Seventy-five years to the day, the Nazi regime bared its anti-Semitic fangs with a ferocity that appalled and outraged even those who took a benign view of Adolf Hitler and believed that they could do business with him. They had paid scant attention to his rants against liberals, Leftists, moderate Christians, homosexuals and especially Jews before he rode to power in 1933. His speeches, delivered with mesmerising, oratorical flourishes, were widely reported in the press both in Germany and abroad.That sort of coverage encouraged him to project his image as a leader who would rid his country of venal politicians and artists and thinkers with a modern, secular and cosmopolitan outlook. The former, he argued, were responsible, along with Jewish businessmen, for Germany’s economic mess. And the latter threatened to emasculate Germany’s nationalism and its ‘authentic’ culture.
The Germans, he emphasized time and again, had to sacrifice their individual freedoms to emerge as a united people who put the nation’s interest above all else under his firm, determined, even ruthless leadership.His painful history with PAS is the reason well-known Muslim preacher Mohammad Kazim Elias declined a seat on the Umno supreme council early this month. Mohammad Kazim, a popular… READ MORE
The effects of such leadership were evident in the very first year of the Nazi regime. Jews were summarily dismissed from the positions they held in the press, radio, theatre, cinema and in schools and universities. A year later, they were eliminated from the stock exchanges. On 15 September 1935, the regime promulgated the infamous Nuremberg laws which stripped Jews of German citizenship and relegated them to the status of subjects.
Thirteen decrees that followed to supplement the laws completely banned Jews from public and private employment. By 1938 they could no longer practice the professions of law and medicine or engage in any kind of business. This was not all. Signs of the social boycott of Jews mushroomed in cities, towns and even hamlets across the Reich.
Such was the background of the fateful events on 9-10 November 1938. The immediate provocation for them was a fatal attack on a German diplomat stationed in Paris by a 17-year-old German Jewish refugee. He sought to avenge the deportation of his father, along with ten thousand Jews, to Poland and the Nazi regime’s treatment of Jews. No sooner had the news reached Berlin than Hitler ordered his propaganda chief, Dr. Goebbels, to organize “spontaneous” demonstrations by the “German people” as a “natural reaction” to the diplomat’s murder.
On 9-10 November Nazi goons went on a rampage the like of which had never been witnessed before even as the police and para-troopers looked the other way. Hundreds of synagogues were set aflame. Thousands of Jewish shops were looted and gutted. The shattered remains of their glass fronts littered the streets for days on end. The number of Jewish homes that were torched or destroyed also ran into the thousands. Their occupants – men, women and children – were shot to death as they sought to flee the inferno. More than 20,000 Jews were arrested and dispatched to concentration camps.
Ustad Mohammad Kazim Elias has a popular show on Astro Oasis and was offered an Umno supreme council seat to strengthen the party’s Islamic programmes. He later declined the post.– The Member of Parliament for Titiwangsa, Datuk Johari Abdul Ghani Among Nine Umno MT Members Appointed “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth …Read more
Judged according to these standards, our Parliament and state assemblies are little more than a hotbed of interminable intrigue, confrontation, mud-slinging, filibustering and sometimes also outbursts of violence. This numbs the nerves of the executive and paralyses the legislature. The one cannot govern while the other cannot enact laws, adopt policies or, so far as the opposition is concerned, even act as a watch-dog of the government of the day. What stands out, therefore, is a mockery of their constitutional responsibilities.The intricacies of the cases continue to be subjected to close and critical scrutiny in the new media. But the larger picture they reveal hasn’t attracted the requisite attention: the growing disconnect between the “hardware” and the “software” of Malaysian democracy. The “hardware” of democracy include legislative and executive institutions (Parliament, state assemblies, and the judiciary, official statutory and non-statutory bodies, political parties and the media. And the “software” relates to the observance of rules and regulations, conventions and precedents to enable the institutions to function in a transparent, accountable and effective manner. What is the record?to this the growing interference of the apex court in legislative and executive areas that are, strictly speaking, beyond its remit. It is argued, doubtless with good reason, that such interference is inevitable when the government and the legislature are unable or unwilling or both to shoulder their constitutionally-mandated tasks. Governance, like nature, abhors a vacuum. But the danger in this argument is that it upsets the delicate balance of power between the three estates of the republic that the Constitution decrees. On this count, too, a lethal virus could render the “software” of democracy obsolete.That danger is no less acute when governments, both at the Centre and in the states, deploy official agencies to get even with rivals. More often than not, such deployment is initiated outside the framework of laws, rules and regulations. Fake encounters and fabricated cases are evidence of this conceited insouciance. But so is the intrusive surveillance of citizens suspected of making life difficult for the rulers of the day: rival politicians, nosey media persons, un-cooperative civilian and police officials, NGOs and, in one instance at least, an individual who posed no such threat. We recently witnessed such conduct in, among other states, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Gujarat. Surveillance of this nature, especially if it is pervasive, also contaminates the “software” of democracy.
