Obama's actions can sometimes be in contradiction with this stated oratory - perhaps compromises happening along the way in favour of executing some much-needed reforms. In which case, I think the narrative will be quite sympathetic over time - no one doubts that the charisma of the cause exceeds personal charisma - truth will always prevail.
And that is why this last-minute determination to push through the two-state solution and keep Netanyahu in check must be supported. It may not matter much that this may be too late. It will be too late anyway if nothing is done, but he has created conditions for the global community to act upon and slam-dunk the tiny, haughty and friendless (not so many, but Singapore is unfortunately one of their friends) Jewish state.
Is there hope for that though? Turkey is mired in domestic terrorism, Iran is in empire building mode, Syria which needs the global community and its Arab neighbours help is being left to drown on its own? Again, reshaping the global muslim agenda should be a key political objective, but we are all left to deal with our own internal problems aren't we?
In prognostication mode, but this development rather stands out as a marker for developments in the mid-term.
Obama finally showed some spine on the settlement issue - threatening to do something about Middle East peace before becoming US President, and strangely subdued thereafter and finally with weeks to go, showing a bit of teeth. Gnarly, but still a bit. Yeah Obama.
Yes, I think I can probably understand the shenanigans of politics - US, or the world politics - where the ones making decisions can hardly be relied upon to make decisions for those not of their ilk, to confirm that beyond bluster, there is always more than a hint of self-interest, that justice for all is a concept difficult to pursue in its entirety.
But, this is different. This is Netanyahu the bully and the spoilt brat, upping the ante and recalling diplomats (of the smaller nations, for sure after calculating that the backlash will be minimal or hoping there will be an overturning of positions from NZ and Senegal), threatening that he'll report to his master (lapdog perhaps, pet dog?) - the incoming US President-elect, and Trump reciprocating that things will change, Paul Ryan confirming that the unified Senate/Congress/President - the axis of evil perhaps? will change things. Trump's lack of credibility in international relations seems to be a major risk factor. So, the US electorate thought that political correctness is a liability huh.
This was the same week Anis decided that ploughing a truck through a civilian market was a jihad. By doing so, the Tunisian, Syrian, Libyan and mainly muslim immigrants who fled turmoil in Islamic countries to find shelter in non-Islamic ones are now targeted for further filtering, the right-wingers are further energised and the Islamic state who has been losing the ground war in Syria further destabilises the Islamic agenda. The Arab Spring was the spark that seemed to bring life to Islamic moderation, but in reality, it brought forth a chain of events where Islam is now being brought forth as a global threat. Whose side is Islamic State and Baghdadi working for?
Israel rejects 'shameful' UN resolution amid criticism of Netanyahu
Israel orders steps against a number of countries that backed motion calling for halt to building of settlements in occupied territories
Israel’s ambassador to UN rejects ‘shameful’ resolution to halt Israeli settlements
Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem
Saturday 24 December 2016 21.24 GMT First published on Saturday 24 December 2016 08.39 GMT
Israel has responded furiously to a UN security council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, recalling two of its ambassadors to countries that voted for the motion and threatening to cut aid.
The security council adopted the landmark resolution demanding Israel halt all settlement building and expansion in the occupied territories after Barack Obama’s administration refused to veto the resolution on Friday.
A White House official said Obama had taken the decision to abstain in the absence of any meaningful peace process. The resolution, which passed by a 14-0 vote, was met with loud applause in the packed chamber after the US ambassador, Samantha Power, abstained.
The move was immediately condemned as “shameful” by the office of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. A spokesman pointedly referred to Israel’s expectation of working more closely with the US president-elect, Donald Trump.
On Saturday Netanyahu said Israel would reassess its ties with the UN and had ordered a review of the funding of UN institutions and the presence of UN representatives in Israel.
“I have already instructed to stop about 30m shekels (£6.3m) in funding to five UN bodies that are especially hostile to Israel ... and there is more to come,” he said, without giving any further details.
The security council last adopted a resolution critical of settlements in 1979, with the US abstaining then too. The US vetoed a similar resolution in 2011, which was the sole veto cast by the Obama administration at the security council.
===============
US abstains from UN vote to end Israeli settlement building
Amid emerging criticism of the handling of the vote by Netanyahu, whose manoeuvres were seen as an attempt to sideline Obama and his administration, Israel ordered action against a number of countries.
The response included the recall of the Israeli ambassadors to New Zealand and Senegal, who voted for the resolution, the cancellation of a planned visit by the Senegalese foreign minister to Israel in three weeks’ time, and the cancellation of all aid programmes to Senegal.
