays government loans to further their studies. They must, however, serve the government for a certain period of time once they graduate and if they refuse to do so or resign before the expiry of their contract then they have to pay back the government the amount of their loan. This ex-Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name therefore owed the government RM80,000 and if he did not pay back the amount then he would be denying other Malays the benefit of this money and therefore would in that same process be denying other Malays the benefit of a tertiary education.

This ex-Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name then appealed to the then Minister of Education, Anwar Ibrahim, for exemption from paying back the government the RM80,000 that he owed and Anwar, being the smart politician that he was (or maybe still is, I am not sure of that), waived the rule so that this ex-Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name need not pay back the nation the RM80,000 that he owed and which could have gone to other less-fortunate Malays who needed government assistance to further their studies.

What boggles the mind is how this ex-Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name could suddenly have millions in his pocket and which he was arrested for as he entered Australia when just barely a few years before that he could not even pay back the government the RM80,000 that he owed and needed Anwar Ibrahim to exempt him from the rule of paying back the money.

This ex-Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name has made a police report against Malaysia Today and me saying that I insulted the Agong and Islam and that I raised racial sentiments which could probably result in racial conflicts in Malaysia. He was of course acting on behalf of Umno and represented Umno as its Information Chief.

It is mind-boggling that this ex-Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name would accuse me of insulting the Agong who is also the Sultan of Terengganu when the Agong is my buddy. When the Agong, who is also the Sultan of Terengganu, was merely the Raja Muda of Terengganu, I used to ride horses with him along the beach in Kuala Terengganu. I also made trips to London to meet the Agong who is also the Sultan of Terengganu when he was still just the Raja Muda of Terengganu and a student in London.

The then Raja Muda of Terengganu who is now the Agong and I would drive around London in his Ferrari and together with my sisters and wife would visit the famous London night-spots such as Longfellows where all the action is. When he was back in Kuala Lumpur I would take him to the then famous Tin Mine where we would just sit and talk as he was not a disco-dancer but preferred to just enjoy the music and talk.

Would I insult my long-time friend who is now the Agong when I sembah and kiss his hand and he would withdraw it and refuse to allow me to kiss his hand as he considered me a buddy rather than a subject? This, the ex-Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name did not realise when he made that police report against Malaysia Today and me.

I will offer to make an audience (mengadap) with the Agong who was my buddy since the days he was merely the Raja Muda of Terengganu and if His Royal Highness is of the opinion that I have insulted him then I will subject myself to any form of punishment befitting a subject who has insulted his Agong. Such a punishment befitting the crime of insulting the Agong can include the death sentence and I will walk to the gallows to have my head separated from my body with the dignity of a true subject of the Agong. An Anak Raja Bugis is loyal to his Agong and a true Anak Raja Bugis looks death in the face with the dignity expected of an Anak Raja Bugis. I am not a descendant of Upu Tenribong Daeng Rilaka in vain and I shall not smear the name of my ancestors by avoiding the punishment of insulting his Agong. The Agong is one of the Raja-Raja Melayu and I am more than just an Anak Raja Melayu; I am an Anak Raja Bugis.

This ex-Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name accuses me of insulting the Agong when he himself insulted the late Agong who was the Sultan of Selangor and my uncle. This ex-Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name eloped with the Sultan’s daughter who is also my cousin and secretly married her in Thailand.

When the late Agong and Sultan of Selangor, my uncle, asked this ex-Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name whether he (the ex-Menteri Besar with the two Muhamads in his name) had married his (the late Agong and Sultan of Selangor) daughter, this ex-Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name denied it. Marrying secretly in Thailand is a crime and one can be punished for it. Furthermore, marrying a woman without the consent of her father goes against Islam and Malay culture and, being a Menteri Besar, this is even more of a no-no. After all, a Menteri Besar is not a man-on-the-street but the head of government of a state. But this ex-Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name denied he had married the Sultan’s daughter secretly in Thailand and swore in the name of Allah that the allegation is a lie.

Eventually, this ex-Menteri Besar with the two Muhamads in his name divorced the Sultan of Selangor’s daughter, my cousin, and paid her RM12 million as a divorce settlement. This upset the late Agong and Sultan of Selangor, my uncle, who made a photocopy of the RM12 million cheque. The late Agong and Sultan of Selangor, my uncle, was not upset that his Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name had divorced his daughter, my cousin. He did not mind this. The late Agong and Sultan of Selangor was upset that his Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name had paid his daughter RM12 million as a divorce settlement. The late Agong and Sultan of Selangor then made a photocopy of the cheque and showed it to the Prime Minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, and demanded to know how a mere Menteri Besar could afford to pay RM12 million as a divorce settlement to his daughter, my cousin. This proves that Selangor has a corrupt Menteri Besar, said the late Agong and Sultan of Selangor, my uncle.

And this is the ex-Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name who made a police report against Malaysia Today and me. This ex-Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name is corrupt, a liar who married the late Agong’s and Sultan of Selangor’s daughter and denied it, and who insulted the Malays and Islam by secretly marrying someone’s daughter in another country without the permission of her father.

But this man is not a mere man-on-the-street. This man was then a Menteri Besar. And this man had two Muhamads in his name. And the woman is not a mere woman-on-the-street. This woman is the daughter of the late Agong and Sultan of Selangor. So this crime of the ex-Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name is ten times worse. And any other man would have been arrested and convicted of the crime of marrying a woman secretly in Thailand. But this ex-Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name was not arrested and put on trial. He was also not arrested and put on trial when he paid RM12 million as a divorce settlement and could not explain where he got the money from and how he could afford to pay such an amount on his meagre Menteri Besar’s salary.

I understand that this ex-Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name can’t speak English. This is what the Australian court said and this is why the court acquitted him of the crime of smuggling dirty money into Australia. This means he also can’t read English. How this ex-Menteri Besar with two Muhamads in his name managed to figure out that I insulted the Agong in my article is beyond me when I write in English and not in Malay. Umno should have chosen another man who can speak English to make that police report against Malaysia Today and me.

Many people from the media phoned me today to ask me my comments on the police report against Malaysia Today and me. Well, this is my response to that police report against Malaysia Today and me. I would just like to say: go to hell Muhamad the son of Muhamad. You are a disgrace to the Muhamad name. And let me tell you Muhamad the son of Muhamad: you should thank your lucky stars that this is 2007 and not 1907. If this was 1907 instead of 2007 I would challenge you to a duel. It would be a man-to-man, one-to-one duel. It would be a duel to the death with kerises.

But no, I don’t think you would accept my challenge to a duel with kerises. You may have two Muhamads in your name but you have no class. You eloped with the late Agong’s and Sultan of Selangor’s daughter and secretly married her in Thailand. Then you denied it when the late Agong and Sultan of Selangor asked you about it. Only someone with no balls would do this. A man with balls would not deny it. So there is no way you would accept my challenge to a duel with kerises.

I know that when the late Agong and Sultan of Selangor, my uncle, found out that you had in fact married his daughter, my cousin, and that you had lied about it, you arranged for Umno Youth to organise an anti-Sultan demonstration. The late Agong and Sultan of Selangor was very hurt and he cancelled his birthday celebration that year. So that year no datukships were awarded and you had to return the money to all those who had paid you for their datukships.

This act of yours, Muhamad the son of Muhamad, is treasonous. If this was 1907 instead of 2007 you would have been put to death. And you accuse me of insulting the Agong? You committed treason. You can send me to jail if you wish. You would have been put to death if this was 1907 instead of 2007.

But I know why you made that police report against Malaysia Today and me, Muhamad the son of Muhamad. You want to make a political comeback. You want to contest a parliament seat in the next general election. And you want to be made a federal minister when you win that parliament seat. You hope that the present Deputy Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak, will fall and that you can take his job. That is why you made that police report against Malaysia Today and me, Muhamad the son of Muhamad.

Muhamad the son of Muhamad, see you in hell. And if I go there first I will wait at the gates of hell to greet you on your arrival, Muhamad the son of Muhamad. Ini Anak Raja Bugis bercakap yang mati dengan keris di dalam tangan.

Nice one, Raja Petra. Spoken like a true Anak Raja Bugis you are. Now, will they cancel the report, or go ahead with it?

UPDATE
I checked Raja Petra's blog, for the 11th July post that is "consisting of criminal elements and inciting religious and racial sentiments which could affect the country’s security". I found none of that. Well, if the report is made to the author of the blog, we should look at the main articles, right? Comments and remarks may be made by people who wish to degrade the author. And if they say that the report is being made because they PERCEIVED the articles, comments and remarks are seditious in nature, it'll be a case of their perception versus other people's perception, which is a useless case to be debated upon.

A Ray of Hope?

2007-07-23T03:48:00.001-07:00

This week will be a bit of a busy week. Got 3 interviews to attend. Well, 4 actually, if they allow my session to be postponed to a later date.

Agensi Pekerjaan Recruit Express Sdn Bhd, Position: Admin Assistant
Date and Time: Jul 27 2007 3:00PM
Venue: Suite 23A.03 Level 23A,
Menara Standard Chartered,
30 Jalan Sultan Ismail,
50250 -, Kuala Lumpur

Creative-KT Group Sdn Bhd, Position: Fresh Graduate Business Development Executive
Date and Time: 30th or 31st July 2007 11.15am
Venue: B-2-15,
Megan Avenue II,
Jalan Yap Kwan Seng,
50450 Kuala Lumpur

EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM - TRAINEE MANAGER position, Jack Tan Marketing Sdn Bhd
Date : 30th July 2007(Monday)
Time : 2.30pm - 4.30pm
Venue : Suites 12.03,Level 12th Unit 3
Wisma Goldhill
67,Jalan Raja Chulan
50200 Kuala Lumpur.

Well, I'll be in KL from 25th July until 1st August. Now, where do I stay...

Comedy of errors in subtitling

2007-07-22T17:37:00.000-07:00

KUALA LUMPUR: Anticipating a suspenseful evening in front of the big screen, ardent fans of the latest thriller waited for the “murderer in an ice hockey mask” to start slashing and killing partying teenagers.
However, some 15 minutes into the movie, there were sniggers among the audience, which later erupted into guffaws.
The reason?
“Serial killer” was subtitled as “pembunuh bijirin” (cereal killer) in Bahasa Malaysia.
In another cops-and-robbers movie shown on TV, during a shootout scene, “fire” was subtitled “api”. And when a man kissed his daughter and told her, “Goodnight, cutie pie”, the subtitles read, “Selamat malam, kuih manis.”
Such scenarios have placed translators of subtitles in a bad light.
However, according to Universiti Sains Malaysia lecturer Dr Hasuria Che Omar, audiovisual translation in the country has improved in recent times.
“It was quite bad many years ago due to factors like hiring untrained and inexperienced subtitlists. Some of the subtitlists did not really understand and had no knowledge in the target language,” said Dr Hasuria, the Human Sciences Studies head for Bahasa Malaysia and Interpretation Programme.
There were also phrases in the figurative form and these had posed problems, as they could not be translated directly, she said.
Dr Hasuria said this was where the subtitlist’s experience and skills came into play, to relay the right message to the audience.
She commended RTM and TV3 for bringing about improvements in the field of subtitling.
“They may have trained in-house staff or hired those who are really qualified to translate.”
However, the quality of subtitles on the big screen has yet to reach the desired stage, said Dr Hasuria, who authored Penterjemahan Audiovisual Televisyen (Audiovisual Television Translation).
She said that apart from making the TV programmes “more interesting”, subtitling also improved the language skills of viewers.
Translating was not an easy task, she said, and not everyone could provide good translation, despite knowing more than one language.
“Good subtitling is supported by, among others, the subtitlist's intellectual level, skills, general knowledge and familiarity with other cultures,” she said.
To boost the quality of subtitles translation in the country, TV stations, post-production firms, film producers, distributors and advertising and communication firms should play the role of language protectors, she said.
This would maintain their credibility.
However, there were TV stations which hired unqualified translators and the results were usually disastrous, she said.
She said there were also calls for professionals to be involved in the translation of subtitles, especially in relation to technical terms, and added that degree holders and those with a high education should also join the industry.
Dr Hasuria, who is also course programme director of the Malaysian Translators Association, said the association was willing to offer short-term courses and workshops on subtitles translation to TV stations and other companies.
Among the courses already being held were translating and editing subtitles, she said.
She said Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka had also offered incentives and prizes for television subtitlists. – Bernama

Hmm... A job opportunity for me? Can anyone tell me how to apply?

Quotes for Success

2007-07-22T16:48:00.001-07:00

DISCIPLINE

"Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors." -- Jim Rohn

"Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability." -- Roy L. Smith

"The only competition you will ever have is the competition between your disciplined and undisciplined mind." -- James A. Ray

"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work." -- Stephen King

DO IT NOW!

"... focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it." -- Greg Anderson

"Now is the only time there is. Make your now wow, your minutes miracles, and your days pay. Your life will have been magnificently lived and invested, and when you die you will have made a difference." -- Mark Victor Hansen

"Stop rationalizing, stop stewing. Get up out of your chair and start doing." -- Denis Waitley

"It's a strange thing, you have said it thousands of times I am sure you will never know what you can do until you try. However the sad truth is, that most people never try anything until they know they can do it." -- Bob Proctor

DREAM BIG DREAMS

"Live your best life. Dream big. Live fully." -- Oprah Winfrey

"when you have a sense of your own identity and a vision of where you want to go in your life, you then have the basis for reaching out to the world and going after your dreams for a better life." -- Stedman Graham

"Live out of your imagination, not your history." -- Stephen Covey

"Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate accomplishments." -- Napoleon Hill

I'll See It When I Believe It!

2007-07-22T16:47:00.001-07:00

I'll See It When I Believe It! by Tony Alessandra

It has been estimated that we each have upwards of 50,000 thoughts per day. How many of yours are negative? Sometimes you have to do a mental spring-cleaning to get rid of those negative thoughts that have become ingrained attitudes. Stopping self-destructive thoughts is like stopping any other bad habit - it takes time and effort.

Among the most effective ways to do this are visualization and affirmations. Affirmations are positive statements about yourself that you repeat over and over in your head until they are programmed into your subconscious.

Visualization is mentally picturing yourself the way you want to be. You've heard the old saying "I'll believe it when I see it". Well, the reverse is also true: "I'll see it when I believe it!" Affirmations and visualizations may not feel true at first. They may not even be true! However, they can become so.

Consider what happens when you tell yourself repeatedly, "I'm lousy at remembering names." There will never be any improvement there. Therefore, if you catch yourself saying it, stop and immediately say to yourself, "I'm good at remembering names."

Consider the effect of telling yourself, "I'm feeling pretty good today." Or "I can lose ten pounds." Or "I am good at getting people to see things my way." Anything you say to yourself repeatedly will actually influence your reality.

Writing down your affirmations and putting them in some handy place - above your desk, on your bathroom mirror, on the dashboard of your car - will help keep them in mind as well as in sight. Use affirmations and visualizations to project what success will feel like and look like. Imagine, in as much detail as you possibly can, how you feel as the boss singles you out for exceeding your quota, or how the audience hangs on your every word during your speech, or how your confident presence causes heads to turn everywhere you go.

To enhance your charisma and persuasion (while making others feel good about themselves), you can apply the very same techniques by turning them outward. Begin thinking positive affirmations about people you work and live with.

For example, "Bob seems much calmer and patient of late. I wonder what has changed in him." During your next interaction with Bob, you will most likely remember your positive thought about him and start your conversation with, "Bob, I've noticed a change in you. You seem really kind and patient while counseling your new employees recently and I admire that. How did you acquire this wonderful characteristic?"

Bob would likely respond with a smile and a story about a book he found, a consultant he hired, or a seminar he attended. Regardless of his reply, you have sincerely complimented another person, put out a positive thought, and begun a new habit of approaching others using "appreciative inquiry"... finding the good in another person or situation first, instead of finding fault or flaws.

Criticizing is easy and sometimes becomes habit, but re-training your mind to find the positive attributes in yourself and others will win you friends, increase your income, and make you feel better about being a better you.

Here's to more personal insight,
Tony Alessandra

Now you can easily understand in a matter of hours what took Tony Alessandra thirty years to research, refine, and now reveal to you. This week Tony has generously offered his complete package of MP3 downloadables, eBooks, workbooks and e-reports at an amazing discount to our subscribers only! Buy individually or SAVE a bundle on the whole package (includes 31 products). For descriptions of each product visit http://alessandra.yoursuccessstore.com or call 877-929-0439.

Act to Create It

2007-07-22T16:42:00.000-07:00

Reproduced with permission from author
Act to Create It

by Jack Canfield, America's Success Coach

If you want to live your dreams, not only must you decide what you want, turn your dream into measurable goals, break those goals down into specific action steps, and visualize and affirm your desired outcomes — you must start taking action.

I recommend making the commitment to do something every day in at least three different areas of your life that moves you in the direction of your dreams.

If one of your goals is physical fitness, make a commitment to do some sort of exercise — aerobics, weight training, stretching — four to five times a week for a minimum of twenty minutes.

I read recently that if you simply go for a 30 minute walk four times a week, that would put you in the top 1% of those people getting physical exercise!

If your goal is financial independence, start saving and investing a portion of your income every month with no exceptions.

If your goal is to write a book, write for a minimum of one hour every day.

DON'T LET FEAR STOP YOU
Most people never get what they want because they let their fears stop them. They are afraid of making a mistake, looking foolish, getting ripped off, being rejected, being hurt, wasting their time, and feeling uncomfortable.

Fear is self-created by imagining catastrophic consequences that have yet to happen. It is all in your mind. In fact, you can actually scare yourself by imagining negative and harmful images. But simply stop the catastrophic thoughts and images, and the fear goes away.

REJECTION IS A MYTH
One of the biggest fears that stops people from asking for support, guidance, advice, money, a date, a job, the sale, or anything else is the fear of rejection. In fact, it’s been known to literally paralyze people. They become tongue-tied and refuse to reach for the phone or get up and walk across the room. They break out in a sweat at the mere thought of asking for what they want.

I have come to realize that the whole concept of rejection is false — that rejection doesn’t really exist. Think about it for a moment. If you asked someone to join you for dinner, and they said no, you could tell yourself that you had been rejected. But think about it. Did you have anyone to eat dinner with before you asked them? No! Did you have anyone to eat dinner with after you asked them? No! Did your life really get worse? No. It stayed the same!

ACT AS IF
One of the secrets of success is to start acting like a success before you are one. Act as if. If you had already achieved your dream, what kinds of clothes would you be wearing? How would you act? How would you treat others? Would you tithe a portion of your income to your church or favorite charities? Would you have more self-confidence? Would you take more time to spend with your loved ones?

I suggest that you begin to do those things now.

When I decided that I wanted to be an “international” consultant, I immediately went and applied for a passport, bought an international clock that told me what time it was anywhere in the world, printed business cards with the words “International Self-Esteem and Peak Performance Consultant,” and decided I would like to first go to Australia. I bought a poster of the Sydney Opera House and placed it on my refrigerator.

