On Jews and Justice

Hantu Laut

Taking respite  from the unpleasant world of politics. 

Below is a short,  somewhat facetious composition from Kirk Douglas on racism, or rather anti-Semitism he experienced when he was a kid. 

I guess not many people know he is a Jew and his real name is Issur Danielovitch, later changed to Izzy Demsky and later legally changed to Kirk Douglas.

He is now 97 years old and have stopped making movies.

On Jews And Justice

Kirk Douglas

I was six-years-old when I had my first contact with anti-Semitism. I came home from school one day with a bloody nose, crying to my mother -- "Yanak hit me!"

"Why?" my mother asked.

"He said I killed Jesus Christ."

"What? You killed who?"

"I didn't kill him. I don't even know who he is."

My nose stopped bleeding and soon I was playing again with Yanack as if nothing had happened between us. It wasn't his fault, because that was what he had been taught to believe by his father. And come to think of it, it wasn't Yanack's father's fault either because he'd certainly been taught the same thing by his father. Maybe none of them could read, because if they had actually studied their New Testament, they would have learned the truth: that the Romans were the ones who crucified Jesus. Only the Romans had the right of public execution. The Jews were a tiny people subject to the laws of the Roman empire.

Rodgers and Hammerstein dealt with the subject of learned prejudice when they wrote the highly successful musical comedy South Pacific. South Pacific was a hit on Broadway but when they started the tour in the Southern states they ran into trouble. The state of Georgia introduced a bill outlawing South Pacific because it contained "an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow." The claim was based on one song, "You've Got to be Carefully Taught." Here are the lyrics:

"You've Got To Be Carefully Taught" (Lyrics from South Pacific)

You've got to be taught to hate and fear,
You've got to be taught from year to year,
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate.

The Southern legislators maintained that this "song justifying interracial marriage was implicitly a threat to the American way of life." Rodgers and Hammerstein fought stubbornly against them and the song stayed in.

Read more.

Anwar Beware Egypt:No More Rallies Please

Hantu Laut

The Arab countries are not yet ready for an open, modern and democratic society. They need "iron fist in a velvet glove" regime to maintain political stability.

The Arab Spring applauded by the West as the way to go for greater freedom and democracy have brought more harm and miseries than good to the Arab world. Regime change through violence and bloodshed is catalyst for more regime change through violence and bloodshed. 

Those "who live by the sword, die by the sword"and Egypt is glowing for another regime change that may lead to full scale civil war if the government can't smother the violent uprising.

Scores of Egyptian have been killed in violence demonstrations and a bigger and bloodier days are expected as the country fell into chaos with clashes between pro and anti-government factions. 

The core of discontent is President Muhammad Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president. With just 30 months in office the people have grown tired of his incompetence. The country's economy is in shambles, in chronic state of stagnation and Mr Morsi is more interested in pursuing his Islamic agenda.

Before the general elections Anwar Ibrahim had mentioned a number of times of a Malaysian Spring for regime change. His refusal to accept the result of the elections is cause for concern. His gatherings of Blackout 505 rallies purportedly against electoral frauds were covers of more sinister plot.

Malaysians are still level-headed and peace loving, but Anwar should not push his luck and persist with his rally that could end up a putsch. 


Protesters torched Muslim Brotherhood headquarters.

Read more in the Telegraph and in the Economist:

A Dangerous Silence

There is no concealing the disappointment felt by many of Aung San Suu Kyi’s supporters around the world in the face of her failure to denounce the attackson Burmese Muslims by members of her own community, the Buddhists who constitute more than 90 per cent of the population.

Burma opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi waves to supporters after she attended a ceremony to mark her 68th birthday at the headquarters of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party Wednesday, June 19, 2013, in Yangon, Burma. (Khin Maung Win/AP)

Perhaps she couldn’t stop it, people say, but at least she could have taken a stand. She is seen as the teacher, the mother of her nation; moral rebirth has been at the centre of her mission ever since she signed up with the democracy movement; her most influential essay was titled A Revolution of the Spirit. How can she possibly stay silent as Muslims are slaughtered?

