Monks on the March

Dear Friends,

If you don't know what the title of this post is referring to, it means you have not been reading the news or have not even looked at a newspaper in the past 2 days. It's time you did!

In solidarity with our Burmese brothers and sisters who are protesting the military junta in Burma, please wear RED today.

Red for the colour of the blood in the streets, in the temples, trickling down the shaved heads of the monks on the march.
Red for the passion of their struggle, for the fire in their souls and the courage they display on the streets they want to reclaim from the soldiers who have shot at and even killed some of them.

Read about the stand off between army/govt and these saints in saffron here and here and here. Even in KL, we had our own demonstration outside the Burmese embassy this morning, here.

For me, it is impossible to see and read about these valiant monks who are willing to die for their struggle, and not be ashamed about our apathy here in Malaysia. We have much to fight for and our foes are not even that formidable or violent and yet, we are content to be complacent.

I hope the monks will inspire all of us to do what is right at all costs.

selamat berpuasa, polis...but why are you still 'eating' up my $$$??

ok...to cut the story short - my sister got into anaccident just last week...a huge truck/lorry rammed into her Atos and dragged it for a few metres (the driver didn't even realised that until all the cars honked him to stop)...needless to say, our fragile little Atos was damaged...not that it's beyond repair lah..but still, it's damaged pretty badly....a police report was made and yesterday, a police officer called up my sister and said, "eh...you come to my office la...i got something to discuss with you..."

so today, she went to see the police officer at the police station and guess what, he said my sister kena saman for RM300 for the accident...he insisted that it was my sister's fault that the lorry langgar her wor...and that it's a terribly 'difficult' case to handle and will need to settle in court wor...unless of course, he 'help' us out by you know what lah...duit kopi.

the best part is...it's expected bah. i mean, these policemen are so bloody predictable. can't they come up with something new so we won't be able to guess their intentions??

2 years ago (when i was still in UTAR), a motorbike came out of nowhere (Section 17 junction outside uni) and banged the front of my car. he broke his leg (from the fall) and i sent him to the hospital. and made a police report. i had a friend with me as a witness that i DID NOT ran into the bike but for some reasons, the police decided to saman me. they said, "you kereta besar...dia motosikal...patutlah you salah...besar langgar kecil...besar salah lah...tak boleh argue punya..."

ok, besar langgar kecil = besar salah. fair. i'd buy that. but now lorry langgar atos. which is bigger?? how is it that my sister's at the wrong then? *scratch head*

and guess what, that was also during the puasa month leh. and the police officer also called me up on my mobile to 'invite me to meet him so we could discuss'...he also tried very hard to scare me with the so called 'court case if i don't pay my saman or settle with duit kopi'...even when i told him to just send the saman over to my pg house address, he refused saying that i need to pay my saman at his police station since the accident happened in his area...which is ridiculous! want coffee money say lah......sial. what i did was, i played dumb when he asked for duit kopi. that worked well.

so yeah...i don't know if this is good for discussion. corruption in this country is an open secret anyway. and hell i don't know why our dear beloved PM refuses to acknowledge it and DO something about it like he said he will. am just pissed right now. hence, this post.

grrrrrrrr.

Of Flag Burning And Trampled Constitutions

http://bolehland.com/2007/09/18/of-flag-burning-and-trampled-constitutions/

this is a good article that i think everybody should read. i dont agree to everything that this article says and i find it hard to accept some of the concepts pointed out. There are two quotes from 2 famous persons that i have difficulty embracing 100%. i can accept them in some ways but not entirely. it shows that not every concept/theory can be applied across the board haphazardly.

Bertrand Russell said, "“only kind of freedom which is undesirable is that which diminished the freedom of others”.
On the flag burning issue, the writer Malik Imtiaz implied that flag burning is the freedom of expression of a person. Examples were give to justify his statement according to Russell's quote. But i have a problem with this because i think this is not the way to justify Russell's quote. Why? Let's see: It is the freedom of sumone to burn a flag, and it is also a freedom of mine to protect it at all cost. Dont ask the reason why first. Most important thing is, it is my freedom, my choice. So if flag burning is allowed, it already impedes the freedom of ppl like me who wants to protect the fact.


Voltaire said, "‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’

In most cases, i would say i agree to this but in some rare cases i cannot. Example, when some one insults you or someone you loved, will you still defend the right of that person to say it? To the religious ppl, i take Christians as EXAMPLE, you disapprove of what the Bible says you cannot do, but will you defend the right of ppl who wants to do what the Bible says to not?
many more examples can be used here but i think two is enough.


So what do you people think of this. I would really love some well thought-of inputs on this.

Who were the leaders of the 1970s student movement in Msia?

Here is one of them, Hishamuddin Rais, who has been called the Che Guevara of the student movement in Malaysia. He now writes for miscellaneous newspapers, has a column in Off the Edge magazine and Malaysiakini news portal, and also speaks at certain public forums. He even dabbles in art and film.

And of course, most famously, he has been detained under ISA. Read about it here.

You can read about his personal life in The Star and you will find out that even though he is a Muslim, he has a dog and leads a very simple life, still holding fast to his ideals. You will also find some of his thoughts about the student movement here.

You can read his many essays/articles in this website, Rice Cooker.

And thanks to Jeannie's research online, you can also hear him pontificate about Negarakuku on YouTube here. This is classic Hisham in action--passionate, fiery, provocative. You begin to understand how he could have been such a potent force in the 1970s.

You must be wondering why I am posting all of this... well, all will be revealed soon :-)

Meanwhile, enjoy the read and you have to wonder, as I did, why there is really so little on the web about student movements in Malaysia. It is as if there has been a systematic effort to erase this history from our past.

