Public memory’s short. The media too has this curious habit of remembering only what it chooses to. Nothing proves this better than the way we have reacted to the cases How did they acquire this imagery, the imagery that has won them so many hearts and, at the same time, got them into so much trouble? They were the first of the brash, rude, tough talking, adrenaline driven brats. They flaunted their machismo, their mobikes and their muscles in an industry that had, for decades, celebrated the gentle hero who loved deeply and cried copiously.

THR Raaga radio announcer Geethanjali G, who was selected as one of ’10 Most Powerful Women in Malaysia’, has denied that she was behind the controversial list which has set tongues wagging since it appeared in The Star last Tuesday.

Speaking to Malaysiakini, the media personality said that she was clueless as to the identity of the listmaker and that her “peaceful life” had been disrupted by speculations surrounding the list.

“Ministers are calling me to ask about it, even media tycoons are asking me the same questions as you are asking me,” she said when contacted.

“I may be popular on television, but I live a peaceful life and this list has created a ruckus to my life.”

She was responding to speculation that she or her company G Global Media – a promotions and production company – had made upthe list and paid for the page five advertorial to create publicity for herself.

Described as a “fashionista” by the listmaker, Geethanjali also denied that her husband – a mysterious but supposedly wealthy man whose identity she declines to reveal – was behind this.

“I keep that part of my life separate, it is quite personal… but to clear the air, I (have) to say that (Westports Malaysia Sdn Bhd CEO) G Gnanalingam is not my husband.If your guy wants to have sex with you tonight, he’d do anything to please you and put you to bed. Don’t let your emotions rule you. Decide whether he’s genuinely praising you or caring about you or just pretending to do so. If he is always this way, it is not an issue but … Read more

“Maybe people speculate that because I use the name Geethanjali G and he goes by Tan Sri G, but (claims that we are a couple) is not true,” she said on the topic which is hotly discussed online.READMOREhttp://clubdesexymind.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2013-06-11T14:32:00-07:00&max-results=7&start=1&by-date=false

The Islamic Renaissance Front is observing the protests in Turkey very closely.

We believe there is much at stake in how AKP (The Justice and Development Party) will engage with the demonstrators at this point, especially with regards to the relationship between Islam and democracy.

It is well known that the AKP, under the leadership of Reccep Tayyip Erdogan, rose to power with ideas for a modern and inclusive balance between politics and Islam.

Despite its official ideology as a conservative party, it has nonetheless assured the Turkish people and the international community that it will abide by principles of transparency and openness in governing.

But we can discern some regressive trends after three terms. For one, Erdogan’s refusal to engage with the demonstrators, while blaming social media for stoking unrest, shows how far he has clearly strayed from his democratic ostentations.

The state driven regulation of personal life has also increased to reach concerning levels.

All this is occurring alongside the rapid neo-liberalisation of the economy, risking greater inequality between the haves and the have-nots and further devastation of the environment.

Turkey too, currently has the highest amount of journalists imprisoned among all member countries of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

All this, needless to say, proves that contrary to initial high hopes, the Erdogan led AKP has not embodied the ideals of good governance founded on the Islamic principles of equality, justice and freedom.
Public memory’s short. The media too has this curious habit of remembering only what it chooses to. Nothing proves this better than the way we have reacted to the cases How did they acquire this imagery, the imagery that has won them so many hearts and, at the same time, got them into so much trouble? They were the first of the brash, rude, tough talking, adrenaline driven brats. They flaunted their machismo, their mobikes and their muscles in an industry that had, for decades, celebrated the gentle hero who loved deeply and cried copiously.
Lessons for Malaysia

The Turkish example shows that the task of establishing a moderate and enlightened vision of political Islam only begins once in power.

In this the challenge and priority is not to add more cosmetic Islamic policies and laws, but to educate the public of the virtues and values of democracy, justice and equality in a complex world towards harmony and prosperity for Malaysians of different cultures and religions.

Expectations are often higher for Muslim leaders who are not among the common stock of politically ambitious ulamas.

They are assumed to be more flexible, or at the very least, less beholden to rigid interpretations of Islam which many with good reason feel cannot survive the dynamism and openness required for any democracy to flourish.

It goes without saying that such Muslim leaders are few and far between in Malaysia. And for that reason, they are therefore entrusted with far more responsibilities to help realise a more inclusive nation.

For it will not only be Muslims who will be turning to them with their aspirations: Non-Muslims too will hope to be represented in the process.

However, given Malaysia’s linguistic, cultural and structural complexities, Malaysians are willing to be patient with these democrats as they work their way through the obstacles before them.

Here, we wish to remind our Muslim democrat friends that the patience of Malaysians should not be used as a pretext for further superficial Islamisation, which is often the more tempting route, given the conservatism that pervades Malay-Muslim political culture.

The goal for any Muslim democrat leader in Malaysia, first and foremost, is to ensure democracy. We wish for our Muslim democrat friends and allies to heed this lesson from the current struggle in Turkey.

Public memory’s short. The media too has this curious habit of remembering only what it chooses to. Nothing proves this better than the way we have reacted to the cases How did they acquire this imagery, the imagery that has won them so many hearts and, at the same time, got them into so much trouble? They were the first of the brash, rude, tough talking, adrenaline driven brats. They flaunted their machismo, their mobikes and their muscles in an industry that had, for decades, celebrated the gentle hero who loved deeply and cried copiously.

Turks first took to the streets on May 28 to demonstrate against the redevelopment of a park in Istanbul. Over the course of a week the non-violent demonstration escalated into large-scale anti-government protests. The subsequent crackdown by the authorities turned violent but much of Turkey’s domestic media ignored the story.

With the vacuum in mainstream media coverage, protesters turned to social media to get their story out but this unfettered source of news potentially inflamed the situation.

Our News Divide this week assesses what the domestic coverage of the protests – or the lack of – says about media ownership in Turkey and the relations those companies have with Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government. Talking us through the story is Yavuz Baydar from Sabah newspaper; Yasemine Congar, the former deputy editor of Taraf newspaper; Andrew Finkel, the auther of Turkey: What everyone needs to know; Ziya Meral, an academic and writer; and Mustafa Akyol, a columnist for Hurriyet.

This week’s Newsbytes: The trial of Bradley Manning begins but the media gets limited access; a prominent blogger becomes the first person to be jailed for insulting President Morsi; in Qatar, a draft cyber crime bill causes alarm for press freedom groups; and a major US newspaper lays off all the photographers on its staff replacing them with reporters armed with i-phones.

Our feature this week takes us to the World Press Photo Awards. Photography is an inherently subjective medium but there is a new trend in photojournalism that adds another dimension. It is called post-processing and it’s when photojournalists digitally enhance their work to make it more captivating to the eye. The practise has raised some ethical questions within the industry and highlighting the debate is this year’s World Press Photo winner. Photographer Paul Hansen’s image was enhanced to the point that it was accused of being a composite. Although the allegation was dismissed the question still remains as to how far photojournalists and news agencies should be allowed to go when digitally enhancing photographs.

The Listening Post’s Nicholas Muirhead looks at this year’s World Press Photo Awards and the growing use of post-processing in photojournalism.

Why should professional photographers have all the fun? You too can digitally manipulate your photographs – do away with blemishes, red eye or the spare tire that is marring your waistline. A couple of years back, the people at CollegeHumor.com posted a music video for a tune they call ‘Photoshop Tutorial Rap’. CMY Killa and his crew of effects gurus school a few people on the tricks of a very misleading trade. Forget subjective photography or minor digital enhancement. These guys take it to a whole new level, where unicorns can come to life. It is our web video of the week. We hope you enjoy the show.

History repeats?

What has been reported in the months before the GE13, was that PAS, PKR and DAP leaders had all publicly declared that Pakatan leader Anwar Ibrahim would be PM if they wrested Putrajaya.

And since they failed to capture Putrajaya, Anwar is now the Opposition Leader although DAP won the most number of seats within the Pakatan pact.

It is learnt that in 2008, following the opposition’s historic victory, one key leader from DAP and PAS had each met with Tengku Razaleigh in Kuala Lumpur.

They had allegedly indicated their willingness to back Tengku Razaleigh as PM, should a national unity government be formed with segments of BN.

The deal however went sour as PKR under Anwar were not convinced, while BN’s MPs also backed out due to pressure from their own coalition.

Anwar was at the time, also seen to be hatching his own plans to wrest federal power.

In which case is history repeating itself?This is the time for party members to debate and discuss extensively the direction UMNO should take. It is in this context that I am advocating a leadership contest. You cannot rejuvenate the party and inspire the confidence of young voters unless the leaders articulate more progressive policies and showcase the talents they have in … Read more

The strategy has worked for Mahathir throughout his terms in office. The main rivals Anwar and Musa hitam have come to  rescue in times of dire need. It has also worked for Najib backed the great Mahathir . Najib was part of the government, while Mahathir supported Najib from the outside until Mahayudin  called it quits albeit for different reasons. The mantra has been operational in UMNO Being so hard on ourselves reflects the great fear many of us having of falling short. And one of the key obstacles all of us are going…You can touch someone’s life by empowering them, and in turn, you are actually empowering yourself. There couldn’t be a more perfect way…What if our definition of success included not only achievement, but also happiness, well-being and our contribution to society?

Being so hard on ourselves reflects the great fear many of us having of falling short. And one of the key obstacles all of us are going…You can touch someone’s life by empowering them, and in turn, you are actually empowering yourself. There couldn’t be a more perfect way…What if our definition of success included not only achievement, but also happiness, well-being and our contribution to society?French Scorpene probe extends to Bala’s SD2  PM should also resign for alleged murder of Mongolian national Altantuya Shaariibuu. Mahathir said, When a BN minister or member becomes a liability, the BN will use all the “goodies” they have collected to destroy him/her by using the judicial system and other forms of blackmail. Mahatir is the master of … Read more

How the power of one became  the poison, for FT Minister Ensure that the tail wags the dog: that appears to be the mantra of  Najib to promote its national-level interests  where it has a negligible presence. The strategy is to woo (with financial largesse) or intimidate  the deployment of central investigation agencies  against  rival  UMNO division leaders. Let them be at each other’s throats on their home turf, runs the argument, but make sure that  they keep the Najib-led government going.

The ‘arrogant heart’ syndrome afflicting the opposition pact, especially PKR’s adviser Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, is the reason why they refuse to accept the result of the 13th general election (GE13) and hold a gathering at Padang Merbok, says Federal Territory Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor. Najib has never seemed as helplessly weak as now Hell has more definitions than heaven , possibly because more of us expect to end up there than in the other place. A cynic described hell as other people. Men of religion generally promise hellfire for the wicked, an image that rather contradicts the doctrine that … Read more

Due to the syndrome, he said, they deliberately blinded themselves to the decision made by the people at GE13. 

“This kind of people will endeavour to find ways and means to create chaos for the nation. We gave them the Merdeka Stadium but they declined because of their arrogance, as people cannot see them shouting.

 DAP challenges Tengku Adnan’s credibility DAP secretary-general and Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng has questioned the appointment of Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor to Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s cabinet, since Tengku Adnan has been involved in the “Lingam-gate” affair. Umno secretary-general  Datuk Seri Tengku  Adnan Mansor stressed that the top two posts in Umno …Read more

“They want to cheat and put the people in difficulty. “Bad heart and ailing heart we can help, but it is difficult to find a remedy for the arrogant heart,” he said at a housing unit voting ceremony for the Kerinchi Residensi, in Kuala Lumpur today. Tengku Adnan also advised Anwar to accept the reality that the Member of Parliament for Permatang Pauh was not picked by the people to be Prime Minister and to stop activities which caused difficulty to the people. – Bernama, June 22, 2013.Politically senior to our PM, with his followers looking up to him, even at the cost of repetition, may share this As the PM will say  when file his papers to be the UMNO PRESIDENT again, “We shall cross our bridges, when we come to them.” Facial hair in men is entirely a pubertal phenomenon. This … Read more

No matter where you are, it’s close to home. Modern slavery affects Malays  within borders . Slavery can trap thousands in one place – like government, mines and factories – or happen at a small scale, where the Malays  are trapped in their own country and forced to work  for little pay. Our freedom fighters were our heroes, then came our farmers who harvested the land with Anwar Ibrahim representing the patriotic Malay, we then marched into the comunnist war heroes era then we had  with war heroes. Our perceptions of patriotism changed with our problems. Today,Racial terrorism is the big problem which the government could have rooted out but Mahathir Malaysia’s most wanted man has now gone into UMNO which does not reciprocate our protocol. as the UMNO machinery has failed to do so for their own convenience. Every Malay wants accountability on what happened and why he is not arrested. Najib have been selected by Mahathir.Anwar is a humanised character but Najib  is  a great actor . He  look like a Mogolian but has a mind of his own who feels that what he is doing is actually business in murder. give a lot of credit to his wife Rosmah  Mahathir in resurrecting his second innings as an actor PM.When it comes to abuse of power by enforcement agencies, says Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin Abu Bakar, what is important is “stern action” and not which agency is taking it. Umno secretary-general Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Mansor said on Sunday that the party supreme council had already decided that both the president and … Read more

“If Pakatan were to conquer Putrajaya this time, I will plan a framework of urban road development in Klang because I’m more competent than Najib Razak since I’ve been a part of the Economic Planning Unit and have been a Directorate Member at the Institute of Strategic Study before. This is the difference between an implementer and a good talker”…………………….Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim,

The Malay UMNO  elities has adopted policies that have taken away or denied the  a number of rights.Former Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad is attempting to keep the divide within Umno under wraps with his call that the top two posts in the party not be contested, said political analyst Khoo Kay Peng.The options are whether to become more Malay-centric in its approach or to convert BN into a single party for all races., it is nothing but a wave created by corporate houses, which will be short-lived and cannot do any magic for Malays,” Tan Sri Khalid earlier said party leaders had been bulldozed into supporting Najib prime ministerial aspiration in the name of unity.

whichever party they belong to and whatever ideology they profess — agree to agree: we, the people, have no right to know where, and from whom, they get the money to fight elections and run their organisations.Getting political parties entangled in such unnecessary things will damage the democratic process. We simply cannot accept it,Najib and Tan Sri Muhiyiddin Yasin will win unchallenged will depend on the feedback at Umno divisional meetings and Putrajaya’s success in handling two restive groups: Umno MPs who were not given Cabinet positions and Umno divisional chiefs not fielded as candidates in the general election.These protests reflect, in part, the deep ideological polarization between secular, liberal-minded Turks, and the more religious Turks, representing a quarter and two-thirds of the population respectively based on the 2011 general election results. Many secular Turks complainthat the Islamist-rooted government is intolerant of criticism and the diversity of lifestyles. So far, Erdogan’s robust and … Read more

You wouldn’t buy a loaf of bread which insisted on keeping its ingredients secret. So how come we are expected to buy — to vote for — political  leaders who keep their finances a secret? Don’t ask. You don’t have the right to that information.Mahathir is trying to keep the fight between the respective factions in support of either options within Umno’s walls

‘Is Umno a party of dynamic change and renewal, or is it a fossilised party determined to keep incumbents in power for as long as possible?’After the calls for no contest for Umno’s top two posts, it is not surprising that there are similar calls for the Umno Youth chief’s post.Election of leaders is a democratic process of every organisation. To ask members not to contest is nothing more than tyranny, they may as well tell the party grassroots that contest breeds disunity and ask them to let the leaders rule for life.

Some even consider Tan Sri Khalid as a much proven product as far as economic strategic planning is concerned in comparison to even the likes of our Prime Minister Dato Sri Najib Tun Razak with his 1Malaysia identity who was eventually made to eat some humble pies after the announcement of the Election results on Sunday.Najib will have to use all available ways to fight Mahathir. In the coming weeks and months to the UMNO internal election, Malaysians can expect ‘movie’ after ‘movie’, ‘drama’ after ‘drama’ although most of these will tend to be either disaster flicks or outrageous comedies. After all Mahathir has so many ways and resources at … Read more

Under Tan Sri Khalid, the former CEO of Guthrie, Selangor enjoyed a leadership with a sense of corporate ingenuity and business stream portfolio of economic development for the past 4 years of his tenure as the Head of the State.

The vastly experienced corporate man has transformed Selangor from a BN dependant State to an independent State of high stake business ventures and investments both from local and foreign entities.

Tan Sri Khalid was the brain behind programs like the Merakyatkan Ekonomi Selangor in which he introduced a popular scheme of Selangorians engaging themselves as shareholders and stakeholders of economic ventures undertaken by the State government in their own birth state of Selangor.Political situation is of concern to many of Malaysia’s top echelon of businesspeople, politicians, civil servants, and even members of the Royal Families. There is a strong feeling amongst the country’s elite that Malaysia needs good governance rather than politicking. Many are very sympathetic to the concept of a national unity government, as a solution … Read more

related article

BEYOND THE BREAKING NEWS ROSMAHI’S ELEVATION AS UMNO POLLL MASCOT.A HIGH-VOLTAGE DIVORCE WITH OLD ALLY MAHYUDIN.

The fairly exhaustive organizational exercise touches management of UMNO deeply, with Najib seen to have given Rosmah a key role in UMNO Presidential election machinery to interface with the party as well as government The changes are linked to  Najib’s  bid to appear focused ahead of UMNO election with Oxford educated Khairy Jamaluddin as a key … Read more

Usually it’s the men who want more sex than women, but what happens when it’s the other way around?

Vanessa Thompson, a Newcastle sexologist, attributes mismatched sex drives to testosterone levels.

She puts it down to biology, saying that typically men have the higher libido, while  woman  have a tenth of the testosterone in men.

Do you think woman are inscrutable? Do you think they are extremely difficult to understand? Are you struggling to find out what she really is thinking and what she is all about? Don’t worry, you are not alone.

 ”Maiya Yashoda”, Hollywood… are you ready for her?

A woman can say a lot with her silence while sometimes a man can talk for hours yet say nothing. You need to listen very carefully to figure out what your girl is trying to say. It is not rocket science, its just that you need to be sensitive to her. Here are a few things that women look for in men. Read on and you will probably understand her better…

nipples nipples nipples

Sometimes suspicion and mistrust can ruin your relationship with your girlfriend. But if the matter is serious and the nagging suspicion is impossible to ignore, here are few steps to figure out if your fears are real:

1. If she turns secretive and tries to guard her conversations on the phone, leaves the room everytime she gets a call on her cell
2. If you call or text her first all the time and she doesn’t bother to do so then that is a bad sign

3. If she starts picking fights too often

4. If you catch her lying, it is often a cause for concern giving signal of infidelity
5. If you find a change in the behaviour of close common friend then it is possible that they know something that you don’t. Perhaps you are the last to know
6. If your girlfriend suddenly starts worrying a little more about her appearance - new clothes, make-up…she may be trying to look good for someone else. If she gets dressed up for you, that’s one thing but if they seem to spend a little more time looking good to go out without you, then that might be a cause to worry.

THR Raaga radio announcer Geethanjali G, who was selected as one of ’10 Most Powerful Women in Malaysia “I keep that part of my life separate, it is quite personal… but to clear the air, I (have) to say that (Westports Malaysia Sdn Bhd CEO) G Gnanalingam is not my husband.If your guy wants to have sex , he’d do anything to please you and put you to bed. Don’t let your emotions rule you. Decide whether he’s genuinely praising you or caring about you or just pretending to do so. If he is always this way, it is not an issue . We are at times foes and at times friends, certainly not lovers but are husband-wife and inherently love each other even though we may keep denying all the time how our love has gone out of the window. I was attracted to him being down-to-earth. If I am flying high, he has the string of the kite. In my glamour and glitz,he was the only source of my being grounded.  Which actress would be able to do that? Unlike me who is a professional actor,he is only having a blast shooting.  I traumatised with the fact that I has to gett up at 8.30 to go to work even busy the whole night. he is my anchor and keeps me mobilised.

Citizens in rage as brides-to-be are subjected to virginity tests at a mass marriage ceremony.

How important is it for a bride to be a virgin in India? The controversial issue has resurfaced and made headlines after officials in Betul district, Madhya Pradesh, allegedly conducted virginity and pregnancy tests on more than 450 prospective brides recently. The incident, naturally, drew the ire of women’s rights groups, as the brides were forced to undergo the tests at the venue itself.

While mass marriage is a concept that is common in all parts of the country, including Karnataka, the ceremonies have often come under the scanner of activists who allege that on many occasions children are married off as adults. But the recently held ceremony in Madhya Pradesh has sparked many discussions over social networking sites and pushed many others to protest.

Actress and columnist Pooja Bedi asks, “Is virginity a big issue over a small (replaceable) tissue? Isn’t it illogical that an intact hymen represents the total worth of a woman upon marriage?” She goes on to slam the whole idea that virgins should be celebrated as clean and chaste, and non-virgins decried as ‘impure’. Pooja adds that those who are responsible for forcing the women to undergo the tests should be awarded strictest of punishment.

