Cadet Pilot (Singapore)
Full/Part Time Full-time
Location Singapore,
Description CADET PILOTS (SINGAPORE)
PLEASE APPLY FOR THIS POSITION IF YOU ARE RESIDING IN SINGAPORE.
- Singapore Citizen, Singapore Permanent Resident or Malaysian Citizen
- GCE ‘A’ level, Polytechnic Diploma or Degree. In addition you must have obtained a minimum of 5 Credits in the GCE ‘O’ level or its equivalent. These must include English, Mathematics and a Science subject, preferably Physics, taken in one sitting.
- At least 1.65 m in height
- Myopia of not more than 500 degrees and astigmatism of not more than 125 degrees, fully correctable with optical aids. Visual acuity of at least 6/60, correctable to 6/6. For candidates who have undergone corrective eye surgery (e.g. Lasik), the pre-surgical visual acuity should also meet the above requirements
- Completed, exempted from, or not liable for National Service
TRAINING
You will spend 15 to 17 months on training to acquire an Airline Transport Pilot’s License (ATPL) with Instrument Rating (IR) at Pilot Training Schools in Singapore and overseas. Full board and lodging will be provided. Upon obtaining the flying license, you will undergo further training for 1 to 2 years to become a First Officer.
REMUNERATION AND SERVICE BENEFITS
A monthly allowance will be provided during training. On appointment as a First Officer, you will be paid a basic salary and various allowances. Fringe benefits, including medical and dental treatment and discounted travel, will also be offered.
BOND
Successful candidates will be required to serve the employer company for the duration of the training and for a period of 7 years from the date of appointment as First Officer.
EMPLOYMENT
Successful candidates will be offered employment with one of the companies in the SIA Group:
- Singapore Airlines
- SilkAir
APPLICATION
If you are applying for the first time, please create your profile and submit an online application at our website: http://www.singaporeair.com/careers
Please apply under the 'Cadet Pilot (Singapore)' position.
We thank all applicants for their applications but regret that only shortlisted candidates will be notified.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Cadet Pilot - AirAsia
People are our greatest assets. We believe in empowering even their wildest dreams because we know that nothing is impossible. 4,000 talented, unconventional, determined and very passionate individuals are the reasons why we are Asia’s leading Low Fare Airline. We believe and share one philosohpy – One People, One Culture, One AirAsia, One Family.
So if you’ve always wanted to make a difference, step out now and make that change.
Join us as:
CADET PILOT – Air Asia
Keen to be a pilot with AirAsia? Read on.
We are looking for young, energetic and hardworking people with a healthy attitude and good work ethics to train to be pilots.
Our cadet pilot training programme is among the best in the world.
Requirements:
1.) Malaysian citizen, aged between 18 and 28 as at date of application.
2.) Either:
1. Passed SPM (or its equivalent that is recognized by the Malaysian Government) with at least A2 in English and Mathematics and B3 in Physics taken at one sitting. (Those from the Arts stream should have at least an A2 in General Science); or
2. Possess a Diploma/Degree in Engineering or Science-related disciplines with CGPA 3.0 and above and at SPM level scored at least a B4 in the subjects mentioned above taken in one sitting.
3.) Good command of English and Bahasa Malaysia both written and spoken.
4.) Must be physically and mentally fit with good eyesight (visual acuity of at least 6/60 without optical aid, correctable to 6/6 and not colour blind. Should be able to successfully pass a medical examination up to a Class 1 standard conducted by a Department of Civil Aviation Authorised Medical Examiner (DAME).
5.) Minimum height of 163 cm (5ft 3in).
6.) Be prepared to sign a training bond with a surety.
The Selection Process
The process consists of the stages as follows:
1.) Screening of applications
2.) Written academic tests in English, Mathematics and Science (Physics) with an IQ test. Passing mark of at least 75% required in all subjects.
3.) Aptitude testing
4.) Interview
5.) Medical Examination
6.) Final selection
The Training Programme
Commercial Pilot Licence with a ‘Frozen’ ATPL
ONLY the training cost is sponsored by AirAsia. All other expenses such as accommodation and food plus all other miscellaneous expenditure will be borne by the cadets. All cadet pilots will repay the cost of training through monthly deductions over a period of fifteen (15) years commencing from the time they are employed by AirAsia and commence their line training as Second Officers. In addition to this the cadets will have to sign a training bond for the type-rating course on the Boeing 737 or the Airbus A320.
In the event the cadet pilot is unsuccessful at any stage of the training the cadet is obliged to repay AirAsia all the training cost that had been expended up to the stage of termination plus any administrative costs.
Phase 1: This phase will take approximately 66 weeks and consist of the following:
Ground School curriculum comprising approximately 1,000 hours of classroom time covering the following:
- Private Pilot Licence (PPL) ground subjects with examinations conducted by DCAM.
- DCA Technical subjects with examinations conducted by DCAM.
- Commercial Pilot Licence (CPL) ground subjects with in house examinations approved by DCAM.
- Airline Transport Pilot Licence (ATPL) ground subjects with papers set and marked by the UK Overseas Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) Examinations. These Examinations will be conducted by DCAM.
- Flight training with 200 flying hours comprising of a minimum of 35 hours on a twin-engined aircraft and the remaining on a single-engined aircraft.
On completion of this the cadet pilots will be issued with a CPL and an Instrument Rating (I/R) with a Frozen ATPL. With this the cadet pilots will be able to progress onto the next stage of the training at AirAsia.
Phase 2: The cadet pilots will carry out their Multi-crew Coordination Course (MCC) before starting their type-rating courses on either the B737 or the A320. This phase includes other regulatory courses conducted to enable them to fly as a crew in an aircraft in the commercial category. Once they have completed their type-rating course they will become Second Officers and commence their line training after having successfully completed their endorsement flight. This whole process in this phase takes approximately 3 to 6 months.
Career Progression
After successfully completing their line training the Second Officers will be employed as First Officers and gain their experience on line. Within a period of 5 to 6 years they would have gained enough hours to be eligible for promotion as a Captain to act as commander. This is of course, subject to their performance, recommendation and any suitable vacancy. With the very fast pace of expansion of AirAsia there is abundant opportunity for all ambitious candidates who are willing to work hard.
Applications to be addressed to:
Cadet Pilot Programme Coordinator
AirAsia Academy
Lot PT25B, Jln KLIA S5
South Support Zone KLIA
64000 Sepang,
Selangor Darul Ehsan
Please submit ONLY the following with your application:
1.) Resume with your contact numbers (including mobile phone) and a valid email address as all correspondence will be via sms or email. Please do ensure your email inbox is not full.
2.) 1 Passport size recent photograph (NR).
3.) Copy of MYKAD.
4.) Copies of only the relevant educational certificates as per the requirements mentioned above.
All original educational certificates and any other certificates should only be brought when you are called to appear for the Academic Tests.
Important to note: All applications are to be sent only after the advertisement appears in the STAR and/or New Straits Times newspapers and before the Closing Date. Otherwise, the application will not be considered or acknowledged.
*Only shortlisted candidates will be notified.
So if you’ve always wanted to make a difference, step out now and make that change.
Join us as:
CADET PILOT – Air Asia
Keen to be a pilot with AirAsia? Read on.
We are looking for young, energetic and hardworking people with a healthy attitude and good work ethics to train to be pilots.
Our cadet pilot training programme is among the best in the world.
Requirements:
1.) Malaysian citizen, aged between 18 and 28 as at date of application.
2.) Either:
1. Passed SPM (or its equivalent that is recognized by the Malaysian Government) with at least A2 in English and Mathematics and B3 in Physics taken at one sitting. (Those from the Arts stream should have at least an A2 in General Science); or
2. Possess a Diploma/Degree in Engineering or Science-related disciplines with CGPA 3.0 and above and at SPM level scored at least a B4 in the subjects mentioned above taken in one sitting.
3.) Good command of English and Bahasa Malaysia both written and spoken.
4.) Must be physically and mentally fit with good eyesight (visual acuity of at least 6/60 without optical aid, correctable to 6/6 and not colour blind. Should be able to successfully pass a medical examination up to a Class 1 standard conducted by a Department of Civil Aviation Authorised Medical Examiner (DAME).
5.) Minimum height of 163 cm (5ft 3in).
6.) Be prepared to sign a training bond with a surety.
The Selection Process
The process consists of the stages as follows:
1.) Screening of applications
2.) Written academic tests in English, Mathematics and Science (Physics) with an IQ test. Passing mark of at least 75% required in all subjects.
3.) Aptitude testing
4.) Interview
5.) Medical Examination
6.) Final selection
The Training Programme
Commercial Pilot Licence with a ‘Frozen’ ATPL
ONLY the training cost is sponsored by AirAsia. All other expenses such as accommodation and food plus all other miscellaneous expenditure will be borne by the cadets. All cadet pilots will repay the cost of training through monthly deductions over a period of fifteen (15) years commencing from the time they are employed by AirAsia and commence their line training as Second Officers. In addition to this the cadets will have to sign a training bond for the type-rating course on the Boeing 737 or the Airbus A320.
In the event the cadet pilot is unsuccessful at any stage of the training the cadet is obliged to repay AirAsia all the training cost that had been expended up to the stage of termination plus any administrative costs.
Phase 1: This phase will take approximately 66 weeks and consist of the following:
Ground School curriculum comprising approximately 1,000 hours of classroom time covering the following:
- Private Pilot Licence (PPL) ground subjects with examinations conducted by DCAM.
- DCA Technical subjects with examinations conducted by DCAM.
- Commercial Pilot Licence (CPL) ground subjects with in house examinations approved by DCAM.
- Airline Transport Pilot Licence (ATPL) ground subjects with papers set and marked by the UK Overseas Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) Examinations. These Examinations will be conducted by DCAM.
- Flight training with 200 flying hours comprising of a minimum of 35 hours on a twin-engined aircraft and the remaining on a single-engined aircraft.
On completion of this the cadet pilots will be issued with a CPL and an Instrument Rating (I/R) with a Frozen ATPL. With this the cadet pilots will be able to progress onto the next stage of the training at AirAsia.
Phase 2: The cadet pilots will carry out their Multi-crew Coordination Course (MCC) before starting their type-rating courses on either the B737 or the A320. This phase includes other regulatory courses conducted to enable them to fly as a crew in an aircraft in the commercial category. Once they have completed their type-rating course they will become Second Officers and commence their line training after having successfully completed their endorsement flight. This whole process in this phase takes approximately 3 to 6 months.
Career Progression
After successfully completing their line training the Second Officers will be employed as First Officers and gain their experience on line. Within a period of 5 to 6 years they would have gained enough hours to be eligible for promotion as a Captain to act as commander. This is of course, subject to their performance, recommendation and any suitable vacancy. With the very fast pace of expansion of AirAsia there is abundant opportunity for all ambitious candidates who are willing to work hard.
Applications to be addressed to:
Cadet Pilot Programme Coordinator
AirAsia Academy
Lot PT25B, Jln KLIA S5
South Support Zone KLIA
64000 Sepang,
Selangor Darul Ehsan
Please submit ONLY the following with your application:
1.) Resume with your contact numbers (including mobile phone) and a valid email address as all correspondence will be via sms or email. Please do ensure your email inbox is not full.
2.) 1 Passport size recent photograph (NR).
3.) Copy of MYKAD.
4.) Copies of only the relevant educational certificates as per the requirements mentioned above.
All original educational certificates and any other certificates should only be brought when you are called to appear for the Academic Tests.
Important to note: All applications are to be sent only after the advertisement appears in the STAR and/or New Straits Times newspapers and before the Closing Date. Otherwise, the application will not be considered or acknowledged.
*Only shortlisted candidates will be notified.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Pontius Pilate of Malaysia?
www.stancoruche.com
www.trafford.com/07-2912
Dr Mahathir: The Pontius Pilate of Malaysia ?
J. D. Lovrenciear
LETTER Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad easily qualifies for the cloak of Pontius Pilate. And that is no compliment by any means.
There was a time when Malaysians stood by you as you promised a developed world for all of us. We went along with you backing your battering ram against the world.
Your war cry to ‘Buy British Last’ made us believe that we can be counted in the world. Likewise you hammered the Australians and we demanded their subservience.
You tried to pull the carpet under the feet of Singaporeans and we developed despite for them. You thundered your views on world economic and political matters and we believed you even to the extent of rubbishing off George Soros.
Some leaders of neighboring countries even hailed you as their mentor and brother – never mind the fact that one of them is a fugitive today and the other is being critically appraised for having allegiance to military rule.
You bulldozed through mega projects and we despised those who had second thoughts about your plans for all Malaysians. And so with the rakyat backing you all the way we saw the birth of Proton; the rise of Petronas Twin Towers; the hatching of Formula One motor sports; the hacking out for the Bakun Dam – just to name a few.
Most of us senior citizens even remember how we were made to rubbish off Bapa Malaysia and hail you as the Bapa Moden Malaysia. And we all followed you all the way.
Even on that seemingly fateful day you shed tears at the UMNO rostrum announcing your resignation as the PM of Malaysia , your fellow ministers sprung to your side – right and left, pleading that you retract.
But today, in your vintage years, we are witnessing your diabolic intentions with crystal clarity a you unashamedly continue to divide we Malaysians along race barriers. Your Malay Dilemma is making a full circle indeed.
Your mega structures and projects have only made this nation more vulnerable to changing economic uncertainties. The Proton is today on the verge of collapse without a saviour investor take-over. Imagine where we would be today if only you did not ‘cheat’ on the Asian Car venture then to get your “Mahathir’s Malaysian car” going.
The Bakun Dam has punched a hole so deep into the gorges of our economic resistance that we may never recover – not to mention the damage to the livelihood of indigenous people or the marvels of mother-nature.
The Twin Towers had to be near-salvaged by a telco tycoon and still struggles to draw one hundred percent occupancy.
What about the BMF scandal? The tin ore scam? And many more sins against the rakyat that freely circulates on the World Wide Web.
But what is most hurting is the fact that having been at the helm of this nation for so long, you not only killed all succession plans for the nation leaving us with two PMs who are unable to lead a nation into the twenty first century. Even you have not lent your support but continue to batter at their kinks making them flip and flop.
Worse, during your tenure as a leader, you made us all believe that opposition parties like PAS were nothing but a band of Arab-like camel-riding sword-wielding ultra conservatives. Today we know that the leader of PAS is respected by all races and creeds. He is to many a fine example of a living saint. Ask any Kelantanese Malay, Chinese or Indian and they will tell that to your face without hesitation
You sacked people who are still fighting relentlessly to prove your misdeeds. In wanting to divide and rule you sowed the seeds of deceit, hatred, mistrust and above all suspicion amongst Malaysians.
And now in your sunset years you are not adding any value to the struggle of a single nation. You are still pitting man against man along race-based divisions.
Why? Why Mr Mahathir Mohammad?
Why are you not playing the role of a seasoned and wise politician, leading not just Malaysians but even our neighbors with words of wisdom, inspiration and integrity? What is terribly wrong with you?
Are you not aware that you may be remembered upon your tombstone as the Pontius Pilot of Malaysia – the leader who betrayed his own people.
***** End Quote*****
Friday, September 17, 2010
Malaysia an ailing state
Every right thinking Malaysians must watch and listen to this presentation by Patrick Teoh on how Malaysia is going downhill into a failed state. The signs are all there. Please pass on to your friends and relatives to spread the dark news and act in GE13 before all is lost to these pirates.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Heart Surgeon Admits Huge Mistake!
(Written by: Dwight Lundell, MD)
Without inflammation, cholesterol won't accumulate in blood vessel walls and cause heart disease.
We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.
I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labeled "opinion makers." Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol.
The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these Recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.
It Is Not Working!
These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated.
The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.
Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before.
Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year.
Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped.
Inflammation is not complicated -- it is quite simply your body's natural defence to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus.
The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process, a condition occurs called chronic inflammation.
Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial.
What thoughtful person would willfully expose himself repeatedly to foods or other substances that are known to cause injury to the body? Well, smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice willfully.
The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, Stroke, diabetes and obesity.
Let me repeat that. The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet recommended for years by mainstream medicine.
What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the
Overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods.
Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. You kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.
Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation.
While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader has arrived, declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.
How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?
Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works. When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat.
What does all this have to do with inflammation? Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall.
This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood Sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking Sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels.
While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator — inflammation in their arteries.
Let's get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6's are essential –they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell — they must be in the correct balance with omega-3's. If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation.
Today's mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That's a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today's food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy.
To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer's disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated.
There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils.
There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state.
To build muscle, eat more protein. Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables.
Cut down on or eliminate inflammation- causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them.
One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Instead, use olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef.
Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labelled polyunsaturated.
Forget the "science" that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak.
Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today. The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation.
Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.
What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Dwight Lundell is the past Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery at Banner Heart Hospital , Mesa , AZ. His private practice, Cardiac Care Center was in Mesa , AZ. Recently Dr. Lundell left surgery to focus on the nutritional treatment of heart disease. He is the founder of Healthy Humans Foundation that promotes human health with a focus on helping large corporations promote wellness. He is the author of "The Cure for Heart Disease and The Great Cholesterol Lie"].