New Zealand’s foreign minister, Murray McCully, said his country’s vote should have been no surprise to Israel. “We have been very open about our view that the [security council] should be doing more to support the Middle East peace process and the position we adopted today is totally in line with our long-established policy on the Palestinian question,” he said.
The UK, France, Russia and China also voted in favour of the resolution, which described Israeli settlement building as a “flagrant violation” of international law.
The vote has sharply underlined the extent of Israel’s international isolation under Netanyahu, and in particular the hollowness of Netanyahu’s boast at the UN general assembly in the autumn over Israel’s purported diplomatic advances at the UN, not least among African members.
While Israel may expect a much easier ride after the inauguration of Donald Trump, support for the motion from countries such as the UK and France demonstrates the deep frustration in Europe with the policies of Netanyahu’s rightwing coalition over settlements and the moribund peace process.
For its part, the Obama administration made clear that the US decision to abstain was in direct response to choices made by Netanyahu on settlements.
The resolution also serves as a warning to the incoming Trump administration over its policies after the selection by Trump of a far-right pro-settler, David Friedman, to be ambassador to Israel.
While the US and EU have worked closely together in coordinating foreign policy on the Israel-Palestine question, there has been growing support among European governments for tougher steps against Israel, which has already resulted in a directive on the labelling of settlement products.
The strength of the language in the resolution reiterating the illegality of Jewish settlements built on land intended for a Palestinian state, occupied by Israel in 1967, is likely to have an impact on multinational companies operating in the occupied territories or working with Israeli enterprises with links to the occupied territories.
Although the resolution is not binding in legal terms, it will have other practical effects, not least in the impact it may have on the Palestinian complaint to the international criminal court, which includes Israeli settlements.
The resolution also includes language calling for differential treatment of Israel within the pre-1967 borders, calling on states to “distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967”, which could potentially pave the way for future sanctions.
Israeli supporters in the US – both senators and lobby groups – were aghast. Morton Klein, the president of the rightwing Zionist Organization of America, railed in unequivocal terms: “Obama has made it clear that he’s a Jew-hating antisemite.”
Leading pro-Israel Republicans also weighed in, including the House speaker, Paul Ryan, who denounced the US abstention as “absolutely shameful” and promised that “our unified Republican government will work to reverse the damage done by this administration, and rebuild our alliance with Israel”.
In Israel, however, questions were being asked about Netanyahu’s handling of the vote. Writing in Haaretz, the columnist Chemi Shalev was particularly scathing about Netanyahu’s diplomatic failure.
“Resolution 2334 shatters the [Israeli] government-induced illusion that the settlement project has been normalised, that it passed the point of no return, that it is now a fait accompli that will remain unchallenged,” he wrote.
“In recent years, after President Obama desisted from efforts to advance the peace process, Netanyahu, his ministers and settler leaders had behaved as if the battle was over: Israel built and built, the White House objected and condemned, the facts on the ground were cemented in stone.
“You can have your cake and eat it too, the government implied: thumb your nose at Washington and the international community, build in the West Bank as if there’s no tomorrow and still get $38bn in unprecedented [US] military aid.”
Sad that cheap politicians resort to the lowest common denominator for support when support diminishes from the centre and/or ethically minded demography. The cries of "Hidup Melayu" ring hollow when the Melayu they want to protect are themselves and their blatant self-interests. Malays will only prosper when they leave this preponderance for race-based priviledges (or is that affirmative action for an under-priviledged majority?) and start thinking like a citizen, nay leader of the world, just like the prayers in the Quran - make of my wife and my offspring the Qurrata A'yun, and make them of pious and be leaders. (rough translation)
I provide proof:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_RxDBcB21s
Here's the son of a UMNO Deputy Minister demonstrating his entitlement rights and displaying threatening behaviour to a Parliamentarian who has insulted his father. Fact of life - if you are a public figure fond of using demeaning language on others, wait till you receive a similar treatment, either in your face or behind your back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QRMoogjUx4
Here's a self-declared Malay leader, proud of his Malay heritage, and his silat prowess squeaming like a little girl when getting smacked on his nose. Changed his story not even an hour later, for obvious political currency. So, abusive, violent, lying are traits captured on this video.
http://www.carigold.com/portal/forums/archive/index.php/t-358912.html
How malay self-proclaimed leaders abuse other malays for power ostensibly to help malays, but just leeching on political dominion, and end up demonstrating power only to the unprotected. Here, a Malay died as a result of getting beaten up due to some sorry excuse. Of course, he was later acquitted of the crime.
It is one of the most incomprehensible aspects of humanity that science-based humanists and atheists, putting their faith in the ability of science to derive facts, fail to appreciate the limits of human knowledge in it. Theories abound - and at the outermost limits are found to be wanting, replaced instead with more theories, some proven, some waiting to be proven, but always looking for more theories to explain what the limitations of the existing theorems cannot prove.
