Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Education:Keeping The Brain-Dead Inside, The Brains Outside

Hantu Laut

Sorry Babe! Ain't got no money for the kids education but we can buy the BMW that we have always wanted.

Got money to build RM800 million palace, got money to build RM800 million new parliament building, got money to bail out the corrupt-laden PKFZ, got money to make every UMNO's ministers and divisional heads rich but have no money for our brainy students.

If there is anything more horrendous that the Najib's government has churned out so far this could be the worst.

I am sure the Chinese are amused because with this policy it would be the majority Malays and bumiputras kept inside the country.The proverbial "katak dibawah tempurong"

Looks like Mahathir's Vision 2020 is going down the drain.

As Jema Khan pointed out in his article here Najib is a good goalkeeper but backed by under performing team.That could be an understatement.

I have in many instances spelled in my previous posts the need for Najib to have a major cabinet reshuffle or face the perils of losing the government not because of him but because of dismal performance of most of his ministers.His own popularity rating may be on the rise but his ministers are dragging him down.It is either intentional or out of sheer foolishness.

Najib should introduce a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) for each and every minister to measure their performance on quarterly basis.Those falling below the tolerance level for three consecutive quarters should be removed.

Do we really need RM800 million palace and RM800 million parliament house and all the trappings of the delusions of grandeur and neglect our responsibility to educate our children?

Lest, Nazri forgets those are taxpayers' money the government spending on megalomanic projects.

What is wrong with the present parliament house which has been renovated and refurbished a few years ago to the tune of RM85 million yet the roof leaks.Is this building about to collapse to justify the building of another?

This is a government in contradiction.After warning the people of economic gloom and doom and possibility of going bankrupt it embarked on a ridiculously grandiose and wasteful plan of building a new parliament house at a whopping RM800 million for the benefits of 222 members of parliament.

We all know how important education is and how success is deeply tied to having a good educational background.

There are many highly intelligent children from poor families who are just unfortunate to not be able to pursue tertiary education because their parents can't afford to finance further education for them.These tangible assets go to waste because the government failed in its duty.

Human success depend on the ability to adapt, to invent and education is the indispensable factor that can bring progress to humanity.

"Necessity is the mother of invention" and only with education we can gear the brain to logical progression and inventiveness.

Look at the Malaysian oil palm industry.We are the biggest producer of palm oil yet we labour in backwardness in our oil palm plantations depending on imported labour to harvest the fruits and misplaced notion that labour will always be cheap.

No one, including government agencies funded by the government to do research on the oil palm industry has come up with an idea how to mechanise the industry.Greed overrides our better judgement.We put as many trees as possible in an acre of land to get bigger yield in the short term rather than invest in the long term by inventing machines that can mechanise planting and harvesting that eventually will bring down the cost of operation.If that crop is grown in the West they would have found a way to mechanise the whole industry.

We have a trapped mind because we are so easily comforted, complacence and forever depending on the West for new technology.Worst, we don't take criticism as construction for new ideas but rather as a source of annoyance.

Invention need research and development which need big money and only government and big companies can afford to fund such venture.The recipe for any invention is the trained human mind.Education trains the human mind.That's why the West put greatest value in education.

Here, our government tells us there is no more money for further education let alone spend money on research and development.Sorry Nazri! You may be a lawyer but you are way out of your league.

Isolated tribes in the jungle have no form of education to bring modernity to their culture.They continue to stay in the age of ignorance.Islamic civilization, where the sciences used to exist and evolve have been dead for hundreds of years caught in a time warp.Many Muslim nations have put high quality education in the backseat.

Education purveys knowledge, skills and values that are passed from one generation to another.Without education we are doomed.Let me produce Nazri's penultimate statement here.

“This year, we reduced the number to 1,500. Next year, we will continue [to reduce this further],” he said.

Nevertheless, Nazri said that the extra funds would be given out as scholarships to students pursuing courses in the local universities.