Without inflammation, cholesterol won't accumulate in blood vessel walls and cause heart disease.
We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.
I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labeled "opinion makers." Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol.
The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these Recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.
It Is Not Working!
These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated.
The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.
Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before.
Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year.
Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped.
Inflammation is not complicated -- it is quite simply your body's natural defence to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus.
The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process, a condition occurs called chronic inflammation.
Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial.
What thoughtful person would willfully expose himself repeatedly to foods or other substances that are known to cause injury to the body? Well, smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice willfully.
The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, Stroke, diabetes and obesity.
Let me repeat that. The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet recommended for years by mainstream medicine.
What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the
Overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods.
Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. You kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.
Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation.
While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader has arrived, declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.
How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?
Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works. When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat.
What does all this have to do with inflammation? Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall.
This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood Sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking Sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels.
While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator — inflammation in their arteries.
Let's get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6's are essential –they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell — they must be in the correct balance with omega-3's. If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation.
Today's mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That's a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today's food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy.
To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer's disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated.
There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils.
There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state.
To build muscle, eat more protein. Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables.
Cut down on or eliminate inflammation- causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them.
One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Instead, use olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef.
Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labelled polyunsaturated.
Forget the "science" that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak.
Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today. The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation.
Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.
What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Dwight Lundell is the past Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery at Banner Heart Hospital , Mesa , AZ. His private practice, Cardiac Care Center was in Mesa , AZ. Recently Dr. Lundell left surgery to focus on the nutritional treatment of heart disease. He is the founder of Healthy Humans Foundation that promotes human health with a focus on helping large corporations promote wellness. He is the author of "The Cure for Heart Disease and The Great Cholesterol Lie"].
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Here is an Indian creation, a poem you will find interesting and probably may
resonate with your beliefs on theory of creation by Prof Stephen Hawkings of late.
There was neither non-existence nor existence then.
There was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond.
What stirred?
Where?
In whose protection?
Was there water, bottlemlessly deep?
There was neither death nor immortality then.
There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day.
That One breathed, windless, by its own impulse.
Other than that there was nothing beyond.
Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning,
with no distinguishing sign, all this was water.
The life force that was covered with emptiness,
that One arose through the power of heat.
Desire came upon that One in the beginning,
that was the first seed of mind.
Poets seeking in their heart with wisdom
found the bond of existence and non-existence.
Their cord was extended across.
Was there below?
Was there above?
There were seed-placers, there were powers.
There was impulse beneath, there was giving forth above.
Who really knows?
Who will here proclaim it?
Whence was it produced?
Whence is this creation?
The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe.
Who then knows whence it has arisen?
Whence this creation has arisen
- perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not -
the One who looks down on it,
in the highest heaven, only He knows
or perhaps He does not know.
*The Poetry of Creation - Rig Veda Book 10 Hymn 129*
Hinduism itself has 6 philosophies with one bordering on atheism.
For buddhists of course there is no god.
Taoists, Shintoists, etc have all different concept of the belief in divine.
Sri Ramana Maharishi says, first find out who is your "self", then worry about god.
Why bother about the concept of god, why bring god uneccesarily into human affairs.
The vedas don't mention anything about god. God, religion etc are all semitic terms for which we have no equivalence.
resonate with your beliefs on theory of creation by Prof Stephen Hawkings of late.
There was neither non-existence nor existence then.
There was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond.
What stirred?
Where?
In whose protection?
Was there water, bottlemlessly deep?
There was neither death nor immortality then.
There was no distinguishing sign of night nor of day.
That One breathed, windless, by its own impulse.
Other than that there was nothing beyond.
Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning,
with no distinguishing sign, all this was water.
The life force that was covered with emptiness,
that One arose through the power of heat.
Desire came upon that One in the beginning,
that was the first seed of mind.
Poets seeking in their heart with wisdom
found the bond of existence and non-existence.
Their cord was extended across.
Was there below?
Was there above?
There were seed-placers, there were powers.
There was impulse beneath, there was giving forth above.
Who really knows?
Who will here proclaim it?
Whence was it produced?
Whence is this creation?
The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe.
Who then knows whence it has arisen?
Whence this creation has arisen
- perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not -
the One who looks down on it,
in the highest heaven, only He knows
or perhaps He does not know.
*The Poetry of Creation - Rig Veda Book 10 Hymn 129*
Hinduism itself has 6 philosophies with one bordering on atheism.
For buddhists of course there is no god.
Taoists, Shintoists, etc have all different concept of the belief in divine.
Sri Ramana Maharishi says, first find out who is your "self", then worry about god.
Why bother about the concept of god, why bring god uneccesarily into human affairs.
The vedas don't mention anything about god. God, religion etc are all semitic terms for which we have no equivalence.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Come and get me in London ( Raja Petra Kamaruddin)
NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
That’s the problem with some Malays when you take them out of the kampong and send them to school. They think that just because they went to school this means they have also received an education.
Do they know that going to school means just that; that you have gone to school? It does not mean you are educated. After all, you can take the Malay out of thekampong but you can’t always take the kampong out of the Malay.
And this is the problem with those Malays who are still sending me hate-mail and the Malays in Umno and the Malays in Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian as well as the Umno Bloggers. They are still talking about getting me. Well, stop talking and come get me. But first go get an education and stop embarrassing the entire Malay race with all this stupid talk.
And this includes the IGP and AG and Umno Ministers who are all singing the same stupid tune. They are all demonstrating that they know nothing about the law. And that is pathetic because they are supposed to be the lawmakers and enforcers and upholders of the law. Yet they are ignorant of the law.
What do they plan to get me on? Do they wish to slap me with a new ISA detention order? Detention without trial does not apply in the UK . Furthermore, whatever I wrote since February 2009 was written outside Malaysia .
And Malaysia does not have any jurisdiction on what I do outside the country. My host country would have to arrest and charge me in the event it feels I have committed a crime on its soil.
For example, in the UK , I can enter into a gay marriage (now, even in church) and, like Elton John, can receive a congratulatory message from the British Prime Minister. Malaysia can’t extradite me for sodomy since what I did I did in the UK and not in Malaysia -- where sodomy is a crime. So the crime must have been committed in Malaysia and must be a crime in both Malaysia and the UK -- dual criminality -- before Malaysia can extradite me.
Or do they wish to slap me with new charges? What new charges? A crime under the Official Secrets Act maybe on the PKFZ Cabinet Papers that I published? Sorry, in the UK they have the Freedom of Information Act. So it is not a crime to reveal information of wrongdoing by the government. In fact, it is the opposite. In the UK it is a crime to hide information of wrongdoing. So here in the UK I would be given an award, not an arrest warrant.
Maybe they want to re-charge me on the old charges that have been dropped (discharged not amounting to an acquittal)? Well, there were only two charges. One was for sedition and the other for criminal defamation.
The UK no longer has the Sedition Act. This law was abrogated on 1st January this year. So, under the dual criminality clause, they can’t extradite me for that charge. So that leaves only one charge left, the criminal defamation charge.
Okay, let’s talk about that one remaining charge then.
I am alleged to have defamed Rosmah Mansor. But Rosmah is not a government officer. She is only the one-time mistress of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, a home-wrecker who stole another woman’s husband. Just because she is Najib’s sex partner this does not make her a Malaysian government official. So the criminal defamation law does not apply to her. How, then, can I get charged for criminal defamation?
Would this mean if I were to defame half a dozen other women then I would face another six criminal defamation charges just because Najib also had sex with them and therefore they are now officially employed by the Malaysian government?
Bila kata Melayu bodoh, marah. Tapi kalau dah bodoh nak kata apa lagi?
Anyway, never mind. Come get me. Apply to extradite me. Then let’s see what the court has to say about that.
What crime did I commit under the criminal defamation charge? I signed a statutory declaration at the Kuala Lumpur High Court in front of a lawyer and the court registrar. Then the lawyer sent it to the prosecutors in the Altantuya murder trial.
In the UK that is not a crime. That is a duty. If you have information that a crime may have been committed -- even if you are not too sure but there may be a possibility -- then you must report it. And that is exactly what I did; I reported it.
And in the UK those who report a crime are given immunity and cannot be charged for the crime of reporting a crime. But this is what happened to me in Malaysia -- I was arrested and charged for reporting a crime.
This is what the British court said:
The utility of a properly managed system of informers is recognised throughout the common law world. As long as crimes are committed, informers have a role to play in their investigation and prosecution. They may either be professional informers, acting for self-serving purposes, or they may be ordinary citizens, motivated by public-spiritedness. Whatever their reason, it is in the public interest that nothing should be done which is likely to discourage persons of either class from coming forward (R v Rankine [1986] 1 QB 861 at 865).
You need more ‘enlightenment’? Then read the point below which explains the issue:-
A person who reports a crime cannot be charged, like what they did to me in Malaysia . This is something that the IGP and AG (or the Umno Bloggers, Ministers, etc.) do not seem to know. And that is why they need more education on how the law works.
And only after they have received this education should they attempt to extradite me. If not then even a non-lawyer like me is going to run rings around them. And that will buat Melayu lagi malu.
***
Please help to spread the message if you wish to see changes for a better Malaysia . Forward to everyone in your email contacts list, asking them to send out via their email list too, so that more people will come out to vote wisely in the 13th General Election for a better Malaysia for your children and their children too.
Raja Petra Kamarudin
That’s the problem with some Malays when you take them out of the kampong and send them to school. They think that just because they went to school this means they have also received an education.
Do they know that going to school means just that; that you have gone to school? It does not mean you are educated. After all, you can take the Malay out of thekampong but you can’t always take the kampong out of the Malay.
And this is the problem with those Malays who are still sending me hate-mail and the Malays in Umno and the Malays in Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian as well as the Umno Bloggers. They are still talking about getting me. Well, stop talking and come get me. But first go get an education and stop embarrassing the entire Malay race with all this stupid talk.
And this includes the IGP and AG and Umno Ministers who are all singing the same stupid tune. They are all demonstrating that they know nothing about the law. And that is pathetic because they are supposed to be the lawmakers and enforcers and upholders of the law. Yet they are ignorant of the law.
What do they plan to get me on? Do they wish to slap me with a new ISA detention order? Detention without trial does not apply in the UK . Furthermore, whatever I wrote since February 2009 was written outside Malaysia .
And Malaysia does not have any jurisdiction on what I do outside the country. My host country would have to arrest and charge me in the event it feels I have committed a crime on its soil.
For example, in the UK , I can enter into a gay marriage (now, even in church) and, like Elton John, can receive a congratulatory message from the British Prime Minister. Malaysia can’t extradite me for sodomy since what I did I did in the UK and not in Malaysia -- where sodomy is a crime. So the crime must have been committed in Malaysia and must be a crime in both Malaysia and the UK -- dual criminality -- before Malaysia can extradite me.
Or do they wish to slap me with new charges? What new charges? A crime under the Official Secrets Act maybe on the PKFZ Cabinet Papers that I published? Sorry, in the UK they have the Freedom of Information Act. So it is not a crime to reveal information of wrongdoing by the government. In fact, it is the opposite. In the UK it is a crime to hide information of wrongdoing. So here in the UK I would be given an award, not an arrest warrant.
Maybe they want to re-charge me on the old charges that have been dropped (discharged not amounting to an acquittal)? Well, there were only two charges. One was for sedition and the other for criminal defamation.
The UK no longer has the Sedition Act. This law was abrogated on 1st January this year. So, under the dual criminality clause, they can’t extradite me for that charge. So that leaves only one charge left, the criminal defamation charge.
Okay, let’s talk about that one remaining charge then.
I am alleged to have defamed Rosmah Mansor. But Rosmah is not a government officer. She is only the one-time mistress of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak, a home-wrecker who stole another woman’s husband. Just because she is Najib’s sex partner this does not make her a Malaysian government official. So the criminal defamation law does not apply to her. How, then, can I get charged for criminal defamation?
Would this mean if I were to defame half a dozen other women then I would face another six criminal defamation charges just because Najib also had sex with them and therefore they are now officially employed by the Malaysian government?
Bila kata Melayu bodoh, marah. Tapi kalau dah bodoh nak kata apa lagi?
Anyway, never mind. Come get me. Apply to extradite me. Then let’s see what the court has to say about that.
What crime did I commit under the criminal defamation charge? I signed a statutory declaration at the Kuala Lumpur High Court in front of a lawyer and the court registrar. Then the lawyer sent it to the prosecutors in the Altantuya murder trial.
In the UK that is not a crime. That is a duty. If you have information that a crime may have been committed -- even if you are not too sure but there may be a possibility -- then you must report it. And that is exactly what I did; I reported it.
And in the UK those who report a crime are given immunity and cannot be charged for the crime of reporting a crime. But this is what happened to me in Malaysia -- I was arrested and charged for reporting a crime.
This is what the British court said:
The utility of a properly managed system of informers is recognised throughout the common law world. As long as crimes are committed, informers have a role to play in their investigation and prosecution. They may either be professional informers, acting for self-serving purposes, or they may be ordinary citizens, motivated by public-spiritedness. Whatever their reason, it is in the public interest that nothing should be done which is likely to discourage persons of either class from coming forward (R v Rankine [1986] 1 QB 861 at 865).
You need more ‘enlightenment’? Then read the point below which explains the issue:-
A person who reports a crime cannot be charged, like what they did to me in Malaysia . This is something that the IGP and AG (or the Umno Bloggers, Ministers, etc.) do not seem to know. And that is why they need more education on how the law works.
And only after they have received this education should they attempt to extradite me. If not then even a non-lawyer like me is going to run rings around them. And that will buat Melayu lagi malu.
***
Please help to spread the message if you wish to see changes for a better Malaysia . Forward to everyone in your email contacts list, asking them to send out via their email list too, so that more people will come out to vote wisely in the 13th General Election for a better Malaysia for your children and their children too.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Faith Is Very Powerful
Faith is very powerful. It can make you believe even in the absence of evidence. It can also make you exterminate old men, women and children. That is how powerful faith can be.
NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Black is black. White is white. That’s what the practicalist would say, not that there is such a word as practicalist or one who is practical. But black can be white and white can be black, any sycophant would agree, just as long as it pleases the boss. And that is why many leaders like to surround themselves with sycophants who would readily tell you what you would like to hear rather than what you should be told.
Is this not the basis of the story of the emperor and his clothes? The emperor paraded naked because no one dared tell him he was naked lest he take offence. And anyone who saw the emperor naked would be considered an idiot so better one pretends that one sees the emperor fully clothed than be called an idiot.
Humankind would believe what it has been taught to believe. Education is not always education in the true sense of the word. You may have been taught but this does not mean you have received an education. Even dogs can be taught to do tricks, or any circus animal for that matter. But just because an animal can respond to commands does this mean we now have an educated animal in our midst?
What is humankind if not but just another animal? But humankind has been blessed with a more developed brain although this does not always mean this brain is used to its maximum potential. Brains, just like artificial intelligence such as computers, too can be taught to think the way it is programmed. And the way it thinks would all depend on the programmer.
The religionists talk about man’s ultimate sins such as pride, arrogance, greed, lust, jealousy, and whatnot. The scriptures talk about the agreement struck between God and Satan where God allowed Satan to prove that mankind is weak and susceptible to these sins, the most deadly of all being the sin of pride and arrogance, which was the failing of Satan himself.
And the religionist is the greatest programmer of all. The religionist does not teach us how to think. The religionist teaches us what to believe. And logic and belief are not compatible. You either believe or you do not. And anything other than belief, logic included, is unbelief.
On the one hand we are taught that God made humankind more superior to other animals because of our more powerful brain. But in that same breath we are taught that our thinking power should be limited and not extended to matters of religion. Religion does not require thinking. Religion requires belief. So logic has to be kept out of religion. And the absence of logic is explained by one word, faith.
What is faith? Faith is the belief in the unexplained. Where no explanation is possible then that it is categorised as faith. Faith, in short, is the belief in anything where proof is not forthcoming.
Humankind lives in two worlds. In one world evidence is required. The absence of evidence would mean a total rejection would be in order. Then there is the parallel world that humankind lives in. This parallel world is called the world of faith. And in the world of faith no evidence is required. It is a world that survives on sheer belief.
How do we reconcile these two parallel worlds that we live in? We can’t. One world is based on tangibles. The other world is based on the unproven. But most times we allow both worlds to overlap and function as one. We can no longer separate tangible from faith. And that is when impose our beliefs on others and take faith as fact, which all humankind must subject itself to.
Since the beginning of time, long before even Islam or any of the Religions of the Book, humankind has been imposing its faith on others. It is what they believe even in the absence of evidence. And this belief must also be the belief of others. And those who reject this belief must suffer death because by rejecting this belief they have forfeited their right to live.
This, the religionist would argue, is what God decided. But who amongst us has ever had an audience with God to confirm this? Can anyone come forward to declare that he or she has personally met God and this is what God commanded?