Filmmaker Kavitha Lankesh rues that even in the 21st century the virginity of a woman counts most for a man to marry her. “The Madhya Pradesh episode is a clear abuse of human rights. It shows that we are in a regressive society. Most men want their brides to be virgins, which they themselves are not ready to adhere to. It’s the duty of parents to raise their children (irrespective of their gender) as equals.”

While the officials, in their defence, said the tests were conducted as they suspected that many married couples say they are unmarried to avail benefits granted under massmarriage ceremonies, the fact remains that a woman cannot be subjected to such embarrassment and humiliation.

Women’s rights activist Pankaja Kalmath says the Madhya Pradesh episode should never be repeated anywhere else. “It should be made mandatory that prospective brides and grooms should furnish all documents, including an age proof certificate to be eligible to participate in mass marriages.”

Virginity and myth

Myth: The hymen is the ultimate marker of virginity

Reality: A woman can rupture her hymen through an accident or sporting and physical activities. Even insertion of a tampon or a finger or an instrument by a doctor during a pelvic examination can lead to the rupture of the hymen.

Men who are “too nice” to their other half spark fears that they are cheating, a new study has found.

Researchers of the study that two thirds of women become suspicious if their partner suddenly has “new tricks” in the bedroom, makes grand romantic gestures or even if he makes them breakfast in bed.

Other triggers for suspicion amongst mistrusting wives and girlfriends are if their man treats them to jewellery or sexy underwear.

According to the poll of 2,000 adults conducted by Kellogg’s, even helping out with housework leads to millions of females to believe her chap is “playing away”.

A third of women said they would be happy to turn a blind eye to a minor indiscretion if it meant that their partner was nicer to live with.

“It seems there is an emotional gulf between the sexes when it comes to matters of the heart,” the Daily Mail quoted Louise Thompson Davies, a spokesman from Kellogg’s as saying.

“So when men think they are just being nice and showering their other half with gifts and affection they think they are being attentive but the reality is that women just don’t see it like that.

“Today’s work and life pressures have resulted in romantic gestures like making your wife or girlfriend breakfast in bed much more of a rare occasion.

“This is why most women tend to reach for the panic button and suspect the worst when they are made a fuss over.

“The smallest changes in a man’s behaviour can set a women’s mind whirring and get them worrying.

“But it’s interesting to see how many women would be willing to ignore their suspicions and just enjoy having a new more attentive partner.

“It seems that for some women having a romantic and thoughtful partner is more important than having one that is faithful,” Davies said.

The study also found that surprise gifts of chocolates would instantly cause concern for most women, with one in six women saying that their partner has given them a gift in the past because of a guilty conscience.

The top 20 things that make women suspicious are:
- Buys jewellery

- New moves in the bedroom

- More emotional

- Buys flowers

- Buys chocolates

- More attentive

- Buys sexy underwear

- Book a romantic weekend away

- Buys you more things

- Helps more with the chores

- Tells you he loves you more

- Makes breakfast in bed

- Pays more compliments

- Texts more

- Does the cooking

- Calls more

- Listens better

- Runs baths

- Hand over the TV remote

- Cuddles more

Jiah Khan’s mother Rabia, speaks about her daughter’s troubled affair with her boyfriend and the film industry

When did you first know that Jiah was dating Suraj? 
Last year. Initially, I never stopped her from meeting that boy. He was wooing her with flowers and home-cooked food. And she liked it.

When did you realise that Jiah was in a troubled relationship with him? 
In February, this year she had come to London. I told her, ‘You are in love but there is no glow on your face’. She broke down. I asked her to share everything with me. I told her ‘Home is hospital, world outside is a battlefield. Don’t hide anything from me’. I asked her to withdraw from the relationship. But I realised it was too late… She was head-over-heels in love with that boy. I managed to dissuade her from talking to him for few days but I saw that they were in touch again. She returned to join piano and kathak classes. She had a maid, driver- her life was going fine. Her younger sister was going to get engaged on June 23, which is why I was in Mumbai. And on return I felt that she and Suraj had sorted it out and life was smiling upon her once more.

If things had indeed settled down between them, how did it suddenly go all wrong? 
I don’t know. But since the past ten days, I could see that Suraj was trying to distance himself from Jiah. I sat Jiah down and had a chat with her on this (pauses). I could see that he was becoming commitment phobic. But youngsters are youngsters I guess…Love is blind.

Did you and Aditya Pancholi ever discuss Jiah and Suraj’s relationship? 
It’s a misconception that Aditya and I were friends. Aditya is Anju Mahendroo’s friend. If he was my friend, things would have been amicable and this incident wouldn’t have happened. But yeah, I know he threw a fit when he came to know about his son’s relationship with my daughter. He even told Salman Khan about it, who tried to talk Suraj out of it. But Suraj told him that he loved Jiah and Salman was then cool about it.

Have you ever met Zarina Wahab (Suraj’s mom) and interacted with her? 
Never. He never introduced me to his parents as Jiah’s mother. I kept telling Jiah that it is strange that you have introduced him to me as your boyfriend but he never reciprocated.

Did Jiah ever tell you that she was pregnant with Suraj’s child and underwent an abortion? 
No. Had I known about it, I would’ve blasted the sky.

Did Jiah want to marry Suraj? 
Yes. She wanted to settle down and have a home with him.

Any message to young girls aspiring for a career in films or their moms? 
I don’t want to preach. But this industry is not bad if you work sincerely. And for heaven’s sake, don’t get me wrong. I have not been an ambitious and pushy mother. Every parent motivates his/her child to pursue his/her dream, I was doing the same

Was Jiah upset when she was ousted from Chance Pe Dance? 
She was very disappointed. But I think only the makers of CPD (Read: UTV, Ken Ghosh) can tell you why they threw her out. But her dream was getting back on track. Recently, she had metSuraj Sharma (of Life Of Pi) and the makers of a South film had almost finalised her. They asked her to put on some weight and did not reject her outright as has been reported in the media.

Do you think that the fact that Jiah hadn’t signed too many films but Suraj was being launched by a big banner (Salman Khan Productions) drove a wedge in their relationship? 
I think so. After he signed his debut film (remake of Hero) with Salman, his body language changed. In fact, Jiah told him that she wanted to meet Salman and tell him that she wanted to work with him. But Suraj did not make it happen.

Jiah was quite bitter about her dad. Where is he? 
She had issues with him but that was her personal matter. At this point, I would only like to say one thing about him. He called me after Jiah passed away. And he cried a lot over the phone.

Jiah Khan’s mother Rabia, speaks about her daughter’s troubled affair with her boyfriend and the film industry When did you first know that Jiah was dating Suraj?  Last year. Initially, I never stopped her from meeting that boy. He was wooing her with flowers and home-cooked food. And she liked it. When did you realise …Read more

When the tail seeks to wag the dog

 snaky Minister Tengku Adnan  can  be trusted to trade diatribes on which one has effectively addressed issues of urgent concern to voters: development, inflation, corruption and governance. Each one will also have to spell out what differentiates it from the other. Two battle-lines are in sight. One will pit ‘inclusive development’ — orMahathir model — against ‘growth at all costs’ for cronies

Competence matters less than loyalty. It pays to be in politics or to get on with the political masters. Or is it because these people are indispensable ? Or is it a reflection of the shortage of talent in our country today?

Malaysian voters threatened to beat Najib with shoes after he did not to heed voters demandWith Najib in charge and with no one willing to challenge him in the forthcoming UMNO elections, our country will remain divisive and moribund. All the talk about transformation remains a figment of Najib’s imagination, with due respects to his hardworking  snaky Minister Tengku Adnan

The modus operandi in UMNO is money politics. This was a legacy of the Mahathir years and has become deeply entrenched, feeding into the concerns over corruption and governance. For many of the delegates, they join the party for the perks and invest in positions for potential financial gains.

Elections are an integral part of the financial rewards in the system as they involve the distribution of incentives. The logic is simple – the more the competition within the party, the more the incentives. Given the modus operandi in UMNO, there are vested interests in fueling contests.

The higher the level of competition, the greater the promise of rewards. This election involves more people, so competition is costly, involving mass outlays of funds to more people than ever before. Part of the call for the return to the old 2,000-delegate system is driven by this economic ‘money politics’ reality.

There is a tension here between those who would like to minimise costs, with those who would like to receive dividends. The numbers are on the receiving ends, thus the systemic pressure for greater competition.

Tengku Adnan Mansor has a bunch of issues confronting him; the mass rally by Pakatan Rakyat at Padang Merbok is not one of them.

The endemic corruption in City Hall is one. The unbridled growth of hawkers all around the city is another. So is urban poverty and rubbish-strewn streets.

Then there is the millstone which has been hanging around his neck since the esteemed Royal Commission of Inquiry found him, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, V. K. Lingam and others guilty of fixing appointments to the judiciary.

But no, he had to wade in today by saying that arrogance was at the heart of the Black 505 gathering today.

Here is some news for Tengku Adnan: hundreds of thousands of Malaysians have attended Black 505 rallies since the general election. In Kelana Jaya alone, more than 120,000 people crammed into the stadium.

Why? Because many Malaysians believe that there were elements of electoral fraud in GE13. That is also why thousands braved the haze to turn out today.

Pakatan Rakyat’s or Anwar Ibrahim’s rallying cry would not have much traction if the public were not like-minded on this important issue of electoral fraud.

Barisan Nasional and the likes of Tengku Adnan will be greatly mistaken if they believe that condescending views will win over the 51 per cent of Malaysians who voted for Pakatan Rakyat.

“Bad heart and ailing heart we can help, but it is difficult to find a remedy for the arrogant heart, ” said Tengku Adnan today.

How about an immediate remedy for electoral shortcomings? –

Former Tourism Minister Ng Yen Yen is expected to take up her position as the Chairman of the Malaysian Tourism Promotion Board (MTPB) despite her party, Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) ‘s avowed stand not to take government posts due to their poor election performance.

The Sun Daily reported today that the MCA politician appointed herself to the position just after the dissolution of Parliament and while she was still the tourism minister.

Her appointment is likely to become a bone of contention and the source of ridicule. Already, Opposition politicians have been actively tweeting about Ng’s new position.

Ng did not defend her seat in Raub which as expected, fell to the DAP. Her tenure as the tourism minister was pockmarked with controversies over payment of RM1.6 million to set up a few Facebook pages.

Also enjoying a new lease of life after the elections is Datuk Jamaluddin Jarjis, much criticised head of Barisan Nasional war room.

He and members of his strategy team have been blamed for Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s unsuccessful attempt to regain two-thirds control of Parliament, with critics saying their predictions had little connection to the pulse of the voters.

Jamaluddin is now a special advisor to the PM with ministerial status. He is also the chairman of PR1MA, the company set up to build affordable houses for those in the middle-income category.

Former Minister of Economic Planning Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop is now the deputy chairman of Khazanah Nasional while former Information Minister Rais Yatim is in the running for a top overseas posting.

Several other former Barisan leaders are also expected to take up positions in various government agencies, in what is seen as a reward for their contribution to Malaysia.

These leaders never fade away, but continue to be part of the public sector with heftier pay checks and not much of the responsibilities of their former posts. Politics pays, for a long while.DAP challenges Tengku Adnan’s credibility DAP secretary-general and Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng has questioned the appointment of Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor to Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s cabinet, since Tengku Adnan has been involved in the “Lingam-gate” affair. Umno secretary-general  Datuk Seri Tengku  Adnan Mansor stressed that the top two posts in Umno …Read more

Pakatan’s top guns urge reps to resolve Malay insecurity Pakatan Rakyat top leaders at the opening of the opposition coalition’s leadership convention today urged its newly-elected representatives to tackle the perception that Malays would be threatened without Umno.

Muslims have been the most static, although there is evidence emerging that some groups have begun to recognize that their real problem is the politics of fear, with prejudice possibly a parallel but subsidiary fact. Fear drove them repeatedly into the false comfort of PAS embrace.UMNO was delighted; if fear was sufficient to deliver the vote, there was no reason UMNO has repeatedly promised Muslims job reservations, once even raising the threshold to a fantastic 30%. In line with previous experience, not a single per cent has become reality. Marginal handouts, heavily advertised, are used to bluff the community, while fear plays on at orchestra strength in the background. Fear, rather than economic benefit, has become the template of secularism. Instead of doing their own thinking, UMNO elist control their  thinking.

So what is new?

The skies in which the powerful reside may still be clouded by false illusion, but ground reality has shifted. The people have, with good reason, lost faith in the government’s ability to lead economic change or provide the exhilaration of opportunity. They know that only the private sector can do so. The PM is no longer someone who promises to expand the public sector job base, but one who can open the private sector job market.

Malaysia’s lower House of Representatives are far more dangerous for political parties than elections. An election can merely kill you.A parliament can disorient you. On any rational day, comatose is a better option than frenzy. There is always a chance that some prophet will turn up one day to resurrect a corpse, but to restore balance to a destabilised organization requires many preconditions, including recognition that there is indeed a problem. Political leaders very rarely admit a mistake. Instead, they blame circumstance, and justify any downward spiral of error with self-defeating logic. Class conflict would have justified Marxist theory and encouraged a natural gravitation by the poor towards Communism and its tendencies towards dictatorship. This trade-off was welcomed by a country that clung to religion and social inheritance as its distinctive profile. Even our independence movement favoured the metaphors of faith to slogans against colonization; the downside was that economic development in independent Malaysia flowed towards the political bisects or trisects of sectarian democracy, rather than responding to the gravitational pull of poverty, wherever it might exist. And so vast deserts of the poor, whether Malay ,Chinese or Indianor Dalit or within the principal minority community, remained arid because they were not able to convert their political clout into economic reward. Their vote belonged to identity, not poverty. After more than five decades of such democracy, each section of the dispossessed has acquired a different history.

I routinely hear many people grumble about everything in their lives. Grumble about their jobs, their weight, their spouses, their bad hair days… the list goes on. There are right problems and there are wrong problems. I say these are the right problems to have. How nice that you have a job. There are so many that are penniless and starving. There are those that grumble about studies, when in reality its’ their privilege that they are being educated and given wings. They won’t be resigned to a life of daily wage physical labour. There are those that complain about their weight, without realising it only means they have food to eat, and are not starving and begging on the roadside. A bad hair day is a reason to celebrate the fact that you have hair. Being bored, means that you have ample time on hand to do anything that interests you. There are those that grumble about their spouses without acknowledging it was they themselves that made the conscious decision to have a life together and that at the end of the day, there is someone they can come home to who will care about their well-being, feed them, or put money to keep the home fires burning. Of course, things can always get better. There is no end to wants, be it anything that is bigger, better, sexier or new compared to what you currently have. But remember, “I’m overworked”, “fat” and “have too much going on” are part of the right problems. You’d rather that than being jobless, emaciated, lonely or bedridden.

Hence, the last people to recognize change are those who should be leading it. The immediate is so overpowering that it fogs perspective. What is obvious to the child is never evident to the emperor. India has changed more in the dozen odd years of the 21st century than the last quarter of the 20th, but prescriptions still seem stuck in that age when today’s new voter was not even both. A dab of lipstick here, or a pinprick of botox there, does not make politics modern. Traditional categories of sectarian difference are reassembling into a new dynamic, as far as the young are concerned. Economic aspiration is crystallizing from the caterpillar of government-serviced race and creed to the butterfly of non-denominational upward mobility. You cannot even sell Mandal’s preferential promise with the vigour that it engendered in the 1990s.

Malaysia’s lower House of Representatives or Dewan Rakyat will convene on Monday for its first session since the May 5 general election, the most controversial and divisive ballot ever seen in the country with the Opposition refusing to concede defeat and demanding re-elections in 30 seats.

Anwar and his Pakatan colleagues are due tol take their oath tomorrow alongside their rivals from the Umno-BN.

A one-hour Q&A (question-and-answer) session of the Dewan Rakyat sitting may also be carried live on national television, but final confirmation for the telecast is still pending from Communications and Multimedia Minister Shabery Cheek.

According to the Dewan Rakyat’s calendar, the first meeting will begin with the appointment of the Speaker, the swearing-in of Members of Parliament and the tabling of a motion to appoint two Deputy Speakers. All the three ceremonies must be completed before the King – the Yang di-Pertuan Agong Tuanku Abdul Halim Mu’adzam Shah – officially opens the Parliament meeting on Tuesday.

Most watched will be the ‘contest’ for the influential post of Speaker. The Umno-BN has announced it wishes to retain Umno MP Pandikar Amin Mulia for the post, with Beluran MP Ronald Kiandee as Deputy Speaker.

The Opposition wants a more neutral person for the Speaker’s post and has nominated a non-politician. Retired Federal Court judge Abdul Kadir Sulaiman has accepted the Pakatan’s nomination for the Speaker’s post, while Tumpat MP Kamaruddin Jaafar has been nominated as Deputy Speaker.

Anwar and Pakatan have also demanded voting for the posts be done by secret ballot, otherwise it would be “an exercise in futility” given the pressure on the Umno-BN MPs to vote based on party line although many have privately voiced their disagreement over Pandikar’s frequent bias during previous sessions.

How can one person or a single emotion have so much hold on you as to wipe away the rest of your life?

One of the most painful experiences of romantic love is when one partner loses interest, while the other retains his or her romantic illusions. Ensconced in the illusory world that lovers create, it takes time for one partner to realise that the other has burst the bubble and escaped.

And with that realisation come immense pain, disbelief and denial. You feel wronged, and like a fish out of water, try desperately to flip back into the earlier equation. People try pleading, cajoling, emotional blackmail, manipulation even threat — anything to get back the magic. Some like Jiah Khan, even give up their lives. But that is no way to love or be loved. You cannot, and should not, force anyone to stay in a relationship, because an unwilling relationship causes unhappiness and is unnatural, often bordering on the dangerous.

Sometime ago, a reader wrote to me in utter distress about a girl he met through social media. They (let us call them Rajan and Priya) struck up a relationship, and Priya waited three years for a commitment. Rajan told her to move on as he was not ready to commit. After a year, he realised he was unable to forget Priya and decided to get back with her. But by now, Priya had actually moved on and was in love with someone else. When he wrote to me, Rajan confessed he was so obsessed and regretful that he could neither eat, sleep nor work. He had taken to stalking Priya and the more he saw her, the more he regretted his mistake. This self-destroying obsession cannot be termed as ‘love’!

I was reminded of Rajan when I read actor Jiah’s suicide note where she says, “the pain that you (Suraj Pancholi) caused me everyday has destroyed every bit of me, destroyed my soul. I can’t eat or sleep or think or function. I am running away from everything. The career is not even worth it anymore…”

How can one person or a single emotion have so much hold on you as to wipe away the rest of your life? There is certainly something abnormal in this. People like Rajan and Jiah are so firmly locked within their own emotions that they fail to notice that their love is not reciprocated anymore. For, how can you love someone who doesn’t love you back? How can you suffer abuse and keep going back for more? And if you really love someone, how about giving them the space to choose who they want to love and live with? Where is your pride, your dignity, your love for others in your life, or even for yourself? Obsessive personalities love disproportionately, lavishing all attention on one individual, to the exclusion of all others.

Let’s take a look at what Jiah accuses Suraj of in her letter — she says life is not worth living when the person you love “threatens to hit you… cheats on you, telling other girls they are beautiful… throws you out of their house… lies to your face… makes you chase them in their car or disrespects their family… You didn’t even meet my sister, you didn’t bother buying me something, you chose to be away from me on Valentines Day.”

If anything, what emerges clearly is the picture of a young man raring to get on with his own life and end this relationship. And, unfortunately, Jiah comes through as highly emotionally-disturbed and not able to deal with reality, insisting on clinging to a relationship that is clearly dead.

Of course, this in no way exonerates Suraj, whose responsibility it was to try and help Jiah deal with her emotional distress. Instead, he not just closed his doors on her and openly flaunted other girls, but in an unforgivably cruel gesture even sent her a ‘break-up’ bouquet that reportedly proved to be the last straw for the distraught actor. When one lover walks out of a relationship, it is his duty to help the other get over the hurt.

Why would a woman want to stay in an abusive relationship? Jiah says, “I didn’t see any love or commitment from you. I just became increasingly scared that you would hurt me mentally or physically. Your life was about partying and women”, and accuses Suraj of “cheating and lies”. If that was so, she should have given up on him in any case and worked on freeing herself of any emotional distress. But she chose to remember all that she had done for him, and then gave up her life as well.

In her letter, Jiah talks of all that she gave to the relationship and almost seems to be demanding a price for her love, loyalty, time, obsession, and the gifts she gave Suraj. If a relationship leaves you with a gaping void within, why give so much to it? “I have no confidence or self esteem left, whatever talent whatever ambition you took it all away. You destroyed my life… you made me feel alone and vulnerable. I am so much more than this.”