Within one month, I received an invitation to speak in Sydney and Brisbane. Since then, I have spoken and conducted trainings in over 20 countries and continue to expand my business around the globe.

Start acting as if you already have everything you want. Most people think that if they have a lot of money, they could do the things they want to do, and they would be much happier. In fact, the reverse is true. If you start by creating a state of happiness and abundance, then do the things you are inspired to do from that state of being, you will end up having all the things you ultimately desire.

You may not be able to fill your closets with expensive Italian suits and designer clothing, but why not invest in one or two really great outfits, so that when you do need them, they are there. When you dress like you have already made it, you will look the part, and successful people will naturally be attracted to you and invite you to participate with them.

The Law of Attraction states that you will attract to you those things that match your state of being. If you focus on having gratitude for what you do have, you will feel rich, and you will attract more abundance into your life. If you focus on what you don't have, you will send out a message of lack and you will attract more lack into your life.

For more on The Law of Attraction, I recommend reading and watching The Secret, a ground-breaking, feature-length movie presentation and bestselling book.

© 2007 Jack Canfield

Stay Focus Focused on Your Core Genius

2007-07-22T16:41:00.000-07:00

Reproduced with permission from author

Success Principle #39
Stay Focused on Your Core Genius

I believe you have inside you a core genius... some one thing that you love to do, and do so well, that you hardly feel like doing anything else. It’s effortless for you and a whole lot of fun. And if you could make money doing it, you’d make it your lifetime’s work.

In most cases, your Core Genius is directly tied to your passions and life-purpose.

Successful people believe this, too. That's why they put their core genius first. They focus on it—and delegate everything else to other people on their team.

For me, my core genius lies in the area of teaching, training, coaching and motivating. I love to do it! I do it well, and people report that they get great value from it.

Another core genius is writing and compiling books. Along with my co-author Mark Victor Hansen and others, I have written, co-authored, compiled and edited more than 100 books.

Compare that to the other people in the world who go through life doing everything, even those tasks they’re bad at or that could be done more cheaply, better, and faster by someone else. They can’t find the time to focus on their core genius because they fail to delegate even the most menial of tasks.

When you delegate the grunt work—the things you hate doing or those tasks that are so painful, you end up putting them off—you get to concentrate on what you love to do. You free up your time so that you can be more productive. And you get to enjoy life more.

So why is delegating routine tasks and unwanted projects
so difficult for most people?

Surprisingly, most people are afraid of looking wasteful or being judged as being above everyone else. They are afraid to give up control or reluctant to spend the money to pay for help. Deep down, most people simply don't want to let go.

Others (potentially you) have simply fallen into the habit of doing everything themselves. "It's too time-consuming to explain it to someone," you say. "I can do it more quickly and better myself anyway." But can you?

Delegate Completely

One of the strategies I use and teach is complete delegation. It simply means that you delegate a task once and completely - rather than delegating it each time it needs to be done.

Ladies, you'll LOVE this one...

When my niece came to stay with us one year while she attended the local community college, we made a complete delegation - the grocery shopping. We told her she could have unlimited use of our van if she would buy the groceries every week. We provided her with a list of staples that we always want in the house (eggs, butter, milk, ketchup, and so on), and her job was to check every week and replace anything that was running low.

In addition, my wife planned meals and let her know which items she wanted for the main courses (fish, chicken, broccoli, avocados, and so on). The task was delegated once and saved us hundreds of hours that year that could be devoted to writing, exercise, family time, and recreation.

Most entrepreneurs spend less than 30% of their time focusing on their core genius and unique abilities.

In fact, by the time they've launched a business, it often seems entrepreneurs are doing everything but the one thing they went into business for in the first place.

Many salespeople, for example, spend more time on account administration than they do on the phone or in the field making sales, when they could hire a part-time administrator (or share the cost with another salesperson) to do this time-consuming detail work. In most cases, in a fraction of the time it would take them and at a fraction of the cost.

Most female executives spend too much time running their household, when they could easily and inexpensively delegate this task to a cleaning service or part-time mother's helper, freeing them to focus on their career or spend more quality time with their family.

Don't let this be your fate.

Identify your core genius, then delegate completely to free up more time to focus on what you love to do.

I believe that you can trade, barter, pay for and find volunteer help to do almost everything you don't want to do, leaving you to do what you are best at - and which will ultimately make you the most money and bring you the most happiness.

© 2007 Jack Canfield

The Most Valuable Question You May Ever Ask

2007-07-22T16:39:00.000-07:00

Reproduced with permission from author

The Most Valuable Question You May Ever Ask

by Jack Canfield

As you begin to take action toward the fulfillment of your goals and dreams, you must realize that not every action will be perfect.

Not every action will produce the desired result. Not every action will work.

Making mistakes, getting it almost right, and experimenting to see what happens are all part of the process of eventually getting it right.

Thomas Edison is reported to have tried over 2,000 different experiments that failed before he finally got the light bulb to work. He once told a reporter that, from his perspective, he had never failed at all. Inventing the light bulb was just a 2,000-step process. If you can adopt that attitude, then you can be free to take an action, notice what result you get, and then adjust your next actions based on the feedback you have received.

Ready, Fire, Aim!
Don’t be afraid to just jump in and get started moving toward your goals. As long as you pay attention to the feedback you receive, you will make progress. Just getting into the game and firing allows you to correct and refine your aim.

The Most Valuable Question You May Ever Learn
In the 1980s, a multimillionaire businessman taught me a question that radically changed the quality of my life. So what is this magical question that can improve the quality of every relationship you are in, every product you produce, every service you deliver, every meeting you conduct, every class you teach and every transaction you enter into?

Here it is:

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the quality
of our relationship during the last week?”

Here are a number of variations on the same question that have served me well over the years...

“On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate…

• our service?	• my teaching?
• our product?	• this class/seminar/workshop?
• this meeting?	• our date/vacation?
• our performance?	• this meal?
• my coaching/managing?	• this book/recording/show?
• my parenting/babysitting?

Any answer less than a 10 always gets this follow-up question:

“What would it take to make it a 10?”

This is where the *really* valuable information comes from. Knowing that a person is dissatisfied is not enough. Knowing in detail what will satisfy them gives you the information you need to do whatever it takes to create a winning product, service or relationship.

There Are Two Kinds of Feedback
There are two kinds of feedback you might encounter – negative and positive. We tend to prefer the positive – that is, results, money, praise, promotion, raise, awards, happiness, inner-peace, etc. It feels betters. It tells us we are on course and doing the right thing.

We tend not to like negative feedback – lack of results, little or no money, criticism, poor evaluations, complaints, unhappiness, inner conflict, pain, etc.

However, there is as much useful data in negative feedback as there is in positive feedback. It tells us that we are off course, headed in the wrong direction, doing the wrong thing. This is priceless information!

In fact, it’s so valuable that one of the most useful projects you could undertake is to change how you respond to negative feedback. I like to refer to negative feedback as information for “improvement opportunities.” Here is a place where I can get better.

Ask Yourself for Feedback
In addition to asking others for feedback, you need to ask yourself for feedback, too. More than any other source of feedback, your body will tell you whether or not you are on course or not. When you are relaxed and happy, your body is telling you that you are on track. When you are constantly exhausted, tense, in pain, unhappy and angry, then you are off track.

Take time to listen to what your body is saying to you. Take time to listen to your physical sensations and your feelings. They are sending you important messages. Are you listening?

Remember, Feedback Is Simply Information
You don’t have to take it personally. Just welcome it and use it.

For more on Using Feedback to Your Advantage, review Principle #19 in The Success Principles. It’s one of the most important principles you can apply.

© 2007 Jack Canfield

You Got To Be Smarter Than This

2007-07-22T16:18:00.000-07:00

If you are an employer, and one of your employees was accused for embezzlement, would you suspend his position until he's clear of the accusation, or would you let him work regardless?

If you are a parent, and the private tutor you hired last month was suspected of molesting his female students, would you still ask him to come and teach your daughter before he is cleared of all charges?

Now read this:

Zakaria can continue as rep

By ROSLINA MOHAMAD

roslina@thestar.com.my
PEKAN: Port Klang state assemblyman Datuk Zakaria Md Deros, who is facing 39 charges under the Companies’ Act with five other people, can continue serving his constituents until the court makes its decision.
Selangor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Dr Mohamad Khir Toyo said everyone should wait for the outcome of the legal proceedings before jumping to conclusions.
“This is the problem with Malaysians. They love to jump to conclusions.
“It is not right. We should wait and see the outcome of the legal proceedings first. For the time being, he can continue with his duties as a state assemblyman,” he told reporters after opening the Pekan Wanita Umno delegates’ meeting here yesterday.
Dr Mohamad Khir also said he was expecting a report from the state Umno secretary.
Zakaria and the five directors of Harvest Court Industries Bhd and Titi Steel Sdn Bhd were supposed to be charged on Friday but all failed to turn up in court.
The companies were being taken to court by the Companies Commission for four offences, namely failure to notify change of address, failure to hold an annual general meeting, failure to submit financial statements and failure to submit profit-and-loss accounts.
Dr Mohamad Khir also said Umno leaders and members must not be apologetic when dealing with matters involving the National Economic Policy (NEP) and Malay rights.
“What is wrong if there are more Malays in the civil service and armed forces especially if they are able to perform. Let them continue with their work.
“However, there are those who will make up excuses when posed with questions related to the NEP and Malay rights,” he added.
Dr Mohamad Khir, who is a party supreme council member, said the party’s lifeline was based on two things – religion and race – because its struggles had always been on upholding Islam and safeguarding the rights of Malays.
Earlier in his speech, he said it would weaken the party if members and leaders were being too apologetic about Islam and Malay rights.

Malaysians, you got to be smarter than them. So make the right choice. Choose the right person.

On Your Mark, Get Set, WRITE!!~~

2007-07-19T18:42:00.000-07:00

By Sharon Bakar:

Getting Started

I very much enjoyed Lydia's post about how she got started as a writer and thought I'd respond. I did try to leave a comment over there, but it somehow disappeared into the ether. And anyway I'd rather like to run with the ball!

I can't remember a time when I didn't want to write. At school I had this great running rivalry with my best friend Helen to see which of us could write the best composition for English classes. I ignored all other homework completely to put aside time to write because my poem or story had to be the best. We both wrote well above and beyond the call of duty, pages and pages where one or two would have sufficed. Helen always got a slightly higher grade though (and is now a published poet).

I still have my English exercise books (below) filled with my scribblings. My writing was frequently melodramatic and wonderfully florid! And always full of spelling errors. (Mild dyslexia?) It's pretty embarrassing to read them now.

I also started a diary in 1969 and kept it right up to the time I got married in 1990. (Too much honest writing left lying around probably wasn't a very good idea ... particularly as a diary is always a space for a good sound off! Keeping an online password protected journal was a substitute later on.)

But I digress.

I got my first poems published at 13 in the Coventry Evening Telegraph and my first boyfriend, a gardener called Francis, was one of my fans ... although on the two occasions we actually met up for a date, I was so much taller than him that I walked in the gutter while he walked on the pavement!

Although I'd always told myself one day I'd love to write. I didn't start writing seriously until I was in my 40's. I guess that's a good point at which to evaluate your life since it hits you that the sand is slipping through the hour glass (speeding up, even) and if you don't do the things you want to do now, you're probably never gonna.

But there was always the fear - would I measure up or end up disappointing myself in an area that meant so much to me? My favourite writers like Annie Proulx wagged their fingers at me saying "You'll never measure up." Spoilsports!

I also didn't know how to "get into" writing.

So when I saw an ad for a correspondence course with The Open College for the Arts, I decided to give it a go. I found the materials they sent very useful, and the tutor I was assigned to gave me excellent feedback. But I didn't finish the course because:

First of all, I lost my nerve several units in when there was a big jump from simple exercises involving description to suddenly writing a complete short story. (How the hell do I think up a plot, I thought, in the days before I realised that plots can just happen onto paper if you let them.) Looking back, I think the course was aimed at more experienced writers.

Secondly, because this was in the days before the internet had really taken off (and OCA was a particularly slow adopter!), each assignment had to be mailed to the UK (with an international reply coupon inside it for the postage), and then there was a long wait for it to come back to me. My tutor felt so far away!

Thirdly, only my tutor saw my assignment and (afraid to show my efforts to those close to me)
I had no chance to see how other readers reacted to it. I felt so lonely!

Much more helpful to me was a book I found in a bookshop in London: Writing for Self-Discovery: A Personal Guide to Creative Writing by Myra Schneider and John Killick which is a fantastic collection of exercises for exploring the material from your own life and experience. (The book appears to be currently out of print, but you can buy it from Abebooks for as little as US$1.)

I went crazy, filling notebook after notebook with recollection and thoughts and fiction and dreams. I never knew I had so much inside that wanted to break free.

There were many other useful books, and I should say more about these, but this one was my catalyst, my turning point.

I signed up with Writers Village which offers a whole range of short courses for one very reasonable joining fee and found friends and support. The course material is online, and the work posted to a bulletin board and feedback given by your coursemates rather than a tutor. The atmosphere was supportive and friendly, I made some writing buddies across the world (Most of the participants are from the US.) and the first two short stories I had published grew from assignments I posted there.

I also did a creative writing course organised by author Chuah Guat Eng at Silverfish. This was the first time I'd written with others and my - what a heady experience it turned out to be - with moments of real magic when we read back our pieces. Much much better than scribbling away lonely and alone!

But the teacher/trainer in me said ... hey ho, I want to encourage others to write and think I can do this better ... and that's why and how my own course for beginners was born. (And it sounds as if Lydia is thinking along these lines too ... good for her!)

I've just finished one run of it at the British Council and hope that the next will be in November, when I finish the project I'm currently involved with and have had a chance to rediscover my Mat Salleh roots in the UK for a few weeks.

There are lots of threads here I might pick up on another day.

But like Lydia I'd love to know, what got YOU writing?

--------------------------------------
Sharon Bakar
Location: Petaling Jaya, Selangor, MY

British but have lived in Malaysia for more than 20 years and very much at home here. I write on books for a number of publications and teach creative writing.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Lydia Teh:

Writing Courses

Every now and then I get emails asking about the writing course I took. I just received another one this week. I’m going to blog about this so that in future, I could just direct the questioner here.

In 1995 I enrolled in a correspondence course from The Writing School, then based in Singapore. The last I heard, it has moved its operation to Australia. It seems they’re also operating in Canada. Then I paid RM1,500 for the 20-lesson course. Today the fees has ballooned.

They send you one lesson and assignment at a time. After you’ve completed it, you mail it back and wait for the next lesson and assignment.

When I took this course, the internet hasn’t exploded in a big way. Today there’s an ocean of writing know-how you can glean from the internet and writing books. What I benefitted most from the course wasn’t the materials provided. It was the training that was invaluable : forcing myself to sit down and complete a writing assignment. And I did sell some of the pieces I wrote for the school. In fact, I broke into print in the NST with an article about my grandfather. I later rewrote the story for my book, Life’s Like That - Scenes from Malaysian Life.The hefty fees also paid a part in kicking the butt. After spending a small fortune on it, the least I could do for myself was to complete the course and make it pay for itself.

Are there writing courses run here? As far as I know, Sharon Bakar runs an 8-week course (classes are held once a week for two hours per session). I’ve attended the sessions held at the British Council. It was great fun to write in a group. If you’re just starting out, I’d recommend Sharon’s course in ‘Getting started - finding the flow.’ She’s a great teacher, very encouraging and personable. Course fees is between RM350 to RM400.

95% also run some writing courses periodically. David Byck, author of It’s a Long Way to the Floor attended this. Fees is quite substantial though.

When Beth Yahp is back in Malaysia, she conducts writing workshops like this one. Her next workshop will be held on 18 and 25 August 2007. It costs RM450 (RM350 for students and unemployed).

If you don’t want to spend the money, you can check out these free mini courses run by BBC.

Whichever route you take, at the end of the day, you still have to sit down and write. That’s the only way you can get your work out. And don’t forget to read. A writer has to read in order to improve.

Having said that, if you have the money and time to spare, go enrol in a writing course. It’s not just the learning that’s fun, it’s the mingling with like-minded people. I’ve attended several workshops and seminars and don’t mind going for more, if not for my other half who keeps insisting, “It’s time for you to stop attending courses. You should be conducting them already.”

---------------------------------------------------

A desperately writing housewife with one husband, four kids (from 6 to 17) and a couple of sparrows trying to nest in her house.

Author of three books:

1. Congratulations! You have won - A guidebook on how to maximize your chances of winning competitions - Malita Jaya, 2001

2. Life’s Like That - Scenes from Malaysian Life - Pelanduk Publications, 2004

3. Honk If You’re Malaysian - MPH Publishing, Jan 2007

Her articles have been published in magazines, newspapers and websites. She’s a columnist with Yellow Post, a weekly newspaper and she writes the occasional Word’s Up, Eh Poh Nim column in The Star’s Mind Our English page. She was named a Best Teleworking Mom by Nestle and e-homemakers.net in 2004.

Location : Klang, Malaysia

------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, LET'S ROCK AND WRITE!!~~~

Nat Tan's Statement on His Detention (Eng & BM)

2007-07-19T18:28:00.000-07:00

Posted on July 19th, 2007 by nathaniel tan

Four Days Under the OSA

I was arrested on Friday, the 13th of July at approximately 4.30pm in the carpark basement (B3) of Phileo Damansara I by about four to five policemen.

While originally being taken in for questioning, the police arrested me when I conveyed to them my lawyers advice that I should not accompany the police to their office unaccompanied by legal counsel.

From Phileo Damansara, I was taken to my house where the police confiscated my computer, some CD’s and some documents.

From the moment I was arrested until about 11 pm, I was not allowed to speak to anyone I knew, or inform anybody of my whereabouts.

I later learnt that this caused an immense and completely avoidable amount of stress and anxiety amongst my loved ones.

I was eventually made to understand that I was arrested in connection to accusations made on the internet regarding Datuk Johari Baharum.

The connection to me was based on a comment made on my blog that was made by an anonymous commentor on the 10th of Februrary, 2007.

It was prepostorous of the police to suspect me of publishing these accusations based on documents protected by the Official Secrets Act that were supposedly in my posessesion. There is absolutely nothing even remotely resembling proof to substantiate such claims.

Throughout my detention, the police employed various questioning strategies in what struck me strongly as a concerted attempt to make me admit to things that I had not done.

The police also subjected me to various rounds of questioning between about 5.30pm and 9pm by different police officers who all kept asking me the same questions. I later learnt that questioning at such late hours was in fact illegal.

One of the officers questioning me that evening who refused to identify himself threatened to slap me and throw me across the room.

Not having access to legal counsel, I refused to answer in detail any questions the police posed in their extremely suspicious manner.

The situation worsened on Saturday, the 14th of July.

Despite my repeated appeals to the police officers accompanying me to court to be produced before the magistrate for the remand hearing, they absolutely refused to notify my family or, more importantly, my lawyers that I was to be produced in court.