Not one of the seven billion or so members of the human race still walking the face of this earth can lay claim to ever meeting God and that this is what God had commanded. How do we know, therefore, that this is true? We have to believe this is so because this belief is based on faith, not on eyewitness accounts.
It is not that there is no evidence. There is. There were, in fact, even some witnesses. Of course, none of these witnesses are still alive today. All died thousands of years ago. What we have today is hearsay and stories passed down mostly by word of mouth through the ages. This is the evidence that we possess, or rather the faith in that there were people a long time ago who did have this evidence but which is no longer available.
But there was not just one witness. There were many witnesses. And all these witnesses contradict one another. So which evidence do we accept as true and which do we reject as false? Ah, this depends on your programmer, the religionists. They tell you which evidence is true and which is false.
But how do they know? They don’t. They just have faith. And they program you to also share their faith. And your beliefs are based on this. The religionists are virtuous people who would not lie. They are here to save you, to lead you through the right path. They are people of God. They would do no wrong.
Almost two thousand years ago, humankind was told that God had decreed the true faith. And God decreed that all those who did not believe this must be put to death. And over hundreds of years millions were killed because they refused to believe what Rome had decreed you should believe. Finally all the unbelievers were exterminated leaving only the believers alive to walk the face of this earth.
Slightly over 1,000 years later these true believers were declared as unbelievers and England exterminated all those who did not switch over to the true church, the Church of England. An ethnic cleansing that dwarfed even what happened in Bosnia and Iraq swept England and the land was cleansed of unbelievers. Today those of the Roman faith may still not sit on the Throne of England or become its Prime Minister.
This, we are told, is God’s command. But not one who put the unbelievers to the sword ever met God or met someone who had met God. Yet they decided who lives and who dies in the name of God.
Faith is very powerful. It can make you believe even in the absence of evidence. It can also make you exterminate old men, women and children. That is how powerful faith can be.
It took six days for God to create the universe and mother earth, say the scriptures. And on the seventh day God rested. And on the seventh day when God rested humankind created religion and murdered fellow humankind in the name of God. And when humankind demanded evidence the religionists came out with the word called faith. And the religionists told humankind that God commanded we must all have faith or else be killed.
Faith is a dangerous thing. Faith is sometimes another word for pride and arrogance. Is this maybe what Satan and God agreed? Make humankind believe that only his faith is right and all others wrong so that the killing spree can commence?
Hmm…could faith then actually be a creation of Satan, a secret weapon meant to mislead humankind? I sometimes wonder.
NO HOLDS BARRED
Raja Petra Kamarudin
Black is black. White is white. That’s what the practicalist would say, not that there is such a word as practicalist or one who is practical. But black can be white and white can be black, any sycophant would agree, just as long as it pleases the boss. And that is why many leaders like to surround themselves with sycophants who would readily tell you what you would like to hear rather than what you should be told.
Is this not the basis of the story of the emperor and his clothes? The emperor paraded naked because no one dared tell him he was naked lest he take offence. And anyone who saw the emperor naked would be considered an idiot so better one pretends that one sees the emperor fully clothed than be called an idiot.
Humankind would believe what it has been taught to believe. Education is not always education in the true sense of the word. You may have been taught but this does not mean you have received an education. Even dogs can be taught to do tricks, or any circus animal for that matter. But just because an animal can respond to commands does this mean we now have an educated animal in our midst?
What is humankind if not but just another animal? But humankind has been blessed with a more developed brain although this does not always mean this brain is used to its maximum potential. Brains, just like artificial intelligence such as computers, too can be taught to think the way it is programmed. And the way it thinks would all depend on the programmer.
The religionists talk about man’s ultimate sins such as pride, arrogance, greed, lust, jealousy, and whatnot. The scriptures talk about the agreement struck between God and Satan where God allowed Satan to prove that mankind is weak and susceptible to these sins, the most deadly of all being the sin of pride and arrogance, which was the failing of Satan himself.
And the religionist is the greatest programmer of all. The religionist does not teach us how to think. The religionist teaches us what to believe. And logic and belief are not compatible. You either believe or you do not. And anything other than belief, logic included, is unbelief.
On the one hand we are taught that God made humankind more superior to other animals because of our more powerful brain. But in that same breath we are taught that our thinking power should be limited and not extended to matters of religion. Religion does not require thinking. Religion requires belief. So logic has to be kept out of religion. And the absence of logic is explained by one word, faith.
What is faith? Faith is the belief in the unexplained. Where no explanation is possible then that it is categorised as faith. Faith, in short, is the belief in anything where proof is not forthcoming.
Humankind lives in two worlds. In one world evidence is required. The absence of evidence would mean a total rejection would be in order. Then there is the parallel world that humankind lives in. This parallel world is called the world of faith. And in the world of faith no evidence is required. It is a world that survives on sheer belief.
How do we reconcile these two parallel worlds that we live in? We can’t. One world is based on tangibles. The other world is based on the unproven. But most times we allow both worlds to overlap and function as one. We can no longer separate tangible from faith. And that is when impose our beliefs on others and take faith as fact, which all humankind must subject itself to.
Since the beginning of time, long before even Islam or any of the Religions of the Book, humankind has been imposing its faith on others. It is what they believe even in the absence of evidence. And this belief must also be the belief of others. And those who reject this belief must suffer death because by rejecting this belief they have forfeited their right to live.
This, the religionist would argue, is what God decided. But who amongst us has ever had an audience with God to confirm this? Can anyone come forward to declare that he or she has personally met God and this is what God commanded?
Not one of the seven billion or so members of the human race still walking the face of this earth can lay claim to ever meeting God and that this is what God had commanded. How do we know, therefore, that this is true? We have to believe this is so because this belief is based on faith, not on eyewitness accounts.
It is not that there is no evidence. There is. There were, in fact, even some witnesses. Of course, none of these witnesses are still alive today. All died thousands of years ago. What we have today is hearsay and stories passed down mostly by word of mouth through the ages. This is the evidence that we possess, or rather the faith in that there were people a long time ago who did have this evidence but which is no longer available.
But there was not just one witness. There were many witnesses. And all these witnesses contradict one another. So which evidence do we accept as true and which do we reject as false? Ah, this depends on your programmer, the religionists. They tell you which evidence is true and which is false.
But how do they know? They don’t. They just have faith. And they program you to also share their faith. And your beliefs are based on this. The religionists are virtuous people who would not lie. They are here to save you, to lead you through the right path. They are people of God. They would do no wrong.
Almost two thousand years ago, humankind was told that God had decreed the true faith. And God decreed that all those who did not believe this must be put to death. And over hundreds of years millions were killed because they refused to believe what Rome had decreed you should believe. Finally all the unbelievers were exterminated leaving only the believers alive to walk the face of this earth.
Slightly over 1,000 years later these true believers were declared as unbelievers and England exterminated all those who did not switch over to the true church, the Church of England. An ethnic cleansing that dwarfed even what happened in Bosnia and Iraq swept England and the land was cleansed of unbelievers. Today those of the Roman faith may still not sit on the Throne of England or become its Prime Minister.
This, we are told, is God’s command. But not one who put the unbelievers to the sword ever met God or met someone who had met God. Yet they decided who lives and who dies in the name of God.
Faith is very powerful. It can make you believe even in the absence of evidence. It can also make you exterminate old men, women and children. That is how powerful faith can be.
It took six days for God to create the universe and mother earth, say the scriptures. And on the seventh day God rested. And on the seventh day when God rested humankind created religion and murdered fellow humankind in the name of God. And when humankind demanded evidence the religionists came out with the word called faith. And the religionists told humankind that God commanded we must all have faith or else be killed.
Faith is a dangerous thing. Faith is sometimes another word for pride and arrogance. Is this maybe what Satan and God agreed? Make humankind believe that only his faith is right and all others wrong so that the killing spree can commence?
Hmm…could faith then actually be a creation of Satan, a secret weapon meant to mislead humankind? I sometimes wonder.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah: We were once ‘Malaysians’
The following keynote speech was given by Gua Musang (Kelantan) Parliamentarian and former Malaysian Finance Minister Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah at the 4th Annual Malaysian Student Leaders Summit (MSLS) on July 30, 2010.
I have played some small role in the life of this nation, but having been on the wrong side of one or two political fights with the powers-that-be, I am not as close to the young people of this country as I would hope to be.
History and the 8 o’clock news are written by the victors. In recent years, the government’s monopoly of the media has been destroyed by the technology revolution.
You could say I was also a member of the United Kingdom and Eire Council for Malaysian Students (UKEC). Well I was, except that I belonged to the predecessor of the UKEC, by more than 50 years, the Malayan Students Union of the UK and Eire. I led this organisation in 1958/59.
asli forum tengku razaleigh economy 150109 02I was then a student of Queen’s University at Belfast, as well as at Lincoln’s Inn. In a rather cooler climate than Kota Bharu’s, we campaigned for decolonisation. We demonstrated in Trafalgar Square and even in Paris. We made posters and participated in British elections.
Your invitation to participate in the MSLS was prefaced by an essay that calls for an intellectually informed activism. I congratulate you on this. The youth of today, you note, “will chart the future of Malaysia.” You say you “no longer want to be ignored and leave the future of our Malaysia at the hands of the current generation.” You “want to grab the bull by the horns… and have a say in where we go as a society and as a nation.”
I feel the same, actually. A lot of Malaysians feel the same. They are tired of being ignored and talked down to. You are right. The present generation in power has let Malaysia down. But also you cite two things as testimony of the importance of youth and of student activism to this country, the election results of 2008 and “the prime minister’s acknowledgement of the role of youth in the development of the country.”
So perhaps you are a little way yet from thinking for yourselves. The first step in “grabbing the bull by the horns” is not to require the endorsement of the prime minister, or any minister, for your activism. Politicians are not your parents. They are your servants. You don’t need a government slogan coined by a foreign PR agency to wrap your project in. You just go ahead and do it.
When I was a student, our newly independent country was already a leader in the post-colonial world. We were sought out as a leader in the Afro-Asian Conference that inaugurated the Non-Aligned Movement and the G-77.
The Afro-Asian movement was led by such luminaries as Zhou En Lai, Nehru, Kwame Nkrumah and Soekarno. Malaysians were seen as moderate leaders capable of mediating between the more radical leaders and the West. We were known for our moderation, good sense and reliability.
We were a leader in the Islamic world, as ourselves and as we were, without our leaders having to put up false displays of piety. His memory has been scrubbed out quite systematically from our national consciousness, so you might not know this or much else about him, but it was Tunku Abdul Rahman who established our leadership in the Islamic world by coming up with the idea of the OIC (Organisation of Islamic Conference) and making it happen.
tunku abdul rahmanUnder his leadership, Malaysia led the way in taking up the anti-apartheid cause in the Commonwealth and in the United Nations, resulting in South Africa’s expulsion from these bodies.
Tunku Abdul Rahman: His great integrity in service was clear to all
Here was a man at ease with himself, made it a policy goal that Malaysia be “a happy country”. He loved sport and encouraged sporting achievement among Malaysians. He was owner of many a fine race horses. He called a press conference with his stewards when his horse won at the Melbourne Cup.
He had nothing to hide because his great integrity in service was clear to all. Now we have religious and moral hypocrites who cheat, lie and steal in office, who propagate an ideology that shackled the education system for all Malaysians, while they send their own kids to elite academies in the West.
Days when we were on top
Speaking of football – you’re too young to have experienced the Merdeka Cup in the 60s and 70s. Teams from across Asia would come to play in Kuala Lumpur: teams such as South Korea and Japan, whom we defeated routinely.
We were one of the better sides in Asia. We won the bronze medal at the Asian Games in 1974 and qualified for the Moscow Olympics in 1980. Today our FIFA ranking is 157 out of 203 countries.
That puts us in the lowest quartile, below Maldives (149), the smallest country in Asia, with just 400,000 people living about 1.5 metres above sea level who have to worry that their country may soon be swallowed up by climate change. Here in Asean we are behind Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, whom we used to dominate, and now only one spot above basketball-playing Philippines.
The captain of our illustrious 1970′s side was Soh Chin Aun and we had R Arumugam, Isa Bakar, Santokh Singh, James Wong and Mokhtar Dahari. They were heroes whose names rolled off the tongues of our schoolchildren as they copied them on the school field. It wasn’t about being the best in the world, but about being passionate and united and devoted to the game.
It was the same in badminton, except at one time we were the best in the world. I remember Wong Peng Soon, the first Asian to win the All-England Championship, and then just dominated it throughout the 1950. Back home every kid who played badminton in every little kampung wanted to call himself Wong Peng Soon.
There was no tinge of anybody identifying themselves exclusively as Chinese, Malays or Indian. Peng Soon was a Malayan hero. Just like each of our football heroes. Now we do not have an iota of that feeling. Where has it all gone?
Capital flight troubling
I don’t think it’s mere nostalgia that makes us think there was a time when the sun shone more brightly upon Malaysia. I bring up sport because it has been a mirror of our more general performance as a nation.
When we were at ease with who we were and didn’t need slogans to do our best together, we did well. When race and money entered our game, we declined. The same applies to our political and economic life.
Soon after independence, we were already a highly successful developing country. We had begun the infrastructure building and diversification of our economy that would be the foundation for further growth. We carried out an import-substitution programme that stimulated local productive capacity.
From there, we started an infrastructure build-up that enabled a diversification of the economy leading to rapid industrialisation. We carried out effective programmes to raise rural income and help the landless with programmes such as Felda.
Our achievements in achieving growth with equity were recognised around the world. Our peer group in economic development were South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, and we led the pack. I remember we used to send technical consultants to advise the South Koreans.
Bmalaysia stock exchange market klse 141008 05y the late 90s, however, we had fallen far behind this group and were competing with Thailand and Indonesia. Today, according to the latest World Investment Report, FDI into Malaysia is at a 20-year low.
We are entering the peer group of Cambodia, Burma and the Philippines as an investment destination. Thailand, despite a month-long siege of the capital, attracted more FDI than we did last year. Indonesia and Vietnam far outperform us, not as a statistical blip but consistently. Soon we shall have difficulty keeping up with the Philippines.
This, I believe, is called relegation. If we take into account FDI outflow, the picture is even more depressing. Last year, we received US$1.38 billion in investments but US$8.04 billion flowed out. We are the only country in Southeast Asia that has suffered net FDI outflow.
I am not against outward investment. It can be a good thing for the country. But an imbalance on this scale indicates capital flight, not mere investment overseas.
Time to wake up
Without a doubt, Malaysia is slipping. Billions have been looted from this country, and billions more are being siphoned out as our entire political structure crumbles. Yet we are gathered here in comfort, in a country that still seems to ‘work’ – most of the time. This is due less to good management than to the extraordinary wealth of this country.
You were born into a country of immense resources, both natural, cultural and social. We have been wearing down this advantage with mismanagement and corruption. With lies, tall tales and theft. We have a political class unwilling or unable to address the central issue of the day because they have grown fat and comfortable with a system built on lies and theft.
It is time to wake up. That waking up can begin here, right here, at this conference. Not tomorrow or the day after but today. So let me, as I have the honour of opening this conference, suggest the following:
1) Overcome the urge to have our hopes for the future endorsed by the prime minister. He will have retired, and I’ll be long gone, when your future arrives. The shape of your future is being determined now.
2) Resist the temptation to say “in line with” when we do something. Your projects, believe it or not, don’t have to be in line with any government campaign for them to be meaningful. You don’t need to polish anyone’s apple. Just get on with what you plan to do.
3) Do not put a lid on certain issues as ‘sensitive’ just because someone said they are. Or it is against the ‘social contract’. Or it is ‘politicisation’.
You don’t need to have your conversation delimited by the hyper-sensitive among us. Sensitivity is often a club people use to hit each other with.Reasoned discussion of contentious issues builds understanding and trust. Stress test your ideas.
4) It’s not ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ to ask for an end to having politics, economic policy, education policy and everything and the kitchen sink determined by race. It’s called growing up.
5) Don’t let the politicians you have invited here talk down to you.
Don’t let them
Don’t let them tell you how bright and ‘exuberant’ you are, that you are the future of the nation, etc. If you close your eyes and flow with their flattery, you have safely joined the caravan, a caravan taking the nation down a sink hole.
If they tell you the future is in your hands, kindly request that they hand that future over first. Ask them how come the youngest member of our cabinet is 45? Our Merdeka cabinet had an average age below 30.
You’re not the first generation to be bright. Mine wasn’t too stupid. But you could be the first generation of students and young graduates in 50 years to push this nation through a major transformation. And it is a transformation we need desperately.
You will be told that much is expected of you, much has been given to you and so forth. This is all true. Actually much has also been stolen from you. Over the last twenty five years, much of the immense wealth generated by our productive people and our vast resources has been looted. This was supposed to have been your patrimony.