Abdul Gani Patail guilty of dishonest practices, as bribery; lacking integrity; crooked :debased in character; depraved; perverted; wicked; evil:The biggest irony of our times is that people perceive all politicians as ‘thieves’ but at the same time they are also forced to elect them to Parliament again and again to rule the country. And, these administrative and legal processes can now get to the bottom of high-profile cases involving, directly or otherwise, in case is abuse of power that is in flagrant violation of the laws by those who are duty-bound – because of the positions they occupy – to uphold them the ailments of the judiciary, including, in the first place, that of the alleged moral turpitude of some of the judges is only one of them. Even on this count, however, the judiciary is loath to allow an impartial and transparent probe by anyone other than the members of its own fraternity. … Read more
The political parties are no better. Their public spats are less about policies and programmes and more about the acquisition of power and pelf. Many of them are akin to privately-controlled family businesses. Inner-party democracy is a rumour to them. Mahathir has had the longest innings in power since independence, leads the pack. DAP and PAS are not far behind:But these permanently feuding parties from one end of the political spectrum to another can and do make common cause when their interests as a corporate class are in jeopardy. Consider their opposition to any serious effort to keep politicians with criminal backgrounds at bay. Consider, too, the alacrity with which they refused to come within the purview of the Right to Information Act. Such “software” contains far too many bugs to serve any worthwhile purpose. They relate to an unforgiveable betrayal of trust reposed in them by their readers, friends, colleagues and followers. What makes the betrayal odious is that these individuals professed to promote highfalutin principles of moral and spiritual rectitude. All three of them emasculated the substance of their calling and, in the process, polluted the “software” that is expected to keep state and society in India in fine fettle. Why are the bloody MPs keeping. This treason of the highest order an unforgiveable betrayal of trust voters reposed in themThis has been morally degrading and has turned politics predatory. But things still remained functional. Till prosperity threw up a body of people whose progress in life has little to do with state patronage and who …Read more
Those who recall the entertainment the ‘Khairy Chronicles’ provided COVER BOOK_NAJIBInternet followers in the middle years of the last decade when the blogosphere began to draw Malaysians to it as an alternate source of news and comment will have sat up the past week to take notice that a reprise may be at hand.
The ‘Khairy Chronicles’ was a titillating amalgam of half-truths, gossip, rumour and conjecture that Raja Petra Kamarudin deployed in his blog Malaysia Today as soon as the new-broom sheen the Abdullah Ahmad Badawi administration sported on being installed in late 2003 began to pall by 2006.
Malaysians with access to foreign-owned regional periodicals have long suspected that the facts behind the published news on national politics are more riveting than the disinfected version the newspapers, all owned by the ruling class or affiliates, decided to print.
In the years before the inception of web news portals, readers eagerly waited for the periodicals to tell them what the mainstream newspapers found too risqué to disclose.
Thus when the blogosphere saw the emergence in the middle years of the last decade of a tattler like Raja Petra , he quickly gained a following for his irreverent musings, with followers of his stuff no longer reliant – for an inkling of what’s happening – on those foreign-owned periodicals which in any case were fast becoming defunct.
RPKAs quickly as he emerged, Raja Petra faded in 2011 as supplier of title tattle that kept droves on edge with his revelations. The reasons for his retreat were as mysterious as the sources that fed him grist for his mill when he hit out at targets which in his prime were the Abdullah family and, latter, the then Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak and his dear wife, Rosmah Mansor.
Since the time of Raja Petra’s evanescence as prime purveyor of editorial contraband in 2011, the void he left was somewhat filled by Rafizi Ramli, the strategic director of PKR, from under whose bonnet there steadily emerged news of shenanigans in high places.
The most sensational in this genre was the RM250 million national cattle breeding scandal in which the family of Wanita UMNO leader Shahrizat Abdul Jalil was embroiled. Juicy revelations were trotted out in the alternate media and remained as scuttlebutt for punch lines on opposition campaign circuits in the lead-up to the general election last May.
The source-field for that kind of stuff of which Rafizi became the go-to conduit appears to have been turned off, presumably by the recent passing of laws that impose deterrent fines and jail terms on those guilty of leaking any information that the authorities consider secret.