“Ultimately, the purpose is also to retain our good students here in our local universities. We want our good students to study locally and this is our long-term goal.

“We want our universities to be first-class. We want to retain the money here, so we finance those in local universities — we want the talent here,” he said.

Nazri noted that one of the reasons behind the brain drain problem in the country was that many students pursued their studies in foreign universities.

“And when they are there and they have the connection, they no longer want to return,” he said.

The full story here.

It sounded like the government is stopping to send students overseas because of the brain drain which is absolutely ridiculous and untrue.

Those who never came back were mostly self-sponsored or paid by parents or family.Those who left the country left for a reason.

Our employment market sucks.It is one big sweat shop and the biggest problem is the government wanting to keep wages low.Entry level for fresh graduate is miserable all for wanting to reflect low cost centre to attract FDI (Foreign Direct Investment).

There is no minimum wage in this country.Employers squeezed labour to the bone and pay minimal wages.

Yes, it is good to keep as many as we could in the country.Maybe, the government should first give a health check on the education system in the country before making that conclusion.Even our local private sector shy away from employing some of our local graduates so can they survive the world's competitive marketplace?Is that the right way to stop the brain drain? Are we going to produce brain-dead graduates?

Nazri and the government should first take a serious look at the top universities of the world and see whether they can find one from Malaysia in the top 100 before making the fatal decision to kill the goose that lay the golden eggs and produce mediocre gooses.

World's top 100 here.

Even more baffling why is Nazri making statement on education issue.Has the Ministry of Education become redundant?

Also read this heart-rending story.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Sorry Babe! Ain't Got No Money For The Kids Education

Hantu Laut

Got money to build RM800 million palace, got money to build RM800 million new parliament house, got money to bail out the corrupt-laden PKFZ, but ain't got no money for bright students.

Why should we worry about education.We should all join UMNO and become the perfect politician.

Vision 2020 is fucked! Take a time travel back to 1920 with Commander Nazri Aziz.

Read it tomorrow here.

Jews Go Home ? The Helen Thomas Tragedy

Hantu Laut

It is alright to kill Palestinian men,women and children but the moment you mentioned anything objectionable about the Jews the whole Western hypocrisy exploded in your face.

Veteran White House journalist Helen Thomas learned that bitter lesson for making what the Western world termed as antisemitism.

Watch the video below.




In the words of Racheal Saclar "It’s hard to hear the words “The Jews of Germany and Poland” and not think of anything but the millions and millions of Jews who were incarcerated, enslaved, tortured, starved and exterminated in the Holocaust." "Which means that, sad as I am, Helen Thomas can no longer be a hero to me."

What about the Palestinians, displaced from their homeland, bombed, killed, locked in by blockade in their own country for choosing a government that the Jews and the Western powers are not happy with.Are their lives worth less than that of the Jews?

Helen Thomas, a 90 year old lady with 67 years career in journalism has to resign because Western hypocrisy and double standard wouldn't allow her to pass for speaking the truth.

Also read from Washington Post "Why we'll miss Helen Thomas"

Sunday, June 13, 2010

The House Of The Rising Sun

Hantu Laut

Why has one form of gambling become an issue while others seemed to have been accepted? Isn't Malaysia already one big gambling house. From 4-digit betting, horse racing, slot machine to full-fledged casino, we have it all.Why the noise about sport betting?

Have Malaysians invariably become victims of disinformation, the blind follow the blind and making noise for the sake of making noise.

Sport betting may be less attractive to many people than say 4 digits or any number game and the devil of it all, the one-armed bandits or slot machines.

With sport betting only those who has clue of the sport would be betting as opposed to other game of chance where anyone can participate.

The detractors of sport betting are blindly opposing it because some vested interest groups are not happy, why they are not getting a share of the cake and, therefore, trumped the war drum.Those so called holier than thou living on their high moral grounds and having scruples about gambling are just pawns in the game.