This caused in me a great deal of undue stress because I feared that I would be forced to face the magistrate without any legal representation.

Entirely by a stroke of luck, a lawyer at the magistrate’s court was able to assist me in contacting my lawyer, R Sivarasa. Had said lawyer not been present, I may have not been given the opportunity to be represented by counsel during my hearing, and my remand order may have been for fourteen days instead of for four.

Even after my lawyer arrived, the police made every possible effort to block me from consulting with my lawyers, denying me extremely basic human rights connected to judicial due process. This even included repeatedly trying to spy and eavsdrop on the conversations I was attempting to have with my lawyers.

After the remand order was allowed, the police continued to pursue the same line of questioning.

Having being advised by my lawyer during my remand hearing not to answer any questions or sign any statements, I refused to answer the increasingly combative line of questioning by the police.

On Saturday itself, a senior officer employed physical means in an attempt to intimidate me into answering their questions. This included shoving me into a chair while I was standing handcuffed.

Although I had stated my intent to exercise my right to silence, and despite my lawyer’s argument that the police had all the evidence they required to investigate me, the police’s insistence on holding me for all four days proved a complete waste of my time and of police resources. I was also made to endure unhygenic and pitifully substandard accomdations in the lockup throughout this time.

All other attempts to pressure and coerce me into providing information under adverse conditions failed. Finally, on Monday, I was allowed to see my family, who conveyed to me fresh advice from my lawyer regarding what information I could provide.

Armed at last with the knowledge that I had been seeking since Friday, I was more than happy to provide all the information I had available to the police.

The entire ordeal for both myself and the police could have been avoided if the police had extended some basic human courtesy and decency in allowing me to consult fully with legal counsel before cooperating with the police, which I was more than happy to do under fair and reasonable circumstances.

*

I fear greatly that my arrest despite the non-existent ties between the accusations against Datuk Johari and myself portend badly for Malaysia’s abilty to deal with true cyber crime.

The fact that I appear to be the best suspect they could arrest in relation to this case indicates that the police do not understand how the internet works, and are at a complete loss as to how to handle true cyber crime.

In my particular case as well, the government and police appear to be sending a signal that while irresponsible bloggers roam free, responsible bloggers who moderate their comments and put a name to their writing are more likely to end up as targets. This policy could not possibly be more ill formed and counterproductive.

Given certain statements in the press recently, I unfortunately cannot rule out completely that the substandard and rushed nature of this investigation is the result of political meddling and pressure in police affairs.

I am also gravely concerned because as my lawyer pointed out in the remand hearing, arrests should take place at the conclusion of an investigation, and not at the beginning of one. What happened to me is beyond doubt an absolute travesty of this principle.

If the police continue in their attempts to procur information from innocent citizens in bad faith and through questionable means such as by coercing information from individuals isolated from legal counsel and outside support, they will find themselves failing the public in their duty to protect Malaysians from true criminal activity.

*

This entire episode smacks of intimidation. Ongoing and unrelenting intimidation towards social activists, internet writers and opposition supporters.

The ranking officer in the unit investigating me even took the time to ‘advise’ me to emulate the example and career trajectories of individuals like Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye. The same officer also warned me to be considerate to my parents as I choose my career paths.

While I appreciate the advice, I wish to reiterate here that the causes I have chosen were chosen with due care and consideration, and after thorough analysis of the state of Malaysia’s social and political climate. I love my parents very much, and hate the fact that this episode has caused them such unhappiness. However, my responsibility is also to my future children, and the Malaysia they will inherit.

Any assumptions that my experience will dissuade other activists and citizens of conscience from exerting all our energies in upholding their responsibilities to their parents, their children, and to all of Malaysia are sadly, sadly misplaced.

My time with the police taught me that all the efforts by political parties and civil society to curb the excesses of the police and the government have proven extremely effective.

The police were extremely concerned that they might be portrayed in a bad light after my release, and took a number of steps to ensure that they did not do things that they knew would be taken up and publicised by activists. I am thus extremely grateful for the efforts of those that have fought before me to make Malaysia a more just and secure place for its citizens.

It is impossible to endure an experience such as mine without having one’s fears and discomfort increased, even in one’s own homeland.

The true mark of human strength however is the manner in which we deal with these fears.

I have chosen not to let my fears overcome me, and as a member of KeADILan and other activist groups, I have instead chosen to draw inspiration from those who have walked these paths before me and continue refusing to spare any effort whatsoever in our ongoing endeavours to uphold justice for all throughout the homeland we love.

*

Lastly, I would like to take this opportunity to express my deepest, most sincerely heartfelt thanks to every single individual and organisation who voiced their support for me throughout this difficult episode. I know this was especially difficult for all of my family and my girlfriend Soon Li Tsin, but despite their pain, they pulled through in every way imaginable to provide me every strength I needed to overcome.

I am not exaggerating in the least when I say the truly touching support I received carried me through the entire ordeal. To all my guardian angles, once again, thank you truly.

Nathaniel Tan
*

Empat Hari Di Bawah OSA

Saya ditahan pada Jumaat, 13 Julai pada lebih kurang 4.30pm di kawasan tempat letak kereta (B3) Phileo Damansara I oleh 3 - 4 orang polis.

Walaupun asalnya dibawa ke balai untuk disoal, saya ditahan apabila memaklumkan kepada polis bahawa saya dinasihati peguam untuk tidak mengikut polis secara sendiri tanpa peguam.

Dari Phileo Damansara, saya dibawa ke rumah saya di mana polis merampas komputer saya, beberapa CD dan beberapa dokumen.

Dari saat saya ditahan sehingga lebih kurang 11pm, saya tidak dibenarkan untuk bercakap dengan mana-mana kenalan saya, atau maklumkan sesiapapun mengenai lokasi saya.

Perkara ini merupakan suatu pengalaman yang pahit dan menderita bagi keluarga dan kawan-kawan saya.

Saya akhirnya dimaklumkan bahawa saya ditahan berkaitan dengan tuduhan yang dibuat di internet ke atas Datuk Johari Baharum.

Kaitan kes ini kepada saya adalah berdasarkan sebuah komen yang dibuat di blog saya oleh seorang yang identitinya tidak diketahui pada 10 Februari, 2007.

Tidak wajar sama sekali pihak polis mensyaki saya menerbitkan tomahan kepada Datuk Johari berasaskan dokumen rahsia rasmi yang disyaki berada dalam kepunyaan saya. Tiada bukti langsung untuk mengesahkan tuduhan ke atas saya tersebut.

Semasa saya ditahan, polis menggunakan pelbagai strategi dalam menyoal siasat saya yang saya percayai adalah percubaan untuk membuat saya mengakui kepada tindakan-tindakan yang saya tidak pernah buat.

Polis juga soal-siasat saya di antara 5.30pm sehingga 9pm oleh anggota-anggota polis yang berbeza tetapi yang semua bertanya soalan yang sama. Selepas dilepaskan, saya dapat tahu bahawa soal-siasat pada waktu tersebut tidak sah di sisi undang-undang.

Satu daripada pegawai yang menyoal saya malam itu dan enggan memberi namanya mengugut untuk melempar saya dan mencampak saya ke seberang bilik.

Oleh kerana tidak dapat berjumpa dengan peguam, saya enggan menjawab secara terperinci mana-mana soalan polis.

Situasi bertambah teruk pada Sabtu, 14 Julai.

Walaupun saya menyeru beberapa kali kepada polis yang mengiringi saya ke mahkamah reman supaya menghubungi peguam dan keluarga saya untuk maklumkan bahawa saya dibawa ke mahkamah, mereka enggan berbuat sedemikian.

Ini menyebabkan saya terasa amat tertekan kerana saya takut akan menghadapi majistret tanpa peguam.

Saya amat bertuah, kerana seorang peguam di mahkamah menolong saya untuk menghubungi peguam saya, R Sivarasa. Jika peguam tersebut tiada di mahkhamah dan sanggup menghubungi Sivarasa, saya mungkin akan direman untuk 14 hari dan bukan 4.

Selepas peguam saya tiba, polis cuba sedaya upaya untuk menghalang saya dari bercakap kepada peguam saya. Dengan itu, mereka mencabuli hak asasi saya yang berkaitan dengan prosedur keadilan. Ini termasuk cubaan untuk mengintip dan curi-curi dengar kepada perbualan antara saya dengan peguam.

Selepas reman dibenarkan, polis meneruskan penyoalsiasatan terhadap saya.

Oleh kerana saya dinasihati oleh peguam saya supaya tidak menjawab mana-mana soalan atau menandatangani apa-apa, saya enggan menjawab soalan-soalan polis yang semakin bersikap aggresif.

Pada hari Sabtu itu, seorang pegawai atasan bersikap kasar terhadap saya ketika menyoal saya. Ini termasuk menolak saya ke dalam kerusi ketika saya berdiri dan digari.

Oleh kerana saya sudah memaklumkan kehendak saya untuk menggunakan hak saya untuk berdiam diri, keputusan polis untuk menahan saya untuk 4 hari tersebut amat membuangkan masa saya dan tenaga kerja polis. Dalam seluruh waktu ini, saya terpaksa bermalam di lokap dalam keadaan yang teruk dan tidak sihat.

Semua percubaan untuk menekan saya sehingga memberi keterangan gagal. Akhirnya, pada hari Isnin, saya dibenarkan menjumpa keluarga saya, yang memaklumkan kepada saya nasihat baru dari peguam mengenai maklumat yang saya boleh beri kepada polis.

Saya seterusnya dengan ringan hati memberi segala keterangan yang diminta oleh polis.

Segala masalah-masalah yang dialami oleh kedua-dua pihak saya dan polis sebenarnya dapat dielakkan sekiranya polis cukup berhemah untuk membenarkan saya berbincang secara bebas dengan peguam saya sebelum memberi keterangan.

*

Saya amat khuatir bahawa penahanan saya, walaupun tiada kaitan langsung dengan tuduhan atas Datuk Johari, menunjukkan bahawa PDRM sebenarnya tiada kepakaran yang mencukupi untuk menangani masalah jenayah siber.

Kerajaan dan polis nampaknya memberi isyarat bahawa penulis di internet yang tidak bertanggungjawab dapat berleluasa secara bebas, manakala penulis di internet yang bertanggungjawab dan menggunakan nama sebenar akan menjadi sasaran. Dasar ini langsung tiada asas yang kukuh dan bersifat kounter produktif.

Memandangkan kenyataan dalam akhbar kebelangkan ini, saya malangnya tidak boleh menafikan kemungkinan bahawa cara penyiasatan ini dijalankan secara huru-hara adalah akibat daripada campurtangan politik dan tekanan terhadap urusan polis.

Saya juga amat risau kerana seperti yang dimaklumkan oleh peguam saya semasa di mahkamah reman, penahanan harus dibuat pada hujung sebuah penyiasatan dan bukan pada mulanya. Apa yang terjadi jelas bercanggah dengan prinsip ini.

Jika polis berterus dalam percubaan mereka untuk mendapat maklumat dari rakyat dengan cara-cara yang amat mencurigakan seperti yang saya alami, mereka akan gagal dalam usaha mereka untuk melindungi rakyat Malaysia dari jenayah.

*

Peristiwa ini mengandungi terlalu ramai unsur intimidasi - intimidasi terhadap aktivis, penulis internet dan penyokong pembangkang.

Seorang pegawai tinggi dalam unit yang menyiasati saya pun ‘menasihati’ saya supaya mencontohi individu seperti Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye. Pegawai tersebut juga memberi amaran supaya menitikberatkan ibubapa saya apabila memilih kerjaya saya.

Walaupun saya menghargai nasihat tersebut dan amat menyayangi ibubapa saya, saya terpaksa juga menitikberatkan masa depan bakal-bakal anak saya serta Malaysia yang akan saya tinggalkan untuk mereka.

Mana-mana anggapan bahawa pengalaman saya akan menakutkan atau melemahkan semangat rakyat yang berjuang untuk menyempurnakan tanggungjawab mereka kepada ibubapa, anak dan kepada semua Malaysia salah sama sekali.

Masa saya dengan polis telah menunjukkan bahawa segala usaha oleh parti-parti politik dan masyarakat mandani untuk membantah keterlaluan polis dan kerajaan telah membuahkan hasil.

Polis amat prihatin terhadap imej mereka selepas saya dibebaskan, dan mengambil langkah supaya tidak melakukan perkara-perkara yang mereka sedar akan dihebohkan oleh aktivis-aktivis. Oleh itu, saya amat berterima kasih kepada usaha-usaha mereka yang telah berjuang sebelum saya untuk menjadikan Malaysia sebuah negara yang adil dan selamat.

Tidak mungkin seseorang mengalami pengalaman sebegini tanpa merasa lebih takut dan tidak selesa, walaupun di tanahair sendiri.

Walaubagaimanapun, tanda sebenar kekuatan insan adalah cara di mana kita pilih untuk hidup dengan ketakutan tersebut.

Saya telah pilih untuk tidak membenarkan rasa takut saya menguasai saya. Sebaliknya, sebagai ahli KeADILan dan rakyat yang sedar, saya telah pilih untuk mencontohi semua mereka yang telah mendahului saya dalam mengambil perjalanan ini dan berusaha sedaya upaya untuk menegakkan keadilan untuk semua di Malayia yang kita cintai.

*

Akhirnya, saya ingin mengucapkan terima kasih setinggi-tingginya kepada setiap individu dan organisasi yang menyuarakan sokongan mereka untuk saya dalam waktu yang susah ini. Saya sedar bahawa keluarga saya dan teman wanita saya Soon Li Tsin terutamanya amat menderita pada waktu ini, tetapi walaupun dalam keadaan begitu, mereka berjaya menunjukkan penuh sokongan dan inilah yang memberi kekuatan yang diperlukan saya untuk menghadapi ujian ini.

Sokongan yang betul-betul amat mengharukan ini telah mengangkat saya pada setiap tahap kesusahan ini. Kepada semua malaikat yang menjaga saya, sekali lagi, saya ucapkan ribuan terima kasih.

Nathaniel Tan

To think that we entrusted our safety to them...

The Price of Healthcare

2007-07-19T18:15:00.000-07:00

Written by Yvonne Foong

Thursday, 19 July 2007

I was overjoyed when Dr. Friedman offered to remove my brain tumour for free. The phone call from the U.S. was brief, but he spoke with such confidence, I knew his offer would come true.

After weeks of planning, visa application, and paperwork, I made my way to Los Angeles three months later. The trip across the ocean proved refreshing. It was my first time travelling alone to a foreign country. What’s more? I went there to see someone who could entirely remove the tumour with confidence.

But the trip was not without glitches. Due to some misunderstanding, the hospital did not expect me turning up so early. There were more documents to settle, and a surgery date had to be scheduled beforehand. With my limited experience with healthcare in Malaysia, I did not expect the U.S. to be different.

Since I caught the hospital unprepared, I had to put up at the hotel for two nights. My aunt who paid the cost was not pleased. She gave me an earful, after harassing the hospital president and raised her voice at Dr. Friedman’s secretary.

It left me traumatised. My aunt convinced me that Dr. Friedman was angry and said I was ungrateful. I cried a bucketful of tears and beat myself up. When I met Dr. Friedman at House Clinic the following day, I bowed my head low, thinking the worst would happen, just as what my aunt claimed.

After a short while waiting, the voice of a bright and confident man beamed from outside. Moments later, Dr. Friedman stepped in and introduced himself. “Wow! Your aunt was aggressive!”. That was all he said concerning my mistake. He ran through the surgery details and what he planned to do. Next, he picked up the phone and called the operation theatre, requesting for a slot on Monday, after explaining the unforeseen circumstances.

Before he left, Dr. Friedman pat me on the shoulder and said, “Don’t worry. We’ll take good care of you.”

I will never forget that scene. His assuring tone brought me close to tears, a total contrary to my aunt’s words.

Two years later, Dr. Friedman removed another tumour from me. This time, he de-bulked a skull-base tumour, in addition to the original procedure. “It’s called the Jugular Foramen Meningioma,” he explained. “Don’t worry. I will take care of you.”

Dr. Friedman does not charge me regular consultation fees, and I can e-mail him anytime.

Many don’t understand when I insist on having some tumours removed abroad. They think of it as a far-fetched luxury. But I did not arrive here easy. The years suffering at a government hospital bruised my heart. Some protested, saying there are good doctors. But little is made known about the place, run by a system so restricting, that I only saw my surgeon a month after every surgery. Without communication, the relationship between doctor and patient is non-existent. Other problems contribute to make the hospital a hellish place, but the root of all lies in weak relationships.

When my friend, Pei Lee, could not certainly tell me what was wrong with her spine, I knew she was left in the dark. With a new doctor seeing her each time, Pei Lee could not be sure of the situation. It reminded me of fear and uncertainty. My first instinct was to rescue Pei Lee from hell.

But to say that only government hospitals mistreat their patients would be an understatement. Even some in private practice neglect the duty of care. Last Wednesday, I raised some funds and brought Pei Lee to a private hospital. Upon hearing about her medical history, the doctor abruptly told her to go back to the government, explaining that his fees were expensive.

The doctor refused to run a simple test such as asking Pei Lee to walk in a straight line, or examine her in any way. I said she could not get her files from the hospital, and might need a new MRI, but the doctor cited the high cost again.

We decided to seek treatment elsewhere. On our way out, I told Pei Lee, “Don’t let that doctor intimidate you. He does not represent the whole medical profession!”.

Yvonne Foong is a freelance writer and blogger. Her writings can be found at her website ‘Fight for Tomorrow, or it May Never Come’. (http://www.yvonnefoong.com/ )

AI Statement on Arrest and Detention of Blogger

2007-07-19T18:10:00.000-07:00

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL MALAYSIA
PRESS STATEMENT

July 17, 2007

Arrest and detention of blogger undermined fundamental rights

Amnesty International would like to raise our concerns over the recently reported news of the arrest of blogger and PKR webmaster, Mr. Nathaniel Tan. We have serious concerns over the manner in which his arrest was executed and his remand process.

We believe that the police clearly abused the due process of investigation by arbitrarily arresting a person without due reason. The attitude of “arrest first and investigate later” which was highlighted by the Royal Police Commission affects a person’s freedom and rights without a just cause. Furthermore the maximum period remand application made by the police is a strong indicator that the police failed to conduct thorough investigations before the arrest.

It was reported that Nathaniel was merely requested to follow the plainclothes policeman believed to be from the Special Branch for questioning in the Bukit Aman police headquarters, without any notification given if he was arrested. We believe that the failure to disclose his status at the time of arrest was in fact deception on the part of the police to deny him access to his family and legal intervention which is provided by law. We are also concerned over the 6 hour absence of any information from the Bukit Aman police headquarters on the status of his arrest and his whereabouts is which is tantamount to an “enforced disappearance”.

