Saturday, September 13, 2008
consider the monkeys...
today is a black day for malaysia. my heart missed a beat when i received an sms at midnight informing that more people were arrested under ISA last night. in addition to RPK, now we have teresa kok and a few others including ANWAR!!! thankfully anwar was not on the list according to the latest malaysiakini and staronline report this morning. even so, this is a very distressing news. not that i'm an admirer of any of these people including anwar but to use ISA when you lose an argument is downright criminal, shameful and and and ...word fails me.
dollah badawi was on record stating that 13 is his favorite number and today is sept 13. and he chose the date well to do this shameful thing. one need not wonder why none of the UMNO goons who started, incited and stoke up the racial issue were similarly arrested. but i say this. no one should expect a stupid leader to do a clever thing. it's a fact that stupid people will do the most harm in anything. and it's our collective misfortunes to have a stupid leader. but who's the stupidest? WE the people are of course! we (well, not me, but the majority of you) chose these people to be our elected representatives and govern the country. so as they say, we deserve what we get.
many are already and will be yakking and gabbing on this new arrests in all the political blogs and mainstream media with all kind of spins as usual. and a lot of these people have much better things to say than me on the issue. i therefore won't say anything more but i'll say this. it's not too difficult to wonder what gives the 'good' opportunity to our snail brained leader to act in such a shameful way and particularly in this time of political uncertainty leading to 916 date of anwar's takeover timeline. so i'll veer off into a slightly different thing.
consider the monkeys. when the first human beings migrate to the land of tanah melayu they would discover that monkeys were already here happily colonising all the tropical forests. so when the curly and crinkly haired negritos paddled all the way from the polynesian islands thousands of years and miles away to this land of ours they would find that the siamangs, gibbons, proboscis monkeys, the short tailed macaques and the pesty long tailed rhesus monkeys were all already here. and so if we want to bark and argue on the pandatang polemics (which i guess is the spark to this new ISA arrests) why then set the cut off point at the modern malays? why not start with the monkeys or the negritos of polynesian origin? because the negritos are backward and play no part in the history of malaysia, says some. but this is no argument. it's a historical fact that they are the first human migrants to malaya or tanah melayu.
the point is nobody should talk about pendatang anymore than talk about if one race is cleverer or stupider or looks more beautiful or uglier than the other. it'll only lead to one thing. more prejudice and disaster. okay, that's two things.
I'm currently reading a very readable travel book the golden Chersonese And the way thither by Isabella I. Bird which you can download a free e-copy here. this is a very fascinating book describing the malay states in the nineteenth century. what came clearly across is that the chinese were already the economic engine of malaya (at least in the west coast states of malacca, selangor and perak) during those days. the pony tailed chinese were busy with the tin mines, doing business in opiums and all kinds of merchandise and crowding the gambling dens during the night time. the malays were decidedly ugly in the eyes of this british woman traveller.
The way she put it , the malay men... looked superb in their red dresses and turbans , although the Malays are anything but a handsome race.
but there were no question that the malays were a civilized race (as she put it) and they were the ruling class, steeped in islamic religion and consider the british colonizers the 'infidel dogs' happily living in the kampongs and on occassions 'shooting the chinese' because 'they have no religion'. and the klings happy to work as servants. not much different than today in the broad sense.
dollah badawi was on record stating that 13 is his favorite number and today is sept 13. and he chose the date well to do this shameful thing. one need not wonder why none of the UMNO goons who started, incited and stoke up the racial issue were similarly arrested. but i say this. no one should expect a stupid leader to do a clever thing. it's a fact that stupid people will do the most harm in anything. and it's our collective misfortunes to have a stupid leader. but who's the stupidest? WE the people are of course! we (well, not me, but the majority of you) chose these people to be our elected representatives and govern the country. so as they say, we deserve what we get.
many are already and will be yakking and gabbing on this new arrests in all the political blogs and mainstream media with all kind of spins as usual. and a lot of these people have much better things to say than me on the issue. i therefore won't say anything more but i'll say this. it's not too difficult to wonder what gives the 'good' opportunity to our snail brained leader to act in such a shameful way and particularly in this time of political uncertainty leading to 916 date of anwar's takeover timeline. so i'll veer off into a slightly different thing.
consider the monkeys. when the first human beings migrate to the land of tanah melayu they would discover that monkeys were already here happily colonising all the tropical forests. so when the curly and crinkly haired negritos paddled all the way from the polynesian islands thousands of years and miles away to this land of ours they would find that the siamangs, gibbons, proboscis monkeys, the short tailed macaques and the pesty long tailed rhesus monkeys were all already here. and so if we want to bark and argue on the pandatang polemics (which i guess is the spark to this new ISA arrests) why then set the cut off point at the modern malays? why not start with the monkeys or the negritos of polynesian origin? because the negritos are backward and play no part in the history of malaysia, says some. but this is no argument. it's a historical fact that they are the first human migrants to malaya or tanah melayu.
the point is nobody should talk about pendatang anymore than talk about if one race is cleverer or stupider or looks more beautiful or uglier than the other. it'll only lead to one thing. more prejudice and disaster. okay, that's two things.
I'm currently reading a very readable travel book the golden Chersonese And the way thither by Isabella I. Bird which you can download a free e-copy here. this is a very fascinating book describing the malay states in the nineteenth century. what came clearly across is that the chinese were already the economic engine of malaya (at least in the west coast states of malacca, selangor and perak) during those days. the pony tailed chinese were busy with the tin mines, doing business in opiums and all kinds of merchandise and crowding the gambling dens during the night time. the malays were decidedly ugly in the eyes of this british woman traveller.
The way she put it , the malay men... looked superb in their red dresses and turbans , although the Malays are anything but a handsome race.
but there were no question that the malays were a civilized race (as she put it) and they were the ruling class, steeped in islamic religion and consider the british colonizers the 'infidel dogs' happily living in the kampongs and on occassions 'shooting the chinese' because 'they have no religion'. and the klings happy to work as servants. not much different than today in the broad sense.
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nicely said for someone who said others have said it better. feel dismayed.
i love "the golden chersonnese" and no idea that it was avaialble to download.
i love "the golden chersonnese" and no idea that it was avaialble to download.
Me too, I don't think the Malays are particularly handsome but they are pretty sexy. And sexy to me is hot. ;)
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