The uncomplicated sense of belonging fully, wholeheartedly, unreservedly, to this country, in all its diversity, that has been taken from you. Our sense of ourselves as Malaysians, a free and united people, has been replaced by a tale of racial strife and resentment that continues to haunt us. The thing is, this tale is false.
Reclaim your history
The most precious thing you have been deprived of has been your history. Someone of my generation finds it hard to describe what must seem like a completely different country to you now. Malaysia was not born in strife but in unity. Our independence was achieved through a demonstration of unity by the people in supporting a multiracial government led by Tunku Abdul Rahman.
That show of unity, demonstrated first through the municipal elections of 1952 and then through the Alliance’s landslide victory in the elections of 1955, showed that the people of Malaya were united in wanting their freedom. We surprised the British, who thought we could not do this.
Today we are no longer as united as we were then. We are also less free. I don’t think this is a coincidence. It takes free people to have the psychological strength to overcome the confines of a racialised worldview. It takes free people to overcome those politicians bent on hanging on to power gained by racialising every feature of our life including our football teams.
Hence while you are at this conference, let me argue, that as an absolute minimum, we should call for the repeal of unjust and much abused Acts of Parliament which are reversals of freedoms that we won at Merdeka.
I ask you in joining me in calling for the repeal of the ISA (Internal Security Act) and the OSA (Official Secrets Act). These draconian laws have been used, more often than not, as political tools rather than instruments of national security. They create a climate of fear.
I ask you to join me in calling for the repeal of the Printing and Publications Act, and above all, the Universities and University Colleges Act (UUCA). I don’t see how you can pursue your student activism with such freedom and support in the UK and Eire while forgetting that your brethren at home are deprived of their basic rights of association and expression by the UUCA. The UUCA has done immense harm in dumbing down our universities.
We must have freedom as guaranteed under our constitution. Freedom to assemble, associate, speak, write, move. This is basic. Even on matters of race and even on religious matters we should be able to speak freely, and we shall educate each other.
Make BN multiracial
It is time to realise the dream of Hussein Onn and the spirit of the Alliance and of Tunku Abdul Rahman. That dream was one of unity and a single Malaysian people. They went as far as they could with it in their time. Instead of taking on the torch, we have reversed course. The next step for us as a country is to move beyond the infancy of race-based parties to a non-racial party system.
Our race-based party system is the key political reason why we are a sick country, declining before our own eyes, with money fleeing and people telling their children not to come home after their studies.
So let us try to take 1Malaysia seriously. Millions have been spent putting up billboards and adding the term to every conceivable thing. We even have ‘Cuti-cuti 1Malaysia’. Can’t take a normal holiday anymore. This is all fine.
Now let us see if it means anything. Let us see the government of the day lead by example. 1Malaysia is empty because it is propagated by a government supported by a racially-based party system that is the chief cause of our inability to grow up in our race relations.
Our inability to grow up in our race relations is the chief reason why investors, and we ourselves, no longer have confidence in our economy. The reasons why we are behind Maldives in football, and behind the Philippines in FDI, are linked.
So let us take 1Malaysia seriously, and convert Barisan Nasional into a party open to all citizens. Let it be a multiracial party open to direct membership. Pakatan Rakyat will be forced to do the same or be left behind the times. Then we shall have the vehicles for a two party, non-race-based system.
If UMNO, MIC or MCA are afraid of losing supporters, let them get their members to join this new multiracial party. Pakatan Rakyat should do the same. Nobody need feel left out. UMNO members can join en masse. The Hainanese Kopitiam Owners’ Association can join whichever party they want, or both parties en masse if they like.
We can maintain our cherished civil associations, however we choose to associate. But we drop all communalism when we compete for the ballot. When our candidates stand for elections, let them ever after stand only as Malaysians, for better or worse.
http://www.malaysiakini.tv/video/19793/we-were-once-malaysians.html
I have played some small role in the life of this nation, but having been on the wrong side of one or two political fights with the powers-that-be, I am not as close to the young people of this country as I would hope to be.
History and the 8 o’clock news are written by the victors. In recent years, the government’s monopoly of the media has been destroyed by the technology revolution.
You could say I was also a member of the United Kingdom and Eire Council for Malaysian Students (UKEC). Well I was, except that I belonged to the predecessor of the UKEC, by more than 50 years, the Malayan Students Union of the UK and Eire. I led this organisation in 1958/59.
asli forum tengku razaleigh economy 150109 02I was then a student of Queen’s University at Belfast, as well as at Lincoln’s Inn. In a rather cooler climate than Kota Bharu’s, we campaigned for decolonisation. We demonstrated in Trafalgar Square and even in Paris. We made posters and participated in British elections.
Your invitation to participate in the MSLS was prefaced by an essay that calls for an intellectually informed activism. I congratulate you on this. The youth of today, you note, “will chart the future of Malaysia.” You say you “no longer want to be ignored and leave the future of our Malaysia at the hands of the current generation.” You “want to grab the bull by the horns… and have a say in where we go as a society and as a nation.”
I feel the same, actually. A lot of Malaysians feel the same. They are tired of being ignored and talked down to. You are right. The present generation in power has let Malaysia down. But also you cite two things as testimony of the importance of youth and of student activism to this country, the election results of 2008 and “the prime minister’s acknowledgement of the role of youth in the development of the country.”
So perhaps you are a little way yet from thinking for yourselves. The first step in “grabbing the bull by the horns” is not to require the endorsement of the prime minister, or any minister, for your activism. Politicians are not your parents. They are your servants. You don’t need a government slogan coined by a foreign PR agency to wrap your project in. You just go ahead and do it.
When I was a student, our newly independent country was already a leader in the post-colonial world. We were sought out as a leader in the Afro-Asian Conference that inaugurated the Non-Aligned Movement and the G-77.
The Afro-Asian movement was led by such luminaries as Zhou En Lai, Nehru, Kwame Nkrumah and Soekarno. Malaysians were seen as moderate leaders capable of mediating between the more radical leaders and the West. We were known for our moderation, good sense and reliability.
We were a leader in the Islamic world, as ourselves and as we were, without our leaders having to put up false displays of piety. His memory has been scrubbed out quite systematically from our national consciousness, so you might not know this or much else about him, but it was Tunku Abdul Rahman who established our leadership in the Islamic world by coming up with the idea of the OIC (Organisation of Islamic Conference) and making it happen.
tunku abdul rahmanUnder his leadership, Malaysia led the way in taking up the anti-apartheid cause in the Commonwealth and in the United Nations, resulting in South Africa’s expulsion from these bodies.
Tunku Abdul Rahman: His great integrity in service was clear to all
Here was a man at ease with himself, made it a policy goal that Malaysia be “a happy country”. He loved sport and encouraged sporting achievement among Malaysians. He was owner of many a fine race horses. He called a press conference with his stewards when his horse won at the Melbourne Cup.
He had nothing to hide because his great integrity in service was clear to all. Now we have religious and moral hypocrites who cheat, lie and steal in office, who propagate an ideology that shackled the education system for all Malaysians, while they send their own kids to elite academies in the West.
Days when we were on top
Speaking of football – you’re too young to have experienced the Merdeka Cup in the 60s and 70s. Teams from across Asia would come to play in Kuala Lumpur: teams such as South Korea and Japan, whom we defeated routinely.
We were one of the better sides in Asia. We won the bronze medal at the Asian Games in 1974 and qualified for the Moscow Olympics in 1980. Today our FIFA ranking is 157 out of 203 countries.
That puts us in the lowest quartile, below Maldives (149), the smallest country in Asia, with just 400,000 people living about 1.5 metres above sea level who have to worry that their country may soon be swallowed up by climate change. Here in Asean we are behind Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, whom we used to dominate, and now only one spot above basketball-playing Philippines.
The captain of our illustrious 1970′s side was Soh Chin Aun and we had R Arumugam, Isa Bakar, Santokh Singh, James Wong and Mokhtar Dahari. They were heroes whose names rolled off the tongues of our schoolchildren as they copied them on the school field. It wasn’t about being the best in the world, but about being passionate and united and devoted to the game.
It was the same in badminton, except at one time we were the best in the world. I remember Wong Peng Soon, the first Asian to win the All-England Championship, and then just dominated it throughout the 1950. Back home every kid who played badminton in every little kampung wanted to call himself Wong Peng Soon.
There was no tinge of anybody identifying themselves exclusively as Chinese, Malays or Indian. Peng Soon was a Malayan hero. Just like each of our football heroes. Now we do not have an iota of that feeling. Where has it all gone?
Capital flight troubling
I don’t think it’s mere nostalgia that makes us think there was a time when the sun shone more brightly upon Malaysia. I bring up sport because it has been a mirror of our more general performance as a nation.
When we were at ease with who we were and didn’t need slogans to do our best together, we did well. When race and money entered our game, we declined. The same applies to our political and economic life.
Soon after independence, we were already a highly successful developing country. We had begun the infrastructure building and diversification of our economy that would be the foundation for further growth. We carried out an import-substitution programme that stimulated local productive capacity.
From there, we started an infrastructure build-up that enabled a diversification of the economy leading to rapid industrialisation. We carried out effective programmes to raise rural income and help the landless with programmes such as Felda.
Our achievements in achieving growth with equity were recognised around the world. Our peer group in economic development were South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, and we led the pack. I remember we used to send technical consultants to advise the South Koreans.
Bmalaysia stock exchange market klse 141008 05y the late 90s, however, we had fallen far behind this group and were competing with Thailand and Indonesia. Today, according to the latest World Investment Report, FDI into Malaysia is at a 20-year low.
We are entering the peer group of Cambodia, Burma and the Philippines as an investment destination. Thailand, despite a month-long siege of the capital, attracted more FDI than we did last year. Indonesia and Vietnam far outperform us, not as a statistical blip but consistently. Soon we shall have difficulty keeping up with the Philippines.
This, I believe, is called relegation. If we take into account FDI outflow, the picture is even more depressing. Last year, we received US$1.38 billion in investments but US$8.04 billion flowed out. We are the only country in Southeast Asia that has suffered net FDI outflow.
I am not against outward investment. It can be a good thing for the country. But an imbalance on this scale indicates capital flight, not mere investment overseas.
Time to wake up
Without a doubt, Malaysia is slipping. Billions have been looted from this country, and billions more are being siphoned out as our entire political structure crumbles. Yet we are gathered here in comfort, in a country that still seems to ‘work’ – most of the time. This is due less to good management than to the extraordinary wealth of this country.
You were born into a country of immense resources, both natural, cultural and social. We have been wearing down this advantage with mismanagement and corruption. With lies, tall tales and theft. We have a political class unwilling or unable to address the central issue of the day because they have grown fat and comfortable with a system built on lies and theft.
It is time to wake up. That waking up can begin here, right here, at this conference. Not tomorrow or the day after but today. So let me, as I have the honour of opening this conference, suggest the following:
1) Overcome the urge to have our hopes for the future endorsed by the prime minister. He will have retired, and I’ll be long gone, when your future arrives. The shape of your future is being determined now.
2) Resist the temptation to say “in line with” when we do something. Your projects, believe it or not, don’t have to be in line with any government campaign for them to be meaningful. You don’t need to polish anyone’s apple. Just get on with what you plan to do.
3) Do not put a lid on certain issues as ‘sensitive’ just because someone said they are. Or it is against the ‘social contract’. Or it is ‘politicisation’.
You don’t need to have your conversation delimited by the hyper-sensitive among us. Sensitivity is often a club people use to hit each other with.Reasoned discussion of contentious issues builds understanding and trust. Stress test your ideas.
4) It’s not ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ to ask for an end to having politics, economic policy, education policy and everything and the kitchen sink determined by race. It’s called growing up.
5) Don’t let the politicians you have invited here talk down to you.
Don’t let them
Don’t let them tell you how bright and ‘exuberant’ you are, that you are the future of the nation, etc. If you close your eyes and flow with their flattery, you have safely joined the caravan, a caravan taking the nation down a sink hole.
If they tell you the future is in your hands, kindly request that they hand that future over first. Ask them how come the youngest member of our cabinet is 45? Our Merdeka cabinet had an average age below 30.
You’re not the first generation to be bright. Mine wasn’t too stupid. But you could be the first generation of students and young graduates in 50 years to push this nation through a major transformation. And it is a transformation we need desperately.
You will be told that much is expected of you, much has been given to you and so forth. This is all true. Actually much has also been stolen from you. Over the last twenty five years, much of the immense wealth generated by our productive people and our vast resources has been looted. This was supposed to have been your patrimony.
The uncomplicated sense of belonging fully, wholeheartedly, unreservedly, to this country, in all its diversity, that has been taken from you. Our sense of ourselves as Malaysians, a free and united people, has been replaced by a tale of racial strife and resentment that continues to haunt us. The thing is, this tale is false.
Reclaim your history
The most precious thing you have been deprived of has been your history. Someone of my generation finds it hard to describe what must seem like a completely different country to you now. Malaysia was not born in strife but in unity. Our independence was achieved through a demonstration of unity by the people in supporting a multiracial government led by Tunku Abdul Rahman.
That show of unity, demonstrated first through the municipal elections of 1952 and then through the Alliance’s landslide victory in the elections of 1955, showed that the people of Malaya were united in wanting their freedom. We surprised the British, who thought we could not do this.
Today we are no longer as united as we were then. We are also less free. I don’t think this is a coincidence. It takes free people to have the psychological strength to overcome the confines of a racialised worldview. It takes free people to overcome those politicians bent on hanging on to power gained by racialising every feature of our life including our football teams.
Hence while you are at this conference, let me argue, that as an absolute minimum, we should call for the repeal of unjust and much abused Acts of Parliament which are reversals of freedoms that we won at Merdeka.
I ask you in joining me in calling for the repeal of the ISA (Internal Security Act) and the OSA (Official Secrets Act). These draconian laws have been used, more often than not, as political tools rather than instruments of national security. They create a climate of fear.
I ask you to join me in calling for the repeal of the Printing and Publications Act, and above all, the Universities and University Colleges Act (UUCA). I don’t see how you can pursue your student activism with such freedom and support in the UK and Eire while forgetting that your brethren at home are deprived of their basic rights of association and expression by the UUCA. The UUCA has done immense harm in dumbing down our universities.
We must have freedom as guaranteed under our constitution. Freedom to assemble, associate, speak, write, move. This is basic. Even on matters of race and even on religious matters we should be able to speak freely, and we shall educate each other.
Make BN multiracial
It is time to realise the dream of Hussein Onn and the spirit of the Alliance and of Tunku Abdul Rahman. That dream was one of unity and a single Malaysian people. They went as far as they could with it in their time. Instead of taking on the torch, we have reversed course. The next step for us as a country is to move beyond the infancy of race-based parties to a non-racial party system.
Our race-based party system is the key political reason why we are a sick country, declining before our own eyes, with money fleeing and people telling their children not to come home after their studies.
So let us try to take 1Malaysia seriously. Millions have been spent putting up billboards and adding the term to every conceivable thing. We even have ‘Cuti-cuti 1Malaysia’. Can’t take a normal holiday anymore. This is all fine.
Now let us see if it means anything. Let us see the government of the day lead by example. 1Malaysia is empty because it is propagated by a government supported by a racially-based party system that is the chief cause of our inability to grow up in our race relations.
Our inability to grow up in our race relations is the chief reason why investors, and we ourselves, no longer have confidence in our economy. The reasons why we are behind Maldives in football, and behind the Philippines in FDI, are linked.
So let us take 1Malaysia seriously, and convert Barisan Nasional into a party open to all citizens. Let it be a multiracial party open to direct membership. Pakatan Rakyat will be forced to do the same or be left behind the times. Then we shall have the vehicles for a two party, non-race-based system.
If UMNO, MIC or MCA are afraid of losing supporters, let them get their members to join this new multiracial party. Pakatan Rakyat should do the same. Nobody need feel left out. UMNO members can join en masse. The Hainanese Kopitiam Owners’ Association can join whichever party they want, or both parties en masse if they like.
We can maintain our cherished civil associations, however we choose to associate. But we drop all communalism when we compete for the ballot. When our candidates stand for elections, let them ever after stand only as Malaysians, for better or worse.
http://www.malaysiakini.tv/video/19793/we-were-once-malaysians.html
Thursday, July 29, 2010
The Lost City of "KOTA GELANGGI" in Malay Peninsula
A small piece of History for our future generation.. Why Kota Gelanggi (lost city) touted as earliest civilization in Malay Peninsula news were banned as they were Buddhist.
The Johor find of 2005 which was quietly dropped was none other than Kota Gelanggi lost city reflecting Srivijaya and its Buddhist splendour. But they deliberately disregarded it because that would have sidelined Malacca Empire and Islam which was smaller and came some 500 years later. I met Dr Lee Kam Hing, a former History prof at MU in Singapore recently at a seminar.Dr Lee, who is now Star research director, told me he was trying his best to highlight Kota Gelanggi, but that the govt killed it off. This is clearly another case to cover up the real history of Malaya and fool the younger generations into believing that our history only began from Malacca 1400.. Not only that, they try to show Parameswara as Malay and Muslim, but actually he was Hindu! If one were to condemn these UMNO scumbags on how they distort history, it will never end......the condemnations will more than cover 10 PhD thesis!