The Royal Commission in its report highlighted that the Special Branch operates with a high degree of secrecy and confidentiality. There were allegation of torture and humiliating and degrading treatment inflicted by the Special Branch and concerns that the Special Branch may be manipulated by a party in power for political purposes. The Commission recommended making the Special Branch accountable and its powers and responsibilities to be spelt out in law so that it can function impartially and independently and to clearly define the term 'security' to avoid abuses of power. Amnesty International supports the Commission’s recommendations to make the Special Branch accountable and to clearly define the term 'security' to avoid abuses of power.

We also condemn the actions of the investigating police officers not to inform Nathaniel’s lawyers of the remand proceedings and their attempt to conduct the remand hearing without the presence of his lawyers. We are of the opinion that this is another example of abuse of power by the police and an infringement of the right to a fair hearing and to full and unhindered access to legal assistance.

We are also of the view that such abuses continues due to the continuing ignorance and failure on part of the police to implement the Royal Commissions recommendation for “A Principles and Code of Practice Relating to the Arrest and Detention of Persons”. This abuses are also due to the delay in implementation of the 2006 Parliamentary Select Committee on Criminal Law’s amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) to improve on remand procedures and on the rights of persons when arrested that has already been passed by the Parliament and signed by the King, but yet to be brought into force.

Amnesty International Malaysia strongly urges the Prime Minister to investigate the incident and implement the recommendations made by the Royal Commission without further delay. It is also crucial that the CPC amendments be implemented to ensure that the rule of law is observed and implemented by the police.

Background Information

The Royal Commission on Police in its report pointed out in several sections on the habit of “Arrest First, Investigate Later”- where arrests were made based on highly questionable “reasonable suspicion” or the likelihood to constitute criminal behaviour and in the context of mass arrests of persons allegedly loosely linked to a particular high profile crime. This practice indicates that the police fail to conduct investigations before an arrest is made hence caused wrongful detention of innocent persons.

The United Nations Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance, as in Article 1 states that an act of enforced disappearance places the persons subjected thereto outside the protection of the law and inflicts severe suffering on them and their families. It constitutes a violation of the rules of international law guaranteeing, inter alia, the right to recognition as a person before the law, the right to liberty and security of the person and the right not to be subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. It also violates or constitutes a grave threat to the right to life.

In 2006, The Parliamentary Select Committee on Criminal Laws made significant amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code significant proposals on the Criminal Procedure Code to include the following. Amend section 117 of the CPC where offences which is punishable with imprisonment of less than 14 years, the magistrate may issue a remand order not more than four days on the first application and not more than three days on the second application and for an offence that is punishable with the death penalty or imprisonment of more than 14 years, the magistrate is empowered to grant up to seven days of remand order on the first application, followed by another maximum seven days on the second application. The committee has also proposed to insert a new section of 28A that specifically deals with the rights of a person arrested. The police will be required to inform the detainee on his ground of arrest as soon as possible; provide free-of-charge facilities for the detainee to inform his relative, friend or lawyer within 24 hours; and defer any interrogation until the detainee is given time to seek legal advice.

The Royal Commission in its report also proposed for “A Principles and Code of Practice Relating to the Arrest and Detention of Persons” to prevent torture and abuse of detainees. This proposed code of practice provides for an independent Custody Officer, who shall be responsible for the welfare and custody of every detainee, procedures for police interview including tape recordings, video surveillance and access to lawyers. The commission also emphasized in its report that the Code of Practice must be strictly adhered to by the police while affecting any arrest, whether under the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) or preventive laws and failure to comply should be subject to disciplinary proceedings.

Josef Roy Benedict

Executive Director

To become a member of AI please contact :
------------------------------------------------
Amnesty International Malaysia
E6, 3rd Floor, Bangunan Khas,
Jalan 8/1E, 46050 Petaling Jaya,
Selangor, Malaysia
Tel : 03-79552680
Fax: 03-79552682
Email : aimalaysia@aimalaysia.org
Website : http://www.aimalaysia.org
- Defending human rights worldwide -

Making Ulama More Relevant

2007-07-15T19:39:00.000-07:00

Grabbed from http://www.bakrimusa.com/
First posted on www.Malaysia-Today.net July 8, 2007

The Raja Muda of Perak speaks for many when he stated at the recent Ulama Conference that an alim (pl: ulama) “must first build a credible image of himself so that his advice and views are accepted and valued.”

Unfortunately, the sad reality is that ulama in many Muslim countries, Malaysia included, have prostituted themselves as instruments of a repressive state. They behave less as spiritual leaders and more to provide religious legitimacy to brutal and unjust governments.

In Malaysia, where the government has totally co-opted the Islamic establishment, Islam is now less a faith and more a bureaucracy, with ulama preaching government propaganda instead of doing God’s work. How many ulama have spoken out against official corruption and gross abuses of human rights?

Islam in Malaysia is what the government says it is; one deviates at one’s own earthly peril. Many have been jailed without trial courtesy of the Internal Security Act, or sent to “rehabilitation camps” by sham Syariah Courts for practicing “deviationist” Islam. This is not the wisdom of Prophet Muhammad, s.a.w., but of Comrade Stalin.

On another level, today’s ulama remind me of physicians of yore. Then, physicians were put on a pedestal, their every pronouncement meekly accepted. Even the language to describe a physician’s advice was telling: “Doctor’s orders!”

This is still the prevailing ethos in the Third World. New doctors coming from there have difficulty accepting the fact that in America physicians are just professionals like others. Meaning, patients are your valued clients, not subservient customers. You have to explain your treatment plans, tests ordered, and medications prescribed. A request for a second opinion is not seen as a slight on your professional competence rather the expectation of an informed patient. And an informed patient is a better patient.

This transformation of American physicians did not occur magically. It is the consequence of three major factors: radical changes in medical education, the public becoming more informed in matters of health and diseases, and the fact that medical care is largely in the private sector. Doctors have to listen to their customers in order to survive economically.

Then there is the manner of training. Would-be doctors in America are well grounded in the humanities and social sciences (in addition to the prerequisite natural sciences) before entering medical school. Further, it is the rare medical student who lives in dorms; most live in the community. They are not cut off from the rest of society, as priests in monasteries, or ulama in their madrasahs. American patients are also better educated and well informed, with medical information readily available. These patients do not take kindly to a physician’s patronizing or “know it all” attitude.

Educating Ulama

Contrast that to the training of an alim. More than likely he (never she) had attended a religious school where the curriculum is severely constrained. His social circle is also similarly limited; having never encountered anyone from a different faith or of the opposite sex. This pattern is repeated at university. Would-be ulama thus dwell in a world totally alien from that of their parishioners. It is no surprise that their pronouncements have little relevance to the real world.

One ready solution would be to abolish religious schools. That however, would not be politically feasible. Besides, these schools are popular with Malays; the Islamic imprimatur sells. A better alternative would be to modernize the curriculum by broadening it to include more secular subjects. There is no reason why these religious schools cannot excel in secular subjects and thus produce their share of the nation’s future scientists and managers, just like religious schools in America. American Catholic schools provide such superior education that they attract many non-Catholics, including Muslim students.

At universities these future ulama should, like modern physicians (at least in America), have broad-based liberal education. An understanding of the humanities and the sciences (natural and social) would enhance their understanding of the Quran and Hadith. The contributions of ancient Muslim scholars were prodigious and monumental because their intellectual interests were broad. They did not differentiate between religious and secular knowledge. Contrast that to the insularity of today’s ulama and religious scholars.

If our ulama are well versed with and have insights from the social sciences, they would be in a better position to relate to and counsel their ummah. They would then be less likely to be simplistic when addressing serious problems of their congregation.

All too often when ulama are confronted with major social problems, be they AIDS, drug abuse, or out-of-wedlock childbirths, their responses have been nothing but the uttering of platitudes and mindless quotations of the Quran and hadith. Similarly when they issue fatwas (decrees), they do so without much thought. They simply give their declarations without any explanation or references to existing body of knowledge. No surprise then that their fatwas are often far detached from reality; and frequently ignored.

If only they would use the occasion of issuing the fatwa as an opportunity to educate the masses by engaging them, then these ulama would be doing themselves and their followers a great service. When judges render decisions, they have pages and pages of reasoning, citing relevant precedents. Our ulama should do no less with their fatwas.

Similarly, just as judges seek testimonies from experts before deciding on a case, ulama too must not hesitate to consult specialists in the relevant fields before issuing fatwas. I would go further and suggest that these ulama have public hearings on important issues before delivering their edicts.

I am appalled that ulama and religious scholars would issue fatwas on such complex matters as modern financial instruments like bonds or public health issues such as AIDS without first understanding them. These are new and daunting problems that earlier Muslims never had to face. Endlessly quoting ancient texts would shed little light except to illustrate general principles. It would be more useful to understand these modern issues by learning from practitioners of other disciplines, and then discern what aspects are or are not in compliance with the principles of Islam.

Quite apart from broadening the curriculum, the current education of the ulama must also be revamped. What passes for “education” in a religious class is nothing but indoctrination. The communication is strictly one way, from instructor to students.

I once attended what was supposed to be a graduate-level class in Islamic Studies. I was appalled at the lack of any intellectual discussion. When I tried to ask a question, I was patronizingly told that I could not even contemplate asking any when I was just beginning the course. I would have to wait at least until I have understood the whole material. Whereupon I retorted that if I had understood everything, then there is no need for my asking any question, or even taking the course!

The instructor’s mindset was telling, and is typical of many Islamic scholars and ulama. Even more revealing was the attitude of the students. These were adults, many professionals in their own right, yet they passively sat through the lecture.

Changing Ulama/Ummah Dynamics

Just as the physician/patient relationship is changing with the public being better informed on health matters, so too must the ulama/ummah dynamics, with average Muslims now more knowledgeable on matters of their faith. The days when the clergy class had exclusive access to religious knowledge went away with the advent of the printing press. The Internet further breached what little remains of that exclusivity.

If ulama persist in their role as gatekeepers to religious knowledge, then they risk becoming irrelevant. Through the Internet I can listen to khutbas and lectures given at leading Islamic centers. There is no need to subject myself to the boring reading of canned sermons prepared by the state. I can read it myself twice as fast, and without putting me to sleep.

On the other hand, if ulama were to assume the role of spiritual advisers, then they would have plenty to do in filling the large void in our modern lives, with problems of alienation and dislocations brought on by rapid urbanization and globalization. To effectively fill in this new role however, they would have to have knowledge and skills beyond the religious, just as a physician needs other skills beyond his narrow profession in order to succeed.

Today’s ulama need to be well versed in counseling skills, child development, family dynamics, and social work to meet the needs of their modern ummah. Muslims today would not be satisfied with someone only reciting the Quran; they could turn on the CD and listen to the most exquisite voices of the best qaris and qariyahs. Nor would today’s Muslims be satisfied with someone endlessly quoting the hadith. What we desperately need is someone who can relate the wisdom of the Quran and hadith to the problems we face day to day. That would demand a totally different set of skills from the ulama.

Ulama have to disengage themselves from the state. They should be the custodians of the ideals of the community; they should guide the ummah along the straight path. Most of all, our ulama should be our bulwark against the tyranny of the state, and not be its accomplice.

If we change how and what we teach our Islamic Studies students, we may get ulama who have a “credible image of himself so that his advice and views are accepted and valued.” That would be good for the ulama, the ummah, Malaysia, and Islam.

Desperate Attempt to Con A Crooked Man

2007-07-15T19:25:00.000-07:00

Recently my email has become a haven for financial scams. Lotteries, "business" proposals, "unclaimed funds", etc. How the heck did they get my e-mail? Beats me. But this one caught my attention. Because whoever sent this claimed to be a lawyer, practicing in Malaysia. He even puts his office address, but minus the office contact number. Why, I wonder. Here's the e-mail:

Contact:
Barrister Ahmad Salim
Senior Advocate.
Office:
Law House
2ND Foor Wisma Yakin
Jalan Masjid 1
50450 Kuala Lumpur Malaysia .

My name is Ahmad Salim,an attorney at law.

I saw your contact and profile and decided that you could cooperate with me in this proposition.

I have a client who was deceased in 11th November, 2004. His heart condition was due to the death of all the members of his family in the Gulf Air Flight Crashes in Persian Gulf Near Bahrain Aired August 23, 2000 - 2:50 p.m. ET as reported on : http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0008/23/bn.08.html

I am contacting you because you have the same surname as my deceased client and i felt that you could help me in the distribution of funding that were left in my deceased client's bank account. This funding is closed to be declared un-serviceable by the bank as there were no indicated next of kin or next of beneficiary of the funding in the bank account.

The total amount of cash in the bank account of my deceased client is US$ 5.2 Million ( Say, Five Million, two Hundred Thousand United States dollars Only ), The bank had issued to me a notification to contact the next of kin of my deceased client for either to re-activate the bank account or to make claim of beneficiary, of the funding in the bank account, with a month surcharge of 6% to be deducted as an Escrow safe keeping fee of the bank account,so as to avoid the indefinite closure of the bank account.

My proposition to you is to seek your consent, and to present your kind self as the next-of-kin and beneficiary of my deceased client,since you have the same last name with him.

This means that the proceeds of his bank account would be paid to you as his next of kin or the legitimate beneficiary. When the proceeds in his bank account are paid to you, we would share the proceeds on a mutually agreed-upon percentage of 60% to me and 40% to your kind self.

All the legal documents to back up your claim as my client's next-of-kin would be provided by me. The most important thing I would need is your honest cooperation in this proposition.This would be done under a legitimate arrangement that would protect you from any breach of the law.

Sorry and over look this business proposition if it offends your moral and ethic values but please, contact me at once if you're interested by replying the mail.

Yours Sincerely,
Barr. Ahmad Salim
[ Principal Attorney].

There you have it. Of all the person who used "Ismat" as his/her last name (FYI, Muhammad Nor Ismat is my name. I didn't include my father's name for various personal reasons), I was chosen to be the heir of someone I never knew existed. Sounds like a story straight from a manga/anime. What I would like you, my friends, to do, is to help me verify this possible conman. I want to know if the office exists, and if it does, is there anyone by the name Ahmad Salim working there. If not, a police report is in order.

Come to think of it, why don't he contact Amir Hafizi instead? He plainly claimed that he wanted to become a millionaire ASAP, for goodness sake!! Amir, why don't you take my place?

Of Sensitivity and Understanding

2007-07-15T04:19:00.000-07:00

I feel inclined to write about this after a conversation with a dearly beloved. It's about sensitivity towards other and understanding the other party. In this case I will specialize the article to evolve around sensitivity and understanding about Islam, as it seems that Islam has become one of the most ridiculed subject nowadays, much to my chagrin.

First, the sensitivity part. What sparked my desire to write about it is the release of Evans Almighty. I haven't watched it, as I'm not much of a movie buff. I'd rather read a thick book on motivation and self-development rather than to pay RM10 for a wasted 2 hours. Here's a review about the movie, stolen (I'm being true to myself here) from FilmThreat.com:

EVAN ALMIGHTY
by Michael Ferraro
(2007-06-22) 2007, Rated PG, 95 minutes

Readers beware: this review contains minor plot spoilage…
There is something rather perplexing going on in Hollywood these days. Back in the early 1990s, “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” cost just over 100 million dollars to make. That movie had it all too: robots, computer-generated effects, blood, a body count, car chases, explosions, helicopters, buildings blowing up, guns, and motorcycles. Again, all of that was done with only $100 million and after 16 years, “T2” still looks better than most Hollywood big budget movies of today. Hell, just 4 years ago, “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” was done with about 140 million dollars and you can see that in the final product.
Then comes “Evan Almighty,” an unnecessary sequel to the equally unnecessary “Bruce Almighty” from 2003, which IMDB reports as having a budget $175,000,000. Where did all this money go? Perhaps due to its Christian themes, Universal just didn’t see a problem forking over such a ridiculous amount but do you think Hollywood will ever have the balls to pump $175,000,000 into a comedy relating to the Qur’an?
Regardless, “Evan Almighty” has Steve Carell once again playing Evan Baxter (Jim Carrey’s nemesis from the first film) who leaves his job as a news anchor to take a role as a congressman in Washington D.C. This greater calling has taken up so much of his time, that he rarely spends any time with his wife and three sons (fans of the Noah story will understand this coincidence). He is instead too infatuated with his newfound political career. Congressman Long (John Goodman) sees his dedication and tries to get him to support a bill that would give a giant hunk of land “back to the people” for development purposes that may be a little shadier than it appears. That’s when God shows up.
Since Evan’s political stance is to “change the world,” God (played by the man himself, Morgan Freeman) asks him to build an Ark, like Noah once did in the Book of Genesis in the Bible. Evan, albeit a bit skeptical, finally gives in to God’s request since the animals of the world won’t leave him alone. Pairs of various species show up like Dennis the Menace and create havoc everywhere he goes. This mayhem causes him to get suspended from his job, leaving him no choice but to grab a thousand-year-old hammer and get to work.
Okay, so let’s backtrack for a second. God plans on flooding the entire Earth once again and this is where the film’s budget was spent on, right? Wrong. It’s not the world at stake, like in Noah’s time. Instead, it’s only a few blocks of a suburban area. We as an audience are to believe that “God” (the Christian version of course) would seek the aid of a white politician to build an ark to save less than a hundred white people in suburbia, yet he chose to do nothing about the Holocaust?
An even better question: if only this one neighborhood is going to flood, why would he make animals travel from all over the world to seek shelter in the ark when their homes were never threatened? I’d be pissed if I was that impala who traveled all the way from Africa for no reason. Is God going to give this guy a ride home when it’s all over? Tell you what, just leave your brain at the door or you’ll leave the theater with a headache.
So there is no body count, no blood, no transforming robots, no explosions and no pirate ships sailing the high seas. All we get here are some Christian fables, animated animals and a computer-generated ark. All of this for that hefty price tag? It’s not like the special effects are top notch either. The blue/green screen work isn’t well disguised and the wide shots showing a multitude of computer-generated animals are as well executed as they were in “Jumanji” back in 1995. Yes, that was indeed sarcasm.
Outside of this budgetary mystery (where are you Hardy Boys?), this film is still plagued with disaster. Over the past few years, Carell has demonstrated that he has a real skill with comedy (“The 40 Year Old Virgin” which he also co-wrote) and can also be dramatically brilliant (“Little Miss Sunshine”). Here, Steve Oedekerk’s screenplay just doesn’t give him anything to work with (outside of bird shit sight gags and slapstick calamities we’ve seen more often than not in better films). There is even a beard joke in this film we heard earlier this season in “Knocked Up” involving a John Lennon reference. I guess we should expect nothing less than recycled jokes and ball-shots from the screenwriter of ”Kung Pow: Enter the Fist” and “Nutty Professor II: The Klumps.”

There you have it, the West (coincidently Christians, or perhaps an Ateis) is up to it's old trick. Mocking religion in the name of freedom of speech. They did it before with Bruce Almighty, the cartoons, and all. But no, that's not enough. They want to put it a notch higher.