One should give only as much as one can comfortably give to a relationship — be it emotions or gifts. The moment you give much more than you receive, or more than the relationship deserves, you raise your own expectations unrealistically and are bound to be disillusioned.

And nobody, I repeat, nobody can destroy you or make you feel powerless in a relationship unless you allow them to!

Is there life after rape? Should a woman live in a purdah rest of her life, if a maniac forcibly violates her privacy? Should she conceal her identity and the identity of those who are near her and next to her?

Are the media and legal system doing the rape victim and her family a favour by not making public her identity? And withholding all references that may point to her identity?

I do not think so. By not naming the rape victim, you are not favouring her but perpetuating the shame and stigma that is associated with the heinous act. Rape is not the fault of the victim. By treating rape as an unmentionable crime, the media are treating the rape victim as an untouchable, someone who is different from you and me.

How does the fact that the public does not know her name, help the rape victim handle the trauma that she is undergoing? The fact remains that she has been assaulted, privacy violated. Those who have done it deserve to be hanged, after establishing their crime in a court of law.

But why should the victim be always on the back foot? Why are we shrouding her identity, apparently, in an ethical effort to help her?

In fact, in every rape incident, everyone who knows the victim at an individual level knows that she has been subjected to the crime, however long, and however hard, you try to pretend so. In the latest incident of rape – of a medical student at the Manipal Medical College in Udupi in Karnataka, all the students in that campus now must be familiar with the name of the victim. Knowing the name is not the crime, but in the age of surreal connectivity, there are no secrets left among us. To know is a human urge, especially if it involves someone’s misfortune and misery, such are rape incidents. So would be the village or town that the rape victims come from. Her relatives would know. So would all her classmates. All of them talk. In a free society, where people are free to gossip, and their fair idea about what is happening around them will continue to do that, unless we want to be a society where news should be always treated with an ethical pen.

Now the point is this. All those who are faintly familiar with the rape victim would know who she is (whether in the case of the Manipal medical college student or Nirbhaya). It is they who are going to be judgmental about what happened to the rape victim and they who will continue to treat with her variety of judgments ranging from empathy, sympathy, support, stigma, shame, unwanted attention, etc.

For someone outside the familiarity cycle, it does not matter the name of the victim. Whether they know it or do not. So if you do not reveal the name, it does not matter to the public, and if you reveal the name, it does not matter, too. So why not reveal the name and help the rape victim tackle her surroundings head on?

The shame associated with rape should go. For that there should be more courageous women such as Sunitha Krishnan, who does not deny the fact that she was raped, but works tirelessly to help such victims.

Rapists have all along thrived due to the “unmentionable nature” of the crime. The stigma and shame that one has to suffer have forced many victims and their parents to live in denial and never admit that their daughters were raped. There used to be an extreme case of under reporting of rapes all over India earlier, which is slowly changing now. It is not surprising that according to National Bureau of Crime Records, Kerala (in fact, Kochi) tops the list of rape cases in India. This does not show how perverse men in Kerala are but how politically empowered the society is. This shift has to go further now. We should be moving towards a mature society that would enable a woman say to the rest of the world, “Yes, they raped my body, but could never rape my mind.”

Punishment for Najib, a large number of Barisan MPs from East Malaysia  are waiting for Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah Rambo act

Can an election ever throw up the right candidate? Or to put it more moderately, is an election the mechanism best suited to throw up representatives that will strive to work for their constituents and attempt to better their life? Are there in-built into the electoral process, a set of imperatives that help pre-determine one kind of outcome, irrespective of the quality of the candidates? Increasingly, it would seem that what it takes to win an election is not only very different from what it takes to govern, but might well be at odds with the idea of providing governance. The privileging of representativeness in our democracy,has meant that electable candidates are chosen with a view to who has the biggest electoral draw in terms representing the interests of a community rather than select those that have a view on issues of policy or administration. At one level, democracy does not require its practitioners to come equipped with a track record, and representativeness is perhaps the most vital element in the idea of democracy, but over a period of time, what representativeness has come to mean identity rather than action; the leader resembles his or her constituents, speaks for them and on the occasion that he or she acts on their behalf, it is often through the same narrow lens of community. Under these circumstances, the election abets the process of weeding out those that see their role in more  attention narrowly on those with more self agendas.

Will  scenes in Parliament lurks a deeper silence. It is as if our legislators no longer find too much relevance in the institution of the Parliament and use it for effect rather than action. Demand for the resignation of the Prime Minister was merely the latest in the line of disruptive manoeuvres that we have seen being employed. that was conveniently forgotten this time, and the focus turned to the PM. Every session seems to come with its own intractable demand, which mysteriously disappears once the session finishes, giving way to the next reason for stalling the proceedings of the house  that was conveniently forgotten this time,is not to say that the opposition had no reason to communicate their anger. When a state institution like Auditor-General  Tan Sri Ambrin Buang   points fingers at the government and alleges a loss to the exchequer of such enormous scale, the opposition is well within its rights to seek appropriate redress. It is also true that in recent times, it is difficult to think of an administration which has governed as incoherently and inefficiently as the present regime has. The number of scams and scandals too has been unprecedented and it is therefore natural that the opposition has reason to attack the government with everything it has on almost continuous basis.The problem occurs when the mode of attack employed is as disruptive as shutting down Parliament for in effect what appears to be a powerful form of action is in fact a lazy absence of any. A beleaguered administration has little to lose when the Parliament stalls, for the visible misbehaviour is clearly the opposition’s. Had the instrument of disrupting the proceedings of the house,The problem occurs when the mode of attack employed is as disruptive as shutting down Parliament for in effect what appears to be a powerful form of action is in fact a lazy absence of any. A beleaguered administration has little to lose when the Parliament stalls, for the visible misbehaviour is clearly the opposition’s. Had the instrument of disrupting the proceedings of the house,

The emptiness of this ritual points to a larger vacuum in the workings of our political system. The role of legislative action in articulating and directing energies of the state towards the task of securing a better future for its citizens is increasingly being buried under a culture of political expediency. Postures in Parliament have much more to do with short-term political jockeying rather than long term legislative action. Much of this political manoeuvring does not translate into material political gain, but it is nevertheless privileged over taking a more long-term view. The fact that all legislators, no matter what political affiliation they hold are conjoined together for a larger purpose is now barely discernible in the actions that we see in the Parliament. The political class shares responsibility for a common task- of formulating policy and keeping the nation going that overrides whatever differences they might have. This responsibility becomes a particularly onerous one, when a coalition government is in power, for the state cannot use its majority to keep the wheels in motion; it needs a degree of collective co-operation. It is interesting that this underlying spirit of unity cutting across party lines was seen in evidence during the discussion of the Lok Pal bill, when the political class came together and collaborated to stymie the effort  to create an independent watchdog. It is an irony of our times that the only time that the Parliament acted as the single organism that it is meant to be, was when it came together to protect its members from greater accountability to the people.

It’s interesting the way Najib jumps into the middle of every incident where the media is present in large numbers! His US based PR agency, APCO, is doing a wonderful job. Much better for sure than the Najib himself is doing, considering that he has done pretty much nothing except generate publicity for himself. Decency in politics is not something the  Najib is particularly known for; so one shouldn’t have expected anything different here.  Since being sworn in as a Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department,Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim the Umno veteran has been playing the role of a trouble-shooter, reaching out to disgruntled Barisan MPs.The real truth is that with Najibi’s ascendancy to the top of the UMNO, even the last shards of political decency have been sacrificed. Now, anything goes in politics. If tomorrow, there is A political earthquake (god forbid) in Malaysia, it would be alright for the Najib to come and play similar dirty politics. If this is what the election process in a democracy entails, we truly don’t deserve it…One MP, who was bypassed for a position in the cabinet despite winning by a healthy majority said that Shahidan spoke to him and assured him that he would be rewarded with a position in a government agency. Others are also waiting for some promises to be fulfilled by July, when Umno grassroots start deciding on the party’s top office bearers.

The frequent use of party whips makes the idea of parliamentary discussion largely irrelevant as the role of the individual legislator gets marginalised. In effect, the idea of a debate gets rendered meaningless if all legislation gets seen only through the lens of the party and its position on the subject. Particularly when these positions get taken not so much on the basis of ideology or a vision for the nation’s progress, but on the basis of narrow and immediate political advantage, the Parliament becomes a prolonged exercise in arm-wrestling, with every new issue becoming an excuse to flex muscle rather than use it productively.

Given that the future looks equally coalition-ridden, the inability of the political system to find a mechanism by which the business of the nation can go on even as political differences get an arena where they can be played out, is likely to be have a crippling impact on governance. In a larger sense we have reduced the idea of democracy to that of elections, the idea of governance to that of power and the rent extraction it enables and the idea of Parliament to an arena for scoring dubious political points. The nosiness of the Parliament is a testimony to the fact that there is nothing worthwhile left to say; all that matter is the loudness with which one screams. Content has been replaced by scale; and the act of disrupting the house is nothing but a sign of the clarity that prevails in the political class about how redundant it has become.

Why Mahathir had given Najib shelter. .Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah said  point-blank that Datuk Seri Shahidan Kassim  his personal matter and duty as a member of the Najib’s club

Najib has been facing mounting pressure from both within and outside Umno after Election 2013 when Barisan won just 133 federal seats, seven less than in the 2008 general elections. The East Malaysian MPs contributed one-third or 47 federal seats. But Najib only handed out 20 minister and deputy minister posts to MPs from East Malaysia, causing parties like SPDP from Sarawak to have only one representative although they won four parliament seats. a large number of Barisan MPs from East Malaysia had met the former finance minister.Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah, as the Kelantan prince was a veteran in Malaysian politics.  Kelantan prince was a veteran in Malaysian politics. constantly performs some tantrik rituals to neutralize his adversaries. And, of course, the rocks on his fingers are still there.

The underlying assumption of elections is that every individual takes a personal decision, on the basis of the inputs received, to choose the person deemed suitable to represent his or her interests. The truth is in the Indian social construct, the individual does not necessarily act as a singular entity and is often inclined to act as part of a larger collective. This is true not only of elections, but of many other walks of life. The election is in some ways almost asking for people to find their own appropriate collective and to cobble together enough numbers so as to increase the bargaining power at their disposal. It is rational to do so, for otherwise every individual feels virtually no ability to influence the outcome.

The middle class distrust of politicians is in part a sense of frustration with the electoral process. Part of the reason why visible outrage does not automatically translate into higher voting percentages is because the idea is laced with a sense of presumptive futility. It is also the reason why movements like the one led by Anna Hazare get traction; the apolitical nature of the struggle is found valuable. The disenchantment with the movement is in part due to its involvement in electoral politics; the paradox being that the impetus for change cannot succeed unless it becomes a variable in the elections but the very act of getting involved with anything to do with elections is seen as an act of contamination.

Electoral reforms will help. But too much has to change before reforms by themselves can be effective. As a structure, elections cannot create intent; that must exist in the system. Without intent, the structure merely re-inforces and perhaps amplifies all that is already wrong. Even when elections are not rigged, in some ways they always are. If not by design, then by definition.

This  party  UMNO that never lost an opportunity to mock the intellectuality of members for its overdependence on one family as one-horse carriages to carry Najib’s heavy baggage the first time,  has chosen to narrow the choice to a single option. It has closed all other windows and is poised to move from a cadre-based, ideologically-motivated party to a leader-driven one. Najib is not just first among equals. If the  Muhyuddinchant is read carefully, he is the one and only.

It is ironic that  UMNO Supreme Council  has joined the rest of the gang in choosing to craft its future politics around the personality of one man. The  fundamental shift in a party that has always put the principle of collective leadership above the sycophancy of personality cult politics. Mahathir is UMNO it seemed that Mahathir  was the only person with a magic wand for all our troubles. There was no acknowledgment of any of his peers:  now  the UMNO “need” a man Muhyuddin,

Now, all eyes will be on UMNO to see how those guys handle what could be a similar scenario. They also have an elderly gentlemen with mega ambitions of becoming the next PM (again!). And there is a Prince waiting in the wings for first lady to organize his coronation. Well, the sooner that happens, the better. At least, the young voter won’t be left in a limbo wondering: Who? What? When? It is always the suspense in a thriller that creates the tension — not the climax. Mahathir has taken care of that. It’Najib. Take it or leave it. Now all eyes will be on UMNO, unless of course, we are all caught off guard by a brand new candidate popping out of the woodwork. Either which way, let’s just get on with it. Rosmah’s future is at stake. Her dreams are directly linked to Najib becoming UMNO PRESIDENT unelected. If she feels thwarted and let down, we are in trouble. Big trouble. But are any of our mighty UMNO warlords thinking of her?

I wish I could have offered sage advice and reassurance when Rosmah sought it. But I sounded hollow to my own ears. Our bachchalog have a built-in radar and can sense discomfort very easily. I backed off and quietly accepted the offered peda. The next elections are upon us. There are just two key issues that need to be addressed: tackling corruption and creating jobs. If the country moves forward,. It will be a win- win situation Rosmah will strike back and demand her rights. Rosmah’s time has come….ignore her and face defeat.

It was a Monday afternoon with primary school pupils buzzing into their parents’ vehicles and buses after school hours, while some sought shade under the trees dotting Jalan Peel.

Layers of walls away from the din, Cheras Umno division chief Datuk Seri Syed Ali Alhabsee’s vocals rose to a pitch as he explained to newsmen why the top two posts in Umno should not be contested for the sake of the party’s unity.

He was mettlesome in his disposition and grimaced at times, with his hands in the air expressing his views to support Umno president Datuk Seri Najib Razak and deputy president Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin’s positions in the party.

“As the ‘orang lama’ (senior) in the party, I have experienced so many moments in the party through thick and thin. I can only suggest state party leaders to advise their grassroots members to keep Najib and Muhyiddin in the top two posts.”

Syed Ali opined that although the Umno party constitution had provided a democratic platform for members to vie for the seats, it had been proven that the combination of Najib and Muhyiddin had rejuvenated the Malays’ support for the party.

Unity is the key word in this context. History has shown that Umno has the tendency to become fractious whenever someone decides to lock horns with the incumbents at the top.

While it is normal for such talks to crop up, usually done in the spirit of democracy, challengers for the top posts can ultimately create splits and dissension among members.

In the past, when Umno veteran Tengku Razaleigh Tengku Hamzah challenged Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad for Umno’s presidency, all hell broke loose and the splinter party Semangat 46 emerged.

That episode is just one of many reasons why Umno members, in general, prefer the president and deputy president’s posts to be uncontested.

The gravity of the situation is not difficult to surmise: With Umno as the backbone of Barisan Nasional, the ruling coalition, an abrupt change in the party leadership without a pertinent need could render its structure brittle, politically and governmentally.

“The current political landscape does not permit it. The opposition is stronger now and that is the reality. Moreover, the reason why Barisan Nasional is still ruling is because Umno is its main pillar of strength.

“A contest for the party’s leadership can weaken the party and if Umno is bogged down by factionalism, it can turn the situation all the more dire for BN. This is the reason why the same call was made in the previous party elections,” said the political cluster head of the National Professors’s Council, Professor Datuk Dr Mustafa Ishak.

Disunity will trickle down to the grassroots level.

While the coalition won 133 of the parliament’s 222 seats, the numbers fell short of internal projections and Najib’s own conviction that he would restore the party’s cherished two-thirds majority in parliament. His party’s non-Malay political partners found themselves all but obliterated and the coalition lost the popular vote for the first time.

Now reliant largely on the votes of rural communities and the Borneo states, Barisan and its race-based constituent parties are struggling with an identity crisis.

For the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the coalition’s dominant party and the party of every Malaysian Prime Minister since independence, the question is whether to fall behind Najib and his slickly packaged reform agenda or return to the more conservative, nationalist ideology of the past.

“It’s hard to get a sense of where the country’s going, until UMNO has had its election and we know how the factions align themselves,” said Keith Leong, a political analyst with KRA Associates in Kuala Lumpur. “This is a year of two elections. It could well be that the UMNO poll turns out to be more important than the general election.”

Already Najib is attempting to appeal not only to the nationalists and the progressives within his own party, but also the reform-minded and increasingly vocal urban Malaysians, who are largely behind the opposition. He is keen to avoid the fate of his predecessor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi; forced out in an internal party coup amid disappointment over 2008′s result.

Claiming victory in the election, Najib warned of a “Chinese tsunami” – Malaysia is majority Muslim Malay but also has sizeable populations of Chinese, Indians and indigenous people – that had turned against Barisan, but spoke also of the need for “national reconciliation”.

Hours later, Najib was once again on the defensive after Utusan Malaysia, a Malay-language UMNO-controlled newspaper, splashed its front page with the headline: “What more do the Chinese want?” But while the condemnation from civil society and the opposition was swift, Najib said little.

Khairy Jamaluddin, Abdullah’s 37-year-old son-in-law and the leader of UMNO’s Youth wing wasn’t so reticent. “The ideological lines have been drawn,” he tweeted to his more than 300,000 followers, fortified by a resounding win in his own constituency. “Game on.”

“The future of this party must be won by those who are committed to a moderate, centrist path,” he told Al Jazeera in an interview last month, shortly before being named Minister for Youth and Sports. ” Utusan ‘s headline represents precisely the sort of faction I stand against. If this party is moulded in the image of that headline then I don’t think we have a future in the next general election.”

Under election rules that will be used for the first time this year, some 146,500 of UMNO’s estimated 3.5 million members will vote for the Supreme Council, vice presidents, the heads of the youth and women’s wings and, in theory, the party’s deputy president and president. Previously, voting was limited to the 2,000 delegates at the party conference, a system that helped create a class of party warlords with the money and influence to keep their favoured leaders in power and to dominate the party’s political agenda.

But Ahmad Mustapha Hassan, who worked with former Prime Ministers Abdul Razak Hussein, Najib’s father, and Mahathir Mohamad, doubts the new system will have much effect.

“UMNO cannot be changed,” he said. “Mahathir created warlords and the warlords will not give up their power. If you try to take away their funds they will go against you and I don’t think Najib will want to do that. He wants to keep his position. UMNO is still in the grip of Mahathir.”

Shortly after the election, Mahathir questioned Najib’s leadership. Last week, he insisted that a vote on the top leadership was necessary, even though one hasn’t been held since the late 1980s.

Meanwhile, Utusan has produced more editorials questioning the commitment of the country’s ethnic Chinese to Malaysia. And while Najib has insisted that the elections were free and fair, he has said also that parliament would now have oversight of the elections commission, currently under the prime minister’s office, and that his coalition had also filed petitions against some of the results.

Saifuddin Abdullah, a leading moderate and a member of UMNO’s Supreme Council, is in no doubt that, without Najib, Barisan would have done even worse. He insisted UMNO needed to accept that Malaysia has changed and the party must change with it.

“Fear no longer works,” he told Al Jazeera. “No issues are deemed ‘too sensitive’ any more. The main reason we survived the election was [Najib's] four years of transformation. Without it we could have lost more.”

As the opposition presses home its concerns about the general election, it is confident Saturday’s rally will be peaceful. Once again, they’re expecting at least 100,000 people to attend. Najib’s response will give an indication of whether Malaysia is headed towards a more open and democratic future – or flirting once again with its autocratic past.

Republicans such as Newt Gingrich, John McCain and Mitt Romney never fail to seize an opportunity to emphasise what they believe as ‘American exceptionalism’ – freedom vs tyranny, and a mandate to impose American values on others.

The Exceptional Malay

It has its origins in America’s history as a haven for puritans fleeing religious conformity, as decreed by King Charles I, “a shining city upon a hill”.

This unique chapter in human history has since been upheld as part of the tenets of faith in American politics. It must not be questioned even if the country has done something terribly wrong. Hence, the US, in the name of American exceptionalism, has committed great atrocities with impunity – from Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Pakistan to Iraq. You name it.

That is not all. Stepthen Walt, a Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University, once made an attempt to debunk the myth of American exceptionalism by pointing out that up to 400,000 Filipinos were killed when Washington was fighting against Spain over the Philippines, while aerial bombing during World War II killed 305,000 German and 330,000 Japanese civilians. General Curtis LeMay had to make sure the US would not lose the war, otherwise, “we would be prosecuted as war criminals”.

Thanks to this peculiar ideology which has penetrated all layers of American society, that whoever criticises US foreign policy does so at the risk of being branded as ‘anti-American’.

But my piece today is not another ‘anti-American’ rant, for I am simply using this example to highlight how irresponsible politicians and public figures can easily turn fallacies into truths and justify their own misdeeds or prejudice by referring to ‘Malaysian exceptionalism’.