A small piece of History for our future generation Hitler's public relations manager, Goebbels, once said, 'If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.'
Once again our government wiped out any references to a famous Melaka prince as being Hindu and belonging to the powerful Hindu empire Sri Vijaya.So all of a sudden our museums, school text-books etc. all refer to Parameswara as a Malay prince.
What race ruled or did not rule is besides the point. What is important is not butchering history to create your own truths. You cannot change your race even if you convert - Parameswara could have been responsible for Umno's proud heritage of ' Ketuanan Melayu '.
If this is what it is based on, there is no ' Ketuanan Melayu '. The lineage of Melaka Sultans are Indians, not Malays.
It is no secret that Parameswara was an Indian and a Hindu prince.
It is clear from records that Parameswara never converted to Islam. He was an Indian Hindu who fled Palembang in Sumatra to eventually found Melaka circa 1400 AD. It was Sri Maharaja who converted himself and the court of Melaka to Islam, and as a result took on the name of Sultan Muhammad Shah sometime after 1435...
The most famous of Indian Hindu Kings were Raja Chola and his son Rajendra Chola who invaded Southern Thailand, Kedah, Perak, Johor and Sumatra about 1000 AD. This is Raja-raja Chola - the Indian/Hindu kings and not Raja Chulan - a Malay king. But what is really sad is that our children are taught as though Malaysian history suddenly began in 1400 with an Islamic Melaka.
We are led to believe that the Indians and Chinese first arrived on the shores of Malaysia in about 1850 as desperate indentured labourers, farmers and miners . Nothing could be further from the truth.
The cultural influences of India in particular, and China, in South East Asia span over 2,000 years, starting with the arrival from India of the Brahmanical prince/scholar - Aji Saka in Java in AD78, through to Vietnam, Cambodia (Indo China), Thailand,Burma, Indonesia, Bali, Borneo, Brunei and beyond.
The findings at Bujang Valley speak of an ancient Indian/Hindu presence in Kedah. There were Chinese settlements in Pahang and Kelantan around the 13th-14th century and in 12th century in Singapore .
The early Brunei Sultanate had a Chinese Queen. One need not ponder at length the implications of Angkor Wat and Borobudur or that 40%-50% of Bahasa Malaysia comprises Sanskrit/Tamil words. To illustrate, some of these word are :
bumi = boomi
putra = putran
raja = rajah
desa = thesam
syakti = sakthi
kolam = kulam
bahaya = abahya
jaya = jeya
maha = maha
aneka = aneha
nadi = naadi
kedai = kadai
mahligai = maaligai
mantra = manthrum
tandas = sandas
(This list can go on)
An extremely important archeological find that pointed to one of the greatest empires in history - the Raja Chola empire that ruled from the Maldives through India , Sri Lanka and right down to South East Asia found deep in the jungles of Johor a few years ago and made headlines in the mainstream newspapers in 2005, suddenly disappeared from the news…..
The time has arrived for us to record our history as the facts tell us and not as we would like to wish it.
The truth will never hurt anyone. Lies, always will .
Regards,
LEE Ong Kim (Dr)
Associate Professor and Head
Policy and Leadership Studies
National Institute of Education
NIE2-03-54, 1 Nanyang Walk,
Singapore 637616
Tel: (65) 6790-3236 GMT+8h | Fax: (65) 6896-9151 |
Email:ongkim.lee@nie. edu.sg
Web: www.nie.edu. sg
An Institute of Nanyang Technological University
The Johor find of 2005 which was quietly dropped was none other than Kota Gelanggi lost city reflecting Srivijaya and its Buddhist splendour. But they deliberately disregarded it because that would have sidelined Malacca Empire and Islam which was smaller and came some 500 years later. I met Dr Lee Kam Hing, a former History prof at MU in Singapore recently at a seminar.Dr Lee, who is now Star research director, told me he was trying his best to highlight Kota Gelanggi, but that the govt killed it off. This is clearly another case to cover up the real history of Malaya and fool the younger generations into believing that our history only began from Malacca 1400.. Not only that, they try to show Parameswara as Malay and Muslim, but actually he was Hindu! If one were to condemn these UMNO scumbags on how they distort history, it will never end......the condemnations will more than cover 10 PhD thesis!
A small piece of History for our future generation Hitler's public relations manager, Goebbels, once said, 'If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.'
Once again our government wiped out any references to a famous Melaka prince as being Hindu and belonging to the powerful Hindu empire Sri Vijaya.So all of a sudden our museums, school text-books etc. all refer to Parameswara as a Malay prince.
What race ruled or did not rule is besides the point. What is important is not butchering history to create your own truths. You cannot change your race even if you convert - Parameswara could have been responsible for Umno's proud heritage of ' Ketuanan Melayu '.
If this is what it is based on, there is no ' Ketuanan Melayu '. The lineage of Melaka Sultans are Indians, not Malays.
It is no secret that Parameswara was an Indian and a Hindu prince.
It is clear from records that Parameswara never converted to Islam. He was an Indian Hindu who fled Palembang in Sumatra to eventually found Melaka circa 1400 AD. It was Sri Maharaja who converted himself and the court of Melaka to Islam, and as a result took on the name of Sultan Muhammad Shah sometime after 1435...
The most famous of Indian Hindu Kings were Raja Chola and his son Rajendra Chola who invaded Southern Thailand, Kedah, Perak, Johor and Sumatra about 1000 AD. This is Raja-raja Chola - the Indian/Hindu kings and not Raja Chulan - a Malay king. But what is really sad is that our children are taught as though Malaysian history suddenly began in 1400 with an Islamic Melaka.
We are led to believe that the Indians and Chinese first arrived on the shores of Malaysia in about 1850 as desperate indentured labourers, farmers and miners . Nothing could be further from the truth.
The cultural influences of India in particular, and China, in South East Asia span over 2,000 years, starting with the arrival from India of the Brahmanical prince/scholar - Aji Saka in Java in AD78, through to Vietnam, Cambodia (Indo China), Thailand,Burma, Indonesia, Bali, Borneo, Brunei and beyond.
The findings at Bujang Valley speak of an ancient Indian/Hindu presence in Kedah. There were Chinese settlements in Pahang and Kelantan around the 13th-14th century and in 12th century in Singapore .
The early Brunei Sultanate had a Chinese Queen. One need not ponder at length the implications of Angkor Wat and Borobudur or that 40%-50% of Bahasa Malaysia comprises Sanskrit/Tamil words. To illustrate, some of these word are :
bumi = boomi
putra = putran
raja = rajah
desa = thesam
syakti = sakthi
kolam = kulam
bahaya = abahya
jaya = jeya
maha = maha
aneka = aneha
nadi = naadi
kedai = kadai
mahligai = maaligai
mantra = manthrum
tandas = sandas
(This list can go on)
An extremely important archeological find that pointed to one of the greatest empires in history - the Raja Chola empire that ruled from the Maldives through India , Sri Lanka and right down to South East Asia found deep in the jungles of Johor a few years ago and made headlines in the mainstream newspapers in 2005, suddenly disappeared from the news…..
The time has arrived for us to record our history as the facts tell us and not as we would like to wish it.
The truth will never hurt anyone. Lies, always will .
Regards,
LEE Ong Kim (Dr)
Associate Professor and Head
Policy and Leadership Studies
National Institute of Education
NIE2-03-54, 1 Nanyang Walk,
Singapore 637616
Tel: (65) 6790-3236 GMT+8h | Fax: (65) 6896-9151 |
Email:ongkim.lee@nie. edu.sg
Web: www.nie.edu. sg
An Institute of Nanyang Technological University
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
A Tale of Two Temples
by Farish A. Noor
Tuesday, 041207
Editor’s Note: Up to date this Hindu temple problems remain unresolved. Even the Mariamman hindu temple in Shah Alam that was said to be the spark for the 25th November 2007 HINDRAF Rally has refused to be granted land by even the new PKR Selangor government. UMNO, PKR, DAP and PAS has refused to grant land to all Hindu temples all in on go in the states they rule including Kedah, Penang and Selangor. Because they will lose Malay votes!
While meandering about in downtown Saigon recently I chanced upon the Sri Mariaman temple close to Ben Thanh market. It was an interesting visit to say the least, for the riotous colour of the temple were matched by the riotous conjunction of many faiths that had come together in that singular enclosed and sacred space.
The reasons for this are obvious to those familiar with Vietnam’s recent history: In 1975 when Saigon finally fell to the triumphant North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong, practically all the foreigners and migrant residents had made a bee line for the dock. The temples, churches and mosques of Saigon – thenafter renamed Ho Chi Minh city – were left vacant and the devotees wondered if they would be allowed to remain standing at all after their departure. At the height of the Cold War the Vietnamese Communists were seen as a rather uncompromising, tiresomely dogmatic, no-fun bloodthirsty lot and many had assumed that the religious texts would be recycled as toilet paper (as the Khmer Rouge treated the Bibles and Qurans that fell into their hands later) and that the sacred sites would be desacralised in the most outlandish manner.
But what followed next was a surprise to many: They, the dreaded Commies, not only allowed the religious buildings to remain, but they also made use of them in a host of imaginative ways. Many of the churches and mosques were restored and preserved, and some were turned into schools or clinics. Not a stone was touched, save by the restorer’s paint brush.
Today the Sri Mariaman temple in central Saigon has once again become a religious site for many, but ironically most of the devotees happen to be Buddhists and Taoists, not Hindu – for there are scarcely a dozen Hindus left in the city. So I sat and watched as mothers and aunts, grannies and grand-kids perambulated around the precinct of the temple, offering their prayers and sending up their hopes and wishes to the Gods of the Himalayas on a cloud of incense smoke. The Hindu priests are still there, though one wonders what they make of it all, with Buddhists and Taoists coming to offer prayers and light joss-sticks before the many avatars of Lakshmi, Durga, Kali and Krishna. If human beings have proven their intolerance time and again, at least the Gods seem more kindly and benevolent to entertain the vainest of wishes even from strangers.
100_2052Hop of the next cheapo flight and find yourself here in multi-culti Malaysia, just in time to see the bulldozers smash through another Sri Mariaman temple in Selangor. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA It was a double blow to me to return to KL in transit to hear the news that not one, but two, Hindu temples had just been flattened on the same day by our endearing developers in the vicinity of Shah Alam. Even less heart-warming were the accounts of the devotees of the temple who were manhandled and forcibly marched out before the hammers came down, some at gun point. If nefarious Commie Vietnam can protect their temples, why can’t we ‘plural, multicultural, multiflavoured’ Malaysians extend the same comfort and protection to our fellow Malaysians too?
Of course there will be the nay-sayers who will point me to the legal fine print and remind me of the legally dubious status of some of these temples. Then there will be those who will insist that this is an Indian-Hindu issue which I should not stick my nose in (even though the issue is a 100_2080Malaysian one as these are Malaysian temples being destroyed on Malaysian territory and Malaysians are affected). Then there will be the gung-ho testosterone-driven macho types who will yelp and whinge about Malay identity being the paramount defining factor that defines what being Malaysian is, etc. etc.
But prattle and legalese notwithstanding, the bottom line is this: These happen to be Malaysian temples built on Malaysian soil with Malaysian devotees and the Malaysian government is presiding over their systematic and calculated destruction, one by one. One shudders at the thought of the long-term global repercussions of this campaign, for already recorded footage of these temple demolitions are being transmitted to websites all over the globe and the issue taken up by Hindu conservatives in India.image
Nor are the parallels being drawn an attractive one: If the Taliban could have leveled the Bamiyan OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA statues of Buddha with a flick of the trigger-finger (to be followed by the mass slaughter of goats and cows all over the benighted land, which did not make it to the headlines); then what is happening in our plural wonderland called Malaysia? How are we to hold our heads up high and invite the world to visit our wonderfully diverse and colourful country when the very same landscape is being flattened in a rather indecorous way at the same time? Taliban, Wot? Here? Blimey!
The tragedy of course is that the deliberate reconstruction of Malaysia’s urban landscape is being done in broad daylight under the flag of a nebulous formulae of ‘moderate Islam’ that is said by some hopefuls to be the last chance to save the pluralist spirit of the country. However one finds it hard to accept such talk of mutual love and inter-communal cuddlyness when the bulldozers parked outside don’t look all that cuddly. Nor do the cops with their tear gas canisters and batons. Or the Orcish horde of construction (or should we say destruction) workers with mallets and hammers slung precariously over their shoulders, ready to rock and roll. Looking back at the fate of the two Sri Mariaman temples, the question remains: Who were the ones who protected the rights of the religious minorities better? The Godless Commies or the faithful Malaysians? These are the times when I am not proud to admit that I am a Malaysian, I have to say.
Tuesday, 041207
Editor’s Note: Up to date this Hindu temple problems remain unresolved. Even the Mariamman hindu temple in Shah Alam that was said to be the spark for the 25th November 2007 HINDRAF Rally has refused to be granted land by even the new PKR Selangor government. UMNO, PKR, DAP and PAS has refused to grant land to all Hindu temples all in on go in the states they rule including Kedah, Penang and Selangor. Because they will lose Malay votes!
While meandering about in downtown Saigon recently I chanced upon the Sri Mariaman temple close to Ben Thanh market. It was an interesting visit to say the least, for the riotous colour of the temple were matched by the riotous conjunction of many faiths that had come together in that singular enclosed and sacred space.
The reasons for this are obvious to those familiar with Vietnam’s recent history: In 1975 when Saigon finally fell to the triumphant North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong, practically all the foreigners and migrant residents had made a bee line for the dock. The temples, churches and mosques of Saigon – thenafter renamed Ho Chi Minh city – were left vacant and the devotees wondered if they would be allowed to remain standing at all after their departure. At the height of the Cold War the Vietnamese Communists were seen as a rather uncompromising, tiresomely dogmatic, no-fun bloodthirsty lot and many had assumed that the religious texts would be recycled as toilet paper (as the Khmer Rouge treated the Bibles and Qurans that fell into their hands later) and that the sacred sites would be desacralised in the most outlandish manner.
But what followed next was a surprise to many: They, the dreaded Commies, not only allowed the religious buildings to remain, but they also made use of them in a host of imaginative ways. Many of the churches and mosques were restored and preserved, and some were turned into schools or clinics. Not a stone was touched, save by the restorer’s paint brush.
Today the Sri Mariaman temple in central Saigon has once again become a religious site for many, but ironically most of the devotees happen to be Buddhists and Taoists, not Hindu – for there are scarcely a dozen Hindus left in the city. So I sat and watched as mothers and aunts, grannies and grand-kids perambulated around the precinct of the temple, offering their prayers and sending up their hopes and wishes to the Gods of the Himalayas on a cloud of incense smoke. The Hindu priests are still there, though one wonders what they make of it all, with Buddhists and Taoists coming to offer prayers and light joss-sticks before the many avatars of Lakshmi, Durga, Kali and Krishna. If human beings have proven their intolerance time and again, at least the Gods seem more kindly and benevolent to entertain the vainest of wishes even from strangers.
100_2052Hop of the next cheapo flight and find yourself here in multi-culti Malaysia, just in time to see the bulldozers smash through another Sri Mariaman temple in Selangor. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA It was a double blow to me to return to KL in transit to hear the news that not one, but two, Hindu temples had just been flattened on the same day by our endearing developers in the vicinity of Shah Alam. Even less heart-warming were the accounts of the devotees of the temple who were manhandled and forcibly marched out before the hammers came down, some at gun point. If nefarious Commie Vietnam can protect their temples, why can’t we ‘plural, multicultural, multiflavoured’ Malaysians extend the same comfort and protection to our fellow Malaysians too?
Of course there will be the nay-sayers who will point me to the legal fine print and remind me of the legally dubious status of some of these temples. Then there will be those who will insist that this is an Indian-Hindu issue which I should not stick my nose in (even though the issue is a 100_2080Malaysian one as these are Malaysian temples being destroyed on Malaysian territory and Malaysians are affected). Then there will be the gung-ho testosterone-driven macho types who will yelp and whinge about Malay identity being the paramount defining factor that defines what being Malaysian is, etc. etc.
But prattle and legalese notwithstanding, the bottom line is this: These happen to be Malaysian temples built on Malaysian soil with Malaysian devotees and the Malaysian government is presiding over their systematic and calculated destruction, one by one. One shudders at the thought of the long-term global repercussions of this campaign, for already recorded footage of these temple demolitions are being transmitted to websites all over the globe and the issue taken up by Hindu conservatives in India.image
Nor are the parallels being drawn an attractive one: If the Taliban could have leveled the Bamiyan OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA statues of Buddha with a flick of the trigger-finger (to be followed by the mass slaughter of goats and cows all over the benighted land, which did not make it to the headlines); then what is happening in our plural wonderland called Malaysia? How are we to hold our heads up high and invite the world to visit our wonderfully diverse and colourful country when the very same landscape is being flattened in a rather indecorous way at the same time? Taliban, Wot? Here? Blimey!