Honestly, I'm not amused about what these people do. And since I'm not amused, I don't feel like making a fuss over it, pick up the fork and the torch, and go on a not-so-peaceful rally in front of the US Embassy. I'm not a big fan of physical activity anyway (though you can always give me a call for a walk. No matter how far. Have walked from Gombak to KL, and would like to try walking from JB to KL). But there are other people who will get angry, who will be amused in a negative way, and will react to the extreme. And I'm not talking about the Muslims only. The story about Noah affects both Christians and Muslims, since coincidently they share the same prophets (at least until Jesus).

Here the question of sensitivity arises. The West, particularly America, is now being targeted by terrorist. Some of it with religious agenda, some just want to wreak terror. And it all started because the West lack sensitivity. They can't say it in a way less destructive. They don't make it a point to see whether other cultures can accept what they are doing. And they forget that unbridled freedom have brought various civilizations to ruins.

My dear friends from the West. If you wish to be respected, learn to respect others. f you want your culture to be respected and accepted, learn to respect other culture. That means, learn the dos and don't about them. You guys know very well that your population is not the majority. Combine China and India, they'll swallow you whole. And as far as my knowledge goes, they are not amused with people making fun of their gods and deities. Religion is not a matter you can make a joke about. Or a comedy. If religion is a joke, then that makes morality irrelevant. Well, coming from America, I guess morality is irrelevant to you guys. Your current President doesn't seem to be a moral person. If he is, then he wouldn't be making a fool out of himself. Which means I shouldn't expect much of the people who put him in the White House, ie: Americans who voted for him.

So there. Be aware of the issues that may spark negative emotions by learning about their cultures.

Now, about understanding Islam. I noticed that the West often quote Islam with the Middle-Eastern culture. That's not the right way to understand Islam. If you want to understand about Islam, you have to take out "culture" from the equation. What drove many Muslims towards violence is not the religion, but the culture. And I can't really blame the West for having the misconception as well. Majority of the Muslims mistook their culture as the basis of Islamic teachings. Thus giving them the impression that their actions are righteous.

To differentiate between true Islamic principles and a culture, you have to spend some time with various Muslim communities and study them. Spending time with only one Muslim community may lead to a misconception, as their culture has already intertwined with Islamic principles. Take Malaysian Muslim society. We have various cultural events that were intertwined with Islamic concepts, such as adat bercukur. Those who are not informed might mistook the event as a religious event, since salawat, marhaban, and Quranic verses were recited. These events, may not be exercised in other Muslim communities, as it is not part of their culture.

I will discuss further about these 2 issues later, as discussing 2 issues in one post will only make the post a burden to read. Until then, stay tuned.

Bloggers Are Not Immune

2007-07-14T19:09:00.000-07:00

Bloggers don’t enjoy more rights

BY MANJIT KAUR

KUALA LUMPUR: Bloggers are as liable for defamation as publishers in any other medium, but the difficulty arises when there are anonymous postings on blogs.
According to University of Ulster (UK) senior lecturer in Law Dr Venkat Iyer, it is the anonymity that creates a legal “grey area”.
Dr Iyer said it was wrong to assume that bloggers enjoyed greater privileges.
“There have been cases in the West where legal action had been taken against websites for defamatory remarks and some website owners were also taken to court when an anonymous posting was made,” he said.
He was speaking to reporters after delivering a talk on “Defamation in Cyberspace” by the Kuala Lumpur Bar here yesterday as part of its ongoing legal education programme.
On the liability of companies whose employees blog, Dr Iyer said it depended on the company's policies on e-mail and IT facilities.
He said that if the employees used the company’s website or logo to blog, and if the company knew about it, then very likely the employee or employees would be served with a warning not to use the company’s assets.
“With this the liability reduces, but if the employee just uses the facilities of the company and blogs on his own site, then again if the company comes to know about it, very likely he would be served with a warning for using its facilities, premises and company time,” he said.
“And under those circumstances, if ever legal action is taken, then the company can defend itself by saying it had taken all the reasonable steps to ensure that the employee was prevented from doing what he did.”
He said the Internet was a unique medium, as it had a limitless potential audience, was easy to access, and had the ability to create communities regardless of geographical constraints.
Dr Iyer said that therefore the potential difficulties, among others that could arise, were the effects of republication of libellous matter, anonymity of authors, implications of hyperlinking, liability of intermediaries and effects of multiple format publication.
He said the cyber-defamation possibilities included e-mail messages, where risks are inherent when the recipient forwards such messages.
Dr Iyer said that when there are mailing lists the situation can be riskier as any member of a mailing list may reply with a defamatory statement that he intended only for the person who posted a particular message but inadvertently relayed it to everyone else.

Indeed we don't. Let me quote my mum:

"What you want to say is your right. The moment you've said it, it becomes other's right." -My Mum, Halijah Binti Nasir-

It's true. Thus the phrase, "watch what you were saying," comes into play. Say it in a manner less harmful. Can't say that I do it all the time, but I try as hard as I can to sprinkle humor on what I said. To dull the edge.

And there are some taboos as well. Take the picture posted by Tian Chua. That's going too far, even as a joke. He could at least put a disclaimer: "This is just the author's illustration of how the picture might look like". Something like that. Thus removing him from the blame of insulting, as he was just assuming that the picture might look like the picture he doctored.

However, the Government itself has to be neutral so that bloggers will not be victimized. There are some instances where bloggers were subjected to lawsuit for telling the truth. This can be very damaging not only to the blogsphere, but also for the country, as the people calling for lawsuit most of the time are corrupt people. People who make a living out of the sweat, blood and tear of their fellow countrymen. If the Government aims to have patriotic people, then the bloggers who dared to uncover corrupt personnel are the people the Government would like to have more of.

A Life Lost In The Name Of Justice

2007-07-14T04:06:00.000-07:00

My friend,

We are living in a sad time indeed. A time where life holds little value, and could easily be snuffed out on a whim. People end others life or their own without even considering the consequences. Be it murder or suicide, the price of a life can never be paid fairly, other than with another life.

Let me share with you my view about the act of taking a life (your own or another). When a life is taken, the owner of that life lost everything; their past, present, and their future. She/he can never get it back. And they are not the only ones who lost something. The wife lost a husband, who was supposed to stand by her side through happiness and sadness. The child lost a parent, who was supposed to teach him/her about the goodness of life. The husband lost a wife, who was supposed to be the one supporting him when he is insecure. The father lost a child, whom a future was entrusted upon to. Such is the loss when a life is taken. And the price to pay for that loss, the burden to offset the loss, is heavy enough to crush the person who took a life away.

Yesterday, 7am, a life was lost in an attempt to protect something that was not of his own. To some, he had shown courage few had. To others, he was just a busybody and a fool. How about you?

Man dies in bid to foil car theft

By ANDREW SAGAYAM

saggy@thestar.com.my

KUALA LUMPUR: A factory worker who tried to prevent a car theft was stabbed to death in Taman Megah here.
Tan Chee Wai, 31, (pic) from Taman Seri Cheras, was said to have walked to the area near his home in Taman Seri Cheras to buy breakfast for his family at about 7am yesterday when he noticed four men behaving suspiciously near a Perodua Kelisa parked outside a house.
He then hid behind another parked car to observe what was going on.
The four surrounded the car and kept looking inside, and one of them used an iron rod to prise open the driver’s side door.
At this juncture, Tan shouted: “Oi! Curi kereta orang kah”? (Hey, are you stealing the car”).
One of the men, who saw Tan, then asked his accomplices to get to Tan.
The four men started to assault Tan and stabbed him thrice in the chest.
Kajang OCPD Asst Comm Rosli Mohd Nizam said Tan, a bachelor, was found dead sprawled in a pool of blood along the road.
“Two eyewitnesses told us that Tan tried to fight back but was overpowered.
“They told us that the four men fled the area in two motorcycles,” he said.
ACP Rosli urged those with information to contact the Kajang police headquarters at 03-8736 2222 or the nearest police station.

The face of all victims

Posted by: Davin Arul

I would like to exhort the authorities to take a look at the photograph of the late Mr Tan Chee Wai of Cheras, KL, that was published in the newspapers today. It is the face of a brave man who called attention to criminals in the act of stealing a car, and paid for it with his life.

Mr Tan was killed by the would-be car thieves, whose horrendous act is typical of the kind of mad dog criminal that we have in our midst today.

The kind of mad dog criminal who slashes and assaults victims, who preys on the elderly and disabled and weak, who seems to be able to operate with impunity, laughing at and mocking our law enforcers' efforts to bring them in.

The kind that will continue to do so as long as the authorities seem more focused on bickering over statistics and questioning one another's information sources and hurling allegations of corruption at one another, than on presenting a unified and mighty front to put this sort of mad dog criminal in the ground.

Please look at Mr Tan's photo. It is the face of a man who only wanted to go out and buy food for his family, and who will never see them again in this existence. Please look at it before you feel the need to puff up for a few extra column-inches in the papers, and consider that the effort expended in that could have been directed towards something, anything, more productive and more reassuring to the people who put you in your various offices.

Settle your internal disputes internally, and let the nation see a united team working for a brighter future for the decent citizens of this country. You owe it to people like Mr Tan, and the scores of other victims whose deaths have gone unpunished.

Singapore Is Still Not A Nation

2007-07-13T18:57:00.000-07:00

Nazri Aziz would feel relief reading this. At least he was right about something. But that doesn't make him a better person.

Not yet a nation at 42

INSIGHT DOWN SOUTH
By SEAH CHIANG NEE

cnseah05@hotmail.com
When Malaysia celebrates its 50th Merdeka next month, its southern neighbour will be celebrating its 42nd National Day. For Singapore the question of nationhood could become one of the most crucial issues over the coming generation.
THIS little rich state is celebrating its 42nd National Day next month with many blessings and a few darkening clouds, one of which is: It isn’t yet a nation.
In fact it will take a generation or two to become one. Wealth notwithstanding, it is more diverse and divided than before.
The republic has become a high-tech international city of transience, where hordes of foreigners come and Singaporeans leave as in past history.
But even before going global, the process of nation building was already tough enough. Now with a changing Internet-influenced population, it appears even more remote.
The question of nationhood could become one of the most crucial issues over the coming generation.
As speculation mounts of a possible decision to allow the people to adopt dual citizenship as a way to stem the brain drain, it could even take a longer time for nationhood to take root.
Singapore has always been and remains a migrant society.
During a recent seminar on the mass inflow of foreigners, Wendy Tan, a junior college student asked, “how can we get people in Singapore to have a common sense of purpose?”
The legacy left behind by the first generation is rich and plentiful, an educated, efficient people, good infrastructure and strong reserves.
For a larger country with a longer history, these ingredients would have been enough to forge a strong nation. Singapore has neither.
The government is under pressure to consider dual-citizenship as a means of reducing the brain drain. Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, who had long rejected this idea, has apparently softened on it.
He recently hinted of this possibility when he said this would be left “to the present or future government” to decide.
Officials privately explain this is the only way to stop young talented Singaporeans from leaving for good.
“It is a matter of time before dual citizenship is granted that will allow citizens to settle in another country while remaining a Singaporean,” said a think tank researcher.
This will give him the option of coming back or work overseas to contribute to Singapore’s interests. “It has first to resolve the matter of national service.”
Such a move could result in a looser nation if many citizens opt for divided loyalties.
When Lee Hsien Loong became Prime Minister, everyone knew he would face a different set of problems. However, few could have foreseen how much tougher it would be when compared to that of his father, Lee Kuan Yew, decades ago.
He inherited a more divided nation. His is a self-centred generation with high expectations – not the trusting one that made his father’s work so much easier.
Singapore is more class-conscious, increasingly divided between ‘elites’ and ‘commoners’, rich and poor, locals and foreigners in addition to the race and religion divides.
This makes it harder for the younger Lee to rally a cohesive people behind him.
But the potential hotspot is the rapid influx of hundreds of thousands of foreigners who do not share local values.
In pursuing a strategy of importing skill in large numbers, the government has bent backwards to welcome them, to the discontent of locals.
Permanent residents are exempted from the two-year mandatory National Service followed by 10 years of reservist duty (but not their children). This gives them a tremendous advantage in the job market.
Two factors are slowing its nation-bonding evolution.
The first is a changed vision of the new educated generation. Helped by the Internet and easy travels, these youths see themselves as ‘citizens of the world’ who can work and live anywhere, thus diluting the sense of belonging.
Secondly, an increasing number of youths resent the strong government control and wish to migrate to more liberal cities for more personal liberties.
Kuan Yew voiced his concerns about the impact of ‘the borderless world’ when he met Singaporeans working in Qatar last year.
“If more Singaporeans worked abroad and their children forgot their roots, there will be no Singapore node to send them out ... They dissolve and disappear and there is no Singapore,” the minister mentor said.
“They become citizens of the world. What does that mean? Lost!”
Malacca-born Prof Shirley Lim Geok-lin, who taught English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said Kuan Yew’s concern was over the loss of the fourth generation of young citizens.
This preoccupation, she added, had taken over from his perceived threats of regional military hostility or global isolation.
Kuan Yew was concerned that Singaporean parents, in becoming international workers, had “opened to them a different identity”.
Some 150,000 Singaporeans are residing or studying overseas, with a growing number opting not to return after setting roots abroad.
Singapore’s Dr Linda Lim, a professor of strategy at the University of Michigan who has taught in the US for 20 years, has debunked the idea of world foreign talents in large numbers making this their home.
She said in a recent lecture here that in the past decade, she had got to know many Chinese and Indian nationals in Singapore.
They had come to study in schools and universities, often with government scholarships and later worked for a few years before applying for an MBA programme in America.
“To my knowledge, none has ever returned to Singapore after graduating with MBAs, their goal all along having been to use the place as a stepping stone to the US job market,” she said.
What is the way forward? Dr Lim said, “Promote active civic and political participation and inculcate the ‘sense of ownership’.

I believe the same applies to Malaysia, since we got the report that over the past 10 years, more than 100,000 Malaysian migrated overseas. Almost 80,000 are Malays. Knowing that thy neighbor is facing the same (well, almost) problem, wouldn't it be wiser to seek the solution together?

To Ban or Not To Ban, It's Already Banned...

2007-07-13T18:34:00.000-07:00

Thanks, guys, for the concern over my mum's condition. Rest assure, it's getting worse. But that's not a bad sign. Based on my knowledge of healing cycle, it is normal for ailments to be at it's peak before the healing process kicks in. She's taking the antibiotics, but she's still worried about her current condition. I wonder if I should call Aunty Nasriah and have her do the check up on my mum instead. I have to convince my mum to come to KL, though, and I doubt that she's willing.

Now, to the article today. Here it is:

Watch movie first before calling for ban, says Rais

By IZATUN SHARI

PETALING JAYA: Any party calling for a ban on a movie on religious grounds should first view it and state what aspects of it are against the teachings of the religion, said Culture, Arts and Heritage Minister Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim.
Once they have seen the movie and outlined what aspects of the film were against the tenets of the religion, they could forward their views to the Film Censorship Board.
“If you haven’t seen the movie, I don’t think you should create tension,” he said when asked to comment on a call by the Muslim Consumers Association of Malaysia to ban the comedy Evan Almighty, which is scheduled for general screening in cinemas nationwide from Aug 23.
According to Bernama, association secretary-general Datuk Dr Maamor Osman labelled Evan Almighty an insult to Islam because it “poked fun at God and the Prophet Noah”.
The trailer of the US$175mil (RM600mil) movie, featuring Morgan Freeman as God, asking Evan Baxter (Steve Carell) to build an ark to prevent the big flood that was to hit New York, has been shown in cinemas here.
Evan Almighty is the sequel to Bruce Almighty, which was initially caught up in a controversy four years ago when former Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Abdul Hamid Zainal Abidin called for the film to be banned because it was against Islamic beliefs as the main character had assumed the power of God.
However, the Government allowed the screening of the movie after it was viewed and assessed by various government officials including those from the Islamic Development Department and Film Censorship Board.
Dr Rais said he would leave the current matter to the censorship board.
“Upon deliberation, the board has disallowed or allowed many stories,” he said.

Well, Dato', how do you supposed we watch the movies first? by downloading it before it even reach our shores? I don't mind. I do that a lot with Japanese animation and movies. But for a minister to actually imply that, you have my respect.

I do agree that we need to actually read/watch/listen to the media before giving the verdict whether the media should be banned or censored or left alone. I 100% support the motion. Make that 199.99999%. However, as far as I'm concerned, all types of media have to go through the Government agency before being released officially. Which means you can't even take a sneak peek legally (and a sneak peek is not enough to warrant a verdict). Which means you guys (ministers, Parliament members, Father, Son, and the Holy SIL) get to watch it first. Heck, before we know it, the media are already banned/censored/burned to smithereens. Unless we illegally acquire the media, that is. Illegally from your point of view, that is.

Impending Crisis.

2007-07-13T01:53:00.000-07:00

My mum got a germ infection on her left eye. She got the infection 2 days ago, and now it's spreading towards the right side of her face. And her face no looks a bit puffy. I'm worried. Very worried. She's not the kind who believes in a doctor, unless the doctor is worthy of being trusted. Yesterday she went for a check-up at a clinic, took the medicine prescribed, and today, her condition worsen. So, anyone have a good idea what I should do?

Brace Yourselves!

2007-07-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

The Sydney Morning Herald

AN ASSET bubble in Asia could cause another financial crisis like the one a decade ago, a former deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia said yesterday.

Stephen Grenville, a member of the central bank's board during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, said Asia's financial sector was still fragile and he predicted Asian nations would be reluctant to seek help from the International Monetary Fund if another crisis emerged.

Dr Grenville said a shortage of foreign currency reserves in Asian economies was still a problem. "There's the possibility when exchange rates come under par, they [investors] will change their behaviour in a way that's most inconvenient," he told the Lowy Institute think tank in Sydney.

Volatile capital flows, fragile financial markets and "less anchored" exchange rates added to the risk of another Asian financial meltdown, he warned.

"They [the Asian economies] are going to have current account deficits if they get capital flowing again," he said.

"They'll have to have higher exchange rates. When you have more investment, you have the possibility of an asset bubble."

However, Dr Grenville said another financial crisis in the near-term was unlikely. "There seems to be no chance of another crisis like that any time soon," he said.

In July 1997, the "tiger" economies of Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand were plunged into economic turmoil after capital investments were abruptly withdrawn as investors lost faith in corporate governance.

Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Laos were also affected.

The battered Asian economies had previously kept interest rates high to attract foreign investors seeking high returns.

Dr Grenville said the International Monetary Fund had not made much progress with its governance in the decade since the Asian financial crisis and Asian economies would probably delay asking for help if another emergency arose.

"You do need an international lender of last resort but the countries have said 'never again'," he said, before advocating the creation of a regional Asian monetary fund.

After the 1997 financial crisis, Asian economies turned current account deficits into current account surpluses. As foreign debt levels fell, so did economic growth rates.

To grow again, Dr Grenville said Asian economies would have to run current account deficits as a price for attracting foreign investment.

He said the Indonesian and Thai economies should be growing much faster than they were. "If China can grow by more than 10 per cent, then the countries of South-East Asia should be growing by more than 5 per cent," Dr Grenville said.

