Isa Samad was in possession several pictures of Najib Razak and Ziana Zain, was taken by Burglars
The main aim is to give a few more blows on Najib hoping that Najib will surrender his will to the real master, whatever the outcome of the GE-13 may be. Who in UMNO can beat Najib if not Mahathir?
Najib’s most dangerous enemies are now from within his own UMNO party, where he is the most vulnerable. All the wannabes are out to replace him. It is clear that Najib will just handover his prized list of ‘winnable’ candidates that he has guarded with his life to Mahathir and let Mahathir make the final decision. Firstly, Najib is just too indecisive to come to any conclusion and secondly, there is no way he could say ‘NO’ to the strong-willed Dr M.
Mahathir being politically cold-blooded and ruthless, Mahathir in his endeavor to create a clear path for his son Mukhriz to be prime minister in the future may have no choice but to sacrifice UMNO. And this he is willing to do. He has done it before and he thinks that UMNO can still survive.
Is it true that men constantly try to pull down women at the workplace? Why? Perhaps they do so because they consider the office, and in particular, the corridors of power, their original territory! And a woman walking down the same corridor is something they still haven’t got used to.
Or, maybe men are convinced that women are inferior, and so give them short shrift. Or, is it because knowing the weakness of their own sex, men fear that susceptible male bosses may give women colleagues more attention and bigger promotions?
Whatever the reason, the fact remains that a woman with a strong personality and even average looks can strike terror in the hearts of male colleagues for no fault of hers. If a woman has a mind of her own and dares to question a decision or make a point strongly, she is instantly labelled “enemy” for she has violated the traditional code of conduct between the sexes! And so as a protective response, men label her “difficult to work with”, “hard to get along”, “tough to handle” or “not willing to listen”. This is the global mantra of guys who find it difficult to accept a woman on an equal footing, intellectually or professionally.
Most women professionals realise early on that in order to be heard and taken seriously, they will have to adopt a somewhat serious mien and a nononsense approach. It is only strong women who make it to the top, others fall by the wayside. A softie just will not do, she will be an easy doormat for men to walk over. They will take her lightly and try to fix her in the slot they are most comfortable with — a biddable or sexy type who can be controlled through manipulation. But give men a stern, nononsense approach and they will stand at a distance and wonder what to make of you.
But reflect upon the issue a bit, and you realise that the situation is not as simple as a male-female gender face-off. Certainly, the gender edge aggravates it, but the issue is more about fields of control rather than men not able to accept women at work. And so, as a male colleague puts it, “Men don’t get along even with each other in office situations, except when their work relationships are sharply defined as junior and senior. And when it comes to women, you have to be mature if you are not to feel challenged and diminished. The fact is that women at the top are all the strong ones, who have grown against a lot of opposition from colleagues.”
The competition between women at the same level is equally intense and dirty. And probably that’s how the top bosses like it to remain. Jagged edges, unrealised dreams, unfulfilled desires, and circles just short of completion, all make for edgy people who will give it their last shot to move ahead, rather than sit back in sated glory.
Says Meenakshi Lekhi, advocate and national spokesperson, BJP, and one of the strongest women I know, “Fearing and pulling down people is not gender-specific. This is more to do with the psychology of a person. People who lack confidence and are greedy to gain power by hook or by crook, will attack and pull others down. The fact is that it is a competitive world and when people cannot pull you down on merit, they indulge in attacks based on extraneous issues. Men and women get affected equally. I have come across many very decent men, and also very indecent women.”
And so insecure people all pull down each other, but when it comes to men and women, the situation takes a dramatic turn because at stake here is not just a promotion or hike, but the entire power play between the sexes. Traditionally, a man’s superiority and masculine image has come from the protector-provider role he has played towards women. The role a woman plays in evolution and the cycle of life is enough to make men feel inadequate in any case, and psychiatrists also talk about a man’s deep-seated fear of being rendered unnecessary and redundant. And so a strong woman who can step out and take him on at office as well, makes an insecure man feel emasculated and inadequate. In order to validate his own worth, a man may prefer women to lead lives of dependence and incompetence.