I agree with Raja Petra here they are not against gambling per se but against licenced gambling.Underground gambling is just as big if not bigger.I know of a friend who made almost RM1 million in the last World Cup, so he says.So, don't underestimate the size of underground gambling.

I do agree there must be some form of control over gambling in the country but the unfortunate thing is Malaysians are barking up the wrong tree.They keep their eyes and ears shut to what is more dangerous and one that have brought more serious social ills and untold miseries to families.

Those who suffered most are in the low and middle income group.Those with compulsive gambling habit of the breadwinners.

In term of severity the slot machines are the most dangerous and more often than not did not comply with international standard on the ratio of payout.You can well imagine who are the inspectors to police compliance? A full-pledged casino is less dangerous than those unregulated one-armed bandits scattered around the country.



































These three slot-machine clubs under the guises of cafe lounge are only 200 meters away from each other at Tg.Aru, Kota Kinabalu.There are many more scattered all over the city.


These money-grabbing machines are scattered throughout the nation under the guises of membership sport clubs and virtually controlled by one man or his companies.Unlike bona fide clubs you don't have to pay to be a member to this phony sport club because they know they will eventually get all your money.It racked in million of dollars every month of hard-earned money of the low and middle income group who dreamed the elusive dream...of becoming rich from gambling.

The very rich don't gamble, if they do it's what they called spare change, so it is those with little money that frequent this kind of gambling joint.

Gambling is addictive and can destroy lives of families of gamblers who have no control over their habits and the slot machines are there 24/7 or 365 days a years waiting for them.

Licences for slot machines are given out by the Federal Ministry of Finance.Obviously, the usual give and take policy would have been the reasons to allow these money-grabbing devils in our midst.

This so -called sport clubs have sprouted in the cities, suburbs and urban outskirts close to rural population. There are scores if not hundreds of such clubs in Sabah. I don't know about Peninsula Malaysia and Sarawak, I guess they would have the same if not more of these factitious sport clubs.

These iron-clad electronic monsters allow you to gamble your money up to RM80.00 on one push of the button.For the bold and reckless that's money down the drain very quickly.You can lose thousands in a flash.Here the machines only come in minimum denomination of RM1.00 and RM0.50 and you can bet up to 80 times in one go.

In Burswood Australia they are less greedy and more reasonable, the common areas only have 1 cents, 2 cents, 5cents and 10 cents machine which allow you to bet up to 100 times.Still cheaper and more dependably regulated than the monsters in this country.

PAS youth has decided to mobilise a 100,000 strong rally to the Istana to protest against the sport betting but conveniently overlooked other more pressing problems detrimental to the Muslim community.

Obviously, we are more interested in political gimmickry rather than the welfare and well being of the Muslim community.

We should wake up to the other realities of life, those that will lead us to the brink of disaster and sadly we have the habits of sweeping our problems under the carpet and denied that we have a problem and Muslims all over the world seem to have this attitude and false sense of invincibility.

In her second book "Nomad" how in one of the chapters the writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali apostate wrote about the husband of one of her cousins who was seropositive for AIDS and sadly out of ignorance and sense of invincibility the man keep saying "AIDS?! I don't have that! I am a Muslim! I am a Somali! We don't get AIDS!

In his case, ignorance is not bliss, it is deadly.

We all know and these are published facts.We have a serious drug addiction problem among our youths, majority Muslims, we have multiplying HIV problem, majority Muslims, we have babies born out of wedlock, majority Muslims,we have babies out of wedlock killed and dumped, majority Muslims and lastly we have the abominable Mat Rempit almost exclusively Muslim boys.

Is the government and Islamic party like PAS doing anything about it? Are there programmes in place to bring education and awareness to counter these social ills afflicting the Muslim community.

If there is, than it must be either invisible or I am blind, because I have not seen or heard of any of it.


Issuing new licences to counter underground gambling may not be the answer, enforcement of the law is.

Below is the reason I titled this article "The House Of The Rising Sun"