Shifting gears
With that cut-off, a void has developed into which has seemingly stepped a former top editor whose blog, when it was launched several years ago, was not known for more than its commentaries on public affairs. In the past week or so, the blogger has ventured on to turf once treaded by Raja Petra.
A Kadir Jasin, the NST group’s former editorial No 1, has shifted gears in his widelyA Kadir Jasin followed blog, perhaps opting to fill the vacuum left by Raja Petra. A staunch UMNO supporter, Kadir’s long smoldering distaste for PM Najib ratcheted up in intensity after the UMNO elections in October and broke out into the open at the conclusion of the party’s annual general assembly last week.
What appears to have got Kadir’s goat was Najib’s defence of wife Rosmah at the party meeting where the PM disclosed that Malaysian students stranded in Egypt during the Arab Spring were rescued from danger through Rosmah’s intercessory efforts with higher-ups she was acquainted with in the Arab world.
Dripping sarcasm, Kadir suggested in his blog The Scribe by Kadir Jasin that Rosmah ought to be made a minister because her talents have rendered redundant present holders of the portfolios of education, international trade and foreign affairs. He said there would be no problem about her lack of a seat in Parliament because there was the Senate to which she could be appointed, in readiness perhaps for her to contest for a seat in the lower house at the 14th general election.
Kadir’s sarcasm was too succulent for the other blogs and websites to ignore so thatrosmah-najib when one that had posted a piece had to take it down, reportedly on orders from the PM’s Department, the scribe’s gills overflowed, the sarcasm this time tinged with vitriol.
Kadir’s venomous squirts were reserved for Najib, but Shahrizat was also sprayed, his scorn for her description of Najib as the “grandmaster” of political moves – “chest master” Kadir punned – a term certain to acquire cocktail-party immortality.
That’s was not all. Kadir said he would soon have details of what the fawningSHAHRIZAT JALIL Shahrizat actually thinks about Najib, something if indeed Kadir follows through with will surely turn a cockpit into a cauldron.
Najib may have won the general election last May and was triumphant at the UMNO internal polls in October, but he cannot be certain of turning the double win into a sweep of all he surveys in the party.
Civil courts were asked to try the Nazi goons who faced charges of murdering Jews. There were no convictions. The courts accepted the argument that the murderers could not be punished since they had merely carried out orders from above. The one who forcefully made that argument – a certain Major Buch – was candid enough to say: “The public, down to the last man, realizes that political drives like those of November 9 were organized and directed by the Party, whether this is admitted or not.”
To add insult to injury, not only were the Jews who survived the barbaric attacks provided with no relief or rehabilitation, but they were compelled to pay for the loss of their own property. Indeed, as a form of punishment, a collective fine of one billion marks was imposed on them. And the state went ahead to confiscate the compensation they would receive from insurance companies.
This, then, was the prelude to the systematic liquidation of six million Jews and the uprooting of millions more. The chilling scenes of 9-10 November 1938 shocked political leaders and opinion-makers throughout those parts of the world that weren’t enslaved by fascism. Some had premonitions of the horrors to come earlier that year. One of them was Indira Gandhi. Writing to her father from England in September, she said she found the European situation “perfectly sickening”, expressed her concerns about Neville Chamberlain flying to Munich to cut a deal with Hitler, and praised him for his decision to visit Spain as a show of solidarity with the Republicans. The father whole-heartedly endorsed these comments.
The utterances of Mahatma Gandhi on the evils perpetrated by the Nazi regime are well documented. So are the views of the Indian National Congress. The resolutions of the party, drafted by Jawaharlal Nehru, leave not an iota of doubt about its uncompromising stand against fascism and militarism of all hues: German, Italian and Japanese.
But there were other voices that were heard in India at that time. Here is what one influential leader had to say in 1938: “German pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races- the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well nigh it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by.” The author of these lines was MS Golwalkar who, two years later, would head the RSS.
Consider what was heard in Germany then – the talk of a “spontaneous reaction to an action”, the plea for “unity”, the call to “put the nation first”, the rants against venal politicians and against “Jew-loving artists and intellectuals”, the yearning for a “strong and decisive leader.” Consider next what has been heard in India in the light of the Godhra and post-Godhra incidents and during the campaign speeches for the forthcoming state and national elections, especially by an RSS-nurtured figure aspiring to lead India on the strength of his messianic conceits. The coincidence could well be fortuitous. But it still sends a chill down the spine.