Judiciary Crisis Links

Kah Joon's link does not seem to work so I am posting another that does:

http://malaysia-today.net/reports/2006/06/crisis-in-judiciary.htm

And a few more of my own:

Aliran 2004

Aliran 2005

Wikipedia

But seriously though, go check out Kah Joon's blog, it is amazing! Thanks for the very simple to understand history and snippets.

What really happened in the 1988 judicial crisis.

6 Supreme Court judges were suspended during that time which means theoretically, the Supreme Court itself had been suspended. How can one of the pillars of the Separation of Powers Concept be suspended? For those of you who dont know much about law and courts, there are 10 Judges in the Supreme Court at that time including the Lord President/CJ.

to know more on what really happened back then, read this. it is an account by Datuk George Seah, one of the judges suspended. you will be shocked to no end.

so much of Visit Malaysia

i have a question - why is it more expensive for us (locals) to travel to places within Malaysia than travelling overseas ah??

i went to the Underwater World here in Sentosa Island, S'pore and guess what, the ticket for an adult is less than S$15! i don't remember how much exactly 'cos my uncle paid for my ticket but i think it's still bloody cheap. provided you don't convert lah of course.

if you were to compare to places like the aquaria in klcc, and the underwater world in p. langkawi, i'd think the ticket here in s'pore is much cheaper. and remember, there are definitely more things to see here than those back in m'sia.

i was welcomed by many many sea turtles at the entrance and boy, they're huge! they look healthy and very much 'alive' as compared to the ones i saw back in p. redang. my boyfriend paid for a trip to p. redang early last month and the two or three baby sea turtles we saw in a tub was so damn pathetic. is this how they attract tourists and promote the importance of conservation? by showing them sad looking sea turtles and also, some dead & preserved ones??

here in sentosa, i can't help but feel hopeful. as in, yes, these creatures are near extinct but hey, there's still hope. and even the unborn baby sharks in uterus are displayed. they don't just use dead specimens mind you, but alive ones instead. you can very well see the unborn baby shark breathe and swim in the extracted 'womb'...that is what i call - hope. not pathetic, dying or dead creatures. we also get to touch and 'pat' the stingrays, sharks and puffer fish. lotsa activities. and it's a good way to get children and people to learn to love and care about these creatures. by touching, we become 'attached'. we tend to fall in love more easily. hence, we see it as our responsibility to be involved in conservation.

i don't know about you but after touching stingrays, i'd swear not to eat them anymore. even though they're not endangered. so i guess it's a good way to create awareness through this kinda human-animal interaction.

again, my less than S$15 is well spent. i enjoyed my visit tremendously. couldn't help but smsed my bf, "can't believe i see more sea turtles here in s'pore by just paying 15bucks...so much lesser than what you paid for in redang really!"

of course, this is just an example. another would be places like phuket, koh samui etc. it's cheaper to fly to thailand and laze in their beautiful beaches than to swim to our own dying corals in tioman or redang. you'd probably fall out of holiday mood too when you see floating plastic bags in our seas...i don't want to be reminded how i end up doing the 'cleaning' by picking up floating plastic bags in redang, really. that was supposed to be my holiday!!!

a friend from the States actually laughed the idea of paying (close to RM500) to hike up mt kinabalu. he said, "it's absurd to pay to climb a mountain!"...and yeah, i think so too. it's not as if we needed special equipments like those people use to climb everest etc. and we end up paying a few thousand (including air tickets) to east malaysia as well, which is more than what we pay to places like bali...

visit malaysia sucks. and no, i don't regret saying that.

psst, not trying to say the redang trip wasn't fun. i had fun of course, else he'd kill me ;-)

Issues of Judiciary

For those of you who are more interested in the current judiciary crisis going on in our country right now instead of the Nurin case, you are welcome to my blog to read up comprehensive information on that issue.

i also have a detailed transcript of the phone call recording by the lawyer VK Lingam. even did some research to give readers understanding about the whose who in Lingam's conversation. when i first heard it, i couldn't really understand also coz no context ma. the deixis also not clear.

already explained things in my blog. so happy reading and you can ask me questions if you are not clear about it.

disclaimer: i want to clear things here first. its not that i'm not interested with the Nurin case but the problem is, this kind of murders do happen from time to time, i am looking at it without emotions so that i can analyse it better and find solutions to improve the situation in our country concerning crime. what is the priority now? the nation as a whole or individual cases?

i din want to post the judiciary issue here because there are too many things being discussed here already. peace out..

yx

just a quick intro, so you all won't wonder "who the hell is this?" I'm yixing, carmen's friend--who attended your class the day that anthony and yeevon did their presentations. also ran into a couple of you again at FFF recently.

cheers.

CCTV: Are they working?

Today on the news, a new topic was introduced. Are the CCTV in some shops really working? Maybe some really do but the ones which are working properly are the ones in famous buildings. According to Datuk Christopher, the shops now have fixed CCTV just to fill in the requirments of the insurance company. Even if the CCTV is working, the recording is not clear because no proper mantainence for the CCTV. How can the authority seek for clue to solve a case. Sometimes in crime investigation the CCTV recording can be the most important evidence. In Altantulya's case the CCTV recording was a total disaster and the recording was so bad that they had to move it out from the evidence list. But why are there some businessmen/women dont care about this things and why?

In Malaysia the reason to fix a CCTV is to make criminals scared. Hello! Criminals are way cleaver than some others. Lets say someone creates a super dupper alarm for a car but a criminal will find a way to break the alarm and it will be a sucess. There owner of the CCTV should take some things into consideration and not just think of themselves. Finally there are some specific rules for the CCTV fixing and I hope that this will not be another "Malaysia Boleh" faliure thing.