The tragedy of course is that the deliberate reconstruction of Malaysia’s urban landscape is being done in broad daylight under the flag of a nebulous formulae of ‘moderate Islam’ that is said by some hopefuls to be the last chance to save the pluralist spirit of the country. However one finds it hard to accept such talk of mutual love and inter-communal cuddlyness when the bulldozers parked outside don’t look all that cuddly. Nor do the cops with their tear gas canisters and batons. Or the Orcish horde of construction (or should we say destruction) workers with mallets and hammers slung precariously over their shoulders, ready to rock and roll. Looking back at the fate of the two Sri Mariaman temples, the question remains: Who were the ones who protected the rights of the religious minorities better? The Godless Commies or the faithful Malaysians? These are the times when I am not proud to admit that I am a Malaysian, I have to say.
MAS Cabin Crew Walk In Interview
Join Our Award Winning Cabin Staff Walk-In Interviews to be held at MAS Academy, Kelana Jaya
Posted in Hear it from Us, on Friday, July 23, 2010
Tags: Interview, Career, Cabin Crew
Courtesy : The Living MH Blog Team
Hello everyone,
Once again, we are recruiting new Malaysia Airlines Cabin Crew and this time it will be held at MAS Academy in Kelana Jaya.
To all interested, please keep yourselves available on Saturday, 31 July and Sunday, 01 August 2010. Should you need more information about what is asked during the interview session, do click on these links and read the comments...
My Dream to be a MAS Cabin Crew
The ABC of What You Need To Know about our Cabin Crew Graduates Programme
Cabin Crew Graduation Day 2009
Cabin Crew Graduation Ceremony
Passion. From a cabin crew to a pilot.
We wish you good luck and bring with you that CHARMING SMILE and RADIATE YOUR INNER PASSION!
Posted in Hear it from Us, on Friday, July 23, 2010
Tags: Interview, Career, Cabin Crew
Courtesy : The Living MH Blog Team
Hello everyone,
Once again, we are recruiting new Malaysia Airlines Cabin Crew and this time it will be held at MAS Academy in Kelana Jaya.
To all interested, please keep yourselves available on Saturday, 31 July and Sunday, 01 August 2010. Should you need more information about what is asked during the interview session, do click on these links and read the comments...
My Dream to be a MAS Cabin Crew
The ABC of What You Need To Know about our Cabin Crew Graduates Programme
Cabin Crew Graduation Day 2009
Cabin Crew Graduation Ceremony
Passion. From a cabin crew to a pilot.
We wish you good luck and bring with you that CHARMING SMILE and RADIATE YOUR INNER PASSION!
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Pilot Appointments - Singapore Airlines
CADET PILOT
REQUIREMENTS
- Singapore Citizen, Singapore Permanent Resident or Malaysian Citizen
- GCE ‘A’ level, Polytechnic Diploma or Degree. In addition, you must have obtained a minimum of 5 Credits in the GCE ‘O’ level or its equivalent. These must include English, Mathematics and a Science subject, preferably Physics, taken at one sitting
- At least 1.65 m in height
- Myopia of not more than 500 degrees and astigmatism of not more than 125 degrees, fully correctable with optical aids. Visual acuity of at least 6/60, correctable to 6/6. For candidates who have undergone corrective eye surgery (e.g. Lasik), the pre-surgical visual acuity should also meet the above requirements
- Medically fit
TRAINING
Successful candidates will spend 15 to 17 months on training to acquire an Airline Transport Pilot’s License (ATPL) with Instrument Rating (IR) at Pilot Training Schools in Singapore and overseas. Full board and lodging will be provided. Upon obtaining the flying license, you will undergo further training for 1 to 2 years to become a First Officer.
REMUNERATIONS AND SERVICE BENEFITS
A monthly allowance will be provided during training. On appointment as a First Officer, you will be paid a basic salary and various allowances. Benefits include medical and dental treatment, and discounted travel.
BOND
Successful candidates will be required to serve the employer company for the duration of the training and for a period of 7 years from the date of appointment as First Officer.
EMPLOYMENT
Successful candidates will be offered employment with one of the companies in the SIA Group:
- Singapore Airlines
- SilkAir
APPLICATION
Please submit an online application under the “Cadet Pilots (Singapore)” position at the following website:
www.singaporeair.com/careers
Select PILOT APPOINTMENT > CADET PILOT
We thank all applicants for their applications and regret that only short-listed candidates will be notified.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Nobel Price - Jews & Muslims
JEWS AND MUSLIMS
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN JEWS AND MUSLIMS...
The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000
ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION or appx. 20% of the world's population.
They have received the following Nobel Prizes...
Literature -
*1988 - Najib Mahfooz*
Peace -
*1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat*
*1990 - Elias James Corey*
*1994 - Yaser Arafat:**
**1999 - Ahmed Zewai*
Economics -
* (zero)*
Physics -
* (zero)*
Medicine-
*1960 - Peter Brian Medawar*
*1998 - Ferid Mourad
TOTAL: 7 SEVEN..
IN CONTRAST ...
The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000...
Only FOURTEEN MILLION or about 0.02% of the world's population...
They have received the following Nobel Prizes:
Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer World
Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin
Physics:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - William Howard Stein
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1989 - Sidney Altman
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
1995 - Martin Perl
2000 - Alan J. Heeger
Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel
Medicine:
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen - Rita Levi-Montalcini
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward B. Lewis
TOTAL: 129 ONE HUNDRED TWENTY NINE!
The Jews are NOT promoting brain washing children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims!
The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow themselves up in German restaurants. There is NOT one single Jew that has destroyed a church.
The Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.
Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.
Muslims must ask 'what can they do for humankind' before they demand that humankind respects them!!
Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbours, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel 's part, the following two sentences really say it all...
'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence;
If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel '.
-Benjamin Netanyahu*
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN JEWS AND MUSLIMS...
The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000
ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION or appx. 20% of the world's population.
They have received the following Nobel Prizes...
Literature -
*1988 - Najib Mahfooz*
Peace -
*1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat*
*1990 - Elias James Corey*
*1994 - Yaser Arafat:**
**1999 - Ahmed Zewai*
Economics -
* (zero)*
Physics -
* (zero)*
Medicine-
*1960 - Peter Brian Medawar*
*1998 - Ferid Mourad
TOTAL: 7 SEVEN..
IN CONTRAST ...
The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000...
Only FOURTEEN MILLION or about 0.02% of the world's population...
They have received the following Nobel Prizes:
Literature:
1910 - Paul Heyse
1927 - Henri Bergson
1958 - Boris Pasternak
1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
1966 - Nelly Sachs
1976 - Saul Bellow
1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
1981 - Elias Canetti
1987 - Joseph Brodsky
1991 - Nadine Gordimer World
Peace:
1911 - Alfred Fried
1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
1968 - Rene Cassin
1973 - Henry Kissinger
1978 - Menachem Begin
1986 - Elie Wiesel
1994 - Shimon Peres
1994 - Yitzhak Rabin
Physics:
1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
1906 - Henri Moissan
1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
1910 - Otto Wallach
1915 - Richard Willstaetter
1918 - Fritz Haber
1921 - Albert Einstein
1922 - Niels Bohr
1925 - James Franck
1925 - Gustav Hertz
1943 - Gustav Stern
1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
1952 - Felix Bloch
1954 - Max Born
1958 - Igor Tamm
1959 - Emilio Segre
1960 - Donald A. Glaser
1961 - Robert Hofstadter
1961 - Melvin Calvin
1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
1965 - Julian Schwinger
1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
1971 - Dennis Gabor
1972 - William Howard Stein
1973 - Brian David Josephson
1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
1976 - Burton Richter
1977 - Ilya Prigogine
1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
1978 - Peter L Kapitza
1979 - Stephen Weinberg
1979 - Sheldon Glashow
1979 - Herbert Charles Brown
1980 - Paul Berg
1980 - Walter Gilbert
1981 - Roald Hoffmann
1982 - Aaron Klug
1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
1985 - Jerome Karle
1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
1988 - Robert Huber
1988 - Leon Lederman
1988 - Melvin Schwartz
1988 - Jack Steinberger
1989 - Sidney Altman
1990 - Jerome Friedman
1992 - Rudolph Marcus
1995 - Martin Perl
2000 - Alan J. Heeger
Economics:
1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
1971 - Simon Kuznets
1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
1976 - Milton Friedman
1978 - Herbert A. Simon
1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
1985 - Franco Modigliani
1987 - Robert M. Solow
1990 - Harry Markowitz
1990 - Merton Miller
1992 - Gary Becker
1993 - Robert Fogel
Medicine:
1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
1908 - Paul Erlich
1914 - Robert Barany
1922 - Otto Meyerhof
1930 - Karl Landsteiner
1931 - Otto Warburg
1936 - Otto Loewi
1944 - Joseph Erlanger
1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
1952 - Selman Abraham Waksman
1953 - Hans Krebs
1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
1958 - Joshua Lederberg
1959 - Arthur Kornberg
1964 - Konrad Bloch
1965 - Francois Jacob
1965 - Andre Lwoff
1967 - George Wald
1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
1969 - Salvador Luria
1970 - Julius Axelrod
1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
1975 - Howard Martin Temin
1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
1978 - Daniel Nathans
1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
1984 - Cesar Milstein
1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
1986 - Stanley Cohen - Rita Levi-Montalcini
1988 - Gertrude Elion
1989 - Harold Varmus
1991 - Erwin Neher
1991 - Bert Sakmann
1993 - Richard J. Roberts
1993 - Phillip Sharp
1994 - Alfred Gilman
1995 - Edward B. Lewis
TOTAL: 129 ONE HUNDRED TWENTY NINE!
The Jews are NOT promoting brain washing children in military training camps, teaching them how to blow themselves up and cause maximum deaths of Jews and other non Muslims!
The Jews don't hijack planes, nor kill athletes at the Olympics, or blow themselves up in German restaurants. There is NOT one single Jew that has destroyed a church.
The Jews don't traffic slaves, nor have leaders calling for Jihad and death to all the Infidels.
Perhaps the world's Muslims should consider investing more in standard education and less in blaming the Jews for all their problems.
Muslims must ask 'what can they do for humankind' before they demand that humankind respects them!!
Regardless of your feelings about the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians and Arab neighbours, even if you believe there is more culpability on Israel 's part, the following two sentences really say it all...
'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence;
If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel '.
-Benjamin Netanyahu*
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
JPA Scholarships?
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
JPA Scholarships?
Assalammualaikum.
Just from the title of this post, I think many readers will know what I would be talking about.
I talked about my ignorance in how the money in Malaysia had been spent and now, after announcing the reduction/withdrawal of subsidies, another announcement was made.
Few days back, I'm pretty sure it was on Monday, I heard of the news that JPA will no longer sponsor students doing first degree overseas. And I was totally shocked. As a JPA-sponsored student myself, I'm fully aware of the benefits not only me, but my whole family is getting from the scholarship. I can't imagine how hard my parents will have to suffer to work to put me where I am studying now, if it wasn't for the sponsorship by JPA. And I am also aware of the neck-to-neck competition I went through before securing myself this scholarship. And I really hope my siblings will get a chance to secure themselves a scholarship too.
And now, JPA is going to PHASE OUT the scholarships.
According to the New Straits Time (June 14th 2010), the government will be phasing out the scholarship and offer more scholarships for courses in local universities. Click here for news from The Star.
However, the minister mentioned that undergraduate students who secured a place in top foreign universities such as Oxford or Cambridge may apply for the scholarships. And there will also be scholarships for postgraduate studies.
And the move was made because: THERE ARE COMPLAINTS THAT THERE WERE NOT ENOUGH SCHOLARSHIPS FOR OUTSTANDING SPM LEAVERS.
Funny, there were not enough scholarships so, reduce the scholarships instead of increasing them?
The minister also said that by cutting off the burden of funding undergraduates overseas, the country will have more money to fund students locally. And he said it's impossible to increase the number of scholarships as we do not have enough money. The amount of scholarships offered currently is 1,500. 300 are allocated for the Perdana scholarships. That left only 1,200 places. Only 1,200 places for more than 15, 000 applicants. (Source: NST and The Star). And that has NOT INCLUDED the "back door" people. There are bound to be people using "cables" and "contacts" to get themselves scholarships no matter how "transparent" JPA tried to claim to be. If not, explain how come some of the JPA scholarship receivers are from very rich families? I thought the scholarships are supposed to be only for mid to low-income families?
On June 15th (one day after the deadly announcement),
1) MIC and MCA urged JPA to retain the scholarships (source: The Star)
2) JPA emphasised that reducing the scholarships will not bring bad effects to the country, instead it will help the development of local universities. (source: NST, Utusan
3) UMNO Youth urged the government to revise the move to drop the scholarships offered for students. Source: Utusan.
As for now, 56% of the scholarships under the race quota are allocated for bumiputeras while 44% are for non-bumis (source: NST).
I believe that there are at least 3 most important components in building a good country; the army, the leaders and the people.
Other than occasional news about Malaysia buying new submarines or training our soldiers, I am not sure how good our defense is. Seriously, I don't know and I better not comment on it. But if it really is outstanding, why not send some for the Gazans. Heh =p.
The leaders; okay let's not talk about them. Some of them really are trying to help the people, congrats. But some of them are busier attacking their colleagues than taking care of their own responsibilities, thank you.
The people.
Although education is not the only way to success, but one can never deny the importance of education, at least to most of the people. Thus, by depriving the people from the chance of studying overseas, won't it not hasten the development and progress of our country?
Ok fine. Some might argue that studying overseas and in local universities do not bring much difference. Even the minister asked why are we doubting the quality of our local universities?
Well, in my year (2007), there were 1,800 scholarships being offered, and of that 80% are for science-based courses. Of this, 50% are for medicine. (Source: The Star) Ok, let me do the calculation, 720 places out of 1,800 places are for medical course. And 200 medical students in a single batch is considered A LOT, believe me. Doctors are not supposed to be produced like water bottles. There should be a quantity limit to a class. Thus, with this 720 new medical students per year, with 7 local national universities offering medical course (UM, UKM, UPM, UIAM, USM, UMS/Unimas and USIM) PLUS the numbers of students not receiving the JPA scholarship but doing medicine, does our country really have the capacity to accommodate us?
In an article entitled "Mushrooming Medical Schools Pose Concern" published in Malaysian Medical Resources (http://medicine.com.my), the quality of local medical graduates are questionable. So, this small country of ours actually STILL DO NOT HAVE THE CAPACITY to produce good doctors in huge amount, which was the reason medical students being sent overseas in the first place. I know the article did not suggest sending students overseas but, to develop our country, won't we need to do the best we can first? And that certainly is not by producing medical students like mushrooms. Undoubtedly, numbers of students interested in doing medicine will never decrease as years pass, thus there will never be shortage of medical students enrolling in med schools. And where there is demand, there will be supply. What need to be concerned off are the quality of "these supplies" that are created when there is excessive demands.
(I'm talking based on experience and I'm also giving medical course as an example because I'm in it. I do not know how the situation is in other courses)
Apart from that, do you really think there is no difference between a local and overseas graduate? An overseas (or at least JPA students) graduates were sent out there to live on their own with friends, facing all the challenges and exposures by themselves. And that made them a different person compared to what they were initially. Not to say local graduates are not exposed but, accept the fact, the exposures ARE different. Hence, Malaysia will not have only "one type" of people; those who graduate locally. With students graduating overseas, Malaysia will have a pool of variety professionals, and is that a bad thing?
And do you know that many people are amazed that Malaysia actually provides scholarships for the outstanding students to study abroad?
Isn't that giving Malaysia a better image?
Some of the people I know, from less developed countries were very much amused and "jealous" that Malaysia can afford to send us overseas.
And the government want to take that back?
I thought we are always working 24-7 to make sure Malaysia has good image?
With the growing number of population, isn't it just logic that the resource is expanding, and the numbers of scholarships available increasing?
How come we have not enough money left to fund deserving students?
Where had all the money been spent to?
The publicity of 1Malaysia?
The diplomatic visits all around the world by our leaders?
The feasts, dinners and festivals?
The luxury of "some people"?
And all that were done on the expense of scholarships of students?
I wonder where do all these ministers sent their kids to?
Local universities or overseas?
I'm asking. Just some questions. Full stop.
To not receive any complaints from the public on being "left out" or being "done injustice to" is impossible. But, to cancel off the scholarships because you can't satisfy everyone?
It's like killing all the chickens in the barn just because one or two of the chickens died of hunger.
In case I have not made my point clear, I totally disagree with the move of phasing out the scholarships.
We still need that.
For further readings:
Some of the blog posts by Dr Mahathir on the money of Malaysia:
1) Malaysia's Generosity on April 29, 2010
2) Not So Generous? on May 3rd, 2010
Zainul Arifin in his article in the New Straits Time on June 16, 2010 agrees with the move that the overseas scholarship shall be reduced. To read his opinions, click here.
p/s: I spent a very long time writing this post, when I should actually read on Lung Cancer. This news had been bothering me ever since it was announced.