An the crux of it all would be the Dawkin's and his ilk - who will put their faith in the improbable statistics that we are the products of a coincidence of creation, an amalgamation of improbable events that brought into being the universe, the earth and the origin of life. This anthropological principle does not bring a creator, an owner, or a powerful God into consideration. Why? Science has no proof of God, so the improbable statistic must be true. A faith in religion is then replaced by a faith in faulty reasoning and misunderstanding of maths and science. Why not if it brings fame as a global spokesman, and stupidity can be dressed up as intellect?
Theory challenging Einstein's view on speed of light could soon be tested
New paper describes for first time how scientists can test controversial idea that speed of light is not a constant
If the Magueijo and Afshordi theory is right, a signature will have been
left on the ancient radiation left over from the big bang, the
so-called cosmic microwave background that cosmologists have observed
with satellites.
The newborn universe may have glowed with light beams moving much
faster than they do today, according to a theory that overturns
Einstein’s century-old claim that the speed of light is a constant.
João Magueijo, of Imperial College London, and Niayesh Afshordi, of
the University of Waterloo in Canada, propose that light tore along at
infinite speed at the birth of the universe when the temperature of the
cosmos was a staggering ten thousand trillion trillion celsius.
It is a theory Magueijo has being developing since the late 1990s,
but in a paper published on Monday he and Afshordi describe for the
first time how scientists can finally test the controversial idea. If
right, the theory would leave a signature on the ancient radiation left
over from the big bang, the so-called cosmic microwave background that
cosmologists have observed with satellites.
“We can say what the fluctuations in the early universe would have
looked like, and these are the fluctuations that grow to form planets,
stars and galaxies,” Afshordi told the Guardian.
The speed of light in a vacuum is considered to be one of the
fundamental constants of nature. Thanks to Einstein’s theory of general
relativity, it was stamped in the annals of physics more than a century
ago at about 1bn km/h. But while general relativity is one of the
cornerstones of modern physics, scientists know that the rules of today
did not hold at the birth of the universe.
Magueijo and Afshordi came up with their theory to explain why the
cosmos looks much the same over vast distances. To be so uniform, light
rays must have reached every corner of the cosmos, otherwise some
regions would be cooler and more dense than others. But even moving at
1bn km/h, light was not travelling fast enough to spread so far and even
out the universe’s temperature differences.
To overcome the conundrum, cosmologists including Stephen Hawking
have proposed a theory called inflation, in which the fledgling universe
underwent the briefest spell of the most tremendous expansion.
According to inflation, the temperature of the cosmos evened out before
it exploded to an enormous size. But there is no solid proof that
inflation is right, and if so, what sparked such a massive period of
expansion, and what brought it to an end.
Magueijo and Afshordi’s theory does away with inflation and replaces
it with a variable speed of light. According to their calculations, the
heat of universe in its first moments was so intense that light and
other particles moved at infinite speed. Under these conditions, light
reached the most distant pockets of the universe and made it look as
uniform as we see it today. “In our theory, if you go back to the early
universe, there’s a temperature when everything becomes faster. The
speed of light goes to infinity and propagates much faster than
gravity,” Afshordi said. “It’s a phase transition in the same way that
water turns into steam.”
Scientists could soon find out whether light really did outpace
gravity in the early universe. The theory predicts a clear pattern in
the density variations of the early universe, a feature measured by what
is called the “spectral index”. Writing in the journal Physical Review,
the scientists predict a very precise spectral index of 0.96478, which
is close to the latest, though somewhat rough, measurement of 0.968.
Science can never prove the theory right. But Afshordi said that if
measurements over the next five years shifted the spectral index away
from their prediction, it would rule out their own theory. “If we are
right then inflation is wrong. But the problem with inflation is that
you can always fine tune it to fit anything you want,” he said.
David Marsh, of the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge
University, is not giving up on inflation yet. “The predictions of
inflation developed by Stephen Hawking and others more than 30 years ago
have been tested by cosmological observations and faced those tests
remarkably well. Many scientists regard inflation as a simple and
elegant explanation of the origin of galaxies in the universe,” he said.
And while other theories might also look promising, Marsh said there
were elements of Afshordi and Magueijo’s that were not well understood.
“It remains to be seen how robust the predictions are when all the
theoretical issues have been addressed,” he said.