He said Indonesia's gross domestic product would be a third higher than what it is now if the 1997 crisis had not curbed its previously higher economic growth rate of about 7 per cent.

If you wish to leave the country, do it before it's too late. If you wish to save the country, rally oyur support, and remove the incompetents running this country.

What Was That Again?

2007-07-11T19:36:00.000-07:00

No Citizenship For Malaysians Who Have Given Up Citizenry - Abdullah
General
July 10, 2007 18:51 PM

PUTRAJAYA, July 10 (Bernama) -- The Government will not reinstate the citizenship of Malaysians who have given up their citizenry of this country, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said today.

He said Malaysians, who have surrendered their citizenship, also cannot re-apply for citizenhood.

"All those who had opted to surrender their citizenship have officially wrote in to the authorities informing that they are giving up their citizenship of this country.

"(Acting on their letters), the Home Affairs Ministry has granted permission to the applicants to surrender their citizenship. Surely, there must be specific reasons for the ministry to approve their requests.

"But one thing I want to stress and explain is that Malaysians who have surrendered their citizenship to the government cannot have their citizenship status reinstated later, suddenly they want to become a Malaysian citizen again," he told reporters after attending the Internal Security Ministry's monthly assembly.

Deputy Home Minister Datuk Tan Chai Ho said yesterday Malays accounted for 70 per cent of Malaysians who surrendered their citizenship in favour of life overseas.

Between 1996 and April this year, 106,000 Malaysians have given up their citizenship. Of these, 79,199 are Malays; 25,107 Chinese, 1,347 Indians and 350 other races.

Tan said more women than men were emigrating, with marriage being cited as the most common reason by the women.

Abdullah, who is also Internal Security Minister, said two police training centres, in addition to the one in Jalan Semarak, Kuala Lumpur, would be built in Langkawi and Bentong to step up enforcement and to fight rising crime.

"We will acquire a building in Langkawi so that the training centre can be operational soon," he added.

-- BERNAMA

Pak Lah, what makes you think that those ex-Malaysian who had renounced their citizenship would re-apply to be Malaysian again? Not under your tenure, no way. And not until ALL the current Parliament Members, save some of the dedicated ones, have been removed and substituted by better candidates. They didn't renounce their citizenship out of a whim. They did it because there are a lot of things unpleasant going around in this country. And they have gave up on hoping for a change, because after all these years, NOTHING CHANGED AT ALL.

Sure, some of them wanted to return to Malaysia for whatever reasons. Perhaps the parents they left in Malaysia are sick, and need to be taken care of. Perhaps for work. Perhaps they suddenly realized that they couldn't cope up with the lifestyle overseas. But still, before we even consider why they wanted to comeback, let's analyze ourselves, and figure out why did they leaved in the first place.

Analysis on Response to Rommel's Statement on NEP.

2007-07-07T18:28:00.000-07:00

Grabbed from Reuter:

ANALYSIS - Malaysia's raw nerve: affirmative action
Tue Jul 3, 2007 8:15 AM IST

By Mark Bendeich
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Diplomats have long grumbled in private about Malaysian protectionism in some important industries, but few dare to speak frankly about it in public.
The reason, as a minor Western diplomat recently demonstrated in spectacular fashion, is because their complaints often touch on Malaysia's rawest political nerve: race relations.
Thierry Rommel, the European Commission's envoy to Malaysia, stabbed a finger into that nerve last month by commenting on the nation's affirmative-action policy in favour of ethnic Malays, bluntly calling it a form of trade protectionism.
Malaysia, a shrill critic of the West on trade issues for many years, flew into a rage, lodged a formal protest in Brussels, carpeted the hapless Belgian and inspired a series of damning commentaries in government-friendly papers.
Rommel is not a newcomer to Malaysia but seemed taken aback by the fierce reaction. Other diplomats, while agreeing with some of his sentiments, said he should not have been surprised.
Affirmative action in favour of Malay businesses, especially in securing state contracts, may be unpopular with some trading partners and with many Malaysians, but it is part of the fabric of Malaysian politics. No one expects it to be unravelled.
Affirmative action began before independence in 1957, under British colonial rule, and has always been an irritant among the more economically successful ethnic Chinese community. But it became an article of faith among Malays after May 13, 1969.
On that day, an outbreak of rioting between poor ethnic Malays and generally wealthier ethnic Chinese turned the capital into a lawless bloodbath in which officially almost 200 people were killed, and unofficially many hundreds more.
People attacked each other with knives, poles, whatever was to hand. The city was ablaze. Malay accounts say Chinese political chauvinists, celebrating a strong showing in general elections held three days earlier, had provoked the violence.
Chinese witnesses say some Malay police turned a blind eye to attacks on their communities and even shot into Chinese shops.
"NEP-OTISM" OR KEEPING THE PEACE?
The only consensus in the aftermath was that the yawning wealth gap between mostly rural Malays and business-oriented Chinese had fuelled racial hatred.
At the time, Malays made up half the population but owned barely 2 percent of the nation's corporate equity.
Since then, Malay ownership has climbed to about 20 percent -- and one unofficial estimate puts it as high as 45 percent.
But the wealth gap between Malays, who now make up about 60 percent of the population, and ethnic Chinese (a quarter), remains big: Chinese corporate equity is double Malay equity and Chinese household income outstrips Malay income by 64 percent.
The New Economic Policy (NEP), the affirmative-action agenda born out of the 1969 riots, is over-ripe for reform, say liberals from all across the racial spectrum, which also includes ethnic Indians who make up about 8 percent of the population.
Former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim, now the de facto opposition leader and a Malay, says the current policy has only benefited the Malay political establishment and its cronies.
He mockingly calls it "NEPotism".
Malay privileges have been eroded over the years but Malays still get discounted house prices and special share allocations.
Most controversial of all, under the NEP, also known as the Bumiputera ("sons of the soil") policy, contracts to build highways, schools and public buildings are awarded to Malay firms linked to the ruling United Malays National Organisation (UMNO).
The contract system is partly what bothers Thierry Rommel.
It also chafes with the United States, which has pushed Malaysia in free-trade talks to open up state procurement to U.S. firms. But Washington, which also practises affirmative action, is careful not to criticise the Bumiputera policy. It says, more tactfully, that the policy should be "more transparent".
The policy is far from popular, abroad or at home. Even Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi has said Malays should throw away their "crutches". But political experts do not think a Malaysian leader can ditch affirmative action and survive long in office.
"I think if one asks for the dismantling of the NEP, there would be a very adverse reaction from the Malay community," said political scientist Chandra Muzaffar, diplomatically.

Sage Advice from a Dropout

2007-07-05T19:58:00.000-07:00

Taken from Datin/Datuk Marina Mahathir's Blog

The most famous dropout in the world recently went back to his alma mater to deliver this year's commencement address. It's a great speech and worth reading. It illustrates that old adage that money isn't everything (it helps if you also have brains and a heart) but it sure helps a lot.

But his story of his brief student days also tells you that he wasn't sitting around doing nothing. He was already using his brains and working hard to put his ideas into practice. So perhaps Harvard couldn't academically teach him anything.

I can't help wondering if there has ever been a speech at any of our universities locally which simply assumes that the audience comprises 'the best minds' around? That exhorts them to think of inequities in the world and become activists and do something about it? In fact, has there ever been a graduation speech here that is worth reading?

And I'm so glad he credits his mother for inspiring his concern for the inequities of the world.

Remarks of Bill Gates

Harvard Commencement, June 7, 2007

(Text as prepared for delivery)

President Bok, former President Rudenstine, incoming President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, parents, and especially, the graduates:

I’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree.”

I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I’ll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.

I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I’m just happy that the Crimson has called me “Harvard’s most successful dropout.” I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class … I did the best of everyone who failed.

But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I’m a bad influence. That’s why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.

Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn’t even signed up for. And dorm life was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House. There were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyone knew I didn’t worry about getting up in the morning. That’s how I came to be the leader of the anti-social group. We clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of all those social people.

Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success.

One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975, when I made a call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun making the world’s first personal computers. I offered to sell them software.

I worried that they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: “We’re not quite ready, come see us in a month,” which was a good thing, because we hadn’t written the software yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Microsoft.

What I remember above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging. It was an amazing privilege – and though I left early, I was transformed by my years at Harvard, the friendships I made, and the ideas I worked on.

But taking a serious look back … I do have one big regret.

I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.

I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.

But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.

I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.

It took me decades to find out.

You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You know more about the world’s inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I hope you’ve had a chance to think about how – in this age of accelerating technology – we can finally take on these inequities, and we can solve them.

Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had a few hours a week and a few dollars a month to donate to a cause – and you wanted to spend that time and money where it would have the greatest impact in saving and improving lives. Where would you spend it?

For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have.

During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I read an article about the millions of children who were dying every year in poor countries from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country. Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. One disease I had never even heard of, rotavirus, was killing half a million kids each year – none of them in the United States.

We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions of children were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under a dollar, there were interventions that could save lives that just weren’t being delivered.

If you believe that every life has equal value, it’s revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: “This can’t be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving.”

So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked: “How could the world let these children die?”

The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.

But you and I have both.

We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism – if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. We also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes.

If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world.

I am optimistic that we can do this, but I talk to skeptics who claim there is no hope. They say: “Inequity has been with us since the beginning, and will be with us till the end – because people just … don’t … care.” I completely disagree.

I believe we have more caring than we know what to do with.

All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing – not because we didn’t care, but because we didn’t know what to do. If we had known how to help, we would have acted.

The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.

To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.

Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problems. When an airplane crashes, officials immediately call a press conference. They promise to investigate, determine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future.

But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: “Of all the people in the world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent of them were on this plane. We’re determined to do everything possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half of one percent.”

The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the millions of preventable deaths.

We don’t read much about these deaths. The media covers what’s new – and millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it’s easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it’s difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It’s hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don’t know how to help. And so we look away.

If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, we come to the second step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution.

Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the most of our caring. If we have clear and proven answers anytime an organization or individual asks “How can I help?,” then we can get action – and we can make sure that none of the caring in the world is wasted. But complexity makes it hard to mark a path of action for everyone who cares — and that makes it hard for their caring to matter.

Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology that you already have — whether it’s something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet.

The AIDS epidemic offers an example. The broad goal, of course, is to end the disease. The highest-leverage approach is prevention. The ideal technology would be a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a single dose. So governments, drug companies, and foundations fund vaccine research. But their work is likely to take more than a decade, so in the meantime, we have to work with what we have in hand – and the best prevention approach we have now is getting people to avoid risky behavior.

Pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again. This is the pattern. The crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working – and never do what we did with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century – which is to surrender to complexity and quit.

The final step – after seeing the problem and finding an approach – is to measure the impact of your work and share your successes and failures so that others learn from your efforts.

You have to have the statistics, of course. You have to be able to show that a program is vaccinating millions more children. You have to be able to show a decline in the number of children dying from these diseases. This is essential not just to improve the program, but also to help draw more investment from business and government.

But if you want to inspire people to participate, you have to show more than numbers; you have to convey the human impact of the work – so people can feel what saving a life means to the families affected.

I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting on a global health panel that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. Millions! Think of the thrill of saving just one person’s life – then multiply that by millions. … Yet this was the most boring panel I’ve ever been on – ever. So boring even I couldn’t bear it.

What made that experience especially striking was that I had just come from an event where we were introducing version 13 of some piece of software, and we had people jumping and shouting with excitement. I love getting people excited about software – but why can’t we generate even more excitement for saving lives?

You can’t get people excited unless you can help them see and feel the impact. And how you do that – is a complex question.

Still, I’m optimistic. Yes, inequity has been with us forever, but the new tools we have to cut through complexity have not been with us forever. They are new – they can help us make the most of our caring – and that’s why the future can be different from the past.

The defining and ongoing innovations of this age – biotechnology, the computer, the Internet – give us a chance we’ve never had before to end extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease.

Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencement and announced a plan to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: “I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation.”

Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my class graduated without me, technology was emerging that would make the world smaller, more open, more visible, less distant.

The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to a powerful network that has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating.

The magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance and makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number of brilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem – and that scales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree.

At the same time, for every person in the world who has access to this technology, five people don’t. That means many creative minds are left out of this discussion -- smart people with practical intelligence and relevant experience who don’t have the technology to hone their talents or contribute their ideas to the world.

We need as many people as possible to have access to this technology, because these advances are triggering a revolution in what human beings can do for one another. They are making it possible not just for national governments, but for universities, corporations, smaller organizations, and even individuals to see problems, see approaches, and measure the impact of their efforts to address the hunger, poverty, and desperation George Marshall spoke of 60 years ago.

Members of the Harvard Family: Here in the Yard is one of the great collections of intellectual talent in the world.

What for?

There is no question that the faculty, the alumni, the students, and the benefactors of Harvard have used their power to improve the lives of people here and around the world. But can we do more? Can Harvard dedicate its intellect to improving the lives of people who will never even hear its name?

Let me make a request of the deans and the professors – the intellectual leaders here at Harvard: As you hire new faculty, award tenure, review curriculum, and determine degree requirements, please ask yourselves:

Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems?

Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world’s worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty … the prevalence of world hunger … the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept out of school … the children who die from diseases we can cure?

Should the world’s most privileged people learn about the lives of the world’s least privileged?

These are not rhetorical questions – you will answer with your policies.

My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was admitted here – never stopped pressing me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter she said: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.”

When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given – in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us.

In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue – a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don’t have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.

Don’t let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.

You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort. You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.

Knowing what you know, how could you not?

And I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities … on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.
Good luck.

As a bonus, here's something that Plato said about not participating in politics:

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that
you end up being governed by your inferiors." - Plato

It's evidence here in Malaysia. Look at our PM and his band of merry members of the Parliament.

General Election a la Akademi Fantasia

2007-07-05T17:46:00.000-07:00

You know, many of us refer to Malaysia as Boleh!-Land, where everything are Boleh! (possible), no matter how silly it sounds. Like making teh tarik in zero gravity (YB, somebody in your department DID say that), or sending Mat Rempits for a sky-diving expedition to the North Pole (or was it South Pole? I'm sure it's not the Flesh Pole, though).

So here I would like to propose another novel idea to the Government: General Election a la Akademi Fantasia. If you have no idea what I'm talking about,let me explain further.

Akademi Fantasia (AF) is one of the biggest craze in Malaysia. Everyone, regardless of their age or race (except for the sane ones), are hooked to the programme (ESPECIALLY Malays). Whenever the event is aired, the audiences, no matter where they are, are sitting at the edge of their seats. AF uses an SMS-based voting system as well as a fixed-line call voting system for the audiences to decide who gets to stay, and who gets to go. And these AF-maniacs are willing to spend on their airtime credits just to keep their idols on the stage.

Let's talk about the Parliament now. Read this article, for it has all the relevance to my proposal:

Put them on camera

ALONG THE WATCHTOWER

By M.VEERA PANDIYAN

Live coverage of Parliament debates may make errant MPs behave better.
IF IT’S always going to be a circus, watching it live would be more entertaining. The frolics of the clowns alone might provide more amusement than the shows on television these days.
Hats off to Kalabakan MP Datuk Abdul Ghapur Salleh for one of the better suggestions to come from a backbencher in the Dewan Rakyat recently.
“Let’s telecast the debates live on TV so that the MPs will behave,” he proposed last week, noting that parts of parliamentary debates – including the trading of harsh words and insults – were already being screened on some news segments.
But a spoilsport in the form of Deputy Information Minister Datuk Ahmad Zahid Hamidi threw cold water on the idea, giving the most cockamamie of excuses. He said no on the grounds that RTM would disallow lucah (obscene) words to be aired.
“Some quarters, including the opposition, are recording debates as well as heated arguments onto CDs and distributing them. My advice is we should behave ourselves in the House,” he said.
Isn’t that precisely the point? If MPs who use vulgar language and behave like thugs realise that their words and antics would be seen by all and sundry, might they not want to mend their ways?
Live coverage could also help identify the silent Yang Berhormats (The Honourable) who just warm their seats in Parliament, not to mention those who use the august hall as a convenient place for their afternoon naps.
Of course, viewer ratings for live TV coverage of parliamentary proceedings would be a long way off from shows like Akademi Fantasia, as much of it would feature soporific speeches.
But boring or not, voters shouldn’t be deprived of watching how their elected representatives perform where it really matters. After all they pay these YBs’ tax-free salaries, fat allowances and life-long pensions.
With cameras focused on them, would MPs still go for the burlesque? You know, like cracking crude, sexist “bocor” (leakage) jokes, getting all hot and bothered by scantily clad Super GT models, or stewing over the “sexy” uniforms of Malaysian Airlines stewardesses.
Just imagine watching the dramas unfold in Parliament, with close-ups of the faces of the rankled MPs raising such matters of utmost importance to the nation.
If opinions are based merely on newspaper reports, Malaysians can’t be faulted for thinking that many of our MPs are preoccupied with jaga tepi kain (monitoring hemlines) instead of jaga kepentingan rakyat (looking after the peoples’ interests).
Whether they accept it or not, the general perception is our MPs dwell too much on trivial matters instead of focusing on the real issues affecting the country.
Surely, there are enough compelling subjects for them to get agitated over. Here’s a small sampling: corruption, weaknesses in the education system, rising levels of crime, drug abuse, disregard for rule of law and gross misuse and wastage of public funds.
Wouldn’t it be a welcome change to see backbenchers grandstanding before the cameras, getting riled up over corruption in high places, or demanding clarification over claims of police-crime links?
If and when that happens, who knows, voters might be tempted to do something special for them, perhaps even wear T-shirts proclaiming: “I am YB So & So’s constituent ... And proud of it!”
Most of us, however, would be content to just see our MPs argue their cases against opponents intelligently and rationally, not display spoilt-brat temper tantrums or frenzied screaming of un-parliamentary terms like the recent outbursts of Bodoh! Bodoh! Bodoh!” (Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!)
But then again, with politics being such a bizarre realm, Malaysians too might eventually warm up to such behaviour, as in the case of Taiwan where brawling and unruly behaviour have become the norm in Parliament.
Apparently, voters on the island expect their representatives to fight hard on issues – both verbally and physically. To get maximum media coverage and support back home, legislators plan their showdown strategy to the extent of choreographing the pushes, shoves and fisticuffs.
In the end, it’s all about our level of acceptance. As long as we choose to allow errant MPs to remain unaccountable for their words and misdeeds, we shouldn't expect things to get any better.
Within the walls of the Dewan Rakyat, however, the onus is on Speaker Tan Sri Ramli Ngah Talib and his deputies, Datuk Lim Si Cheng and Datuk Dr Yusof Yacob, to draw the line on unacceptable conduct.
They ought to wield their gavels more resolutely against misbehaving members, irrespective of party allegiances. They must hammer home the importance of maintaining the decorum and dignity of the House.
M. Veera Pandiyan Deputy Editor, New Media, a taxpayer who has voted in the past six general elections, has always been observing what MPs say and do in and out of Parliament.