Why is Malaysia exceptional? According to former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad, it is because this is a multiracial country and one must be ultra-sensitive to the feelings of others.

The Police Force is a ‘symbol’

Therefore, one cannot be harsh on the Police despite the rising crime rate in the wake of deteriorating public security, as the Police force is largely made up of Malays and any criticism in this regard is tantamount to dismissing the Malay community as a whole.

For Mahathir and UMNO, the Police force symbolises the professionalism and competency of the Malays, and must be protected from public criticism. It is so ‘exceptional’ that even Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian chose to play down the fact that more Indians had been beaten to death in Police custody than any other ethnic group.

When the Cabinet and the Police unite against the calls for the long-proposed Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC), they do so out of the fear of more dirty linens being exposed in broad daylight and, more importantly, that the Malay community may come to know more about the systemic failure of an institution that used to be held in high regard, which would spell more trouble for UMNO, no doubt.

And all Malays are seemingly born with a divine duty to defend first and foremost their own race. Should anyone be audacious enough to join the Opposition parties – especially DAP – he or she would become a pengkhianat (traitor) instantly, even faster than the Prime Minister’s wife Rosmah Mansor changes her handbag.

And for the non-Malays to challenge UMNO hegemony would be a crime worse than treachery, which explains why the shouts for Ambiga Sreenevasan’s citizenship to be stripped of are growing louder, with Mahathir leading the charge.

In Mahathir’s view, there is only one way for the non-Malays to become ‘fully Malaysian’ and thereby overcome this ‘Malaysian exceptionalism’, which is to speak Malay as their first language and to adopt Malay customs. Of course, one must not be too rich or it would again hurt the sentiments of the Malays.

But would one be so naive to believe that Mahathir has the best interests of the country at heart? Just look at the way he despises the poor Malays. There is even a marked social stratification within the Malay community today, and I honestly do not think Kedah Menteri Besar Mukhriz Mahathir (right) shares much in common with the maid who comes and cleans my apartment every now and then.

In all likelihood, Mukhriz would feel more comfortable negotiating business deals with all the filthy rich tycoons in Malaysia, be they Vincent Tan, Ananda Krishnan, or Syed Mokhtar Albukhary.

Still not worthy enough

In other words, a pious, dutiful Malay is still not worthy of Mahathir’s attention unless he or she is as ‘successful’ and wealthy as his sons. As for those who sincerely believe that by becoming more Malay, they would win the hearts and minds of the ruling elites in UMNO, don’t be fooled. Even if one speaks impeccable Malay, would one then have qualified as a true Malaysian? Not likely, for the next criteria would be for one to embrace Islam – UMNO’s version of Islam, to be exact.

There will be more hurdles added to the journey of ‘becoming completely Malaysian’ just because this country is unique and ‘exceptional’. It is precisely because of this obsession with ‘Malaysian exceptionalism’ that UMNO is not putting any real efforts into arresting the decline in Malaysia’s competitiveness and curbing the rampant corruption. Instead, Mahathir and his cohorts prefer to talk about race and religion so as to fend off any challenge to their privileged position.

These days, no-one exemplifies the idiocy of ‘Malaysian exceptionalism’ better than former Court of Appeal judgeMohd Noor Abdullah (left), who has urged non-Malays to “repay the past sacrifice” made by the Malays in allowing Bahasa Melayu to be written in Rumi rather than Jawi “for the sake of national unity”.

It is suffice to say that there is no official record of the non-Malays making such a request at independence – the decision was most probably collectively made by English-educated elites, including Tunku Abdul Rahman, Abdul Razak Hussein and Tan Cheng Lok – the Malay language is heavily influenced bySanskrit and was written in various scripts before the arrival of Islam in the peninsula.

And I wonder if either Mahathir or Mohd Noor has heard of the Kedukan Bukit Inscription. Personally, I would have no issue with learning Jawi, but to distort historical facts in order to serve UMNO’s agenda is an act most unbecoming of a Yang  Arif (the learned).

The conclusion? The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. Indeed, nowhere in the region of South-East Asia has this quote been proven true time and again than in Malaysia, and that is truly exceptional.

Now that the U.S. government has charged NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden with espionage and theft of government property, the NSA’s spying activities will remain in the news for a while. Which is good, since public evaluation of our government’s policies is critical to the integrity of our democracy.

Ironically, this is also what makes it essential for Snowden to face trial.

He is a hero in that he has exposed a major initiative by the NSA to spy on American citizens, which violates our most cherished principles of privacy and of not being ‘monitored’ by the authorities without real cause and due process. If our basic means of communication — emails, phone calls, texts — are all subject to eavesdropping by our government, we risk becoming an Orwellian nightmare. Snowden’s actions, questionable or not, were the catalyst that brought this issue to the fore and for that we should thank him.

However, that does not mean that he should not have to answer for his actions. If that sounds incongruous to you, it is not. Take for example the father of a teenage girl who is raped and killed. Let’s also assume that the rapist/killer is freed by a court of law due to a legal technicality. In that circumstance, would anyone fault the father for taking the law into his own hands and delivering vigilante justice to the killer? Very likely not, and there is an argument to be made that the law and justice are not the same thing at all.

And yet despite our sympathy for the father, we support a legal system that views the father’s actions as criminal. Extenuating circumstances or a temporary insanity defense might secure the man an acquittal but he must still be tried for his crime. The reason for this is that our system of law only works if it treats all defendants equally and subjects them to the same process, regardless of how ‘just’ a defendant’s actions were.

It is up to a judge or jury to decide guilt or innocence, not us. Without that, our laws would become meaningless and impossible to enforce since everyone can have their own high-minded motivations for doing whatever they do.

Snowden is currently in Hong Kong and will likely resist extradition. I think that is a mistake. It is fine for the public to ask for clemency and for the courts to acquit him despite what he did, but he must first respect our system of law and return for trial — or he will be making a mockery of the very democratic principles that he claims he was trying to protect.

Real heroes don’t run. They do what they believe is right, then boldly face the music so that we are forced to confront our own sense of fairness and uphold our own values.

Admitted leaker Edward Snowden took flight Sunday in evasion of U.S. authorities, seeking asylum in Ecuador and leaving the Obama administration scrambling to determine its next step in what became a game of diplomatic cat-and-mouse.

The former National Security Agency contractor and CIA technician fled Hong Kong and arrived at the Moscow airport, where he planned to spend the night before boarding an Aeroflot flight to Cuba. Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said his government received an asylum request from Snowden, and the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said it would help him. “He goes to the very countries that have, at best, very tense relationships with the United States,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., adding that she feared Snowden would trade more U.S. secrets for asylum. “This is not going to play out well for the national security interests of the United States.”

The move left the U.S. with limited options as Snowden’s itinerary took him on a tour of what many see as anti-American capitals. Ecuador in particular has rejected the United States’ previous efforts at cooperation, and has been helping WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, avoid prosecution by allowing him to stay at its embassy in London.

Snowden gave The Guardian and The Washington Post documents disclosing U.S. surveillance programs that collect vast amounts of phone records and online data in the name of foreign intelligence, but often sweep up information on American citizens. Officials have the ability to collect phone and Internet information broadly but need a warrant to examine specific cases where they believe terrorism is involved.

Snowden had been in hiding for several weeks in Hong Kong, a former British colony with a high degree of autonomy from mainland China. The United States formally sought Snowden’s extradition from Hong Kong but was rebuffed; Hong Kong officials said the U.S. request did not fully comply with their laws.

The Justice Department rejected that claim, saying its request met all of the requirements of the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Hong Kong.

During conversations last week, including a phone call Wednesday between Attorney General Eric Holder and Hong Kong Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen, Hong Kong officials never raised any issues regarding sufficiency of the U.S. request, a Justice spokesperson said.

A State Department official said the United States was in touch through diplomatic and law enforcement channels with countries that Snowden could travel through or to, reminding them that Snowden is wanted on criminal charges and reiterating Washington’s position that Snowden should only be permitted to travel back to the U.S.

Those officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case.

The Justice Department said it would “pursue relevant law enforcement cooperation with other countries where Mr. Snowden may be attempting to travel.”

The White House would only say that President Barack Obama had been briefed on the developments by his national security advisers.

Russia’s state ITAR-Tass news agency and Interfax cited an unnamed Aeroflot airline official as saying Snowden was on the plane that landed Sunday afternoon in Moscow.

Upon his arrival, Snowden did not leave Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. One explanation could be that he wasn’t allowed; a U.S. official said Snowden’s passport had been revoked, and special permission from Russian authorities would have been needed.

“It’s almost hopeless unless we find some ways to lean on them,” said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.

The Russian media report said Snowden intended to fly to Cuba on Monday and then on to Caracas, Venezuela.

U.S. lawmakers scoffed. “The freedom trail is not exactly China-Russia-Cuba-Venezuela, so I hope we’ll chase him to the ends of the earth, bring him to justice and let the Russians know there’ll be consequences if they harbor this guy,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

With each suspected flight, efforts to secure Snowden’s return to the United States appeared more complicated if not impossible. The United States does not have an extradition treaty with Russia, but does with Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador. Even with an extradition agreement though, any country could give Snowden a political exemption.

The likelihood that any of these countries would stop Snowden from traveling on to Ecuador seemed remote. While diplomatic tensions have thawed in recent years, Cuba and the United States are hardly allies after a half century of distrust.

Venezuela, too, could prove difficult. Former President Hugo Chavez was a sworn enemy of the United States and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, earlier this year called Obama “grand chief of devils.” The two countries do not exchange ambassadors.

U.S. pressure on Caracas also might be problematic given its energy exports. The U.S. Energy Information Agency reports Venezuela sent the United States 900,000 barrels of crude oil each day in 2012, making it the fourth-largest foreign source of U.S. oil.

“I think 10 percent of Snowden’s issues are now legal, and 90 percent political,” said Douglas McNabb, an expert in international extradition and a senior principal at international criminal defense firm McNabb Associates.

Assange’s lawyer, Michael Ratner, said Snowden’s options aren’t numerous.

“You have to have a country that’s going to stand up to the United States,” Ratner said. “You’re not talking about a huge range of countries here.”

That is perhaps why Snowden first stopped in Russia, a nation with complicated relations with Washington.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is “aiding and abetting Snowden’s escape,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

“Allies are supposed to treat each other in decent ways, and Putin always seems almost eager to put a finger in the eye of the United States,” Schumer said. “That’s not how allies should treat one another, and I think it will have serious consequences for the United States-Russia relationship.”

It also wasn’t clear Snowden was finished with disclosing highly classified information.

“I am very worried about what else he has,” said Rep. Loretta Sanchez, a California Democrat who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she had been told Snowden had perhaps more than 200 sensitive documents.

Ros-Lehtinen and King spoke with CNN. Graham spoke to “Fox News Sunday.” Schumer was on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Sanchez appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Feinstein was on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Atwitter over internet

Well, if 300,000 people did converge on a field that can only fit 12,000 people, as Anwar had hoped, then the excess would definitely spill over to Dataran Merdeka. And that was the game plan — to ‘occupy’ Dataran Merdeka and trigger a ‘Malaysian Spring’ that would finally bring down the government that Anwar had been trying to bring down for 15 years since 1998.

Raja Petra Kamarudin

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

US politicians have mastered the art of social media outreach. Are their methods and lessons relevant to Mahathir?

We have been witness to an amazing tsunami in Turkey over the last three weeks. Many things have been done, said, heard and felt. Most of us are deeply sad and many of us are confused. But we are all in a learning process and it’s time to get ready to be witness to a great innovation after this chaos.

Yes, since 2001, the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has significantly improved the economy; created jobs; developed health care; made many improvements to Turkey’s infrastructure, such as building roads and bridges; and improved civil society by pushing the army out of politics. It also contributed significantly to Turkey’s efforts to become a mature democracy and challenged the old power structures. Yet nowadays, the picture tells us that somehow Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and many others cannot read the results of the AK Party’s own policies: Turkey is not the same as it was 10 years ago. It has changed. It’s time to change our mindsets in order to see the picture clearly.

Lately, making a mistaken analysis, our prime minister compares himself to previous democratic Prime Ministers Turgut Özal and Adnan Menderes and he acts like a victim, as if the circumstances are the same.

Mr. Erdoğan is much luckier than Mr. Özal and Mr. Menderes and cannot be a victim because the democratic improvements were made by his own party and because of the broad support he has enjoyed.

Somehow, it seems that Erdoğan is convinced that all the people at the street protests against him are either being manipulated by the old forces he has been fighting for his whole political life, or they are provocateurs with the support of other countries. He totally ignores the fact that there are lots of people who truly and sincerely protest only Mr. Erdoğan’s overbearing attitude with regard to their privacy and personal liberties. On Monday Today’s Zaman published poll results indicating that 54.4 percent of Turks “thought the government was interfering in their lifestyle.”

Mr. Erdoğan has to accept that if he cannot change his perception of reality, he will damage the democratic image of Turkey and its prestige in the international arena, which he has been trying to build up for the last decade — if it hasn’t already been damaged in the last three weeks. We don’t need worn out conspiracy theories to read the situation or old-fashioned political vision to see what’s going on. Instead, we have to count on a new generation and listen to them. Our youth wants more dialogue and freedom and less paternalism.

Unfortunately, the prime minister’s tough and uncompromising attitude irritates people and generates anger in society. There are also some in the crowds who contribute to hatred and violence. Ironically, while Bulent Kenes, Today’s Zaman’s editor-in-chief was mobbed by AK Party supporters last week because Today’s Zaman’s published a poll that showed disapproval of the AK Party, a Zaman America correspondent was attacked at New York Gezi Park protests for being a representative of a “pious civil society Hizmet newspaper.”

If we want to have a solid and mature democracy we have to be ready for it. We have to deserve it. Leaders and the society of the 21st century should be open-minded to discussing different ideas and respecting them even if they don’t approve of them. Turkey is an important country in the international arena and shouldn’t try to go back to its old identity. We have been there already and now it is a new day. In order to understand what’s going on, we all need to get rid of the templates and clichés in our attitudes.

First Mr. Erdogan and than rest of us have to understand one simple fact that we cannot create peace by force we should achieve a solid understanding of each other to generate long lasting peace in every dimension in society.

Alie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes, is a lovely quote attributed to Mark Twain, the father of American literature. The context in which Twain made the remark is obscure, but we can be sure it was well before the age of Twitter, Facebook, You Tube, Pinterest and other instruments of social media. Now, as perhaps then, truth has to put on shoes and tie its laces, and hence is slow and heavy-footed, although it travels with certainty. A lie is barefooted — and barefaced — and therefore has no trouble racing across the world.

The lightning fast lanes of the information superhighway had made this travel even quicker — and the lie even more fleet of feet. We saw it earlier this week when a cyber-intruder hacked into the Twitter account of the news agency Associated Press, and falsely tweeted from its account (@ AP) that there had been explosions in the White House and President Obama had been injured. The lie was heard at the same instant in Washington DC and Wellington, New Zealand, in New York and New Delhi. A denial and clarification followed at equal speed, but in the brief seconds or minutes it took for it to put its shoes on, the lie had already been heard and believed by millions across the world.

Despite this mishap — there have been more before and there will be many more hereafter — few doubt that social media is here to stay

Today, there isn’t a politician worth a byte in the US who does not use the internet — in particular social media — for outreach and communication. To get a sense of how pervasive this is, look up the website of Indian-American Congressman Ami Bera, a first-time lawmaker. On his homepage, aside from the cookie cutter layout that offers biographical details in “About” and sundry legislations, issues, and resources, there are links to his Twitter feed, his Facebook page, and to his You Tube and Flicker uploads. In other words, his constituents have more than half a dozen ways of reaching him and interacting with him, beyond the 20th century tools of phone, fax, and email.

It had surprised me that day, June 17 2004, to see Ishrat Jahan’s corner of their one-bedroom house in Mumbra, a largely Muslim ghetto separated from Mumbai both by time and distance. Her table was full of books — mathematics, statistics, science. There was also a half-read novel. One of her teachers at the Khalsa College, where she was studying (BSc, second year), had told me the girl wanted to teach maths after she graduated. “She was very curious, very keen,” he had said.

Ishrat, then just 19, had been killed by the Gujarat police in Ahmedabad two days back, on June 15, along with three men for attempting to assassinate Narendra Modi. An AK-47, which investigators later said might have been planted, was found next to her bullet-splattered body. She didn’t have a chance.

As I pursued the story — catching up with her teachers, friends, relatives — to draw a portrait of the kind of girl she was, the one person I was most reluctant to meet was her mother, Shamima Shaikh. I thought she would rave and ramble, curse the police and attack the media. But the person I came face to face with was quiet and composed — to the extent that it alarmed me.

Someone offered me water as I sat on the floor with a group of people who had come to the house to console the distraught mother and Ishrat’s four sisters. All that Shamima kept saying was, “I don’t know how she reached Ahmedabad.” Zeenat, the eldest of Ishrat’s siblings, who would be closely interrogated and grilled by the Mumbai police in the days that followed, did most of the talking. She, too, seemed bewildered by the fact that Ishrat was there with the three men — one of whom, in the words of a few Gujarat cops, was “close” to her.

Looking around at the only room in Shamima’s shanty, one thing that struck me was the dirty curtains. They either didn’t have a change or hadn’t bothered with it as very few not their impoverished kind came visiting anyway. It was probably the former. If Ishrat was a terrorist she was clearly not doing it for money.

Strangely, the Thane police, like many others who knew Ishrat in Mumbra, was the first to vouch for her “good behaviour”. In fact, as I had reported then, it was the cops in Thane, under whose jurisdiction Mumbra falls, who had dealt the biggest blow to the credibility of the Gujarat police’s “fidayeen theory”. According to the latter, the four who were killed were members of a Lashkar-e-Toiba suicide squad out on a mission to eliminate chief minister Modi.

On June 17 itself, after searches at Ishrat’s Mumbra house, police said they found “no evidence” to show she was either a militant or was linked to any radical organisation. ACP Amar Jadhav had then announced: “We have found nothing that could connect the girl with any terrorist group.” They said they had scanned every piece of paper, every part of the house before they made that statement.

At Ishrat’s college — where mathematics and statistics were her main subjects — her class teacher and principal had expressed shock. She must have been the quiet type, vice-principal SC Dhume had said, adding that if she had opted for maths and stats she “must have been serious about studies”. Principal Ajit Singh seconded that: “She seemed to be very particular about her classes and her practicals. I have had no complaints about her.”

The timing and quickness of the encounter had surprised many then. Modi, still struggling to explain the riots that followed the Godhra train carnage, was shaky in his chair, with Atal Bihari Vajpayee and some of the BJP brass seemingly unconvinced by his show of innocence. The rapid developments in the Ishrat case, eight years after her gunning-down, are surprising many now. Modi, having consolidated his position in the party, is these days gunning for greater glory.

On its part, the CBI says it has proof senior officials of the Intelligence Bureau and the Gujarat police were involved in the “fake encounter” — yes, they are calling it that — of Ishrat Jahan. Apparently, a top IB man and a couple of high-ranking Gujarat cops had colluded to generate intel inputs that would eventually lead to the killings.

The truth may come out soon. Or it may never, as is often the case in our country. There are hundreds who suffer for things they haven’t done. And there are more hundreds who get away with everything they do. Long after Ishrat is gone, I don’t know how her story will end. But I do hope some day Shamima gets the true answer to the only question she has been asking all these years: Why was Ishrat in Ahmedabad that day?

There’s little dispute about BJP entering the 2014 election race with Narendra Modi as the general. The more important question is, can he win? Or perhaps the more important one for the BJP, what will it take to win?

This column is not written with the intent to back the BJP. It is merely a set of actions and events that need to happen if they want to see Modi as PM. As Indian citizens our best outcome is if there’s a tough contest, with each side putting in their best.

With this intent the following game plan for winning 2014 is being offered. Some of the suggestions may not be what you call straight or fair. However, if you try to be that in Indian elections, your result will be a big zero. If the end intent is good, which is to change India for the better, perhaps the means can be unconventional. Anyhow, here is what it may take for Modi to become the PM.

One, work on the fence-sitters. Modi polarises opinion, a fact unlikely to change. A cult-like fan following on one hand, to absolute haters on the other, people’s opi-nion on Modi is divided. Convincing either side to switch is never going to work. However, there’s a large group of fence-sitters, particularly new voters, who still haven’t made up their mind about him. They can be convinced.

However, an inspiring speech or the right slogan won’t do it. They can’t be marketed to. They have to be persuaded on a one-on-one basis. An army of educated, not overtly political volunteers, say one lakh in total or 200 per constituency is required. They’d work one-on-one on no more than eight families, or about 20 votes a day. This would be the level of micro-campaigning required to convince people about the merits of electing someone like Modi.