Unsurprising from a narrow point of view, having read the superforecasting methodology where events are assigned probabilities based on leading events, the election of Trump was never an impossibility that it was made out to be by the pundits, pollsters, and yes late night show hosts including the likes of Trevor Noah and Colbert. Trevor was so laughably off the mark with his day before sketch, and whilst Colbert visibly maintained his preference, he was also careful to cerebrally show that he fully understood the possibility of Trump winning the election was real.
Coming from the last posting on Podesta and the complacent liberal stance of not gonna happen, it also shows how the US electorate seemed to decide that Trump, could be their leader for any of the following reasons -
that fulfils their economic self-interest, even if it includes putting up barriers against immigrants, and those not like them,
to help regain their hardhitting "international policeman" state position, and abandon the diplomacy that was Obama's stance, and make the world safer for them
restore the lost white pride, after 8 years of black man leadership, and hell no way will they allow a woman to lead them another 4 years
and just plain xenophobic, fear that drives their decision to vote Trump.
3. Can't see how the choice was a rational one. It was an emotional one, driven by fear, hate, insecurity etc.
4. Now that you have the ticket, Trump needs to regain the trust and credibility lost during the campaigning. Malaysia has endured over 50 years of shitty campaigning followed up by sometimes very strong leadership, albeit that being absent in the past decade or so. For the sake of the rest of the world, Trump's policies must be credible and rational not just for them, but the rest of the world too.
5. A final word about democracy - Overrated. Leadership succession decision when placed in the hands of the knowledgeable and sincere, and guided by God, "trumps" leaving that most important of decision in the hands of the majority. American voters join their British voter brethren in failing to vote the most rational decision possible and allowed emotions to sway their minds, perhaps thinking 4 years isn't too long. Guess what, it bloody is.
Interest in the US is crucial to understand how the world works. They have military superiority - the ability for military projection in any given location with their aircraft carriers which are just floating military airports, long-range airpower, ICBMs, drone assisted and fully teched out land army. They have political power - with the protection money accorded to NATO, seat on UN SC. They have the tech although with the vast amounts of money poured by VC and Govt you'd think that the gap with the rest of the world could be a lot larger that where it is now. Consider that China is slowly grasping that tech capabilities now. They also have economic power, although that is eroded now given their propensity to use a vast chunk of it on their military complex. The projection of that economic power could be seen more visibly in the interests of the large American mega-corporates - the oil companies and the tech companies, many of which singly have bigger revenues than the GDP figures of most countries.
So, at the end of it - it's all in the money as that is how it has been structured and networked, the architecture of it has remained invisible by the outer layers of decorum and diplomacy. What they have got right historically has been the preservation of values that matter to the commoners - meritocracy, doing things right by hard work and perseverance, respect, trust etc. Their 2016 elections have shown that beneath it all, these are a bunch of self-interest, crooked and scandal-ridden personalities competing for the highest position in the land, and the earth currently.
Public interest? Give me a break.
---------
Forget the FBI cache; the Podesta emails show how America is run
The emails currently roiling the US presidential campaign
are part of some unknown digital collection amassed by the troublesome
Anthony Weiner, but if your purpose is to understand the clique of
people who dominate Washington today, the emails that really matter are
the ones being slowly released by WikiLeaks
from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John
Podesta. They are last week’s scandal in a year running over with
scandals, but in truth their significance goes far beyond mere scandal:
they are a window into the soul of the Democratic party and into the
dreams and thoughts of the class to whom the party answers.
The class to which I refer is not rising in angry protest;
they are by and large pretty satisfied, pretty contented. Nobody takes
road trips to exotic West Virginia to see what the members of this class
looks like or how they live; on the contrary, they are the ones for
whom such stories are written. This bunch doesn’t have to make do with a
comb-over TV mountebank for a leader; for this class, the choices are
always pretty good, and this year they happen to be excellent.
They are the comfortable and well-educated mainstay of our
modern Democratic party. They are also the grandees of our national
media; the architects of our software; the designers of our streets; the
high officials of our banking system; the authors of just about every
plan to fix social security or fine-tune the Middle East with precision
droning. They are, they think, not a class at all but rather the
enlightened ones, the people who must be answered to but who need never
explain themselves.
Let us turn the magnifying glass on them for a change, by
sorting through the hacked personal emails of John Podesta, who has been
a Washington power broker for decades. I admit that I feel
uncomfortable digging through this hoard; stealing someone’s email is a
crime, after all, and it is outrageous that people’s personal
information has been exposed, since WikiLeaks
doesn’t seem to have redacted the emails in any way. There is also the
issue of authenticity to contend with: we don’t know absolutely and for
sure that these emails were not tampered with by whoever stole them from
John Podesta. The supposed authors of the messages are refusing to
confirm or deny their authenticity, and though they seem to be real,
there is a small possibility they aren’t.