And I hope the government will do the correct decision and change the announcement for the benefit of all people.
And JPA stands for Jabatan Perkhidmatan Awam or Public Service Department (PSD) in English.
-AkMaR-
http://nur-akmar.blogspot.com
Wednesday 16th June 2010
10.59pm
Courtesy of http://nur-akmar.blogspot.com/2010/06/jpa-scholarships.html
JPA Scholarships?
Assalammualaikum.
Just from the title of this post, I think many readers will know what I would be talking about.
I talked about my ignorance in how the money in Malaysia had been spent and now, after announcing the reduction/withdrawal of subsidies, another announcement was made.
Few days back, I'm pretty sure it was on Monday, I heard of the news that JPA will no longer sponsor students doing first degree overseas. And I was totally shocked. As a JPA-sponsored student myself, I'm fully aware of the benefits not only me, but my whole family is getting from the scholarship. I can't imagine how hard my parents will have to suffer to work to put me where I am studying now, if it wasn't for the sponsorship by JPA. And I am also aware of the neck-to-neck competition I went through before securing myself this scholarship. And I really hope my siblings will get a chance to secure themselves a scholarship too.
And now, JPA is going to PHASE OUT the scholarships.
According to the New Straits Time (June 14th 2010), the government will be phasing out the scholarship and offer more scholarships for courses in local universities. Click here for news from The Star.
However, the minister mentioned that undergraduate students who secured a place in top foreign universities such as Oxford or Cambridge may apply for the scholarships. And there will also be scholarships for postgraduate studies.
And the move was made because: THERE ARE COMPLAINTS THAT THERE WERE NOT ENOUGH SCHOLARSHIPS FOR OUTSTANDING SPM LEAVERS.
Funny, there were not enough scholarships so, reduce the scholarships instead of increasing them?
The minister also said that by cutting off the burden of funding undergraduates overseas, the country will have more money to fund students locally. And he said it's impossible to increase the number of scholarships as we do not have enough money. The amount of scholarships offered currently is 1,500. 300 are allocated for the Perdana scholarships. That left only 1,200 places. Only 1,200 places for more than 15, 000 applicants. (Source: NST and The Star). And that has NOT INCLUDED the "back door" people. There are bound to be people using "cables" and "contacts" to get themselves scholarships no matter how "transparent" JPA tried to claim to be. If not, explain how come some of the JPA scholarship receivers are from very rich families? I thought the scholarships are supposed to be only for mid to low-income families?
On June 15th (one day after the deadly announcement),
1) MIC and MCA urged JPA to retain the scholarships (source: The Star)
2) JPA emphasised that reducing the scholarships will not bring bad effects to the country, instead it will help the development of local universities. (source: NST, Utusan
3) UMNO Youth urged the government to revise the move to drop the scholarships offered for students. Source: Utusan.
As for now, 56% of the scholarships under the race quota are allocated for bumiputeras while 44% are for non-bumis (source: NST).
I believe that there are at least 3 most important components in building a good country; the army, the leaders and the people.
Other than occasional news about Malaysia buying new submarines or training our soldiers, I am not sure how good our defense is. Seriously, I don't know and I better not comment on it. But if it really is outstanding, why not send some for the Gazans. Heh =p.
The leaders; okay let's not talk about them. Some of them really are trying to help the people, congrats. But some of them are busier attacking their colleagues than taking care of their own responsibilities, thank you.
The people.
Although education is not the only way to success, but one can never deny the importance of education, at least to most of the people. Thus, by depriving the people from the chance of studying overseas, won't it not hasten the development and progress of our country?
Ok fine. Some might argue that studying overseas and in local universities do not bring much difference. Even the minister asked why are we doubting the quality of our local universities?
Well, in my year (2007), there were 1,800 scholarships being offered, and of that 80% are for science-based courses. Of this, 50% are for medicine. (Source: The Star) Ok, let me do the calculation, 720 places out of 1,800 places are for medical course. And 200 medical students in a single batch is considered A LOT, believe me. Doctors are not supposed to be produced like water bottles. There should be a quantity limit to a class. Thus, with this 720 new medical students per year, with 7 local national universities offering medical course (UM, UKM, UPM, UIAM, USM, UMS/Unimas and USIM) PLUS the numbers of students not receiving the JPA scholarship but doing medicine, does our country really have the capacity to accommodate us?
In an article entitled "Mushrooming Medical Schools Pose Concern" published in Malaysian Medical Resources (http://medicine.com.my), the quality of local medical graduates are questionable. So, this small country of ours actually STILL DO NOT HAVE THE CAPACITY to produce good doctors in huge amount, which was the reason medical students being sent overseas in the first place. I know the article did not suggest sending students overseas but, to develop our country, won't we need to do the best we can first? And that certainly is not by producing medical students like mushrooms. Undoubtedly, numbers of students interested in doing medicine will never decrease as years pass, thus there will never be shortage of medical students enrolling in med schools. And where there is demand, there will be supply. What need to be concerned off are the quality of "these supplies" that are created when there is excessive demands.
(I'm talking based on experience and I'm also giving medical course as an example because I'm in it. I do not know how the situation is in other courses)
Apart from that, do you really think there is no difference between a local and overseas graduate? An overseas (or at least JPA students) graduates were sent out there to live on their own with friends, facing all the challenges and exposures by themselves. And that made them a different person compared to what they were initially. Not to say local graduates are not exposed but, accept the fact, the exposures ARE different. Hence, Malaysia will not have only "one type" of people; those who graduate locally. With students graduating overseas, Malaysia will have a pool of variety professionals, and is that a bad thing?
And do you know that many people are amazed that Malaysia actually provides scholarships for the outstanding students to study abroad?
Isn't that giving Malaysia a better image?
Some of the people I know, from less developed countries were very much amused and "jealous" that Malaysia can afford to send us overseas.
And the government want to take that back?
I thought we are always working 24-7 to make sure Malaysia has good image?
With the growing number of population, isn't it just logic that the resource is expanding, and the numbers of scholarships available increasing?
How come we have not enough money left to fund deserving students?
Where had all the money been spent to?
The publicity of 1Malaysia?
The diplomatic visits all around the world by our leaders?
The feasts, dinners and festivals?
The luxury of "some people"?
And all that were done on the expense of scholarships of students?
I wonder where do all these ministers sent their kids to?
Local universities or overseas?
I'm asking. Just some questions. Full stop.
To not receive any complaints from the public on being "left out" or being "done injustice to" is impossible. But, to cancel off the scholarships because you can't satisfy everyone?
It's like killing all the chickens in the barn just because one or two of the chickens died of hunger.
In case I have not made my point clear, I totally disagree with the move of phasing out the scholarships.
We still need that.
For further readings:
Some of the blog posts by Dr Mahathir on the money of Malaysia:
1) Malaysia's Generosity on April 29, 2010
2) Not So Generous? on May 3rd, 2010
Zainul Arifin in his article in the New Straits Time on June 16, 2010 agrees with the move that the overseas scholarship shall be reduced. To read his opinions, click here.
p/s: I spent a very long time writing this post, when I should actually read on Lung Cancer. This news had been bothering me ever since it was announced.
And I hope the government will do the correct decision and change the announcement for the benefit of all people.
And JPA stands for Jabatan Perkhidmatan Awam or Public Service Department (PSD) in English.
-AkMaR-
http://nur-akmar.blogspot.com
Wednesday 16th June 2010
10.59pm
Courtesy of http://nur-akmar.blogspot.com/2010/06/jpa-scholarships.html
Monday, June 7, 2010
Boyle: Independent Eelam will be a bulwark for India
Boyle: Independent Eelam will be a bulwark for India
[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 June 2010, 00:02 GMT]
Professor Francis A. Boyle, an expert in international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, said that an independent state of Tamil eelam south of the Indian border will add to India's security, and therefore, India should actively intervene in the Tamil struggle and facilitate the formation of Tamil eelam. Boyle was talking to the popular Tamil Nadu Tamil biweekly magazine Junior Vikatan in an exclusive interview given to the magazine's US correspondent Prakash M Swamy early part of May.
Text of the translation of the interview published in Vikatan follows (Note: original interview to Vikatan was in English):
Vikatan: One year has passed since the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Do you think birth of Tamil Eelam is still a possibility?
Professor Francis A. Boyle, University of Illinois College of Law
Professor Francis A. Boyle, University of Illinois
Boyle: Faith propels life; in recent times, terrorism label was stamped on those who led and supported Tamil eelam struggle. Now, since Tiger leadership has disappeared, Rajapakse is on his mission to destroy the Tamil people. Sri Lanka has no respect for any international law. India [as a regional super-power] has failed to contrain Sri Lanka's conduct. Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) will reflect the conscience of Tamil people. Counselors elected for TGTE will determine their future. Many directives will be taken at their first meeting.
Vikatan: Opponents claim that TGTE have only web presence. Can you comment?
Boyle: After the genocide, where is the space for Tamil leadership to operate or even emerge in Sri Lanka? Surviving leadership are all outside of Sri Lanka. Can these leaders visit Sri Lanka? Under these circumstances Tamils only option is the formation of Transnational Government. The counselors are elected democratically. Liberation struggle is taking its step in an entirely new direction. Let us wait to see the impact.
Vikatan: You support Palestinians, who have a state. Tamil people do not have a state.
Boyle: Not quite true. Tamil homeland is occupied by Sri Lankan state. This is sad! Tamils are enslaved in their own state. Rajapakse is supported by Israel, which is occupying Palestinian land. Wars for Palestinian independence and Tamil Eelam independence are similar. Both struggles are labelled as terrorism, illegal occupation. Currently, 127 out of 195 members of the United Nation have recognized Palestine. President Obama has recently said that an independent Palestine should be allowed to exist without security threats.
Vikatan: US, while fully engaged in Palestinian-Israel conflict refuses to play an active role in Tamil Eelam struggle. Why?
Boyle: Israel is the reason. Israel fully supports Sri Lanka. Obama supports Rajapakse administration because of China. America is concerned by the increasing Chinese influence in Sri Lanka, and that China may even be allowed to build a military base in Sri Lanka. U.S. even supported the dud committee set up by Sri Lanka to investigate the rights violations in Sri Lanka. This committee is useless, and without teeth. This committee will not dare investigate Rajapakse brothers. What is troubling is the UN ambassador to UN [and later Secretary of State Clinton] have extended their support to this committee.
Vikatan: What types configurations are possible for a future Tamil Eelam state?
Boyle: First, Tamil eelam can be an independent sovereign state – this is the wish of Tamil people. Second, Tamil eelam can be similar to that of Commonwealth of Puerto Rico – Puerto Rico is a sovereign state, at the same time, comes under America’s confederation. Third, it can be an independent province within a sovereign Sri Lankan state.
Vikatan: Could you comment on Indian government’s refusal to issue visa to Prabhakaran’s mother?
Boyle: Your central government has directed its anger against Prapakaran on his mother. Is Ms. Parvathi an extremist? Is she scheming to over throw your government? She is eighty years old; she does not even have the strength to stand on her own. This is a serious violation of human rights. India has capable lawyers. Do you have honest and independent courts? Why have not this act been challenged in a court of justice in India? In the U.S., many lawyers and rights organizations would have immediately filed challenges in US Courts. India should not have politicized a humanitarian matter. Other than India getting a fleeting satisfaction by refusing visa to Pirapaharan's mother, no other useful purpose was served by India's act. Is India trying to punish Pirapakaran who is dead and gone..?
Vikatan: What should be India's approach to dealing with Tamil Eelam struggle?
Boyle: I am not qualified to advise India. As an American who loves India, I can share some thoughts. Tamils worldwide are connected culturally and emotionally to Eelam Tamils, and therefore, to their struggle. In this context, recognize that Prapakaran era is over. Do not continue to show vengeance on Tamils and their struggle. India should change the way it views struggle for Tamil independence. In the changing geo-political structure, close alliance between china and Sri Lanka will be a danger to everyone. Independent Tamil Eelam will add security, and will be a bulwark to India's security. I am not a politician; an attorney, of Irish descent. I am not even a Tamil, but I feel their pain. India should actively intervene to facilitate the birth of Tamil Eelam.
Note: Professor Boyle extends his apology, and his congratulations to Mr Karuppan for his heroic legal action on behalf of Mr. Prabakharan’s Mother. Prof Boyle regrets that he had not read about the legal action at the time he gave this interview.
Mr Karuppan in a communication to Prof Boyle following this article noted that "Pirapaharan's mother was not refused visa. She was deported forcibly in the same plane back to the orgination Kaula Lampur. Although She had a valid visa issued by the High Commission of India in Malaysia on her valid Sri Lankan Pass port.
* Karuppan v. Govt. of India
I had challanged the same up to the Supreme Court of India from the High Court stating that deportation without any reason is illegal, when refugees without visa were not deported. Sought directions from the High Court to ask the Govt of India to send a special plane and bring her back and continue treatment at State Expense."
Related Articles:
21.04.10 Chennai High Court calls for clarification on deportation of..
[TamilNet, Sunday, 06 June 2010, 00:02 GMT]
Professor Francis A. Boyle, an expert in international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, said that an independent state of Tamil eelam south of the Indian border will add to India's security, and therefore, India should actively intervene in the Tamil struggle and facilitate the formation of Tamil eelam. Boyle was talking to the popular Tamil Nadu Tamil biweekly magazine Junior Vikatan in an exclusive interview given to the magazine's US correspondent Prakash M Swamy early part of May.
Text of the translation of the interview published in Vikatan follows (Note: original interview to Vikatan was in English):
Vikatan: One year has passed since the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Do you think birth of Tamil Eelam is still a possibility?
Professor Francis A. Boyle, University of Illinois College of Law
Professor Francis A. Boyle, University of Illinois
Boyle: Faith propels life; in recent times, terrorism label was stamped on those who led and supported Tamil eelam struggle. Now, since Tiger leadership has disappeared, Rajapakse is on his mission to destroy the Tamil people. Sri Lanka has no respect for any international law. India [as a regional super-power] has failed to contrain Sri Lanka's conduct. Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) will reflect the conscience of Tamil people. Counselors elected for TGTE will determine their future. Many directives will be taken at their first meeting.
Vikatan: Opponents claim that TGTE have only web presence. Can you comment?
Boyle: After the genocide, where is the space for Tamil leadership to operate or even emerge in Sri Lanka? Surviving leadership are all outside of Sri Lanka. Can these leaders visit Sri Lanka? Under these circumstances Tamils only option is the formation of Transnational Government. The counselors are elected democratically. Liberation struggle is taking its step in an entirely new direction. Let us wait to see the impact.
Vikatan: You support Palestinians, who have a state. Tamil people do not have a state.
Boyle: Not quite true. Tamil homeland is occupied by Sri Lankan state. This is sad! Tamils are enslaved in their own state. Rajapakse is supported by Israel, which is occupying Palestinian land. Wars for Palestinian independence and Tamil Eelam independence are similar. Both struggles are labelled as terrorism, illegal occupation. Currently, 127 out of 195 members of the United Nation have recognized Palestine. President Obama has recently said that an independent Palestine should be allowed to exist without security threats.
Vikatan: US, while fully engaged in Palestinian-Israel conflict refuses to play an active role in Tamil Eelam struggle. Why?
Boyle: Israel is the reason. Israel fully supports Sri Lanka. Obama supports Rajapakse administration because of China. America is concerned by the increasing Chinese influence in Sri Lanka, and that China may even be allowed to build a military base in Sri Lanka. U.S. even supported the dud committee set up by Sri Lanka to investigate the rights violations in Sri Lanka. This committee is useless, and without teeth. This committee will not dare investigate Rajapakse brothers. What is troubling is the UN ambassador to UN [and later Secretary of State Clinton] have extended their support to this committee.
Vikatan: What types configurations are possible for a future Tamil Eelam state?
Boyle: First, Tamil eelam can be an independent sovereign state – this is the wish of Tamil people. Second, Tamil eelam can be similar to that of Commonwealth of Puerto Rico – Puerto Rico is a sovereign state, at the same time, comes under America’s confederation. Third, it can be an independent province within a sovereign Sri Lankan state.
Vikatan: Could you comment on Indian government’s refusal to issue visa to Prabhakaran’s mother?
Boyle: Your central government has directed its anger against Prapakaran on his mother. Is Ms. Parvathi an extremist? Is she scheming to over throw your government? She is eighty years old; she does not even have the strength to stand on her own. This is a serious violation of human rights. India has capable lawyers. Do you have honest and independent courts? Why have not this act been challenged in a court of justice in India? In the U.S., many lawyers and rights organizations would have immediately filed challenges in US Courts. India should not have politicized a humanitarian matter. Other than India getting a fleeting satisfaction by refusing visa to Pirapaharan's mother, no other useful purpose was served by India's act. Is India trying to punish Pirapakaran who is dead and gone..?
Vikatan: What should be India's approach to dealing with Tamil Eelam struggle?