Trust needs one-on-one interaction, not mass media advertising. Since this process is time and labour intensive, fence-sitter voter data and the right message kit with the volunteers would be important. Modi is one of the rare leaders to pull this kind of support together given his popularity amongst the youth. If one lakh volunteers can work 200 votes each in total, that’s 20 million votes, enough to cause a swing on his side.

Two, the BJP needs to back him completely and be clear on the actual benefits India will have from having a leader like him, apart from just getting rid of the Congress. For instance, Modi will have been CM of a state earlier. This will enable a better Centre-states relationship, often in jeopardy these days. Or, Modi’s decisiveness (after all, they did take a decision in Goa) is something India might badly need.

The focus on job creation can be another one where the youth will respond well. Whatever he is offering, should be clear to the BJP, and eventually to the electorate. Also, the constant references to Gujarat need to stop. What can you do for India, is more important than what was done for Gujarat.

Three, social engineering in the ticket allocation process is vital. Modi supporters are often less caste-conscious as voters. That allows him greater flexibility to field candidates of the caste that will attract the most number of caste-conscious voters (something Congress does extremely well too).

Four, the right amount of saffron-ness. The BJP and the RSS have the occasional tendency to slip into tilak, pagdi and sword photo-op mode. While there’s nothing wrong in such symbolisms, it further consolidates the Muslim vote already against him. Any sign that Modi will bring back the tilak-sword era only exacerbates the fear some have of him.

However, this doesn’t mean there should be nothing Hindu about the campaign. If the Cong-ress will target Muslims, BJP may have little choice but to target Hindus. However, positive Hinduism will work better with the youth. Positive Hinduism is about making India modern, safe, scientific, free, liberal and a society with good values. Rather than attacking other religions and saying Hinduism is better, it should be about how we can be better Hindus. Cleaning up some of our holiest temples, infected with bad management and corrupt priests, would be a wonderful step for instance.

Five, one additional source of votes is consolidating the female vote. Safety of women is a concern valid enough today for a section of women to switch their votes. Modi’s tough, no-nonsense image makes him seem like the kind of guy who can deliver on it. He can win this vote, but his remedies for women’s safety should not be regressive. Any attack on the personal freedom of the youth will backfire badly. People need safety, but they also need personal freedom and choices.

Six, Modi needs to deal with 2002. Not in an awkward, avoid-at-all-possible-costs manner, but take it head-on. This will require some personal risk and introspection. The answers will have to come from within. Tough questions need to be answered.

Narendra Modi did well in Goa, but Delhi is no beach town. To get there, Modi, and a fully supportive BJP, need to pull out all stops. The odds are tough, and if he can make that happen, it will be a minor miracle. But then again, isn’t our country the land of miracles?

For those who do not understand the pace at which devastation arrives The unbeatable Rosmah-Mahathir Sad truth about Malay tragedy not Malay Delima.Most of us live our partisan politics through the media, which generally means cross-firing tweets, posts and TV3 news shows about the latest scandal as interpreted by a rotating stable of  Mahathir strategists, party faithfuls and pundits. But behind Mahathir , there has always been a less topical, more abstract debate between liberal and conservative academics and philosophers about the nature o Malay flourishing and the political and social institutions that best promote it.Modern embryology has corrected an earlier view of the fetus as a part of the mother; from the moment of conception, he holds, it is a “complete, self-integrating organism,” with unique self-directing DNA. The unborn are “living individuals of the species Homo sapiens — members of the human family.” Like all vulnerable beings, they need protection from the powerful who would like to control them. Utilitarian arguments about the benefits that could come from embryonic research or from preventing the birth of an unwanted child are no more valid than the social improvements promised by a eugenicist.

The unbeatable Gauls may soon have a new member in their village to fight against their arch enemy, the Romans. And his name could be Gandhix, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi.

“Conscience and Its Enemies,” doesn’t add much to what he has already written on these matters. But it does bring together an accessible group of essays that put his highly burnished philosophical and constitutional learning on full display. They should, at the very least, unsettle those whose only experiences of social conservatism are the blunderings of Todd Akin and the theatrics of Rush Limbaugh, and perhaps even lead to some reflection that rises above the media brawl.

In his first ever interview, French author Jean-Yves Ferri — who replaced Albert Uderzo, the Italian-born illustrator who invented Asterix and Obelix with his scriptwriter friend Rene Goscinny in 1959 — told TOI that the inseparable warrior Gauls could soon be embarking on an adventure in India “at the time of the Romans.”

“I want to set a new adventure in old-time India,” said Ferri. “Maybe I will introduce a new character in the Gaulish village called Gandhix — named after the most famous Indian, Mahatma Gandhi.”

Ferri will be only the second person to hold the position of author after Uderzo retired in 2011. His new book, “Asterix and the Picts”, is to be released worldwide on October 24.

Dr M wants Rosmah’s biography in schools Former premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad has suggested that Rosmah Mansor’s biography be distributed to schools as a guide for future generations “100 or 200 years from now”.

.readmore  Dr M wants Rosmah’s biography in schools – Malaysiakini

Ferri said writing a new adventure for the Gauls was a real challenge. “The work is very difficult to reproduce,” he said. “Creations by Uderzo and Goscinny are a cocktail of action, humour and adventure with an amazing play of words that keeps both children and adults engrossed. The stories are very intelligent. I intend to use India in one of my stories. Maybe I could get Gandhix to visit Druid Getafix and use the magic potion to become a super Gaul.”

Ferri loves the character of Obelix. “He is a rich character who is candid, innocent yet intelligent,” he says. But his all-time favourite is Geriatrix.

The Asterix series is the world’s bestselling comic-book series — over 350 million copies have sold — and has inspired 12 films.

“Asterix and the Picts” is the 35th book in the series and the first not to be written by Uderzo and Goscinny (Uderzo took over the writing after Goscinny’s death). In it, Ferri introduces a new character called Whiskix who loves Scottish whisky. It tells the story of Asterix and Obelix’s journey from ancient Gaul to Iron Age Scotland and their meetings with the fearsome Pictish clans living there.

Ferri will announce himself to the world for the first time at the University of Glasgow’s meeting on comic books on June 28 and speak about the process of taking over from the world’s most successful comic-book creators.

It’s the forces that always redeem themselves and how! Is it any wonder that people think they are the only ones in the country that work in time of need? Of course, even as we praise the forces, a few words of credit must also be expressed for the organisations vilified by the media, especially the English language onereadmoreclickbelow

As the fighting in Syria becomes increasingly bloody, analyses of the conflict have become increasingly simplified especially as the Americans and Europe are considering arming the rebels and Iran has said that it will send troops to aid Assad’s government which was described by the Independent as ‘plunging America into the great Sunni-Shia conflict.’ Perhaps the most commonly used lens through which the events are being viewed is that of sectarianism. The recent declaration by Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi in Qatar that Sunnis the world over should mobilise for jihad in Syria coupled with Hizbollah’s now open involvement in aiding the Syrian army has drawn the superficial yet dangerous analysis that the war is now simply a sectarian battle between Shias and Sunnis. While it is true that the sectarian narrative is one part of the wider problem problem, it is important to remember that this view is pushed by vested interests that stand to gain from such a reductionist understanding.

Most analyses, depending on their pre-commitment, attempt to make broad generalisations in the way they describe the Syrian goverment and her allies or indeed the opposition. The actions of the infamous Jabhat an-Nusra are wrongly used to condemn the entire opposition as a Salafi conspiracy and the government is often simplistically portrayed as an embattled religious minority, an ‘off-shoot’ of Shi’ism, clinging on to power with the aid of ‘Shi’a’ powers such as Iran and Hizbollah. Here is it is important to note that the Alawis, who are now being called infidels by mainstream Sunni scholars, have in the past been recognised as Muslims by prominent Sunni scholars such as Amin al-Husaini, the Mufti of Palestine, who issued a fatwa in this regard in the wake of the decline of the Ottoman Empire and rise of pan-Arabism. It is also an overlooked fact that many Sunnis have stood by the regime, just as many Alawis continue to fight against the government.

The coverage given to the involvement of various foreign fighters place to much emphasis on religion being the root cause.  Certain Shi’a militias have gone to protect important shrines and Sunni fighters have gone to fight a heretical government. However, neither of these groups represent the interests of the Syrian people. It must also be underscored that the terms Shi’a and Sunni do not describe static interpretations of Islam or homogenous social groups. The fact is that religion is successfully used by both sides in order to manipulate a struggle that is mainly to do with economic, political and therefore wider geo-strategic interests. The tactical move by Hizbollah to support Assad is seen as one catalysed by the organisation being Shia. However, it is  important to realise that Hizbollah is by now a very real political presence in Lebanon and therefore will act to preserve its regional influence. This has nothing to do with it being Shia or not. If the Shia-Sunni rift was really so fundamentally ideologically unbridgable and unresolvable then Sunnis in both Lebanon, Syria and other countries would not have supported Hizbollah in the aftermath of the 2006 war with Israel up until their involvement in Syria. A few years ago when traveling in predominantly Sunni parts of Lebanon and Syria I found Hassan Nasrallah’s photograph in shops, other public places and people’s houses.

Although the temptation is to see Iran, Qatar and Saudi Arabia as countries which are primarily driven by a specific religious ideology, this assumption would neglect the very real and overriding interest that these countries have in acting in their national interest. Iran, with its massive energy potential, from the oil in the Caspian Sea to its vast gas reserves, will inevitably act in its national interest. Similarly Saudi Arabia and Qatar are countries that are driven by their particular aspirations. Although Saudi Arabia, like Iran, has hardline clerics who are on panels that decide or comment on policy matters,  it is the states’s interest that is the ultimate measure. The Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia and Iran are neigbors that are in natural competition over control of trade routes, existing and future global oil and gas supplies as well as  other issues. In other words they are contending for regional influence.  It is inevitable that these countries, like many other nation-states, will try and use religion instrumentally in order to create the illusion of an existential threat that must be dealt with.

However, it is crucial to realise that the spillover of this kind of sectarianism will have a deadly affect in countries beyond the Middle East and perhaps most importantly in South Asia with its large Muslim population. It is therefore encouraging to see influential Muslim voices emerge in opposition to the shrill clamour about the current war in Syria being the inevitable fulfillment of an ancient ideological rift. In a recent statement the president of the All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat, Dr. Zafarul Islam Khan, condemned the move to convert a political, popular and democratic struggle against a family dictatorship into a Sunni-Shia war. He further warned Indian Muslim scholars and leaders to be ‘vigilant against this menace’ and not allow it to enter and destroy the community. His fear is perhaps most pertinently illustrated by the case of Afghanistan and the deadly outcome of the manipulation of religion in trying to fight battles over economic and political influence. As America considers engaging with the Taleban in Qatar, something it did in the 1990s in its quest for oil security, one of the questions that arises is whether they will also one day be willing to sit down with extreme groups such as the Jabhat an-Nusra in the future? If  It is crucial for the world to not buy into the hollow discourse of sectarianism and therefore entrench stereotypes that are nothing more than a ruse for the geo-strategic aspirations of certain countries.

Written by  Wong Choon Mei,

Distressingly, this is being enabled by media that promotes the very people who are architects of this mess simply because at this point in time, what they have to say is useful in attacking the current dispensation#BLACK505:  . This selective use of critics studiously ignores the larger context;Even now, there is a possibility that the old stick-together-and-deny-everything gambit might just work. UMNO president sees no reason to resign in spite of the scandal having reached his doorstep and while many others are baying for his blood, no one seems to want any real change. The people leading the charge are part of the same formation that has been instrumental in creating the monster we now seek to tame, and are using this crisis to further their own ends. In the name of cleansing UMNO, it is possible that all we are seeing is an attempted coup, where one rotten piece is sought to be replaced by another.

In Malaysia, where UMNO is dominant, it is almost impossible to change the government through the ballot box because of the past gerrymandering by unscrupulous people including Mahathir Mohamad and even Abdullah Badawi.

However, the Umno legacy of “collective grievances” inflicted onto the rest of the country may in the end be its own undoing. This is the crucial common denominator that unites 51% of Malaysia against them.

The second tie is the social media network that helped to communicate down the line the latest developments and happenings in the Opposition, uniting it with the people of the county and the rest of the world.

Without freedom of speech and a free press, the Umno-BN government could take any action or make any laws it wants unobserved by its own people and the outside world.READMORE Americk Sidhu : RPK dont prostitute your asshole to distract attention from who ordered Altantuya’s MURDER!

It is ironic that in GE13, Pakatan has won 7 more seats and taken 51% of the popular vote while Umno-BN has slid further. Yet in the next 5 years, the going will be even tougher for Pakatan than for Umno-BN.

The call is very clear for greater courage from the Pakatan. It not yet time for it to rest on its laurels and to ‘enjoy’ the fruits of its hard work yet. Otherwise, Malaysians voters will dump the PR in GE14 for not doing enough to fulfill their primary request – which is to take over the federal government and make real broad-based structural reforms to save this country.

The test before Pakatan MPs as they doll themselves to take their oaths in Parliament is far greater than for Umno-BN, which by now is practically lawless being a law unto itself having managed to get away scot-free despite all the outrageous tricks and stunts they pulled the past 5 years.

So Pakatan MPs, especially the ‘boys and girls’, please get savvy and learn ‘guerrilla warfare’ real fast because you will now be fighting a completely lawless and amoral entity.

Is that how UMNO minister exonerates themselves from fraud, mischief and gerrymandering? A fraud is still a fraud regardless of perception.Shabery, you are a very shollow person. Taking office of MP does not mean the Government is legit, it only means that they have to fulfill their responibilities to the people that elected them. They still have to work but like you says the mentality of UMNO is to get benefits and be comfortable then get rich?Shabery, you are a very shollow person. Taking office of MP does not mean the Government is legit, it only means that they have to fulfill their responibilities to the people that elected them. They still have to work but like you says the mentality of UMNO is to get benefits and be comfortable then get rich?…its not the end of the story . U BN guys cheated . They shud not be 133 bn mps. ait till we prove it. Very soon it will be u who is crying and looking pitiful

In the May 5 general election, DAP won the most seats with 38 versus PKR’s 30 and PAS’ 21. Most of their wins also came with thumping majorities. But is DAP really so strong? They should not forget that most of their wins came from Chinese-dominated seats which they insisted on and exerted enormous pressure on PKR and PAS to yield to their candidates. The fact is the Chinese are already pro-Opposition and there is no need to ‘convert’ their thinking. Maybe this is also why DAP leaders are reluctant to take risks and get nabbed for attending the Black 505 rallies. Instead some even behaved like their Umno counterparts and actively contributed to the scaremongering over the event.

Let’s not forget that it is what the voters want that counts, not DAP, PAS or PKR. The Chinese ardently want change and if they don’t get this from DAP and Pakatan, they will look else where. So cut through the hype and thanksgiving rhetoric. The core electoral promise has already been broken. And to make it worse, it looks like the DAP leaders have no intention to stick their necks out to stop a repeat electoral robbery. It seems they just want to have their 5 years of being a Member of Parliament and state assemblyperson. They want to stick to the safe and narrow, the self-glorifying rhetoric without output. If this is so, at GE14, why should Malaysian Chinese vote for them again? They might as well stick with the mousy, greedy and selfish MCA. As for the Malays, it is odd but DAP is to most of them what Umno is to the non-Malays – something that the Pakatan leaders should take note of.

Ahmad Shabery Cheek says to him, the ‘Black 505′ movement ended the moment the 89 Pakatan Rakyat MPs took their oath. Of the physical features that reveal men and their mind, the moustache is among the foremost. Much has been written about by psychologists and behavioural scientists on the meaning of the different shapes and sizes of whiskers that men choose to grow. The mush, it appears, isn’t just an indicator of who the owner is but also a pointer to his state of mind. Some grow facial hair as soon as they are capable of doing so. This is the kind of quality minister UMNO produces. Absolutely stupid beyond redemption. The rakyat pays for all the MPs, including you Shabery albeit you being an illegal MP. Swearing in does not absolve UMNO & your cohort EC of the GE13 fraud commited. All you 133 BN stooges cheated your way into Parliament. Period !…its not the end of the story . U BN guys cheated . They shud not be 133 bn mps. ait till we prove it. Very soon it will be u who is crying and looking pitiful

Blackout 505 rally on Saturday saw the attendance of about 9,000 participants, who had marched to Padang Merbok from seven locations around the city.

On another matter, Khalid said police investigations into alleged seditious remarks by Pas vice-president Datuk Husam Musa and student Khalid Mohd Ismath had been completed.

He said police had briefed the Attorney-General’s Chambers on the investigations, which were classified under the Sedition Act.

Husam, who allegedly issued seditious remarks — that supporters who joined the illegal Blackout 505 rally and sacrificed themselves would be martyrs — was picked up by Ampang police in Pandan Indah on Saturday. He was remanded for two days to facilitate investigations.

In Kota Baru, Husam, who is the assemblyman for Salor, was released on bail after being remanded by police for two days.

For the first time in Malaysia’s history, the Opposition dared to say no. Anwar and Pakatan voiced their rejection of the election results. They mobilized their followers to protest the fraudulent electoral process and its outcomes and launched the Black 505 rallies. But have Anwar and Pakatan succeeded?

So far, the desired outcome of their actions has not materialized but they must not give up. UMNO-BN still formed the government, they continued to cheat with the election of the Speaker, making a laughing stock of themselves by forcing their own reps to sign a so-called secret ballot so that all would toe the line and vote in a controversial toady back into office.

At the same time, it was ironic that as the re-elected Speaker was pompously calling for ‘change’ in his acceptance speech, 32 youth activists were roughed up and arrested by the police outside Parliament. In other words, nothing has changed.

And meanwhile, the Black 505 rallies seem to have lost steam despite clear evidence of public support. No doubt, the crowds are no longer so large but obviously, if you have attended one or two such ‘ceramahs’, you won’t want to go again unless there are new issues or speeches to hear. So the right medicine is not to dump the rallies but to ask, what new strategies can we apply to keep the public interest intact? Actually, if the crowd size tapers down to sustainable levels, that’s fine because there may be another 5 years to go before the next general election, so don’t throw away this powerful and precious early momentum.

Also, has there been enough ‘outreach’ to all the towns in the country yet? Who is really losing interest here – the Pakatan leaders of the people? Who is feeling the fatigue? Why are there no effort to galvanize public interest with new issues? Why zero search for new tacks to keep the flame burning? Also, why are only PKR and PAS involved and not DAP?

Cheeky Ahmad Shabery, I don’t know you are a ” dick head” or born stupid! Swearing in is the duty of all MPs but election fraud is a complete a different matter! Than why did BN/ UMNO filed petition the outcome of 20 results of the GE? They also swear in and are you telling the petitions are a joke ? No wonder you screwed up the Sport Minostry! How come Najib still having such guys guys in the cabinet? Is BN short intelligent MPs?The 89 PR MPs were elected despite cheating against them. Some of the 133 BN MPs may not have won if there was no cheating. So there is no reason why the PR MPs should not take the oath .Sometimes, the formidable morphs into the pathetic. For a long time, TV3 juggernaut, with its potent combination of powerful interests seemed to carry such sweeping and overwhelming force that it looked to be above any challenge, criticism or scandal. , administrators, sponsors, franchisees, the television broadcaster, commentators and the mainstream media at large all appeared to be part of a monolithic structure that acted in unison and found a way of deflecting all criticism.

But there are also others like Cheeky Ahmad Shabery  and Najib who have developed a fondness for upper lip plumage midway through their careers, has no moustache played a role in their newfound success? Or is it the other way around? you! sliver spilling out YOUR stinking mouth! Stop criticizing and feel very happy about what you said. The rakyat knows you’re another stupid kampung boy from Kemaman who is trying to lick your bosses’ shitty arse to show that you have a very minute brain. Don’t be happy about winning by cheating and frauds. You bloody illegitimate MP. The parliament doesn’t belong to you, 52% of the people have voted the opposition to go to parliament. So, just SHUT UP YOUR DIRTY, FILTHY MOUTH.

Brain Dead is the best way to describe this guy. Just want to remind you that inspite of the ‘cheating’, 51% of M’sians voted for PR. In reality 60% of M’sians were with PR. BN is an illegitimate govt. in the Peoples Court of Opinion. oath taking and election irregularities are two different things stupid. Even if one had taken oath and then court rule out the election at certain constituency is null, the MP concerned is automatically also null and void lending for another election. oath taking and election irregularities are two different things stupid. Even if one had taken oath and then court rule out the election at certain constituency is null, the MP concerned is automatically also null and void lending for another election.

Many governments in the world have established some sort of democracy and Malaysia has her own peculiar version which cannot be branded with any particular name.

It is not even a Malaysian version of democracy per se but purely and totally – it is UMNO’s own version of democracy. And sad to say, Prime Minister Najib Razak’s party knows little about the subject, hence the great controversies and boorish clownishness.