With all that taken into consideration, I think the
WikiLeaks releases furnish us with an opportunity to observe the upper
reaches of the American status hierarchy in all its righteousness and
majesty.
The dramatis personae of the liberal class are all present
in this amazing body of work: financial innovators. High-achieving
colleagues attempting to get jobs for their high-achieving children.
Foundation executives doing fine and noble things. Prizes, of course,
and high academic achievement.
Certain industries loom large and virtuous here. Hillary’s
ingratiating speeches to Wall Street are well known of course, but what
is remarkable is that, in the party of Jackson and Bryan and Roosevelt,
smiling financiers now seem to stand on every corner, constantly
proffering advice about this and that. In one now-famous email chain,
for example, the reader can watch current US trade representative
Michael Froman, writing from a Citibank email address in 2008, appear to name
President Obama’s cabinet even before the great hope-and-change
election was decided (incidentally, an important clue to understanding
why that greatest of zombie banks was never put out of its misery).
The far-sighted innovators of Silicon Valley are also here
in force, interacting all the time with the leaders of the party of the
people. We watch as Podesta appears to email Sheryl Sandberg. He makes plans to visit
Mark Zuckerberg (who, according to one missive, wants to “learn more
about next steps for his philanthropy and social action”). Podesta
exchanges emails with an entrepreneur about an ugly race now unfolding
for Silicon Valley’s seat in Congress; this man, in turn, appears to
forward to Podesta the remarks of yet another Silicon Valley grandee,
who complains
that one of the Democratic combatants in that fight was criticizing
billionaires who give to Democrats. Specifically, the miscreant Dem in
question was said to be:
“… spinning (and attacking) donors who have supported
Democrats. John Arnold and Marc Leder have both given to Cory Booker,
Joe Kennedy, and others. He is also attacking every billionaire that
donates to [Congressional candidate] Ro [Khanna], many whom support
other Democrats as well.”
Advertisement
Attacking
billionaires! In the year 2015! It was, one of the correspondents
appears to write, “madness and political malpractice of the party to
allow this to continue”.
There are wonderful things to be found in this treasure
trove when you search the gilded words “Davos” or “Tahoe”. But it is
when you search “Vineyard” on the WikiLeaks dump that you realize these
people truly inhabit a different world from the rest of us. By
“vineyard”, of course, they mean Martha’s Vineyard, the ritzy vacation
resort island off the coast of Massachusetts where presidents Clinton
and Obama spent most of their summer vacations. The Vineyard is a place
for the very, very rich to unwind, yes, but as we learn from these
emails, it is also a place of high idealism; a land of enlightened
liberal commitment far beyond anything ordinary citizens can ever
achieve.
Consider, for example, the 2015 email
from a foundation executive to a retired mortgage banker (who then
seems to have forwarded the note on to Podesta, and thus into history)
expressing concern that “Hillary’s image is being torn apart in the
media and there’s not enough effective push back”. The public eavesdrops
as yet another financier invites
Podesta to a dinner featuring “food produced exclusively by the
island’s farmers and fishermen which will be matched with specially
selected wines”. We learn how a Hillary campaign aide recommended
that a policy statement appear on a certain day so that “It wont get in
the way of any other news we are trying to make – but far enough ahead
of Hamptons and Vineyard money events”. We even read the pleadings
of a man who wants to be invited to a state dinner at the White House
and who offers, as one of several exhibits in his favor, the fact that
he “joined the DSCC Majority Trust in Martha’s Vineyard (contributing
over $32,400 to Democratic senators) in July 2014”.
(Hilariously, in another email chain, the Clinton team appears to scheme to “hit” Bernie Sanders for attending “DSCC retreats on Martha’s Vineyard with lobbyists”.)
Then there is the apparent nepotism, the dozens if not
hundreds of mundane emails in which petitioners for this or that plum
Washington job or high-profile academic appointment politely appeal to
Podesta – the ward-heeler of the meritocratic elite – for a solicitous
word whispered in the ear of a powerful crony.
This genre of Podesta email, in which people try to arrange
jobs for themselves or their kids, points us toward the most fundamental
thing we know about the people at the top of this class: their loyalty
to one another and the way it overrides everything else. Of course
Hillary Clinton staffed her state department with investment bankers and
then did speaking engagements for investment banks as soon as she was
done at the state department. Of course she appears to think
that any kind of bank reform should “come from the industry itself”.
And of course no elite bankers were ever prosecuted by the Obama
administration. Read these emails and you understand, with a start, that
the people at the top tier of American life all know each other. They
are all engaged in promoting one another’s careers, constantly.