Sounds similar to Akademi Fantasia, isn't it? Except that one is to find an idol, and another is to find a working Member of Parliament/YB.

Okay, many people (including my Abah) thinks that it is not possible to have the General Election a la Akademi Fantasia. But hey, this is Boleh!-Land. Nothing is not possible. And here are my rationale as to why it is possible:

Everyone has to register their handphone number(s), and one of the required documents for the registration is your Identification Documents (either passport, birth certificate, or MyKad). Coincidently, one Government department holds the same information, which is the National Registration Department. So all we need to do is link, connect and merge the database so that we can do a cross-match between the identification number and the handphone number. For each identification number (not handphone number), only 1 (ONE) vote can be casted. Here's an example; I have 2 numbers, a Maxis and a Digi number. I vote via SMS with my Digi number. The system will match my Digi number with my MyKad number. It will then mark me as "Already Voted". If I try to vote again with my Maxis number, the system will again match my MyKad number with my Maxis number, found that I have voted with another number (Digi), and send me an error message ("Have Already Voted").
A good thing about having a joint-database is that you can create a system where all the citizens who are eligible to vote can be automatically registered as voters. And that solves the problem of citizens who refused to register as voters.
Now, we do have some stubborn geniuses who refused to register their handphone number(s) for whatever reasons there are. When they try to vote, they will get an error message ("Number Not Exist" or something).
To protect the legitimacy of identity of the voters (in case their fancy handphones were stolen, or their children one day thought that they could select a better leader compared to their parents), we can assign a PIN number for security purposes.

Discussions with my mom suggested that with all these 4 reasonings, there should be no problem to implement the system. So how do we vote? First and foremost, here's the format:

GEUNDI<>ID number/PIN<>PAR/DU<>Candidate's Code

Explanation:
GEUNDI - General Election UNDI
<> - Space
ID number/PIN - PIN number
PAR - Parlimen
DU - Dewan Undangan
Candidate's Code - Code assigned to election candidates. Available from the Election Commission website.

Send to 725524 (PAKLAH).

Easy, isn't it? So, Pak Lah, shall we go on with this system? If it's a YES, please reward me handsomely. I need all the money to pay for my PTPTN loans, friends' loan, PAMA (papa and mama) loans, and get my journalism and writing career started.

Second Case Against A Malaysian DPM?

2007-07-05T05:39:00.000-07:00

You know, when I look at this blog, I got a feeling that I may follow the footsteps of Razak Baginda. Nope, not as a suspect of murder, but as a political analyst. Here's a new piece I saw in Malaysia Today. It was a comment by one of the readers:

*Disclaimer: This piece WAS NOT written by Nor Ismat aka Radical Scope.

MM2007 wrote:
.
THIS IS REAL HAYWIRE FOLKS
.
First let us ALL be clear about some things.
.
RUHANIZA CANNOT BE IMPEACEHD
.
ACP Mastor's testimony now corroborates the earlier testimony of the Policewoman Rohaniza. Rohaniza said that Azilah DID NOT get into the Suzuki Vitara with the mysterious man. That means Azilah DID NOT kill Altantuya.
.
Now Mastor's testimony says Azilah 'cracked' under interrogation and Azilah spilled the beans that it was Sirul Azhar who killed Altantuya. And the CID Director and Mastor believed Azilah, so much that Mastor was sent directly to Pakistan to get Sirul Azhar back - the real murderer.
.
This means that the Policewoman Ruhaniza was telling the truth. Azilah did not kill Altantuya. It was Sirul Azhar. So this means the DPP cannot impeach Ruhaniza.
.
AG's CHAMBERS LOOK REAL STUPID
.
Also it must also be true that as she testified, Ruhaniza was tortured and forced to make a cautioned statement by the Police. It is obvious now that the Investigating Officer Tony Lunggan (or whatever his name) has therefore handed over 'bad or doctored' investigation papers to the AGs chambers. The AGs chambers are really starting to look like idiots. The AGs chambers have been misled by the Investigating Officer Tony Lunggan (or whatever his name). It is the Police and the IO who must be charged with perjury and seven years jail - not the Policewoman Ruhaniza.
.
SHIT HITS THE FAN HERE
.
OK now we have to really dig deep into the motive. Korporal Sirul Azhar never met Razak Baginda. He never went to Razak's office. Korporal Sirul Azhar also never met Altantuya before.
.
Then why the hell did Sirul Azhar kill and blow up a woman (Altantuya) whom he never met before, ostensibly on behalf of a man (Razak Baginda) whom he never met before also ?
.
Its like this - three people have been charged with killing Altantuya ie Azilah Hadri, Sirul Azhar and Razak Baginda. Razak is charged with aiding and abetting the murder. This means a collusion or a conspiracy to kill this woman.
.
But Sirul Azhar the actual murderer never met Razak. Worse the First accused Azilah never gave any 'orders' to Sirul Azhar to kill and blow up the woman.
.
According to Ruhaniza's testimony, Azilah did not know where Altantuya was and was concerned about the fate of Altantuya. This does not seem like the behaviour of a person who has already ordered the execution of Altantuya.
.
But Sirul Azhar did kill and blow up Altantuya. Why ? What was Sirul Azhar's motive ? Answer : There was none. Sirul Azhar had no motive at all. But he did kill Altantuya. Why ?
.
Answer : Sirul Azhar was UTK. As ACP Mastor testified the UTK are trained to obey orders unquestioningly. Sirul Azhar was obeying orders.
.
Whose orders was Sirul Azhar obeying ? Ladies and gentlemen, meet the fourth and fifth accused DSP Musa Safri and DPM Najib Tun Razak.

Elp, elp... Asking for help. Part 2.

2007-07-04T21:16:00.001-07:00

I'm writing a novel, and i need ideas. Well, not really ideas, but suggestions and whatevers (is there such word as "whatevers"?).

Okay, the novel I'm writing is about a young guy (me, of course) who met a foreign older guy. Interestingly, the elder guy (Takeshi) NEVER spends more than 5 days in one place. But he told the me that, "This is where my journey ends". He offered me a job as his helper, since he's not familiar with the country and the area, which I accepted. During the period of my job as his helper, my relationship with Takeshi develops from employer-employee, to confidante, to father-son. In the novel, I will use various quotations from many philosophers and motivational speakers, such as Jim Rohn and Wayne Dyer. I expect to finish the first draft of the first chapter by the end of this month, and it will be published in a blog on a monthly basis.

So what kind of help do I need? I need some advice on how to avoid plagiarism and being plagiarized, how to protect my work, how to generate ideas, and also I need some editors to review and edit my work. I can't offer any form of payment, though. As you know, I AM JOBLESS (huhuhu).

So, if any of you would be interested to help me out, send me an email: radicalscope@gmail.com with "Novel Aid" as its subject. Negative e-mails shall be published in this blog for entertainment purposes hehe.

If You Want To Live To Over 100, READ THIS.

2007-07-04T19:59:00.000-07:00

Desiderata by Max Erhmann (1872-1945)
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence
As far as possible without surrender, Be on good terms with all persons
Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others - Even the dull and ignorant,
they too have their story
Avoid loud and aggressive persons - they are vexations to the spirit
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter,
For always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans
Keep interested in your own career - However humble,
It is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time
Exercise caution in your business affairs,
For the world is full of trickery
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is
Many persons strive for high ideals,
And everywhere life is full of heroism
Be yourself
Especially do not feign affection, neither be cynical about love
For in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, It is as perennial as the grass
Take kindly the council of the years, Gracefully surrendering the things of youth
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune, But do not distress yourself with imaginings
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself
You are a child of the universe
No less than the trees and the stars, You have a right to be here
And whether or not it is clear to you, No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should
Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be
And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, Keep peace with your soul
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world
Be careful
Strive to be happy.
A few weeks ago, I read about a few longest living people in the world. And I found that they share certain similarities; they are active, they take good care of what they eat, they stay mentally young, and they actually followed what the poem above tells us to do. So you want to be one of those people in the Guinness Book of Record for living over 100? Read the poem, and do exactly as it tells you to do.

Apathy, numbness or ... ?

2007-07-04T17:27:00.001-07:00

Imagine yourself, lying in a pool of your own blood, in a 7Eleven outlet, your consciousness fading, and nobody even bothered to help you. How do you feel about that?

Now, try to imagine that happening to your son, daughter, husband, wife, brother, sister, father or mother? Better, imagine it happened to each of your family member. How do you feel about that?

As stabbing victim LaShanda Calloway lay dying on the floor of a convenience store, five shoppers, including one who stopped to take a picture of her with a cell phone, stepped over her. I can only imagine what was going on in her mind before she died. Probably this, "Help me... Help me... Help me... I DON'T WANT TO DIE!!" (taken from one of the goriest episode of "Ghost Hunt", a Japanese anime about paranormal). Let's hope that she didn't turn into an evil spirit and haunt the convenience store as well as those 5 bloody shoppers.

This is what's happening in America. And guess what, America is the land of emerging trends. Both good and bad. They already have the trend of bringing guns to school (looks like the Offsprings had made a prophecy in their song "Come Out and Play"), and shooting classmates as well as teachers. Malaysia has already caught that trend, but since we can't acquire guns as easy as Americans, we settled for samurai swords, parangs, and knives. Imagine if this new trend, being heartless and selfish, made its way here in Malaysia. With the crime rates getting higher and higher, we will have to wonder whether it is safe to be around anywhere. Even your own home can be a crime scene (remember the case where a couple was murdered in their home at Negeri Sembilan?). Then again, perhaps the trend has already made its way here. Though fortunately, we are slow to adapt.

My friends, we all know the Golden Rule, "Do to others what you wanted to be done to you". Apply it in all aspect of your life. You don't know when you'll be on the receiving end of it. If you see a road accident, don't stop your car and watch, or take the license plate number and go and buy a lottery ticket. Stop your car and help out. You never know when you'll be the accident victim later. If you see someone being snatched of his/her belongings, don't just stare. If it's possible to chase, give chase. If you can't, at least call the police. Sure, they can be a pain in the backside most of the time (the police, I mean), but do the right thing. Help out. You'll never know if one day you or your loved ones become a snatch-theft victim.

So remember, my friends. Do to others what you wanted to be done to you. Don't let the same fate that fell on LaShanda falls onto your loved ones, or even yourself.

Kansas Store Video Captures Five Shoppers Stepping Over Dying Stabbing Victim

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

WICHITA, Kan. — As stabbing victim LaShanda Calloway lay dying on the floor of a convenience store, five shoppers, including one who stopped to take a picture of her with a cell phone, stepped over the woman, police said.

The June 23 situation, captured on the store's surveillance video, got scant news coverage until a columnist for The Wichita Eagle disclosed the existence of the video and its contents Tuesday.

Police have refused to release the video, saying it is part of their investigation.

"It was tragic to watch," police spokesman Gordon Bassham said Tuesday. "The fact that people were more interested in taking a picture with a cell phone and shopping for snacks rather than helping this innocent young woman is, frankly, revolting."

The woman was stabbed during an altercation that was not part of a robbery, Bassham said. It took about two minutes for someone to call 911, he said.

Calloway, 27, died later at a hospital.

Two suspects have been arrested. A 19-year-old woman was charged with first-degree murder. Another suspect who turned himself in had not been charged as of Tuesday, the Sedgwick County prosecutor's office said.

The district attorney's office will have to decide whether any of the shoppers could be charged, Bassham said.

It was uncertain what law, if any, would be applicable. A state statute for failure to render aid refers only to victims of a car accident.

Eagle columnist Mark McCormick told The Associated Press he learned about the video when he called Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams to inquire about a phone call he had received from a reader complaining about a Police Department policy that requires emergency medical personnel to wait until police secure a crime scene before rendering aid. McCormick said Williams then unloaded on him about the shoppers in the stabbing case.

"This is just appalling," Williams told the newspaper. "I could continue shopping and not render aid and then take time out to take a picture? That's crazy. What happened to our respect for life?"

Looking Into the Future Means Letting Go of the Past.

2007-07-04T04:53:00.000-07:00

How many of us, have encountered people who likes to say, "You should've done this or that", as if it would change anything? Plenty, I take it. I got that a lot, and sometimes, I do it myself.

Wayne Dyer in his audio book, "The Secret of the Universe", mentioned about these people. You know, when your children came home at 5 while they were supposed to be home at 3, and you tell them, "You should've called at 3!", they know that they are talking to a banana (these are the exact words of Wayne Dyer). You can't change anything by could've, would've and should've (CWS've).

Coincidentally, all those three phrases come into play when you failed at something; fail to come home at 3, fail to be around when the durian orchard is in abundance, fail to join Herbalife while it is still in early stage. One of my acquaintance spoke of "dream stealers" in his blog, now let me introduce you to the "guilt-spammers". Dream stealers tell you that you're on a wild goose chase; guilt-spammers try to make you feel guilty and send you to a dead end of your path to success.

The remedy against these guilt-spammers is the same as the one for dream stealers; you can either stay away from them (keep a good mile distance at least), or you could be an inverse paranoid. An inverse paranoid is a person who believes that the universe, everything in it, is trying to help him achieve what he wanted.

Now, some of you may question, "How do guilt-spammers, dream stealers, and inverse paranoid fit into the title?" We're getting there, so please bear with me. The path to success is paved upon failures. In other word, for you to be successful, you have to swallow a huge dose of failures. It's how you take that dose of failure that would decide how successful you will be. If you are forever haunted with the guilt of your past, of the efforts that didn't work, then your path to success is either a long one, or going to be a dead end. but if you take it as a lesson, and move on, you'll find yourself on a speedy way to success. Not overnight, no. But it'll be fast.

That conclude the article tonight. Until then, let us let go of the past. Learn from them, but don't let them be a burden to our efforts towards success.

A Desperate Attempt on Altantuya's High-Profile Photo

2007-07-03T20:08:00.000-07:00

Malaysian and the rest of the world (at lest the rest of South-East Asia) are fully aware of the Altantuya Trial. The Mongolian beauty was murdered in an unimaginable way, second only to the Mona Fandey case. In the Mona Fandey case, which involved a politician (Dato' Mazlan Idris), the victim was murdered, cut into 18 pieces, and then burried. And mysteriously, The victim's testis couldn't be found. As for Altantuya, she was murdered, and then exploded with a C4 into God-knows-how-many pieces. Equally gruesome in their own ways.

Recently, one of the witnesses claimed that she saw a picture of Altantuya with the Deputy Premiere and Razak Baginda. Of course, the Deputy Premiere would deny such claim, saying that he had never met Altantuya. Maybe he did met Altantuya, but given his status and the rumours flying around him, perhaps he did met Altantuya, but she was never registered in his mind. Afterall, a Deputy Premiere meets a lot of people. It would be a great discovery if he could actually remember all the people he had met.

And today (or was it last night), one of the Alternative Parties decided to take a desperate attemp, taking advantage of the photo claim against the Deputy Premiere. This is the picture that they produced, claim to be "REAL":

Okay, concentrate on the Deputy Premiere. Compare his sitting posture with the posture in this picture:

I'm disappointed. TOTALLY disappointed. We have high hopes for the Alternative Front, but this is all they could muster as an answer to our hope? Seriously, where did the Anwar Ibrahim that I once revered went? Is the one released from the prison is a mere Doppelganger; an evil clone? The image of Anwar Ibrahim that I have is one who will never resort to cheap tactics against his opponent. Then again, perhaps it was all just an act. It's plainly political, after all.

You can read about the picture in Tian Chua's website, and the comments by Jeff Ooi about the picture in his blog.

The Road to Good Health

2007-07-02T16:11:00.000-07:00

We all want to look good, we all want to be healthy, but we always end up using the wrong method. One year being a Herbalife Distributor exposed me to the reality of how silly and fickle people can be when it comes to their body. And it's a sad fact that many companies (coincidently majority of them are MLMs) are taking advantage on them, offering products that don't work. Sure, the PROMISED remuneration is great, but if the products don't work, you'll end up with a double loss. How is it a double loss? Well, the products don't work, so you don't benefit from it. That's one loss. And since they don't work, people won't buy them, and you might as well say goodbye to your investment in the business. See, a double loss.

As for Herbalife, you might say that I'm biased, since I'm still a Distributor by right. True, I'm a distributor, but I don't do the business. At least not anymore. But here's what I want to share with you. Some lessons on health that I learned from Herbalife.

Basically, if you want to maintain a good health and weight condition, you need to incorporate a good eating habit, a good drinking habit, and a good exercise habit. Now let me elaborate.

When we are eating, the content of our food speaks volumes. Contained in our food are nutritions, fats, and calories. We all know about nutrition (at least we know the meaning), but many of us misunderstood the term "fat" and "calorie". Fat is a component needed for energy, and can be divided into 2 classes: saturated and non-saturated fat. Saturated fat is a fat that is solid at room temperature and comes chiefly from animal food products. Some examples are butter, lard, meat fat, solid shortening, palm oil, and coconut oil. These fats tend to raise the level of cholesterol in the blood. Non-saturated fat/unsaturated fat is a fat that is liquid at room temperature and comes from a plant such as olive, peanut, corn, cottonseed, sunflower, safflower, or soybean. Unsaturated fats tend to lower the level of cholesterol in the blood. Calorie, in the other hand, is a unit of food energy. And nutritions provide various benefits to our body, such as providing you energy and keep you vibrant, produce and keep your cells alive, improve your heart condition, repair your body tissue, improve your recuperation rate when you are sick, and assist digestion.

So when we are eating, it's not the form of the food that matters, it's the content: how much nutrition it has, what kind of nutrition, how much fat, what kind of fat, and how much calorie is in it. Those are the questions that we need to ask, and we need to verify as a standard to our eating habit. And here's why; we need an intake of 44 nutritions on a daily basis; we want to have unsaturated fats, rather than saturated, because saturated fats are hazardous to our body; and we don't want to consume excess calories. Arrange an appointment with your physician to check how much calorie you body can burn. If we eat more calories than we can burn, we'll be building more fats in our body.

Next, we need to have a good drinking habit. And by drinking, I don't mean beer, wiski, tequila, champagne, vodka, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, sirap limau, teh tarik, and the likes. I mean plain water, or sky juice. We lose about 1.7 liters of water everyday through breathing, sweating, detoxification, etc. And we need to replenish the amount of water we lose constantly. We our body lack water, we experience tiredness, migraine, constipation, muscle cramps, irregular blood-pressure, kidney problems, dry skin, and if our body is more than 20% dehydrated, you might end up on a journey of no return.

We need to drink at least 3 liters of water throughout the day. Mind you, THROUGHOUT the day. Not on one go. We need that much of water because 75% of our body is made of water. 90% of our brain is water, 80% of our blood is water, and 20% of our bone is water. See how much water we need? A lot.

Last but not least, we need to have a good exercise habit. 20 minutes a day, 3 times a week. And that's a minimum. You can jog, you can walk, you can dance. Be creative, do something that you like and enjoy. As long as you get a good sweat from it, go ahead.