What UMNO has done to “democracy” is not to practice it but to institutionalize the facades of democracy, including regular multiparty elections to give the appearance of being a democratic country. These multiparty elections have never been free or fair, resulting in the formation of an authoritarian government.

Many people – within and outside Malaysia – may take these democratic facades for real. Many others, however, do not. More than anyone, the Opposition parties and candidates here who have suffered the worst consequences of the cheating know very well that the present government is only playing a game and not practicing legitimate democracy or democratic elections.

Seems like Pakatan may also be experiencing a dose of ‘over success’ among its ranks. It is obvious that the pretty boy and girls of the Opposition, and a good example of these are in the DAP, seem to care more about the frills and fuss of being in Parliament, no? They certainly seem to hanker  for the high government posts, the power-dressing that befits their double-barelled qualifications, the chauffeured driven cars and plush-carpeted corridors of power.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with that. Just don’t do it in the political space – especially that which belongs to the Opposition. In the Opposition ring – particularly in a semi-dictatorship like Malaysia -fighters are needed. Really tough ones. So like those in MCA, DAP boys and girls should move on to the corporate scene where they can make more money although they won’t enjoy so much fame. But stop wasting the precious 5-year mandates of the people. Do not keep repeating the non-achievement of the elders and leave Malaysia forever floundering in Umno’s ever-increasingly vicious cycle.

The acid test is simple. There is nothing hazy about this. For example, what is the point of raising motion after motion on the haze? What real or concrete result can Teo Nie Chieng or her rival Wee Ka Siong from MCA achieve here other than a fleeting puff for themselves? Face it, even Singapore strongman Lee Hsien Loong and his dad Lee Kuan Yew are powerless to reduce the haze in their precious republic.

Malaysian Opposition leaders should be honest and ask themselves – do the people want them to keep pointing out corruption case after corruption case, one cheating scam after another, haze year in and year out but at the end of the day be the same powerless people unable to make a real or concrete difference? We see Pakatan leaders at risk of failing in their primary duty, they may lose sight of the main goal because of their desire for the fluff, and a good example is Bakri MP Er Tech Hwa who was apparently so terrified of being left out from Parliament that he broke party line to attend a briefing.

Really, what is the point of being in the fight if the Opposition is only making the motions of trying to win the federal government. Just yesterday Pakatan could not even stop Najib from cheating again in the secret ballot for the Speaker. And yet some of the Pakatan MPs brazenly and a tad arrogantly declared their priority to ‘solve’ the issue of the haze or to ‘combat’ corruption!

Seems to us that all the Umno-BN needs to do is to just threaten arrests, label an issue or event illegal and that’s the last you see of some of these so-called “brave but at the same time kiasu” leaders from the Opposition! We say why should Malaysians vote for ‘kiasu’ leaders at all – be they from the Pakatan or the BN?

Street protests are not the only way. Sometimes, street demos are counter-productive because they make the ruling regime be more authoritarian, resolute, vigilant and inventive in maintaining the status quo. Unless massive enough, street demonstrations are seldom enough to constitute a serious threat to the regime survival.

At the moment, the Black 505 peacful gatherings are not a threat and cannot spark any immediate governmental changes. But they sure make a helluva  statement. And with the right tack and development, they can be built to harness enormous and sustainable public support plus an all-important sense of urgency that is still sorely lacking despite Malaysia being in a really precarious position – socially, democratically and economically.

The lesson to take home from the Brazilian example is that the focus of their protests was on “collective grievances”, not just about transport fares. For the Black 505 gatherings here, the focus was on the “common grievances” suffered by voters due to the lack electoral reforms and the frauds perpetrated during the election. The scope of Black 505 can easily be expanded because the chest of wrongdoings of the UMNO-BN is too deep and way too wide.

And another key point is that the Black 505 must retain its core feature of being a peaceful gathering. Given the amiable nature of the Malaysian people plus the good track of the rallies held so far, this should not be beyond the organizers.

Mass civil pressure exerted peacefully, with dignity and regularly can achieve dramatic results. There is no need for the violence of the Arab uprisings to bring about change here. All it takes is for Malaysians to keep on repeating their demands to the government in a very VISIBLE way – stop the nonsense. Enough is enough!

READMORE Wong Choon Mei of Malaysia Chronicle watch your words our words are weapons

This haze problem reflects very accurately on how the minister in-charge of environment is competent in his job. In other advance nations, the minister/secretary in USA must resign immediately. Even our PM seems not to take the issue seriously which explains why LKS hits at both of them on the Royal Address

Group ups pressure on environment minister

 This Palanivel who won narrowly with 390 orang asli votes is not sure about environment issues.The SCUMNO supercronies plantation owners in Sumatra are more powerful than this MIC clown.Everytime the haze/smoke comes the minister goes to Jakarta and then the haze comes back the following year.The sandiwara continues to fool the

This Palanivel …… if no one complaints, he’ll be back sitting on his desk, smoking cigars. s like him need the public to whip around to do his job Knowing BN government’s way of ‘beating around the bush’ and not having the courage to face issues upfront, the rakyat cannot expect any truthful answers from the government even it is given one whole month to respond. MAP should instead proceed with its intended legal action on the government and the agencies involved which will send a clear signal to the government and the companies involved that the rakyat would not tolerate their lackadaisical attitude on the recurring haze phenomena.Great move by MAP. The directors of these bad-companies who are hell-bent on profiteering by adding poisons into the air must be made accountable. Rapists get whipped with the rotan; these modern day rapists of mother earth and the environment must be similarly whipped. Melayu, Cina companies- it doesn’t matter. What matters is that these directors should be outted and shamed. Alternatively, put them on a stage in Central Market, and let sufferers of their crimes throw tomatoes and rotten eggs at them. But in 1Malaysia Bodoh, we are more interested in punishing young people for close proximity, whilst crony millionaire plunderers get away with giving all of us toxic air. Mana boleh? As the first step, let’s name these companies, and more importantly the jokers who are the guilty directors. The people demand to know who these idiots are!

8 companies are according Indon media. JAKARTA: The Indonesian Environment Minister Balthasar Kambuaya has identified eight companies with Malaysian links that are being investigated for burning in Riau and Jambi, that has led to the haze that is choking neighbouring countries Malaysia and Singapore. According to Dr Balthasar, all eight companies are owned by Malaysian investors and fires were discovered on their concessions. The eight companies concerned are PT Langgam Inti Hiberida, PT Bumi Rakksa Sejati, PT Tunggal Mitra Plantation, PT Udaya Loh Dinawi, PT Adei Plantation, PT Jatim Jaya Perkasa, PT Multi Gambut Industri and PT Mustika Agro Lestari.

Mr Purnomo told

“The heads of the districts are not accountable to the public at large if there are forest fires and ongoing deforestation,”

“If we can create a system whereby the fate of the forests is (tied to) the head of the district, then there is some incentive for him to do more than participate in deforestation activity.”

Record-high air pollution hit Singapore and Malaysia last week as winds blew smoke northward from forest fires raging in Sumatra in Indonesia. Demands from the city-state that Indonesia take tougher action prompted retorts by officials who said Singapore was “behaving like a child”. They sought to shift blame to companies based in Singapore and Malaysia.

But the barb-trading over the haze, an annual annoyance that often strains relations between Singapore and Indonesia, overlooks one of the major causes of the burning – corruption.

Observers in Jakarta say rent- seeking local leaders and corporations are taking advantage of lax law enforcement and murky regulations to continue clearing forests at an increasingly rapid rate.

Indeed, as it became clear that the bulk of the burning was taking place in Riau province, analysts were quick to point out that its governor – Mr Rusli Zainal – is the leading suspect in a case involving illegal logging permits.

“The haze disaster shows the impact of corruption in the forestry sector,” said Mr Danang Widoyoko, the chairman of Indonesia Corruption Watch, an independent graft monitor.

It recently assessed permit processes in provinces where the heaviest logging occurred, citing five cases of corruption which led protected forest to be converted to plantations. Losses to the state totalled nearly US$195 million (S$249 million).

The forestry sector has long been a source of rampant corruption. When Suharto was president, he doled out concessions to friends and relatives in return for their political backing. As power has devolved over the past decade from the central government to the local level, analysts say, corruption has become both fragmented and more pervasive.

Conservationists say logging and palm oil companies that cut into virgin forests and peatlands are scaling back wider conservation efforts – with the backing of local leaders seeking kickbacks in return for operating permits.

The problem gets worse in election years, when officials need money to fund campaigns. With national elections due next year, this is one reason the burning may be worse this time around.

In many cases, money compels local leaders, who are also charged with supervising plantation operations, to look the other way when companies engage in illegal practices, such as burning land in protected forest areas, says Mr Danang.

“The problem is clearly a lack of monitoring from the forest authority,” he adds. “A lot of corruption cases indicate that regents are easily bribed.”

Officials in the central government admit that some mining and plantation companies are operating illegally. But they say there is only so much they can do.

“The regents give out the permits; it’s outside the Ministry of Forestry’s authority,” Mr Hadi Daryanto, the ministry’s secretary general, has told Eco-Business.

It is the central government’s responsibility to prevent and respond to forest fires.

It is also the central government’s job to issue national regulations that govern the country’s forests – and this is where Indonesia has done well, say forest activists, pointing to several conservation-minded commitments made by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono since he took office.

In 2011, for example, Dr Yudhoyono backed a ban that would prevent companies from obtaining new permits to clear virgin forest and peatlands.

The ban is part of a US$1 billion deal with Norway, which has agreed to provide the money in tranches as long as Indonesia is living up to its commitment to curb deforestation. Last month, Dr Yudhoyono extended the ban to 2015, a move commended by the international community.

He did so in the face of lobbying by major logging, palm oil and mining companies, which say the ban hurts their ability to expand, dents profits and could stymie Indonesia’s economic growth. The majority of the country’s exports are commodities.

But resource analysts disagree.

“There’s really no reason why the moratorium would curtail economic development in the palm oil sector,” says research associate Kemen Austin at the World Resource Institute in Washington DC. She adds that there is enough degraded land available for oil palm expansion, and the moratorium should be the impetus companies need to utilise their concessions more efficiently.

Another aim of the moratorium on forest-clearing should be to strengthen the permit process, oversight and forest monitoring to ensure companies “don’t revert to business as usual” once it expires, she says.

Still, Indonesia has struggled to balance economic growth with sustainability.

Many local leaders have not been convinced that keeping the forests intact will lead to development. It does not help that several schemes floated under the REDD+ programme, a United Nations initiative that aims to pay local governments for preserving their forests, have fallen flat.

Meanwhile, critics of the forest-clearing moratorium say it does not go far enough, since it applies only to new permits and not those already held by plantation companies.

Indonesia has one of the fastest rates of forest clearing in the world, much of it done to make way for palm oil, an ingredient used in everything from shampoos to sweets to cleaning agents.

The country is the leading producer of the commodity, and a top emitter of harmful climate changing carbons. Many of the forests that are being developed stand on swampy peat that releases large amounts of carbon emissions when upended. The peat also becomes highly combustible after it decomposes, part of the reason the fires this year are so severe.

Last week, environmental non- profit group Greenpeace said commercial plantations control half of the land where the biggest fires are burning, and much of it is on deep peat, which is off limits under the moratorium. Forest campaigner Bustar Maitar at Greenpeace in Indonesia says it becomes like “petrol in the forest”, and can burn for weeks.

While the latest fires have put a spotlight on corruption in the forestry sector, they have also highlighted the private sector’s role in curbing forest clearing.

Last Wednesday, Singapore’s Environment Minister Vivian Balakrishnan asked the Indonesian government to name and shame the companies involved in the illegal burning.

Some of the biggest companies operating in Indonesia – Wilmar International, Sinar Mas Group and Asia Pacific Resources International – are based in Singapore or Malaysia. All have issued statements saying they abide by strict no-burn policies, although Wilmar has reportedly told Singapore media that it “cannot prevent local practices of slash-and-burn for agricultural and other purposes”.

Some have made even bolder commitments.

In February, Asia Pulp and Paper, one of the world’s largest paper companies, said it would immediately stop clearing natural forests within its concessions. Its sister palm oil company, Golden Agri-Resources, has also committed to forest conservation.

Still, companies and governments cannot work independently, argue green groups. Indonesia will need to step up monitoring and ensure that local governments abide by national laws.

Mr Agus Purnomo, a special adviser to President Yudhoyono and the head of the National Climate Change Council, said better law enforcement by local police and the judiciary as well as improvements in land titling and permit issuing processes are some solutions.

Also key is ensuring better oversight from the Ministry of Home Affairs, which is capable of cancelling regulations that contravene national laws on forest protection. But what really needs to happen is that local leaders must be held accountable.

“The heads of the districts are not accountable to the public at large if there are forest fires and ongoing deforestation,” Mr Purnomo told Eco-Business.

“If we can create a system whereby the fate of the forests is (tied to) the head of the district, then there is some incentive for him to do more than participate in deforestation activity.” -

Who and how were the explosives obtained? Can we see the 2 faces of the accused ? ( before they are switched off )  Who and how were the explosives obtained? Can we see the 2 faces of the accused ?before they are switched

No one attribute everything to the then DPM. But a fair and complete trial must call upon the then DPM and his ADC Musa Safri to be give testimonies in court. We smell fishy in this trails…. At the end, the Appeal Court may acquit the two cops base on “technical mistake” of the High Court judge and Prosecutors, but probe no further on the then DPM and his ADC Musa. Will then DPM (current PM) and his former ADC Musa Safri will be call upon to testify in the court? The people demand a re-trail of the whole case including calling back Razak Baginda, then DPM and his ADC, in view of the new evidences available from Deepa, PI Bala, lawyer Abraham etc.

Biased and Uncouth Judge. You think the rakyat is as stupid as you. What happened to Bala’s SD and Deepak’s Statements. Althantuya’ ghost will come after you and then you’ll be vomiting blood, Surely there must be an explanation for all d questions that had been posed….immigration record must have been wiped out by a virus attack; there was no stock of C4 in Bukit Aman, hence C4 must have been smuggled in from Mongolia and accidentally detonated when victim tripped and fell..verdict:accidental death during a misadventure. How’s that for a closure? Perfect for a theater of fools, and you bet right….Malaysian Rakyat are not fools!! There will be a Day of Judgement for all evil deeds.It all boils down to one deal the Scorpene deal where Najib made the decision to buy it and received kick backs via Razak Baginda and his family member’s accounts overseas especially in Hong Kong maybe also in Singapore who knows as Singapore is kingpin in money laundering as proven by Taib Mahmud’s episode. There is definitely the link to Altantuya’s murder as she was asking for some commission herself for her assistance in the deal. All because of USD500,000 she was killed. Would the 2 policemen have gained USD500,000 in killing her? Certainly not they were ordered by someone higher up to kill her and now all have washed their hands off them and made them the scapegoats to take the wrap. The prime question is what was their motive to kill her. USD500,000 who gained by her death Razak Baginda or Najib? Everyone knows the answer even a kindergarten kid can answer the question. Does the prosecutor, AG and the courts take rakyat for fools?

Cecil had already made known that Bala’s SD2 was a fabrication. Hence, Bala’s SD1 still stands unchallenged. Why aren’t the defence lawyers for Sirul and Azilah raising this?There was no “imaginary evidence” to show that Najib was, and is, linked to the murder? Excuse me. An imaginary evidence is evidence that does not exist. Or did you mean “imagined evidence”? In any case, since C.Insp. Azilah Hadri has admitted in his defence testimony that he killed Altantuya on his own volition, then hang him till he expires. If he is desirous of protecting the identity of the mastermind of this very foul deed, or of the person that ordered him to execute the deed, then let him pay the ultimate price.

If it no connection with najib.musa safri should have told razak badinda make a police report. But her ordered najib`s body guards to take altantuya away.Musa safri must answer this.Why ?Tun Majid, why are you so defensive of Najib and went to great lengths to argue about Najib having no link to the murder. Did any defence lawyers say anything about Najib’s link in the court hearing in the first place? Are you just imagining things, or are you suspecting that Najib could be involved?Why would two policemen who did not know the deceased had gone all the way to get C4 to kill her? They didn’t know her so why kill a person you didn’t know? Abd Majid’s contention that Azilah Hadri had testified that ‘what he did was his own’ is laughable considering that there was no rhyme or reason for Azilah to murder a total stranger Altantuya unless he was acting on orders. Whose orders? If Azilah was a hired assassin who hired him and for what reason? Or is there a fear that answers to these simple questions may lead to the real perpetrators of the crime? As to his contention that Najib had no link to the murder has Abd Majid ascertained the validity of the first SD by the late PI Bala, his second SD allegedly prepared by T S Abraham and the slew of press statements by Rosmah’s business partner Deepak? If not what is the basis for Majid’s claim? If those running this matinee are interested to do real justice for the murdered mother its time they went back to the drawing board and start with a clean slate.

The question of who killed Altantuya will be left blowing in the wind  the prosecution in the Altantuya Shaariibuu murder conviction appeal argued in court today that there was nothing to link then deputy prime minister Najib Abdul Razak to the death of the Mongolian woman”Just because Abdul Razak knew the then DPM and Musa, and the ADC worked with the DPM, you cannot attribute everything to the DPM. There is nothing to link the then-DPM to what Abdul Razak allegedly did, There is no imaginary evidence (showing this),” Tun Abdul Majid said in his submissions. I wonder how the hell can Abdul Majid deduce the above fact unless Baginda and Musa not to mention Najib has been put on the stand. This is like saying 2 + 2 = 10. The High court trial has evoked more questions than answers and looks like the AG’s team is scraping the bottom of the barrel to keep the real culprits who gave the orders at bay. Nevertheless with the kind of arguments and remarks being exchanged among the players it appears that only the verdict will reveal if it turned out according to script.Musa was Najib’s ADC and Baginda was Najib’s friend. Who ordered Musa to assist Baginda? Who could have ordered the murder? This is the same court that acquitted razak baginda? So, will AG drag him back to court? Will they also then find a link between his company to the scorpene purchases negotiated by xxx? Will they then find a link to Alantuyas role in the purchase. Will they then find a motive?

Our highly learned and highly disgraceful chief prosecutor had changed his role to become a defender of someone else.He should resign from this prosecution team straight away.Since the chief inspector Azilah Hadri had admitted he did it on his own then let him be hung immediately cos he killed the mongolian lady for NO reason he must be very,very dangerousEverything points towards Najib’s involvement but the AG’s office is doing everything to sever all links and block all investigations concerning his involvement, relying on suppositions, conjecture and unreliable admissions and also plainly ignoring what is obvious. Supposition, “Just because Abdul Razak knew the then DPM and Musa, and the ADC worked with the DPM, you cannot attribute everything to the DPM.” Conjecture, “There is a possibility, as one of the police witnesses had testified, that the two may have kept the unused explosives as they were not returned,” Unreliable admission, “the first accused, Chief Inspector Azilah Hadri, had admitted in his defence testimony that “what he did was on his own”, and plainly ignoring facts like missing immigration records. This is what leads me to believe that the whole trial is a scam. Our learned,wise and honorable judges will not dare to ask the two accuses why did they murder this mongolian lady if they did know her and if they did NOT have any motives .I challenge these 3 judges to ask these two accuses directly and order them to answer the questions themselves

A murder without a motive..This is the worst kind of crime..truly evil…taking a life for no reason whatever. Even wild beasts kill for food or to defend themselves. There can be no mercy or leniency for such killers..to take another person’s life just because they CAN do it. We may have some pity on the killers if they had been ordered to do it by a superior, or misled into thinking that the killing was in the country’s interest But these two should be shown no mercy at all…before they are hanged, their faces should be shown to all…they and their families should be shamed…their evil act has disgraced Malaysia and all right-thinking Malaysians. The people should demand that their faces be exposed and displayed everywhere.

Just wait. Their own daughter will be murdered in a similar manner. Will the truth be told in the tragic death of Altantuya? Who ordered her to be killed? What were the motives? Who were the players? The truth is still out there waiting to be revealed. The ghost of Altantuya will never rest.What rage or bitterness the murderer(s) must had to carry out such brutal killing to a woman. This circus must be stopped so that all those guilty could be brought to justice, it has gone far too long and too many lives have been robbed in Malaysia.Two key persons are not implicated in the murder trial. Razak Baginda was let off the hook and found not guilty in the earlier trial. He is pursuing his Ph. D in Oxford University. The go-between Razak Baginda and Najib (ADC Musa Safri) was never called to testify in the earlier trial. Then what one gets is the link between Altantuya and the prime suspect is broken.The Court of Appeal has noted that the Shah Alam High Court judge presiding over the Altantuya Shaariibuu murder trial did not address the issue of common intention for the two Special Action Unit personnel to murder her.What farcical statements by the prosecutor and nobody is rebutting. My heart weeps for the judiciary. The prosecution has been presented new findings. Police reports have been lodged pertaining to SD 1 and SD 2. Are these to be ignored. The witnesses are all available. Yet it looks like this sandiwara is heading towards the direction we all know. Mistrial, then tutup cerita.Mistrial with all the new evidence available ? This calls for a retrial.