The first attacks came in June 2012, just as she was embarking on her first trip abroad in 24 years. A young Buddhist woman in Arakan state, which borders the overwhelmingly Muslim nation of Bangladesh in the west, was raped and murdered by two Muslim men. In retaliation, a group of non-Muslim men stopped a bus and killed the Muslims on board, and the spiral of murder quickly got out of control. There were many victims on both sides but the Muslims were in the majority. Many thousand lost their homes and were resettled in squalid temporary camps.

Another, even more serious wave of attacks came in October. Unlike June’s events, these were initiated by the majority community and closely co-ordinated, as a recent investigation by Human Rights Watch explained in detail (http://www.hrw.org/features/burma-ethnic-cleansing-arakan-state). And although there have been no recent attacks as vicious or widespread as October’s, the fire has not burned out. Instead it has spread across the country. And still Suu Kyi holds her tongue.

How are we to explain it?

Read more.

Reinvigorating Rural Malaysia

New Paradigms Needed

There has been a remarkable change in the composition of Malaysia’s rural-urban mix. In the 1980s approximately 70 percent was considered rural, where today 72 percent are urbanized and with the change taking place at about 2.4 percent annually.

It is a change that is taking place all over Asia, from China to India to Indonesia and more. Very few countries outside China have even attempted to cope, with the result that the rural-urban divide has grown and with very little being done to directly alleviate problems of poverty and rustication.

In Malaysia, rural sector development has been debated little, even though the primary sector still represents almost 12 percent of GDP and employs more than 11 percent of the population. Many rural issues affect the future in much greater magnitude than the rural contribution to GDP and employment. The sustainability of Malaysia as an eco(n)-system, the country's cultural basis, and even political destiny are tied up with rural evolution, with the vote in the kampung remaining a potent fiction if nothing else

In the meantime, deterioration continues in what was once one of the world’s most lush environmental green lungs. Forest cover is decreasing on a daily basis. Conservation has lost out to greed and development. Palm oil, rubber plantations and urban expansion are eating into the forests, with very poor land enforcement on the ground. Well-connected businesses get concessions that are extremely financially lucrative, at great environmental cost. Roads and new townships have divided rural habitats, playing havoc with biodiversity.

The precise needs of rural societies are best obtained from inside those communities. A "bottom up" problem identification process would ensure development objectives and implementation scenarios would remain relevant. Community shura (consultation) committees could be set up at the village level to identify and discuss needs, problems, and desired solutions, and advise village heads.

Such a democratic approach to community would provide policymakers with the guidance they need in setting objectives and programs, and assist in minimizing funding leakages during implementation. This measure alone would signal a very strong redistribution of policy decision-making to the communities themselves, empowering communities to have more say in deciding their own future destinies. The shura system should develop new leaders and champions who are willing to lead and help shape a new community sense of wisdom. Policies will never succeed without people to drive them.

Self-sufficiency and a vibrant local trade economy are the keys to future rural communities. However, rural SMEs should be facilitated to enter national and international markets. There are now many compliance procedures such as Good Agricultural Practice (GAP), necessary for agricultural produce to enter international supply chains. These practices need to be introduced within rural communities so products produced are accepted in international markets.

These compliance processes can be locally enhanced to include halal (Islamic compliance) certification, thus widening the compliance process to one inclusive certification, which would greatly enhance the desirability of Malaysian produce, especially within the exponentially growing halal markets worldwide.

Whole sectors like rice paddy production need to be reconfigured from the bottom up so they can become competitive. The paddy production process requires the hands of a number of contractors during field preparation, planting, cultivation, harvesting, and processing stages. Paddy production is an uncompetitive sector.

New methods like System of Rice Intensification (SRI) could be adopted, and more popular aromatic varieties of rice cultivated to increase industry viability. The rice monopoly held by the government regulator Bernas could be ended to allow new approaches to rice products and marketing by entrepreneurial individuals. Such an approach could drastically decrease production costs and add value to rice products, redistributing this added value back to farmers.

University and institutional research should change focus towards communities rather than using scare research funds to chase medals at exhibitions that have no research or commercial significance in places like Geneva and Seoul. The technology developed by Malaysian institutions should be simple, applicable to community enterprise, and appropriate to the size of the enterprises operating in rural areas.

This appropriate technology, if effective and viable is itself a source of competitive advantage that would enable rural enterprises to compete in the marketplace. Read more here.