Everything blurs into everything else in this world. The state department, the banks, Silicon Valley, the nonprofits, the “Global CEO Advisory Firm” that appears
to have solicited donations for the Clinton Foundation. Executives here
go from foundation to government to thinktank to startup. There are
honors. Venture capital. Foundation grants. Endowed chairs. Advanced
degrees. For them the door revolves. The friends all succeed. They break
every boundary.
But the One Big Boundary remains. Yes, it’s all supposed to
be a meritocracy. But if you aren’t part of this happy, prosperous
in-group – if you don’t have John Podesta’s email address – you’re out.
1. The remnants of what I recall from my engineering degree is predicated on technologies related to physically manipulating electron pathways in new materials to embed programming codes. My work has been to maintaining stable and reliable conductance of electrons to the masses. Essentially, in summary, sciences based on physics and a little bit of materials engineering, maths and programming design.
2. Biology and chemistry didn't enter into it much. I tend to think inspirational icons can push you towards developing a passion into any of the scientific fields, but physcics has always held my interest. Trying to understand the laws that govern the physical world, and enabling the laws to be applied to humanity's benefit in a repeatable manner.
3. The governance of those knowledge didn't interest me either. That was the stuff for others.
4. But there's no getting away from it. Administration of the sciences is necessary to prolong innovation and extending knowledge. Intersection of capital and requisite returns, funder interests and scientific curiosity and risk-taking must be governed and administered for optimality. Optimality being the operative word as the different constituencies can run at cross-purposes to each other.
5. How much is the risk appetite of the funders to see scientific progress? How important is it to use it and leapfrog adjacent economic rivals, be it different applications of capital or external stakeholders? How can the technological absorption be maximised for the masses? How can technology be deployed to benefit the needy and solve currently unsolvable problems?
6. The different agendas are too apparent. As usual, the need is to strike the right chord, hit the right buttons, walk the right path and have the right ecosystem backing the overarching purpose.
Physics, chemistry and biology
7. I've hardly spent too much time trying to compare the three disciplines. But the reality is that biology is on a totally different plane to physics and chemistry. I am in awe of biology and its design and its potential applications.
8. Take an organism, any organism. Look into its cell makeup and the physiology of it. You can't help but marvel at the way it sustains itself and reproductive capabilities, metabolism-propelled nourishment and self-repair, defenses against harm, works within an elegant system with such simplicity, efficiency and balance. Subhanallah.
9. And then there is the consciousness that allows to become aware of such subtlety and beauty. And the consciousness and knowledge and will to use this understanding to make things better for the greater good. This is where things can get a bit iffy, when the rationality of sciences meets the irrationality of free will. Allah help us find our way out.
10. Of course, on running its course, it dies. And again, even in death it serves to remind the living of its place in the world.
What was previously a straightforward UMNO vs PAS for the majority Malay votes are now divisive totally for the Malay voterbank. No matter the ideals of each, they have all contributed in their own short-sightedness to this present malady.
From the spectrum of correcting Malay economic imbalances to rightwing racial privileges, UMNO brings multifaceted elements that have brought forth the Malay-muslim growth enjoyed by my generation. That is now at risk.
Accumulated misdemeanours over the years during UMNO leadership of the Malays and the country I can categorize into two:
1. institutional abuses seen before during the constitutional crisis and replayed out in full in the appointment of senior positions.
2. has not reasonably dealt with howling mad racial-based demands A compliant chief of police with selective investigation and questionable record of keeping public safety. Not to say, poor record of defending itself from false allegations. Here's one, and my conclusion is right at the bottom.
Can google "strip search Chinese national" here- reported by an Australian daily:
"The one-minute, 11-second clip starts with a female police officer ordering a naked Chinese woman, possibly in her 20s, to do the squats while holding her ears. The footage, taken on a mobile phone, appears to have been shot through a window without either woman's knowledge.
Lim Kit Siang, leader of the opposition Democratic Action Party, called it Malaysia's Abu Ghraib, a reference to the humiliating abuse of Iraqi prisoners in a US military prison near Baghdad.
A DAP politician, Teresa Kok, played the video clip in parliament on Friday to politicians and the media. "Is it standard practice for police to ask detainees to strip naked and to do ear squats?" Ms Kok asked afterwards.
Mr Lim said that the Malaysian public were entitled to know why the police as a whole "seem so indifferent and detached in a police scandal which had rocked the country and has such far-reaching consequences to the country's tourism, trade, economy as well as the country's international standing, particular the Malaysia-China relationship".
The issue died down after the girl was identified in an official inquiry after a delayed reasoning that this was standard procedure elsewhere (which it is). The lady's name is Hemy, of Malay descent.