The prosecution is playing judge to say there is no useful evidence in calling Musa and hence there is cover up. Musa may have as well received his boss instruction to kill the woman

This was the intention all along to provide grounds for an acquittal in the court of appeal while trying to deceive the public that justice has been served. The cops on trial are now openly hinting just like Baginda (in his case, sworn SD) that they are mere fall guys. Thus in order to keep their mouth shut they will be acquitted, after all they enough grounds to do so since they should have not been found guilty in the first place as motive was never established.

No motive.It is second degree murder.Life imprisonment.If appeal judges opioned that judge. did not consider common intention means common motive.Then the trial should be retrial with razak baginda,musa safri to take to stand.Altantuya’s family and the Mongolian Govt should try the International Criminal Court (ICC) and get its investigators and prosecutors to investigate and prosecute this case in the ICC at the Hague!

Malaysians wake up today to what is likely to be a landmark verdict on a court case that has riveted public attention for four years now.

No less than the top cop in the country, the Inspector General of Police himself, is under the spotlight.

High Court judge Datuk V.T. Singham delivers his judgment today on the negligence suit by the family of A. Kugan, who died while in police custody in 2009.

During the civil trial, the judge had said Khalid should have held a press conference to clarify matters surrounding Kugan’s death. Khalid had, in the first press conference, said Kugan died because of water in his lungs. But a second postmortem revealed that Kugan, 22, was beaten severely, starved in prison and died of kidney failure.

The court also heard that Khalid did not hold another press conference to clarify this. Nor did he recommend an inquest. There was also no internal inquiry by the police.

Kugan’s family has filed an RM100 million claim against the police and the government, but specifically against Khalid, alleging that he tried to cover up the cause of Kugan’s death.

Kugan’s mother, N. Indra, named one of the victim’s interrogating officers, former constable V. Navindran, as a defendant, among others. The mother alleged that the defendants failed to ensure the safety, health and welfare of Kugan while he was in police custody. Kugan, then 22, was arrested in Puchong on Jan 14, 2009, and held overnight at the Puchong Jaya police lock-up before police obtained a remand order.

He was brought to the Taipan USJ, Subang Jaya police station two days later for questioning, but was found dead another four days later.

Navindran was the only one held responsible for Kugan’s death. He was convicted and sentenced to three years’ jail. He is appealing his conviction.

In the civil suit, Navindran claimed he was only a scapegoat and alleged that there were 12 others involved in Kugan’s interrogation. Ten witnesses testified in the trial before Judge Singham.

There have been 122 cases of deaths in police custody in the past 10 years by the police’s own account. But opposition figures have charged that there has been nearly double that number of deaths in the past two-and-half years alone, giving this figure as 211.

So Kugan’s case has touched a raw nerve in the country and the case is expected to be watched closely today by concerned Malaysians. – June 26, 2013.

READMORE  C.I.D Delete Mongolian delegation their immigration records right now!’ Najib’s Cabinet formed following GE13.Compromised. Insulting. Dangerous.

Now every demonstration in Tahrir – and they happen weekly – seethes with likely sexual violence. At least 18 incidents of assaults – women being groped, violated, their clothes ripped off – were recorded there on January 25, during a demonstration to celebrate the beginning of the anti-Mubarak protests. Now women enter the square with trepidation.

Some male members of the Shura Council, Egypt’s upper house of parliament, said in a session that the incidents of January 25 should teach women to stay away from dangerous places, and suggested segregation during political gatherings.

Their remarks came after a popular preacher known as Abu Islam said in an online video that female protesters want to be raped. “Those women have no shame, no fear and not even femininity,” he said. “They are devils.”

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality said in a report published on May 23 that 99.3% of Egyptian women have experienced some form of sexual violence.

Much like their male counterparts, young women were part of the tour de force of the uprising that gave rise to the forces that created the Arab Spring.

Women stood not only in defiance of brutal dictatorships, but also cultural norms that many times encouraged, and in some cases enforced, women’s exclusion from the public sphere.

Yet, the euphoria following Mubarak’s fall on February 11, 2011, is waning after disturbing reports began to surface. Many women who had gathered in Tahrir Square to commemorate the first international women’s day following the  revolution reported that they were sexually assaulted.

Nearly 50% of women reported more harassment after the revolution; 44% said the level of harassment remained the same before and after the revolution. In the months that followed the revolution, women protesters were arrested, subjected to virginity tests, intimidation, and trial by military tribunals.

Egypt’s general directorate of moral police at the ministry of interior reported that 9,468 cases of harassment, 329 sexual assaults, and 112 cases of rape took place in 2012. Needless to say, the figures released by the government are smaller than the actual ones because many women do not report cases of harassment to the police for fear of shame.

In many cases, when women report these attacks, much like some members of our establishment in India, the officials responded by saying that women invited the attacks by participating in public protests and other such ‘unfeminine’ activities.

The situation hit an all-time low when Reda Saleh Al al-Hefnawi, a legislator member of the Muslim Brotherhood, asked at a parliamentary meeting on the issue, “How do they ask the ministry of interior to protect a woman when she stands among men?”

Is this the kind of protection that the state is promising to civilians of this new Egypt?

The new leadership, which played an instrumental role in the writing of the new constitution, raised certain red flags. First of all, women were excluded from the committee that formulated amendments to the constitution that were approved on March 19. The committee’s proposals included denying women the chance to run for the presidency. There are no reservations for women in Egypt’s parliament and a recent reshuffle of ministerial positions has reduced the number of women ministers from three to just one.

Following calls from women’s organizations and activists, the Egyptian prime minister Hisham Kandil met with women’s representatives on March 22 and stressed the importance of women’s participation in politics and public life. Unfortunately, Kandil’s words were mere lip service to the cause of women’s rights and Egypt has seen no concrete proposals for reform.

Article 36 of the new constitution is another stumbling block for women’s rights with its precarious definition of ‘equality’. It reads, “the state is committed to taking all constitutional and executive measures to ensure equality of women with men in all walks of political, cultural, economic and social life”, though it stresses, “without violation of the rules of Islamic jurisprudence”. This leaves ample room for discriminatory interpretations.

In many cases, Muslim women are confronted with discriminatory laws that some seek to impose in the name of Islam. Who gets to define these principles? The same set of Islamic principles are interpreted variously: while the Islamic Republic of Pakistan allows a woman to be the head of state and government, Saudi Arabia bans women from driving without a male chaperon.

One of the articles in Egypt’s constitution says that the state will provide all necessary services for mothers and children for free and will ensure a balance between the woman’s family responsibilities and work in society. Does this mean that women can be professionals only after fulfilling their traditional role as homemakers?

Another lacuna is the constitution is that the minimum age of marriage has not been defined. This will only perpetuate the malaise of child marriages, in a country where girls, sometimes as young as seven, are married to older, richer men.

As the Mohamed Morsi-led government looks to complete one year as Egypt’s first freely elected party on June 30, it sure has some difficult questions to answer. Though President Morsi’s party has a majority of the votes, it is a moot point whether a party which frails in its duty towards one half of its people can truly bring to fruition the vision of the revolutionaries who risked their all in that famous Arab Spring. From the looks of it women seem to have reaped a bitter harvest.

According to literature, the first documented cases of cancer came from the Egyptian civilization. Egyptians are also credited for capturing time in their clepsydra, the hourglass predecessor. But like time that floated timeless before water clocks, so did cancer…firm in their presence way before the first human inhaled the first breath.

It’s almost like darkness without which light cannot exist. Same with our human body. Or so it seems. Normal and abnormal, physiology and pathology, sequence and mutation…they all walk hand in hand, one outsmarting the other. Cancer thus, as a subsequence of genetic or epigenetic alterations was always waiting to happen from the very moment a gene was created.

Thus to call cancer a disease is under-respecting the beast that hides beneath the veneer.  This is not diabetes that can be blood tested. This is not high blood pressure that can be numbered. We are dealing with a happening that is at once subtle and coarse. We are dealing with the stealthiest of the snakes that does not give a hint to the air before the final fatal flaunt.

From foods, smoke, alcohol, sun, radiation, asbestos, virus, family, the list of mutagenic factors are impossibly long, various and still growing. Any one of them can hit us at anytime. Some of us will escape in our sojourn, some will stumble.

Make no mistake; scientists have been outstanding in response, hurling defiance every time a new challenge was thrown in. From chemotherapy, hormone therapy, radiation, surgery, to the present craze of gene targeted therapy, we are throwing all that we have. Yet the beast rages, unbridled, changing colors and moods at random.

I like statistics. They never lie. They look at you without a smile, without a tear shed, and without a muscle twitched. So here’s a snapshot of what cancer looks like in our modern world:

In 2008 approximately 12.7 million cancers were diagnosed and 7.6 million people died of cancer worldwide. Cancers as a group account for approximately 13% of all deaths each year with the most common being:lung cancer (1.4 million deaths), stomach cancer (740,000 deaths), liver cancer (700,000 deaths), colorectal cancer (610,000 deaths), and breast cancer (460,000 deaths). This makes invasive cancer the leading cause of death in the developed world and the second leading cause of death in the developing world^. Over half of cases occur in the developing world. In the United States, cancer outranks cardiovascular disease as the number one cause of death under the age of 85.

This brings us to our final verdict.

Caution and only caution remains the single best cure of cancer. To combat terrorism, the New York Subways warn ‘if you see something, say something.’ Same here. If anything bothers you, or comes across to you as out of the norm, report to us. This addiction of self denial has to go. The icy complacency that cancer cannot knock on my door needs to be dropped.  Worse, the temptation to self treat, the desire to Google and find a cure…nothing can be more naive and dangerous.

The American Cancer Society is explicit in its warnings. Whether it’s a sore that does not heal, a bleeding that will not cease, a new lump in the breast or testis, an unusual difficulty in swallowing, a change in bowel habits, a mole that looks different, a cough or a headache or a fever that wouldn’t go, or a plain and simple bone chewing fatigue… seek a doctor.

The gracious truth that emerges from all these is that when detected young, cancer can always be arrested. So nip it in the bud before it sprouts. We can beat this beast…together.

The state assemblyman for Kuala Besut Abdul Rahman Mokhtar has died at age 55 due to lung cancer. His death paves the way for Malaysia’s first by-election after the controversial May 5 general election.

Political observers said the by-election that must be held within 60 days could lead to a ‘hung’ state government and trigger a “new power equation” in the state government now led by Prime Minister Najib Razak’s Umno-BN coalition.

In the recently-concluded 13th general election, Umno-BN had won control of the state government with a razor thin victory of 17 seats over the Pakatan Rakyat’s 15.

Should Abdul Rahman’s successor fail to defend the seat, it would lead to a situation where the Umno-BN is deadlocked against the Pakatan at 16 seats each in the state assembly.

“This by-election will be critical for Pakatan Rakyat,” Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim told reporters at the Parliament lobby on Wednesday.

Not an easy seat to take from Umno

Abdul Rahman, who is from Prime Minister Najib Razak’s Umno party, was also the Terengganu state executive councilor for Health, Family and Community development. He died at the Critical Care Unit of Hospital Sultanah Nur Zahirah in Kuala Terengganu at about 10.18 am, after having been warded for the past seven days.

Anwar acknowledged it would not be easy for Pakatan to win Kuala Besut. A career Umno politician, Abdul Rahman had won the seat with a 2,434-vote majority, polling 8.809 votes over PAS candidate Napisah Ismail, who garnered 6,375.

“Abdul Rahman has a pretty impressive majority for the seat, but I’m sure PAS and PKR will work together to challenge for this seat,” said Anwar, who also extended his condolences to the late assemblyman’s family.

All eyes on Kuala Besut

Indeed, all eyes will be on Kuala Besut especially with the Umno-BN and the Pakatan now deadlocked in a fierce post-election fight. Anwar and his Pakatan colleagues have refused to concede defeat, citing massive fraud and vote rigging.

Najib had claimed a 133-seats victory in Malaysia’s 222-seat federal Cabinet, but Anwar and Pakatan are demanding re-elections in some 30 constituencies. Najib’s Umno-BN coalition has countered by filing a similar number of election petitions. Kuala Best is not on either of the Pakatan’s or the Umno-BN’s list of election petitions.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission said it would hold a special meeting to set the by-election date after receiving official acknowledgement on its vacancy.

“After that, the EC will issue an official statement when the special meeting will be held. According to the State and Federal Constitutions, the by-election should be held within 60 days from the date of vacancy,” said EC deputy chairman Wan Ahmad.

Terengganu was under the PAS-led government during 1999 to 2004. The chief minister then was PAS president Hadi Awang, who is also the Marang Member of Parliament.

The state fell back to Umno-BN control in the 2004 election and the current chief minister is Umno’s Ahmad Said.

The Prime Minister should take stock of the decision of the Kuala Lumpur High Court today in finding the current Inspector General of Police, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar responsible for the death of A. Kugan in police custody.

It must have been brought to the notice of the Prime Minister that the conduct of the IGP was seriously in question with the case of Kugan pending but yet the Prime Minister felt it fit for him to be appointed as IGP.

First the IGP, next the Home Minister

Now the Prime Minister is highly embarrassed and he has only himself to blame for not realising the obvious, which is that the court could well find against Khalid in the case, which it ultimately did.

Now we have the Home Minister in a somewhat similar situation. Does the Prime Minister not understand that there is a conflict as the Home Minister is in charge of the police and that he may be found liable for acts which may warrant police action?

How does the Prime Minister talk of greater governance and transparency with appointments like these?

Najib should go to court & hear for himself

In fact, the Prime Minister should perhaps go to the Federal Court tomorrow morning in Putrajaya to hear for himself arguments in the case involving these allegations against his Home Minister.

He will have an opportunity to hear in full, the allegations which are expected to come up during the hearing later if the Federal Court is of the view that the matter should proceed to trial.

The Prime Minister may also want to explain what has become of the investigations into the report.

With all that, the Prime Minister cannot plead his usual ignorance and keep silent. He would, if he did so, prove that he is no reformist and that we cannot expect him to make those difficult decisions which are required of him if we are to really expect any change or transformation in his government.

GOBIND SINGH DEO
MP Puchong

Is Najib Protecting the undeserving???

The democratisation of desire is accompanied by the legitimisation of lust. The neat and largely imagined distinction between the ‘criminal type’ and the ‘law-abiding citizen’ has blurred significantly. The sense that anyone can be the next murderer or rapist serves to create a widespread sense of insecurity. Conversely, the policing mechanism, far from becoming available to all, is retreating into becoming the private army of the powerful. An underlying sense of unease, of the fear that the powerful can not only get away with anything, but do so with impunity is palpable. The media plays the game at both ends, at one level creating the climate of desire while simultaneously engaging in shrill criticism after the event. Sense of anarchy and hysteria feed on each other. Debates are fierce but narrow, angry but unproductive. The system is too well entrenched to change, nor is it really pushed to. In asking for special measures to counter this problem, we are in effect acknowledging that the system as it exists cannot deliver. Without fundamental and systemic changes across the spectrum of the administration- the Parliament, the elections, bureaucracy, police and judiciary, and without engaging in a larger societal dialogue, a problem of this kind can no longer be tackled. This is not a particularly comforting thought, for it tells that no easy answers exist but the time has come to go beyond symbolic steps and demand wholesale change. It is time to look beyond the anger, beyond the apparent demands being made in this case and focus on the pushing the system to transform itself- in its entirety.

Today, it is a widely held belief that the police has become an instrument for the powerful and has little time for the citizens. For all the talk about police reforms, no concrete action has been taken, nor is any imminent. But the periodic bouts of anger we see spilling out on the streets, have their source in a deep-seated disgust at precisely this misuse of power. It is time for the political class to read the changing mood of the people; the blind acceptance of the power distance between political leaders and the common citizen is receding rapidly. The idea that the more a politician has to be protected from prosecution ,Enough is clearly enough. The anger we saw spill out on the streets and while this was clearly not the time to gloat about it, the police action after the event has been swift. the more powerful he is, speaks volumes for the nature of democracy that is practised in Malaysia. The time has come for a more rational, transparent and uncompromising principle to be followed in this answering this question. What is needed is a systemic overhaul of all gratuitous displays of power.- It looks like zahid wants more custodial death as he had said only two died durin g custody. See what the high court judge justice singham had said. he wants the IPCMC to be established now. Zahid have to learn something from the highly qualified judge instead of saying something rubbish.Disregarding the recent scrutiny  Judge Singham subjected it to on this front, the Government has chosen to protect  Homeminister under this category. As always, the list contains names that are surprising- who, for instance is  and why does the state need to provide him with such high security? It turns out that he is  MP, who has in the past had criminal case against him, which included  hitting and abduction., and there is no obvious reason why he should be deemed worthy of such elaborate

Legally binding or not, it is a great call from Judge Singham. Thank you, your honour for the lone voice from the judiciary but the judiciary has spoken, so to say. The question now is whether Najib has the gumption to order it. After all, it was the recommendation of an RCI. But he will have to overrule the PDRM, his Homeminister and other ignorant voices against the establishment of the IPCMC. What has our new minster Paul to say about this call? Najib, go for it and show you are in charge.

The also denied that police were targeting non-Malays, saying that most of those who had died in custody were Malays ( (97|), followed Indians (51), Chinese (49) , foreigners (25) and other races (9).

“This perception has to change. This has shown that most deaths are not because of the police,” he added.

The home minister was answering a question from Sungai Petani MP Datuk Johari Abdul (PKR) on measures taken to detect , investigate and prosecute members of police force over deaths in custody.

“We are very committed to avoid deaths in custody and will not compromise, or protect any policeman, or anyone who uses force to the point it causes death in custody.

“Every complaint will be investigated. That is my guarantee,” the Home Minister promised.

Zahid said there was no need for the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) as the Enforcement Agency Integrity Commission (EAIC) was already in place.

The EAIC, which investigates complaints of misconduct against the police force and 18 other enforcement agencies can only make recommendations to the disciplinary authority of the relevant enforcement agency upon completion of investigations.

When the tail seeks to wag the dog

Here are two areas where we will remain on opposing sides of the argument unless Najib get rid of both Tengku Adnan and Ahmad Zahid Hamid i“We are not in a drift, we’re in danger of a rift,”

 snaky Minister Tengku Adnan  can  be trusted to trade diatribes on which one has effectively addressed issues of urgent concern to voters: development, inflation, corruption and governance. Each one will also have to spell out what differentiates it from the other. Two battle-lines are in sight. One will pit ‘inclusive development’ — orMahathir model — against ‘growth at all costs’ for cronies Competence matters less than loyalty. It pays to be in politics or to get on with the political masters. Or is it because these people are indispensable ? Or is it a reflection of the shortage of talent in our country today?Malaysian voters threatened to beat Najib with shoes after he did not to heed voters demandWith Najib in charge and with no one willing to challenge him in the forthcoming UMNO elections, our country will remain divisive and moribund. All the talk about transformation remains a figment of Najib’s imagination, with due respects to his hardworking  snaky Minister Tengku Adnan

Tengku Adnan Mansor has a bunch of issues confronting him; the mass rally by Pakatan Rakyat at Padang Merbok is not one of them.

The endemic corruption in City Hall is one. The unbridled growth of hawkers all around the city is another. So is urban poverty and rubbish-strewn streets.

Then there is the millstone which has been hanging around his neck since the esteemed Royal Commission of Inquiry found him, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, V. K. Lingam and others guilty of fixing appointments to the judiciary.