Now, INCORPORATE all three points, and make it your habit and philosophy, you'll find yourself on the road to greater health. As a closing, let me share with you an ancient wisdom:

"When diet is wrong medicine is of no use. When diet is correct medicine is of no need". – Ancient Ayurvedic Proverb

Many diets work about the same, U.S. study finds
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Looking for that perfect diet? Researchers have bad news -- all diets have just about the same result, and none of them are great, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
A typical diet helps people lose an average of 6 percent of their weight, typically 5 to 7 kg, and most people put it all back on after five years.
Weight loss drugs are similarly ineffective in the long run, said Dr. Michael Dansinger of the Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston.
"It's disappointing but I am optimistic that we can do better in the future. We are learning some of the factors that improve the effectiveness (of diets)," said Dansinger, whose study is published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The news is bad for those who hoped a gentler approach to dieting might be more effective over the long-term. Programs that made people eat fewer calories worked better, as did those that involved more frequent visits to either diet groups or to a counselor's office.
But there is good news -- even a small, temporary weight loss can benefit health, Dansinger said.
"A modest weight loss of six percent that is partially maintained for five years is likely to have important health benefits such as delaying the onset of diabetes," he said in a telephone interview.
Dansinger and colleagues looked at the results of 46 trials that included nearly 12,000 people.
About half were on diets. Dansinger said it was difficult to find good studies that included a control group not on a diet. It was also hard to find studies that followed people for more than three years.
The only commercial program included in the study was Weight Watchers. Most were government or university-sponsored programs.
No studies that included food or shakes were included because they did not include a non-dieting group for comparison.
"The results we found, 6 percent weight loss after one year, is in the same ballpark as most of the studies of weight loss, including studies of weight loss medications," Dansinger said.
"We also found the weight loss gradually goes away so that about half the weight loss was gone within three years and almost all the weight loss was gone within five years. That is also similar to what has been found with weight loss medications."
Dansinger said some of the studies included exercise, but his analysis was not designed to tell whether exercise helped weight loss last longer.
Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, with a higher risk of diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, arthritis and cancer.

To survive war, become war

2007-07-01T18:40:00.000-07:00

RULES OF UNREALITY: BY DAVIN ARUL

John Rambo's observation has never been so timely or applicable in Malaysia as it is now, during our war on crime.
ACOUPLE of months ago, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told the law enforcement agencies of the country to declare war on crime.
Now that the declaration has been made, we should look at ways of securing victory; and as always, in times of war we need to ensure the safety and survival of civilians.
That’s where a certain Vietnam War veteran from popular fiction comes in; I’m not just suggesting that we “go Rambo” on criminals – that should be a given – but maybe we should consider his sage advice on survival in wartime.
In recent weeks, while we have seen great successes by the police – drug rings smashed, gangsters rounded up, rob-and-rape suspects hauled in – there is no denying that crime and its effect on the general well-being of our society are still very much in the forefront of the average citizen's thoughts.
Just a week ago, an auxiliary force was deployed in Johor Baru to combat crime there.
But as some readers have pointed out in our letters pages and Citizen’s Blog, there are other places in the country facing problems too. For example, right here in Bangsar where I live, gangs of Mat Rempit wantonly terrorise hapless motorists after midnight.
Self-serving concerns aside, the worst thing that could happen is when these criminals, after being caught and processed, get off too lightly; or sometimes, are not even prosecuted for various reasons, such as lack of evidence and (as has been alleged a lot lately) influence from high up.
I've heard suggestions ranging from life imprisonment for repeat offenders and rapists to the death sentence for the more heinous crimes.
Recently, in the blog of this column, I wondered about the possibility of bringing back the ancient practice of sula (impaling the wrongdoers from anus to mouth with a bamboo pole) as a special treat for gang rapists. Some readers concurred that mercy should not be shown to the merciless.
And maybe that's the key to winning the war on crime. We have to throw away our rulebook and send clear signals to these criminal elements that they will be shown no mercy. We can't be soft on crime.
Compassion is for better times. Look around you at the number of victims of so-called petty yet violent crime, or gang rape, or ram-and-rob (or slash-and-rob, or bludgeon-androb) and tell me that those times are here, and I'll strongly suggest that you suspend your medication for a while.
John Rambo was not known for philosophising, but his occasional pearls of wisdom – delivered by way of Sylvester Stallone and his screenplay collaborator James Cameron (yes, that James Cameron) in 1985’s Rambo, First Blood: Part II – should be heeded when the occasion demands it: To survive a war, you have to become war.
The first rule is: they start it, we as a society have to finish it. Or finish them.
Hardcore criminals who show no mercy to their victims should be put down like the rabid animals they are, and let the bleeding hearts or human rights advocates voice their concerns all they want. Save it for people who can be saved.
I don't presume to judge the circumstances of others, of what drove them to crime, or even the violence done to them by others; but there is always an alternative to going out and hurting a fellow human being, to dragging a victim to her death, to severing a victim's arm, to violating a victim and destroying her future.
There are many people who have been dealt cruel hands who make the choice every day to live decent lives. So it's really quite simple: any criminal who wilfully causes hurt to another human being should receive a highly disproportionate response.
Some argue that deterrent sentences serve little purpose, because those who have it in them to commit such heinous crimes will do so anyway.
But, people, you're looking at it from the wrong perspective. We don't need it to be a deterrent. It's a punishment first and foremost.
And it’s one that has to be meted out, whether it means impalation (as if that would ever happen), or execution by hanging, or simply locking them up for life and throwing away the key. That would mean society would have to house, clothe and feed them for good. No ... execution is preferable.
Pardon me if I sound glib when talking about human life, but that's only because these animals don't seem to hold it in high regard either.
No regard for the life, well being or dignity of others.
The moment a criminal stops seeing his victim as a human being with a family and a future, that's when he too has made a choice that effectively removes him from being a part of society.
We execute drug traffickers. We execute murderers sometimes. We even execute armed robbers.
Time to extend the death penalty to those who destroy lives in other ways, too. Yes, they will receive the due process – and they should know what's waiting for them at the end of that process.
And this brings me to the next point about war on crime. In a war, you need to mobilise all your resources. This means getting priorities right, too.
I don't want to tell people how to spend their money, but I believe I have the right to suggest how they spend my money. We the people know that the majority of those who read books and periodicals are not the ones who go out and commit crime or rape and kill.
Yet the Government dedicates a huge amount of manpower to the practice of censoring thousands upon thousands of books and periodicals, day in and day out, on “moral” grounds.
Dear reader, you and I know this to be a colossal waste of time and resources. It's not effective, as there are big chain stores where you can easily get “unfiltered” stuff, and the Internet offers millions of avenues for any undesirable material to enter our borders – in colour, in fullmotion video, and probably in 5.1 Surround Sound, too.
In an hour of war, like the war which the prime minister has asked to be declared on crime, shouldn't we mobilise all our human resources and put their time to more effective use? I don't mean that they should be placed in harm's way, out on the mean streets, pursuing gangsters and robbers. Certainly not.
Perhaps, though, with a bit of additional training, they could man the front desks of police stations and beat bases, taking down reports; they certainly have keen perception and an eye for detail that they could bring to this job, too.
The more athletic ones could be deployed to patrol school grounds or tourist spots to keep a protective eye on our children and our guests.
This would free up the police officers who are trained to fight crime, to actually go out on the streets and fight crime.
And by being right there as the interface with the public, maybe the redeployed censors will be able to get a better reading of the pulse of the real world, too.
One can always dream.

Davin Arul, vice president of the I.Star division, is not so spiritually enlightened as to be able to advocate forgiveness for heartless perpetrators of violent crime.
He won’t try harder for the moment. Visit the blog of this column with new and (almost) daily postings at http://blog.thestar.com.my/unreal.

Finally, something with sense. I wonder if this would send some realization to the public?.

A role model for our students

2007-07-01T18:29:00.000-07:00

Grabbed from Dr. Azmi Sharom's column in The Star.

A role model for our students

BRAVE NEW WORLD: BY AZMI SHAROM
Instead of formulating arguments, which is a total waste of time, debaters should simply scream at their opponents at the top of their lungs, the louder the better.

IT SEEMS that schoolboys in Johor now have to get crew cuts. The militaristic hairstyle is not only neat and tidy, but apparently it would also encourage discipline and good behaviour.
I could not agree more. Long-haired louts really are the bane of society. You see them all over the place; shopping centres, parks, cinemas, universities; all waving their locks in a highly undisciplined manner.
Furthermore, there are no long-haired heroes that these impressionable southern boys can emulate. How can these young men grow into fully useful grown men if they don’t have someone to look up to?
Now, with their hair shorn short, they can turn to that crew-cut paragon of self-control and discipline, Nazri Aziz MP, to be their hero.
I think Nazri will be a superb role model. So good in fact that the entire school system should be changed in order to make sure that Nazri’s overall brilliance seeps deep into the education of our youth.
Let us begin with geography. According to the minister in a rousing parliamentary speech last week (available on YouTube), Singapore is not a country. Yes, you heard that right. Singapore is not a country.
When faced with questions from the leader of the Opposition, Lim Kit Siang, regarding Malaysia’s slip down Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, Nazri exploded with a reply that was as rich with insults as it was with new definitions of nationhood.
He shouted “stupid, stupid, stupid”, etc, at Lim innumerable times. Lim’s comparison of Malaysia with Singapore led to Nazri’s amazing statement that the island republic was not a real country.
In order for a country to be a country, it can’t be a small island, it has to have a bigger population than Malaysia and it must be placed lower than Malaysia in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (admittedly, that last criterion is my own addition, based on what I think the honourable minister implies in his truly luminous and intellectual speech).
This being the case, geography textbooks should be scoured to remove Singapore from their pages. While you are at it, scratch out these other places: Barbados (pop. 272,000), Iceland (pop. 292,000), Malta (pop. 397,000), Cyprus (pop. 807,000), and Mauritius (pop. 1.2 million).
These are all small islands, with small populations and low corruption. None of them are countries.
To make things more interesting for our schoolboys and girls, they can organise a mini-United Nations where they can play the roles of the member nations.
Together, they can hold a General Assembly in their respective school halls and argue about how best to remove these impostor states from the hallowed halls of 1st Avenue, 42nd Street, New York.
Why, they can even transcribe their debates and send it to the real UN in order to get the ball rolling.
However, in case you think that Nazri’s influence is limited to academics, you are seriously mistaken. His shining example can be used in extra-curricular activities as well; namely, the debating club.
Instead of formulating arguments, which is really a total waste of time, debaters should simply scream at their opponents at the top of their lungs the following mantra: “stupid, stupid, stupid, you have no brains, you have no brains, and (to make sure the point is driven home) you have no brains.”
The louder the better and if you can get a large number of your friends to cheer you on, then, truly, you would be a super debater. You might even have a future career in politics.

Nazri, you make one hell of a hellish father figure and role model.

How ungrateful can we be?

2007-07-01T18:20:00.000-07:00

How ungrateful can we be? First, majority of our rivers are polluted. Then our forests are being hacked. And now, this:

Nod for project shocks group

LAHAD DATU: An announcement that the Government has approved a controversial RM1.3bil coal-fired power plant in Silam near here has jolted a group of environmentalists opposing it.
“How could approval be given for the 300 megawatt independent power plant without anyone seeing the EIA report,” asked the Lahad Datu district Sabah Environment Action committee chairman Wong Tack.
He said a check with both the federal Environment Department in Putrajaya and the state counterparts in Kota Kinabalu showed that no detailed EIA report on the project of Tenaga Nasional Berhad subsidiary, Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd, had been obtained.
“ We are not sure which government – state or federal – or authority gave the go-ahead for the coal power plant,” he said at Friday’s meeting of concerned social activists and local businessmen at a hilltop rest house overlooking the proposed project site at Pacific Hardwood near Kampung Silam.
The group called for the meeting after TNB announced recently that it had received government approval for the coal power plant.
Chief Minister Datuk Musa Aman had said last year that the project would only go on if all the necessary approvals, including the detailed EIA, were obtained.
In a filing with Bursa Malaysia on July 25, TNB said the project would be carried out by a consortium in which its wholly-owned unit, TNB Repair and Maintenance Sdn Bhd, has a 51% stake. The other consortium members were Eden-Nova with 35% stake and Maser with 14% stake.
Wong said the people of Lahad Datu and Silam had yet to see a copy of the EIA and this showed that some people were trying to bulldoze the implementation of the coal power plant project through regardless of the dangers it would pose to their health and the environment.
“We are also compiling a full report on how the Silam region can be made into a viable eco-tourism centre and will submit it to the Prime Minister,” he said.
The coal power plant project hit the spotlight after environmentalists in Lahad Datu voiced their concerns to The Star in November last year about the long-term effects on people and nature from the proposed power plant at the entrance of Danum Valley conservation area.
The group cited studies that showed significant amounts of birth defects caused by mercury poisoning; sulphur dioxide causing acid rain; soot particles causing visibility and respiratory problems; and carbon dioxide contributing to global warming.

It will not only rain criticism on Malaysia if they go ahead with the plan. Probably we will experience sulfur and brimstone rain as well, literally.

RPK's Disturbing Report Turn Reality?

2007-07-01T18:07:00.000-07:00

I'm astounded at how slow PDRM and the Government got the news on the report written by Raja Petra Kamaruddin about the conspiracy between the IGP and some crime syndicate kingpin, "Tengku" (Tengku what? Tengku-Rap? Tengku-Til? I'm surprised that a Chinese would call himself "Tengku"...). That report was written like, what, a year ago? Oh, I forgot. Government servants lack the IT-knowledge. And of course they lack the knowledge, since the Government is more keen on wasting taxpayers money rather than training its servants (I was about to use the word SLAVE, but I can't find a justification. Heh.) to be competent. The response from the IGP was kinda expected. But hey, that's where the fun starts, right? No villain would easily claim to be evil, and up to no good. That sounds like I'm saying the IGP DO have alliances with crime lords, doesn't it? well, consider this:

Top anti-vice cops moved out

By NELSON BENJAMIN

JOHOR BARU: More than two dozen policemen and officers from Johor and Klang Valley have been transferred in a massive shake-up within the last two weeks.
Most of the transfers involved personnel from the anti-vice, gaming and secret society unit (D7), serious crimes and even interrogation units.
The bulk of the transfers involved Johor. Almost the entire D7 unit based at the state police headquarters were moved out.
Even the unit’s commanding officer and five inspectors were transferred. The latest transfer list, which came out earlier last week, contained 20 names with 13 of them from the D7 unit.
This is not the first time the state D7 unit has been “wiped clean” as two years ago, a similar exercise was carried out.
However, in the latest reshuffle in Johor, it is not immediately clear whether the officers were transferred for not carrying out their duties or by powerful syndicates who felt hindered by these officers.
Sources said that one of the kingpins in the state is a self-proclaimed Tengku involved in gambling and prostitution.
They said the local police had been unable to shut down his operations as he was well connected and protected.
“His syndicate has also warned policemen that they will be removed if they tried to interfere in his operations,” sources said.
Sources said that Bukit Aman tried to shut down his operations during a major operation against his gambling network in March when they raided two houses in Taman Sentosa and Taman Puteri in Kulai.
“In the simultaneous raids, special teams from police headquarters arrested 17 people and recovered more than two dozen fax machines taking in bets amounting to millions of ringgit,” the source said, adding that despite this, the “Tengku” is back in business.
Last week, Inspector-General of police Tan Sri Musa Hassan during a one-day working visit to Johor said that police had identified seven gang leaders who had been terrorising the state with the help of influential people.
Asked whether officers carrying out their duties might fear reprisal or transfers because of these influential people, Musa replied: “My men need not worry about getting transferred if they are doing a good job. Just do not victimise anyone.”

Who was he referring to when he mentioned, "Just do not victimize anyone"? Don't victimize the civilians, or don't victimize the kingpins?

Umno recruiting team of writers to fight ‘cyber war’

2007-07-01T17:37:00.000-07:00

I found this interesting.

Umno recruiting team of writers to fight ‘cyber war’

KOTA KINABALU: Umno is set to do battle in cyberspace ahead of the anticipated general election by assembling a team of writers from every state to counter allegations about the party and its leadership on certain websites.

Umno supreme council member Datuk Azalina Othman Said said she had been recently tasked by party president Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi to take charge of this “cyber war.”

“This is among our key strategies in preparation for the elections. The other is getting our members to register as voters,” she said yesterday after opening the Kota Kinabalu Umno Youth, Wanita and Puteri meetings.

Azalina, the Youth and Sports Minister, said all state Umno liaison committees would be asked to identify writers willing to assist the party in this cause.

However, she declined to explain how these writers would carry out their duties nor did she name the websites that had purportedly spread the allegations.

Earlier, in her speech when opening the Youth, Wanita and Puteri meetings, Azalina said certain websites appeared to be stepping up their attacks against the country’s leaders.

“We need to counter these blatant lies. If we remain quiet, our worry is that some of our members and civil servants will be influenced by all these nonsense,” she added.

Azalina said she was aware that many party members liked visiting certain websites and could end up believing what was posted there.

On the other hand, she said, there was a tendency among opposition party members not to believe any negative report about their leaders.

“We want Umno members to support and defend their leaders. If they are sitting in a coffeeshop and hear others talking badly about the party leaders they should counter those lies immediately,” Azalina added.

In a related development, she said the opposition had resorted to moving their members and supporters to seats they were confident of winning in the coming polls.

People will not talk badly about their leaders if there's nothing to be talked about. And if these "writers" are recruited to counter what us bloggers were writing about the current political condition in Malaysia, then why not just reveal the identities of these so-called "writers"? I'm very sure that the bloggers who dared to criticize our politicians (note: politicians, not leaders. UMNO/BN does not have enough people to be called "leaders". That includes you, Azalina.) didn't hide their identities. I don't. Of course I'm not that stupid to leave my IC number as well.

The more I look at it, the more it seems that our current government is getting desperate. As in trying too hard on the unnecessary things. Exaggerating on the "Malaysia Boleh!" slogan in an embarrassing manner. Now, I would like to pose some questions to the members of the public, and the Government supporters as well:

1) In what way sending astronauts to the space will benefit Malaysian people as a whole? Wouldn't the money spent on training and sending them on board the Russian shuttle (which means we have to pay extra. It's not a free ride, right?), gives more benefit to the country and our people if it was spent for education and research purposes? Since we are facing the global warming crisis, we should take the initiative to start a research on alternative fuels or hydro-based engine. Imagine how much money and reputation would the country gain if the research is a success.

2) Not long ago the UMNO Youth rallied some "Mat Rempits" and send them on a sky-diving expedition to one of the Poles (forgive me, I'm not interested to read about useless things). Why not train them to become professional racers? Sure, they are not interested NOW. Invite a professional racer to give a talk, or bring them to a race, and let them see what's happening behind the scenes. Get them fired up. Let's say we managed to get 100 Mat Rempits to convert to professional racers, and 3% managed to become world-class racers, that would make the country and their parents proud more than sending them on a sky-diving expedition.

Well, that's enough of bashing UMNO. Let's hope that these stupidities are not forever.