I remember an email exchange back at the time when emails are still a novelty, in the early 90s when I was a still a student. We were discussing student activism and what Malaysia needs to move forward. My email correspondent who has had a large degree of success since then, is seen now as a public figure CEO, responded to my negativism-laced comment that this is so typical of the Malaysian attitude of "This is M.A.L.A.Y.S.I.A" and paraphrasing liberally as it's been over a couple of decades since that exchange, reforms are hard.
Since then, we had the Anwar Ibrahim sacking and conviction - gory in all its lurid detail, (celebrated by gays though as a victory!), the gaping holes in the investigation, prosecution and court handling. Most disappointing of all was the polarized voting patterns, the Malays who now dared to break ranks with UMNO for what is seen as an unethical breach of maligning a pious leader were outflanked by the block Chinese votes backing the ruling party (mainly due to stabilizing the economy, and a cynical mind will mischievously include especially as there was a tax exemption due to the falling economy). The effect was a silenced UMNO, a lackey Deputy (relative to Anwar as a deputy) and a spineless coalition ruling the party.
Now we have a financial scandal brewing, social media (who let's face it are not the best witnesses for major rulings) amplifying reports, comments, investigations made by foreign countries. No satisfactory answer has been forthcoming, and as a result a silenced UMNO, a lackey Deputy and a spineless opposition. In the meantime, all the national issues and challenges are swept under the carpet. Oh, and worsening polarization. And I can see manifestations of this in real-time.
So, how do we resolve the 1MDB issue?
First, work on the basis of principles. If we demand transparency on our leaders when there's a charge of impropriety in financial transactions, so must we on purchase of high-value properties.
If a coalition partner are diametrically opposed in an issue, resolve this on the basis of what works for the rakyat. Look at the demographics. Lets not import wholesale ideas, outdated or sometimes ideologically incompatible. If there's good in the ruling party, government, security services, oil and gas and others like.. (uh, say where the Malays are successful at), here's an idea, why not complement them instead of tearing them down. If there's bad, offer constructive criticism.
Second, replace the outdated politicians. Especially the ones who play victims all the time. Aiyah.. penat tengok la.. you know who you are.
Third, strengthen the institutions. Put some really strong, successful, charismatic business leaders and then leave them alone. Stop interfering. At the end of the day, accountability is the first rule for all. There must be still a few out there who are from a neutral, apolitical, non-sycopanthic pool of people. (I hope).
Now - coming back to the beginning. At the end of the day, how is this major impropriety and four letter word likely to be closed? That's right, push it under the carpet, put it into the closet and lock the door.
Next GE, status quo. Minority opposition leaders happy with their outsized voice as a minority opposition leader of a minority race and a large segment of unhappy people from the majority race.
If that be the case of these unhappy times, the conclusion for Malaysia is dark. No principles, no benefit, no use.
You throw stones, we'll send the tanks.
You resist bring evicted from your homes, we'll create endless settlements on your lands.
You stab our soldiers, we'll shoot your injured men.
Are the young overindulged and mollycoddled to the extent that they lack maturity and personal character? Or, are the economic models we have presently accentuating the heavily stacked odds preventing them from succeeding, like their elders did within a more supporting and simpler economic environment?
In Malaysia, the scholarship situation for the Malays are gradually changing, but the attitudes of society may not have changed in tandem. How will the Malays handle being on the periphery of educated society in the next generation?
Interesting article below from the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/07/revealed-30-year-economic-betrayal-dragging-down-generation-y-income
The full scale of the financial rout facing millennials is revealed
today in exclusive new data that points to a perfect storm of factors
besetting an entire generation of young adults around the world.
A combination of debt, joblessness, globalisation, demographics and
rising house prices is depressing the incomes and prospects of millions
of young people across the developed world, resulting in unprecedented
inequality between generations.
A Guardian investigation into the prospects of millennials – those
born between 1980 and the mid-90s, and often otherwise known as
Generation Y – has found they are increasingly being cut out of the
wealth generated in western societies.
Where 30 years ago young adults used to earn more than national
averages, now in many countries they have slumped to earning as much as
20% below their average compatriot. Pensioners by comparison have seen
income soar.
In seven major economies in North America and Europe,
the growth in income of the average young couple and families in their
20s has lagged dramatically behind national averages over the past 30
years.
In two of these countries – the US and Italy
– disposable incomes for millennials are scarcely higher in real terms
than they were 30 years ago, while the rest of the population has
experienced handsome gains.
It is likely to be the first time in industrialised history, save for
periods of war or natural disaster, that the incomes of young adults
have fallen so far when compared with the rest of society.
Experts are warning that this unfair settlement will have grave
implications for everything from social cohesion to family formation.