However, let us not ignore the fact that there is an increasing tribe of men who are more evolved and able to accept a woman as an equal being without seriously harming their own psyche. They treat women well, try to understand them, accept their thinking and go along with their ideas as much as with those of other men.
Here is to that increasing tribe of non-challenged men!
ntellect is seductive… and is equally eager to be seduced. Women are drawn to intelligent men; the interest of a worthy man gives a woman an increased feeling of self-worth. And genius is a world apart. We forgive our men of letters many evils, and indeed many of them – most dead, some still alive, are boors when it comes to real life, however delicious they may be between the pages of their books.
And it is equally true that these men, when they get out of their own intensely thoughtful heads, have sought women like muchneeded tonic – ever younger, more beautiful, doting and appreciative. After the initial charm wears off, reluctant to settle with anything lesser, they have changed women as one changes clothes, seeking to stay on the high which the initial flush of love and sex brings. This keeps the adrenaline flowing, the ego sated. And of course, it keeps the ideas coming.
One such giant of English literature, Ernest Hemingway took birth and died this month many years ago (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961). In between the two defining dates, he lived life to the fullest on his own terms, indulging every whim, courting danger and flirting with death – be it on the battlefields of two World Wars, the bullfighting arena of Spain, the jungles of Africa, his regular trysts with the sea, or two airplane crashes on successive days! Ironically, he escaped these deadly arenas, and finally met Death in his own home foyer on his own terms, by blowing his brains out with his favourite shotgun. This last was the only tale he did not live to tell, the only experience he could not share.
Hemingway’s dangerous living is explained in his words from Paula McCain’s book The Paris Wife. Talking of the bull fighting in Pamplona, Spain, Hemingway says to first wife Hadley Richardson, “The torero has to know he is dying and the bull has to know it, so when it’s pulled away at the last second, it’s like a kind of magic. That’s really living.” Hemingway was a cocktail of contradictions, as history’s most interesting human beings are.
He loved with a passion that saw nothing wrong in chasing many women at the same time, and hated with a vengeance that saw nothing wrong in ridiculing and harming those who supported him on his upward journey. A man who was scared of Death and yet courted her repeatedly; one who had built a heroic myth around himself, yet was scared to sleep with the lights off. One who needed his space and solitude to write and yet could not bear to be alone.
Hadley, who probably loved him best of all four wives, says of him, “He was such an enigma – fine and strong and weak and cruel. An incomparable friend and a son of a bitch. In the end, there wasn’t one thing about him that was truer than the rest. It was all true.” For Hemingway, life was about honing his art of writing and gaining popularity.
A serial womaniser, each time he got bored with his wife, he sought out a new attachment while still married. Hadley was eight years older to him and was credited with grounding and encouraging the young Hemingway till he found his feet in the wetlands of literary Paris. Within five years of marriage and a son, Hemingway started an affair with Pauline Pfeiffer, Hadley’s best friend.
Unwilling to let go of either woman, he tried to carry on with both for a while before Hadley called it a day. He married Pauline in 1927 and had two sons with her. By 1936, Papa Hemingway was ready for another innings. This time, he fell for Martha Gellhorn, a war journalist and author almost cast in his own mould. It was a foregone conclusion that this union wouldn’t last as Hemingway could never stand competition.
Within four years, he started living with his fourth and last spouse Mary Welsh even before the formal divorce with Martha. At the end of all this, what did Hemingway feel? Ironically, in his memoir A Moveable Feast, he says about first wife Hadley, “I wish I had died before I loved anyone but her.”
One of Hemingway’s fictional women says about men in To Have and Have Not, “They want someone new, or someone younger, or someone that they shouldn’t have, or someone that looks like someone else… Or they just get tired, I suppose.”
Martha, the wife who hated him most, said of him, “A man must be a very great genius to make up for being such a loathsome human being.”
Hemingway was indeed a tormented man when he died. Much of that torment came to him; his own father had committed suicide, as did five close relatives. The rest he created for himself with his overindulgences, fickleness, huge demands on love and lovers. He once said, “About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.”
The mental torture and his unending compulsion to be liked and applauded created the myth of an invincible Papa Hemingway, who ultimately died as he lived and loved – by his own rules.