Lawyer Karpal Singh has challenged the Attorney-General to prosecute Home Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi for assault and attempted murder. Karpal, who is also the Bukit Gelugor member of parliament, said there is a clear case of assault by the minister against former businessman Amir Bazli Abdullah.Speaking to reporters today in Putrajaya, Karpal said Ahmad Zahid is obviously not fit to be a minister. ”This is a serious matter, which requires attention. I had written to the AG in the early stages about this but he did not prosecute,” he said. ”It is not too late. The AG can still commence proceedings against the home minister.” Karpal alleged that the police report lodged by Amir Bazli against Ahmad Zahid was never investigated. Meanwhile, counsel Gobind Singh Deo, who is also representing Amir Bazli, urged the AG to relook the police report.Gobind then read extracts of the police report: “I (Amir Bazli) was dragged to a bench and held by two of Datuk’s men. Datuk scolded me and hit me mercilessly. A man called Hans then threatened to chop off both my hands and he also punched me in the face. ”I was hit by a hard object until my forehead skull fractured. I couldn’t see who did this but I suspect it was Hisham, Datuk Ahmad Zahid’s son-in-law. ”Then, Datuk Ahmad Zahid said ‘get a gunnysack, put him in the sack’.His wife, Datin Hamidah came and tried to calm the situation.” Amir, in his police report, had also claimed that Ahmad Zahid wanted to bury him. Gobind then said: “The prime minister must respond to this. Why does he feel fit to have Ahmad Zahid as a minister. ”Look at Kugan’s case yesterday. The High Court had ruled against Khalid (Inspector-General of Police), yet PM still finds him fit to remain as the IGP,” he said. ”I don’t understand. PM seems to be lost in the woods. He does not seem to be able to see the implications of these things.” Gobind said the home minister is going to be tried for assault and other allegations and if he is still not removed, then the prime minister must explain why he feels Ahmad Zahid should remain as minister.In his suit, Amir Bazli claimed Ahmad Zahid had assaulted and threatened him after claiming Amir Bazli had enticed his daughter and had abducted her. –French Scorpene probe extends to Bala’s SD2  PM should also resign for alleged murder of Mongolian national Altantuya Shaariibuu. Mahathir said, When a BN minister or member becomes a liability, the BN will use all the “goodies” they have collected to destroy him/her by using the judicial system and other forms of blackmail. Mahatir is the master of … Read more

PARLIAMENT DAP parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang today accused “vested interests” in Umno of creating the Red Bean Army story as a ploy to seek funding supposedly for their own cyberwarriors.

More likely, he said, the funds are destined for private pockets.

“With regard to the Red Bean Army allegations that the DAP employs thousands of cybertroopers, it is all not true.

“DAP has never spent a single sen nor funded the Red Bean Army,” Lim (right) reiterated while debating the royal address in the Dewan Rakyat today.

He claimed there are reports that some in Umno want to ask for RM250 million to fight the Red Bean Army.

“Now I know why the rumour was started by those who spread the slander as a vested interest. It is not to fight the Red Bean Army, but to enrich themselves,” alleged Lim.

At this, Shabudin Yahaya (BN-Tasek Gelugor) stood up on a point of order, quoting Standing Order 36(6) which prohibits MPs from making presumptions of bad intentions on other members.

However his complaint was set aside by presiding deputy speaker  Ismail Mohamed Said.

“I feel that he has no ill intentions,” said Ismail, dismissing the matter.

Can you keep your privacy online? With the US National Security Agency’s Prism programme snooping on social media networks to collect data, you have reasons to be highly sceptical. People who are not on Google, Facebook and Yahoo and not using smartphones are becoming a minority across the world. The digital age in which we are living has become an uncertain place.

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman, Google, and Jared Cohen, director, Google Ideas, warn us about the consequences of going online in a brilliant book The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business (Published by Hachette in India, Rs 650).

Five billion more people are poised to come online. By 2025, the majority of the world’s population will, in one generation, have gone from having virtually no access to unfiltered information to accessing all of the world’s information through a device that fits in the palm of the hand.

If the current pace of technological innovation is maintained, most of the projected eight billion people on Earth will be online, write Schmidt and Cohen.

The authors raise an important question– will the digital empowerment of individuals result in a safer world, or a more dangerous one? They don’t have the answers but try to chart out the scenario that may unfold before us.

Any stuff you keep online is vulnerable. Identity will be the most valuable commodity for citizens in the future. How to protect it? There is no delete button in digital world. Isn’t that a frightening piece of knowledge?

WikiLeaks cofounder Julian Assange believes in the dictum of ‘information wants to be free.’ Free-information activists say the absence of a delete button ultimately strengthens humanity’s progress toward greater equality, productivity and self-determination.

But the absence of a delete button also presents challenges.

Schmidt and Cohen do not address whether secrecy and privacy are the same. As an individual you have a right to privacy, but do you have a right to secrecy? Public interest should be the key to unlock this question.

The authors caution us that if we are on the web, we are publishing and we run the risk of becoming public figures—it’s only a question of how many people are paying attention, and why. You are always under surveillance in the digital world.

Security and privacy are a shared responsibility between companies, users and the institutions, write Schmidt and Cohen. They admit that companies like Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook are expected to safeguard data, prevent their systems from being hacked into and provide the most effective tools for users to maximize control of their privacy and security.

But they also make it clear that it is up to users to leverage these tools. “Each day you choose not to utilize them, you will experience some loss of privacy and security as the data keeps piling up.” The option to delete data is largely an illusion.

The irony is that privacy is in danger but we don’t even get our basic information right, the kind of information no one has withheld from us. Take the case of former railways minister Pawan Kumar Bansal, as an example. Did we know about the kind of environment in which Bansal was operating as a politician?

Schmidt and Cohen, tech evangelists themselves, say technology is neutral but people are not. They, however, hope that the balance of power between citizens and their governments will depend on how much surveillance equipment a government is able to buy, sustain and operate. “Genuinely democratic states may struggle to deal with the loss of privacy and control that the data revolution enables, but as a result they will have more empowered citizens, better politicians and stronger social contracts. Unfortunately, the majority of the states in the world are either not democratic or democratic in name only, and the relative impact of connectivity—both positive and negative – for citizens in those countries will be far greater than elsewhere,” they write.

The authors point out, rightfully, that there is a canyon dividing people who understand technology and people charged with addressing the world’s toughest geopolitical issues, and no one has built a bridge. They advocate collaboration between the tech industry, the public sector and civil society.

Schmidt and Cohen predict that in the Digital Age, the role of mainstream media will primarily become one of an aggregator, custodian and verifier, a credibility filter that sifts through the data and highlights what is and is not worth reading, understanding and trusting.

“A disaggregated, mutually anonymous news gathering system would not be difficult to build or maintain and by encrypting the personal details of journalists (as well as their editors) and storing their reporting in remote servers, those who stand to lose as a more independent press emerges will become increasingly immobilized,” write Schmidt and Cohen.

But let us remember that quite often it is journalists themselves who are digging their credibility grave by bartering their independence and judgment for a few freebies.

Premarital sex as good as being married: Is the Madras HC ruling progressive or outrageous?

The Madras High Court ruling stating that if a man and a woman of permissible legal age engage in premarital sex, then they will, in the eyes of the law, be viewed as a married couple has come in for flak from several quarters. We ask a few Chennaiites what they think of the ruling, and get a legal expert to decode Justice CS Karnan’s ruling for our readers…

Khushbu, actress

It’s good that the judge has given such a judgment. It takes us forward. This judgment is definitely for women’s protection. If one is in a live-in relationship and after three or four years a man walks out, the woman doesn’t have any rights. In a marriage, a woman can claim alimony, and the children are protected. So this is a welcome judgment as it gives a sense of protection. I am not saying that this judgment is legitimizing premarital sex or live-in relationships, but it gives some sort of security to the women.

Bosskey, COMEDIAN

A few questions need to be addressed with regard to this ruling by the High Court. Post marriage if a couple decides to stop having consensual sex, can that amount to a divorce? If a man and a woman married to two different people, consent for sex, will they be considered married? If a married man flirts with a girl and has sex with her, should he be allowed a second marriage? What if he does the same with a dozen girls? And as per the ruling, the first night will be followed by reception and then muhurtham.

Karty, DJ

The ruling will definitely make youngsters think twice and think seriously before they embark on a relationship and before they decide to consummate their relationship.

Rishita Sawlani, model

I think it’s not right for a lot of people. The ruling does make sense in the context of the case it was given in, but saying that premarital sex can be considered marriage if a documentary evidence is provided doesn’t make sense to me. This decision makes mockery of the institution of marriage, which many of us believe in. Now there are SMS jokes around where people are asking how many wives and husbands one has.

Vikram Vivekanand, guitarist

The story reported by the media did seem absurd. And the posts on social networking sites that followed were downright hilarious. But after reading the actual ruling, it did make sense and looked as if parts of it were taken out of it and blown out of proportion.

Getting married still remains a big deal in India. Kerala is no exception. These days a few Malayalis do not marry at all, but prefer to be in live-in relationships. But this is not about them.

It is about how girls are still pushed into marriage in Kerala much before they attain the age of 18, among Kerala’s Muslims, who constitute more than 25% of the state’s population. These are nothing but child marriages.

The Child Marriage Prohibition Act, 2006, unambiguously defines a “child as a person who, if a male, has not completed 21 years of age, and if a female, has not completed 18 years of age.”

A circular issued on June 14, 2013, by Local Self Government (LSG) department of the government of Kerala has sought to reassure unconvinced registrars across the state that Muslim marriages involving a male aged less than 21 and a female aged less than 18 is legal.

The circular violates provisions in Special Marriage Act 1954. As per this Act, if a marriage has to be solemnized, the man has to be 21 years old and the woman must be 18 years of age. Both the Child Marriage Prohibition Act and Special Marriage Act are applicable to the whole of India except the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

At the moment, a debate is on in Kerala about the intent and logic behind the Congress-led UDF government’s move to sanctify such child marriages among Muslims.

The LSG department is headed by an Indian Union Muslim League minister, M K Muneer, an MBBS doctor, who told The Times of India (the TOI led with the story on June 20 in Kerala which has triggered a state-wide debate, forcing rest of the newspapers and news channels to amplify the story) that he is personally against the move to encourage child marriages among Muslims.

But the government, harried by allegations against chief minister Oommen Chandy’s office of nexus with a set of financial fraudsters, is adamant and not ready to withdraw the circular. Muslim League has 20 MLAs in the assembly and the government runs on two-seat majority in the 140 member assembly.

Interestingly, The Kerala State Muslim Youth League, the youth outfit of IUML, has come out against the circular. But many see that only as a liberal pose, but not a genuine demand to repeal the circular.

The LSG department of Kerala has trotted out two excuses for legalizing child marriages. The June 14 circular points out that the Muslim Marriage Act, 1957, does not make it mandatory for a boy to be 21 years and girl to be 18 years at the time of marriage.

The second argument is that The Child Marriage Prohibition Act, 2006, does not deem marriage between a male aged below 21 and a female aged below 18 null and void.

Saner and liberal voices among Kerala’s economically thriving Muslim community have termed the UDF government’s step as regressive.

M N Karassery, reputed literary critic and activist, says: “This would come in the way of Muslim women’s social advancement as marriage below the age of 18 would hamper their political and educational life besides thwarting their chances of getting a job. We have to protest against the order and it should be challenged before a court of law.”

Karassery says the circular smacks of “religious discrimination. “Marriageable age should be the same for all women in the country, irrespective of their religion. But this order offers a different marriageable age for the women of a particular community. This is a move to appease the Muslim clergy,” he adds.

It is important to realize that this is not a Muslim issue. This is a humanitarian issue. Muslim girls should not be denied an opportunity to pursue education and a career, which their sisters among other communities do with great vigour and conviction.

It is not surprising that Muslim girls and women are reluctant to raise their voice against the circular that has a huge impact on their lives, for such is the hold of orthodoxy among the community. Their silence should not be taken as consent for a regressive step.

Marriage seems to be bad for your sex life. Couples who have sex over four times a week before theirwedding, barely have it once a week three years after tying the knot, a survey in Britain has found.

Researchers found that before marriage, couples can hope to have sex more than four times a week. But after three years of married life, there is a dramatic drop in their sex life and most couples have sex just once every seven days.

The survey was conducted among 3,000 married couple.

Six out of ten couples think that marriage has completely ruined the excitement of having sex, Daily Mail reported.

Another astounding result of the survey was that just below half of all married couples said that their relationship was more like friends than lovers.

“Unfortunately, while you can be deeply in love with someone and want to spend the rest of your life with them, it is also possible to want more from the relationship,” a spokesman for extra-marital dating service http://www.lovinglinks.co.uk was quoted as saying.

“A partner might be supportive, funny, intelligent, and kind, but if they don’t inspire confidence in the bedroom, or don’t meet expectations, sexually life can be frustrating,” he added.

He said: “It is at times like this when eyes start to wander, and folks start to think about having a no-strings affair with someone else…We have good reason to believe many relationships are strengthened by a little out-of-marriage activity.”

The survey revealed that 59 percent of couples think that their sex life had worsened after marriage.

Incidentally, eight in ten couples were in a sexual rut by having sex at the same time, in the same place and in the same positions every time they slept together.

As a matter of fact, 79 percent of the respondents were happier getting a good night’s sleep than making the effort to have spontaneous sex in the middle of the night.

Two thirds of the couples who had an affair admitted that sex was mind-blowing compared to the once-a-week sex with their husband or wife.

A fifth were ready to have a one-night stand if the opportunity presented itself or if their sex life with their partner didn’t improve. And nearly a quarter said they had a one-night stand to satisfy their craving for good sex.

The Loving Links spokesman said: “Modern marriages are becoming a little more open where sex is concerned, and these days we are quicker to forgive if someone has a little one-night stand.”

The results of the survey showed that almost two thirds of the respondents blamed their hectic lifestyle for their unhappy sex life and 80 percent were often too tired to bother once the day is over.
Here is Rosie Huntington-Whiteley topless in “Ten Times Rosie” second chapter, showing off her sexy body for our viewing pleasure. My apologies! You still don’t know who Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is yet? Well, She is the Victoria’s Secret model turn actress replacing Megan Fox in the next Transformers movie. But unlike Megan she has no problem showing off some boobies. Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s new book “Ten Times Rosie” is a stunning 240-page hardback photography book by photographer Lensman Rankin featuring a collection of amazing images of Rosie embodying 10 different personalities while showing off her body in the designs of Paula Thomas of Thomas Wylde. In an interview with Vogue UK, Rosie said:
“Shooting Ten Times Rosie was the most incredible experience of my career,” said Rosie. “Paula, Rankin and the team worked so hard, the set had an amazing community atmosphere. I think we have created some beautiful and iconic images. I’m so proud of this project and I believe it’s something that is very close and personal to all of us as it’s a combined effort of our creativity and imagination.”

Ten Times Rosie is available to buy now from Amazon and all good book stores, priced at $60 or £40. Below is just a 43-shot snippet of the actual book.

Wearing bras make your breasts sag even more and they do nothing to reduce back pain, a French study spanning 15-years has found.

Wearing bras make your breasts sag even more and they do nothing to reduce back pain, a French study spanning 15-years has found.
Jean-Denis Rouillon, Research Professor on the French study, told Counsel and Heal that medically, physiologically, anatomically – breasts gain no benefit from being denied gravity.

On the contrary, Rouillon added, women get saggier with a bra, News reported.

The study that looked at the changes in breasts of 330 women using a slide rule and calliper concluded that breasts naturally become more toned and supported if no bra is used.

When a bra is used, the breast becomes dependent on the artificial support, making them degrade more quickly.

Moreover, the study found that going braless gives women a 7mm lift in their nipples for every year they go without, and aids in fading stretch marks.

But Rouillon noted though they validated the hypothesis that the bra is a false need, it would be dangerous to advise all women to stop wearing their soutien-gorge as the women involved were not a representative sample of the population.

READMORE http://clubdesexymind.blogspot.com/2013/05/boob-boob-boob.html

When the doorbell rang in the middle of the night, the ‘who could it be at this hour’ question ran through everyone’s mind. If the voice on the other side of the door said ‘telegram’ then the curiosity intensified into an electric form of anxiety that raced through the house bringing everyone within earshot to the door. One signed for the sealed envelope, ripped it open and read out the contents, all hearts clogging up one mouth. Sometimes the news was exactly of the kind that made telegrams so feared while on other, when other modes of communication were unreliable, inaccessible and slow, the telegram was the final recourse available when a message just had to be delivered with a guarantee. In its manner of use, respect for its importance was usually maintained; the telegram was never just another way of reaching someone.

Unlike the idea of always being connected that has become the norm today- everyone meaningful is either on social media or a text message away- we lived a life only partially illuminated with knowledge. At any given point in time, there were so many aspects of our own life that we had no access to. When someone went abroad, for instance, for long periods of time, one’s loved ones had no idea as to what was happening. Any meaningful form of communication was slow, so slow that by the time one received and replied, things could have changed dramatically. Relationships found a way of thriving in this constrained world by substituting imagination and yearning in the place of actual contact. The telegram was a way of ensuring that if it came to the crunch,  virtually instant communication was always possible. Armed with this lifeline, the idea of connectivity focused on richness rather than frequency. Every physical contact was heightened by the anticipation that preceded it and the wallowing in memories that followed it. By itself, the telegram is hardly a great loss, but it does also tell us that the world that depended on it has also changed in a fundamental way. That we don’t need the telegram any more is a clue to the fact that we are connected all the time, but it may also point out that being connected is not the same as feeling a connection.

Former New Straits Times Group Editor-in-Chief A Kadir Jasin’s disclosure that it was Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad who personally ordered the consignment to political oblivion of Anwar Ibrahim by the NST after the latter was decapitated in 1998 brings to an instructive close the case against politically-aligned ownership of media outlets.

When the Straits Times Group, majority-owned by AC Simmons, a Jewish businessman domiciled in Singapore, was bought over in November 1972 by PERNAS, one of several government-owned corporations (the GLC acronym was not yet in vogue) set up under the New Economic Policy (NEP) to expand Malay equity ownership in the private sector, the speculation among senior journalists in the Kuala Lumpur office of the STwho were sceptical of the exercise was:

READMORE Pak Kadiaq’s Cautionary Tale

an old politician never dies, he just, well, never dies. Much has been said and written about the need for youth in the gerontocracy that is Malay politics, something that bears no repeating . As a rule, the significant ministries get divided up between the old-timers, while the youngsters ( most of them inheritors of political estates) get the junior roles. To be considered young, one needs to be under 50, but anyone under 60 can also carry off this labelBy any yardstick, politics is a stressful profession. For those not fortunate enough to inherit political legacies , politics involves a long, hard, highly unpredictable journey to a position of any significance. Unlike other jobs, where the path to career progression is clearly defined, and a transparent process is put in place, politics offers no clarity whatsoever. Even after becoming a leader of significance, promotion to party positions or ministerial berths follows no established patterns of logic. Choices are made on factors that are highly variable-  identity, loyalty to individuals, the desire to balance the influence of rivals, among others. Even after coming to power, staying in power is a time-consuming enterprise. While getting elected might seem like the politicians’ biggest concern, in actual fact, it is in managing the internal dynamics of one’s own party by keeping a host of rivals at bay that keeps most politicians occupied.Nor is everyday life easy for a politician. The job involves being available at all times, both to the unending stream of constituents and favour seekers, as well as to the party and ministry, if one is in power. Travel is frequent and at election times, arduous by any standards. Mentally too, the pressure is significant, for the job involves, almost by definition, dealing with crises of various kinds. Given the nature of the job, few people can be trusted and the burden of responsibility falls squarely on the individual.  In addition, now most politicians run some sort of commercial enterprise, both legitimate and otherwise, as evident in the dramatic rise in personal wealth of our elected representatives, that undoubtedly calls for time and attention.When the tail seeks to wag the dog Here are two areas where we will remain on opposing sides of the argument unless Najib get rid of both Tengku Adnan and Ahmad Zahid Hamid i“We are not in a drift, we’re in danger of a rift,”  snaky Minister Tengku Adnan  can  be trusted to trade diatribes on which one … Read more  TENGKU ADNAN A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY MINISTER IN NAJIB’S NEW CABINET

Perhaps power is the ultimate tonic (and aphrodisiac going by the exploits of Tengku Adnan and Ahmad Zahid Hamid ). Perhaps the fact that in politics one blossoms late, shifts the deployment of energy into the second half of one’s life. Perhaps politics is best aligned with shift in faculties that accompany age; the physical becomes less important than the mental and wisdom and experience become highly valued commodities. Perhaps the accumulation of a large network of influence requires time.Perhaps a lot of this has to do with how politics and role of politicians is imagined in UMNO for in other democracies, the trend has been towards younger politicians. Politics is not seen as a job, but a business. It is seen as a way to build a power base which is then traded for significance. Most prime political real estate is cornered by existing principalities, through political dynasties, but the few that make it on their own operate in a similar way. Positions of power are devices of dispensation, rather than accountability. The ministerial berth is a recognition of one’s efforts in the past rather than a charge to create outcomes for the future. The idea of a public position as a reward that is one’s due is one that necessarily privileges age and seniority over capability and energy. This one-sided view of power also places little responsibility on its recipient to feel the pressure of performance.Margaret Thatcher, who led Britain’s Conservatives from confusion into the promised land of three election victories, believed that a political party must serve as a vehicle to capture power, not limp along as a platform for views. Ideas were a mirage unless anchored in the oasis of government.The present impasse is more complex. Both government … Read more NAJIB SO MANY CRUEL IRONIES SHIFTING SANDS MAKE FOR SHIFTING STANDS