A two-week Guardian project, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, aims to explore this predicament in depth and ask what can be done.
Using exclusive data from the largest database of international incomes in the world, at LIS (Luxembourg Income Study): Cross-National Data Center,
the investigation into the situation in Australia, Britain, Canada,
France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the US has also established that:
Prosperity has plummeted for young adults in the rich world.
In the US, under-30s are now poorer than retired people.
In the UK, pensioner disposable income has grown prodigiously – three times as fast as the income of young people.
Millennials have suffered real terms losses in wages in the US,
Italy, France, Spain, Germany and Canada and in some countries this was
underway even before the 2008 financial crisis.
“The situation is tough for young people,” said Angel Gurría,
secretary general of the west’s leading thinktank, the Organisation for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). “They were hit hard by the
Great Recession, and their labour market situation has improved only little since.
“This is a problem we must address now urgently. Kicking it down the road will hurt our children and society as a whole.”
Gurría said there had been a shift since the mid-80s in poverty
rates, which started to rise among younger cohorts while falling among
pensioners. However, the world of barren opportunities facing today’s
young people should be of concern to all age groups, he added.
“Current working-age, middle-class groups are increasingly concerned
with their and their children’s job prospects. An increasing number of
people think children in their country will be worse off financially
than their parents,” he said.
Using LIS’s household survey data,
the Guardian examined the disposable incomes and wages of young
families in eight of the 15 largest developed economies in the world.
Together these countries made up 43% of the world’s GDP in 2014.
These surveys, carried out over decades, are intended to pick up what
is happening on the ground in people’s homes, and are the best way of
distilling domestic realities from governmental level data.
The data accessed by the Guardian found that in the US, France, Germany, Italy and Canada the average disposable income of people in their early 20s is more than 20% below national averages.
For the first time in France,
recent pensioners generated more disposable income than families headed
by a person under 50. In Italy the average under-35 became poorer than
average pensioners under 80. Using the most recent US data, in the midst
of the downturn in 2013, average under-30s had less income than those
aged 65-79. This is the first time that has happened as far back as the
data goes.
Millennials interviewed by the Guardian said they felt their
generation was facing far greater hurdles to establish themselves as
independent adults than previous generations did.
Fiona Pattison, a 30-year-old accounts director at a fundraising
agency, said that despite pay rises and promotions her lifestyle hadn’t
changed in six years. “Everything I’ve made in terms of a pay rise has
gone into living and saving. My lifestyle has remained exactly the same.
Any dent in employment or income would mean I’d have to go back to
sharing again.”
Londoner Tanaka Mhishi, who works in a bookshop, adds: “I definitely
think in a lot of ways my parents’ generation was luckier. They had a
lot more freedom to do things younger: they were able to go straight
from university and move to London and afford their own flat.
“We definitely have to make more compromises. Compromises like if I
want to have kids by the time I’m 30, or even 40, can I still have the
career I want to do?”
Tanaka Mhishi: ‘My parent’s generation had more freedom ... to go
straight from university, move to London and afford their own flat.’
Photograph: Tom Silverstone/Guardian
Several economists told the Guardian that policymakers should do more
to even up the balance between young and old to avoid economic
stagnation. Paul Johnson,
director of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, said he feared
intergenerational inequality would fuel wider inequality in society
because youngsters with rich parents would retain such an unfair
advantage in the important years of early adulthood.
Johnson said: “I think the real unfairness issue comes in the sense
that it’s become more and more important whether your parents happen to
have a house.”
For the next fortnight the Guardian will delve into the fortunes,
feelings and finances of the developed world’s young adults, as well as
looking at fallacies surrounding them.
In our series, we will reveal that today’s young people are not
delaying adulthood because they are – as the New Yorker once put it – “the most indulged young people in the history of the world”.
Instead, it appears they are not hitting the basic stages of adulthood
at the same time as previous generations because such milestones are so
much more costly and in some cases they are even being paid less than
their parents were at the same age.
In Australia, millennials are being inched out of the housing market.
In the UK, new figures will show the notion of a property-owning
democracy has already been terminated. In the US, debt is the millennial
millstone – young people are sitting on $1.3tn of student debt.
Across Europe, the issue centres more around jobs – and the lack of
them. The numbers of thirtysomethings still living with their parents is
stubbornly high in countries such as Italy and Spain,
with grave implications for birthrates and family formation in places
whose demographics are already badly skewed towards elderly people.
“We’ve never had, since the dawn of capitalism really, this situation
of a population that is ageing so much and in some countries also
shrinking, and we just don’t know whether we can continue growing the
economy in the same way we once have,” said Prof Diane Coyle, an economist and former UK Treasury adviser.