Boyle: I am not qualified to advise India. As an American who loves India, I can share some thoughts. Tamils worldwide are connected culturally and emotionally to Eelam Tamils, and therefore, to their struggle. In this context, recognize that Prapakaran era is over. Do not continue to show vengeance on Tamils and their struggle. India should change the way it views struggle for Tamil independence. In the changing geo-political structure, close alliance between china and Sri Lanka will be a danger to everyone. Independent Tamil Eelam will add security, and will be a bulwark to India's security. I am not a politician; an attorney, of Irish descent. I am not even a Tamil, but I feel their pain. India should actively intervene to facilitate the birth of Tamil Eelam.
Note: Professor Boyle extends his apology, and his congratulations to Mr Karuppan for his heroic legal action on behalf of Mr. Prabakharan’s Mother. Prof Boyle regrets that he had not read about the legal action at the time he gave this interview.
Mr Karuppan in a communication to Prof Boyle following this article noted that "Pirapaharan's mother was not refused visa. She was deported forcibly in the same plane back to the orgination Kaula Lampur. Although She had a valid visa issued by the High Commission of India in Malaysia on her valid Sri Lankan Pass port.
* Karuppan v. Govt. of India
I had challanged the same up to the Supreme Court of India from the High Court stating that deportation without any reason is illegal, when refugees without visa were not deported. Sought directions from the High Court to ask the Govt of India to send a special plane and bring her back and continue treatment at State Expense."
Related Articles:
21.04.10 Chennai High Court calls for clarification on deportation of..
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Matthias Chang: Martyr Without A Cause?
By NH Chan
A deliberation on whether Matthias Chang was a victim of judicial oppression through an examination of the law of contempt; from its coming to being to its evolution to what it is today and how it applies to Matthias Chang’s unruly behaviour in court.
In the Sun newspaper of Friday, 2 April 2010 I came across this story:
Dr. M’s ex-aide starts jail term for contempt
KUALA LUMPUR: Matthias Chang, former political secretary of ex-premier Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, was sent to prison after he refused to pay a RM20,000 fine for contempt of court.
Chang was served the committal order by the High Court before he was taken to Kajang prison.
The lawyer was cited for contempt of court on March 25 when he failed to apologise to the court during cross-examination in his defamation suit against American Express (Malaysia).
The committal order stated: “At about 2.30pm to day (March 25) … when the court refused your request to address the court as a witness, you lost your cool and walked out of the witness box and thereafter left the court during the proceedings. Your conduct is a contempt in the face of the court by virtue of Order 52 (1A) of the Rules of the High Court.”
Judge Noor Azian Shaari had ordered Chang to pay a fine of RM20,000 within seven days, in default [to serve a] month’s jail sentence.
The judge says that Chang had committed contempt in the face of the court.
I will first tell about how the law of contempt came into being. Then I will tell about how it had evolved into what it has become in modern times. But before that you may wish to know,
What is contempt in the face of the court?
If you have read my book How to Judge the Judges, 2nd edition, Sweet & Maxwell Asia, you will come across this passage on page 61:
Contempt in the face of the Court
If you attack the character or conduct of a judge it could be termed a contempt by scandalizing the judiciary. If you make the same attack in court or if you disrupt proceedings in court it is called contempt in the face of the court.
This was what the judge Noor Azian Shaari meant when she told Matthias Chang “Your conduct is a contempt in the face of the court.” Chang had disrupted court proceedings as a witness when he walkout in a huff.
The difference between contempt by scandalising the judiciary and contempt in the face of the court is that the latter is dealt with summarily, that is to say, done or made immediately and without following the normal procedures – this is the dictionary meaning. And this is how Lee Hun Hoe CJ (Borneo) put it in Cheah Cheng Hoc v Public Prosecutor [1986] 1 MLJ 299 (SC), at p 301:
The power of summary punishment is a necessary power to maintain the dignity and authority of the Judge and to ensure a fair trial. It should be exercised with scrupulous care and only when the case is clear and beyond reasonable doubt. As Lord Denning, MR said in Balogh v Crown Court [1974] 3 All ER 283, at 288:
“It is to be exercised by the judge of his own motion only when it is urgent and imperative to act immediately – so as to maintain the authority of the court – to prevent disorder, to enable witnesses to be free from fear, and jurors being improperly influenced, and the like …”
This power must be used sparingly but fearlessly when necessary to prevent obstruction of justice. We feel that we must leave the exercise of this awesome power to the good sense of our judge. We will interfere when this power is misused.
Now that we know what is contempt in the face of the court better than any other uninstructed person, we should not listen to a non-lawyer, like Che Det, giving pompous legal advice and telling-off the judge that “no one should be the prosecutor, the judge and the executioner.” Doesn’t our former prime minister know that summary decisions are part of living in a civilized society? The umpire in a badminton match does it all the time, so does the referee in a soccer match and other sporting activities, but most of all, and he should know as he was a parliamentarian, the speaker of the House of Representatives or Legislative Assembly does it all the time at every sitting; they are all, to use his own words, “prosecutor, judge and executioner.”
Contempt in the face of the court means “the power of summary punishment to be exercised by the judge of his own motion only when it is urgent and imperative to act immediately” so as to prevent – as in the case of Matthias Chang – disruption of the court proceedings. This is a necessary power to be exercised only in the most pressing cases so as to deal with the circumstances or situations stated by Lord Denning in Balogh v Crown Office.
Matthias
Inset: Matthias Chang, source:minaq-jinggo.fotopages.com
The history of this awesome power of the judges
But first let me relate the historical evolution of this awesome power of a judge at common law. I won’t say it is a draconian power because nowadays, that is, ever since 1936 – since Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago, a more tolerant attitude is taken by the common law towards critics of the judiciary.
*
On how the law of contempt came into being
At the beginning, before 1936, it was an excessively harsh power; one could say it was a draconian power. But why was it so? Because during the time of despotic kings of England, the king’s judges were lions under the throne of the king, and they were wielding the power of the king in the administration of the king?s notion of justice – do remember that the common law of England is entwined in the history of England. This was how Mr. Justice Wilmot (in an opinion which was not delivered because the prosecution was dropped) explained the purpose of this law in R v Almon 97 ER 94, 100 (1765):
The arraignment of the justice of the Judges is arraigning the King’s justice; it is an impeachment of his wisdom and goodness in the choice of his Judges, and excites in the minds of the people a general dissatisfaction with all judicial determinations and indisposes their minds to obey them; and whenever men’s allegiance to the laws is so fundamentally shaken, it is the most fatal and most dangerous obstruction of justice, and, in my opinion, calls out for a more rapid and immediate redress than any other obstruction whatsoever; not for the sake of the Judges, as private individuals, but because they are the channels by which the King’s justice is conveyed to the people.
In 1788 in the case of R v Watson 2 Term Reports (Durnford and East) 199, 205 (1788) Mr. Justice Buller expressed similar sentiments:
Nothing can be of greater importance to the welfare of the public than to put a stop to the animadversions and censures which are so frequently made on courts of justice in this country. They can be of no service, and may be attended with the most mischievous consequences. … When a person has recourse … by publications in print, or by any other means, to calumniate the proceedings of a Court of justice, the obvious tendency of it is to weaken the administration of justice, and in consequence to sap the very foundation of the Constitution itself.
*
And how from such beginnings the law of contempt had evolved to what it is today
Despite the demise of the reign of despotic kings where it ended with the flight of King James II from the realm (James II was the last of the Stuart Kings of England, 1603-1714) – “the grandiloquent fear that criticism of the courts may endanger civilization” had continued right up to the early twentieth century. “The branch of contempt of court known as ’scandalising the judiciary’ served to inhibit criticism of the courts by laymen. To a limited extent it remains a fetter on freedom of expression about judicial performance.” – see Pannick, Judges, page 109.
In R v Gray [1900] 2 QB 36, 40, Lord Russell of Killowen CJ laid down the law of contempt in this way:
“Any act done or writing published calculated to bring a Court or a judge of the Court into contempt, or to lower his authority, is a contempt of court.”
This is nicely summed up by David Pannick in his book Judges, at page 110:
“The grandiloquent fear that criticism of the courts may endanger civilization has, in the twentieth century, continued to lead to the punishment of persons who have insulted members of the judiciary or impugned their impartiality.”
The book then goes on to say, pp 110-112:
English law remained unwilling to leave it to public opinion to assess whether criticism of the judiciary had any basis.
Mr. Justice Darling was the presiding judge at the Birmingham Spring Assizes in 1900. Before the start of a trial for obscene libel, he warned the press that they should not publish indecent accounts of the evidence. After the conviction and sentence of the defendant in the criminal case, Mr. Gray wrote and published in the Birmingham Daily Argus, of which he was the Editor, an article [in which he described] how Mr. Justice Darling,
” … filled in a pleasant five minutes yesterday. … Mr. Justice Darling … [warned] the Press against the printing of indecent evidence. His diminutive Lordship positively glowed with judicial self-consciousness. … He felt himself bearing on his shoulders the whole fabric of public decency. … There is not a journalist in Birmingham who has anything to learn from the impudent little man in horsehair, a microcosm of conceit and empty-headedness. … One of Mr. Justice Darling’s biographers states that ‘an eccentric relative left him much money.’ That misguided testator spoiled a successful bus conductor.”
This splendid piece of invective effectively punctured the vain pretensions of Mr. Justice Darling whose injudicious behaviour on the Bench was frequently a disgrace. …
Mr. Gray’s prose was not appreciated by the courts. He was brought before the Queen’s Bench Division charged with contempt of court. He swore a groveling affidavit of apology, no doubt on sensible legal advice that otherwise there would be even more serious consequences for him. …
Lord Russell, the Lord Chief Justice, … gave a solemn judgment, noting that it was “an article of scurrilous abuse of a judge in his character of judge – scurrilous abuse in reference to the conduct of a judge while sitting under the Queen’s Commission, and scurrilous abuse published in a newspaper in the town in which he was still sitting under the Queen’s Commission.” He concluded that there was no doubt that the article amounted to a contempt of court. … he was fined 100 pounds and ordered to pay the costs.
The above case was reported in the Law Reports series as R v Gray [1900] 2 QB 36, 39-42. This is the case where Lord Russell of Killowen had laid down the draconian law of contempt which had stifled criticisms of the judiciary in the early part of the twentieth century until the judgment of Lord Atkin in Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago ended it in 1936.
Here are a couple of examples of those pre-1936 cases:
i) In R v Vidal, The Times 14 October 1922 a dissatisfied litigant who believed that the President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court was a party to a conspiracy against him walked up and down outside the Law Courts with a placard accusing the judge of being “a traitor to his duty.” He was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment.
ii) In R v Freeman, The Times 18 November 1925 another dissatisfied litigant sent a letter to Mr. Justice Roche, who had decided a case against him, accusing the judge of being “a liar, a coward, a perjurer.” He was held of being in contempt of court.
* But the tide of the pompous attitude of the judges in their own conceit and self-importance changed abruptly in 1936
At page 114 of David Pannick’s book Judges: “More recently, courts have emphasised that only in very exceptional cases will charges of contempt be brought against those who criticise the judiciary.”
Lord Atkin explained it in the Privy Council case of Ambard v A-G for Trinidad and Tobago [1936] AC 322, at p 335:
… whether the authority and position of an individual judge, or the due administration of justice, is concerned, no wrong is committed by any member of the public who exercises the ordinary right of criticising, in good faith, in private or public, the public act done in the seat of justice. The path of criticism is a public way: the wrong-headed are permitted to err therein; provided that members of the public abstain from imputing improper motives to those taking part in the administration of justice, and are genuinely exercising a right of criticism, and not acting in malice or attempting to impair the administration of justice, they are immune. Justice is not a cloistered virtue: she must be allowed to suffer the scrutiny and respectful, even though outspoken, comments of ordinary men.
This case was decided in 1936, so it is embodied in our common law of contempt by virtue of section 3(1) of the Civil Law Act 1956 which says:
(1) Save so far as other provision has been made or may hereafter be made by any written law in force in Malaysia, the court shall:
(a) in Peninsular Malaysia or any part thereof, apply the common law of England and the rules of equity as administered in England on April 7, 1956;
(b) in Sabah, apply the common law of England and the rules of equity, … as administered or in force in England on December 1, 1951;
(c) in Sarawak, apply the common law of England and the rules of equity, … as administered or in force in England on December 12, 1949, …
But tragically, to the many who have suffered at the hands of the judges, the blame has to be placed on our Supreme Court for being under the delusion that the common law of England on contempt was that as stated in R v Gray [1900] 2 QB 36 and they have applied it as the common law which applies in this country by virtue of section 3(1) of the Civil Law Act 1956. They were oblivious of Ambard v A-G for Trinidad and Tobago which was decided in 1936 and which has since then completely changed the way the common law world looked at the law of contempt of scandalising the judiciary.
The result that Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago has brought about is that all previous Supreme Court cases that depended on R v Gray were decided per incuriam (by oversight, failure to notice).
The effect is that all those cases of contempt mentioned in the judgment of the Supreme Court in Attorney-General, Malaysia v Manjeet Singh [1990] 1 MLJ 167 have failed to apply the common law of England on contempt as it stood in 1956 – in other words, our courts by applying R v Gray, a 1900 decision, have consistently applied an obsolete law.
The judgment of Mohamad Yusuff SCJ at pp 177, 178 belies the mediocrity of the judgment itself. He said:
The Supreme Court has this far consistently applied the common law principle of contempt of court as seen in the judgments of these cases, viz: Arthur Lee Meng Kwang v Faber Merlin (M) Bhd & Ors [1986] 1 MLJ 193, Lim Kit Siang v Dato’ Mahathir Mohamad [1987] 1 MLJ 383 and Trustee of Leong San Tong Kongsi (Penang) Registered & Ors v SM Idris [1990] 1 MLJ 273. All these cases dealt with contempt in scandalizing the court. … the common law, as has been expounded, applied and decided by our courts after April 7, 1956, by virtue of the Civil Law Act 1956, has become part of our law.
… On the law applicable to this case … as mentioned earlier, the principle of common law of contempt as stated in R v Gray [1900] 2 QB 36 still applies in our country.
This judge and all the other judges who have decided the cases of Manjeet Singh, Arthur Lee, Lim Kit Siang and Leong San Tong Kongsi did not realize that R v Gray had been superseded by Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago. This judgment of the Privy Council as to the obsolescence of the offence of scandalising the judiciary has demonstrated that R v Gray is no longer good law. (Emphasis by LoyarBurok)
Therefore, the common law of England on the law of contempt of scandalising the judiciary as it stood in 1956 is Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago; the judgment of the Privy Council by Lord Atkin allows for criticism of the judiciary even in the ferocity of the language used. The common law of England on the law of contempt as administered in England in 1956 is not R v Gray (which is obsolete) but Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago.
Poor Arthur Lee, and poor Lim Kit Siang, and poor Manjeet Singh and poor Murray Hiebert (Murray Hiebert v Chandra Sri Ram [1999] 4 MLJ 321), they have all been convicted of the offence of scandalising the judiciary on an obsolete law.
Tragically, the obsolescence of the offence of scandalizing the judiciary has escaped the uninspired minds of our judges.
Mr. Martin Jalleh has suggested that I be charged with contempt of court. I think it was an unreasonable request because such an event would put the entire judiciary in a quandary. Those cases, such as Arthur Lee, Lim Kit Siang, Manjeet Singh, and even Murray Hiebert are over, bar the shouting, – the phrase is used when any controversial event is said to be technically settled but arguments about the outcome continue, albeit with little effect on the result: see Red Herrings and White Elephants, Albert Jack, Metro Publishing Ltd, London, 2004. I would suggest that it is best to let sleeping dogs (or should I say, lions) lie.
Even our former prime minister Tun Mahathir admitted in Che Det that when he gave his opinion that the judge should not be prosecutor, judge, and executioner in Matthias Chang’s case – he did so with trepidation. Actually, he has nothing to worry about. We are both on the same boat. Our defence is this:
By virtue of section 3(1)(a) of the Civil Law Act 1956, the common law of Peninsular Malaysia is the common law of England as administered in England on April 7, 1956. The common law of England on the law of contempt of scandalising the judiciary as administered in England in 1956 is Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago which allows for criticism of the judiciary even in the ferocity of the language used.
This briefly tells the history and evolution of the law of contempt up to the present time.
We can now proceed to look at Matthias Chang’s case with a broader and better understanding.
How does the law of contempt in the face of the court apply to Matthias Chang?
As far back as in 1527 there is this tale of Sergeant Roo, “a great lawyer of that time, more eager to show his wit than to be made a Judge,” who had composed a satire on the abuses of the law for which Lord Chancellor Wolsey was responsible. The satire was delivered in the presence of the King. Roo was summarily dispatched to prison – see Judges by David Pannick, Barrister; Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, OUP, 1987, at page 105 to which he has also included the rider:
Nowadays a more tolerant attitude is taken towards critics of the judiciary. Nevertheless, lawyers and non-lawyers remain reluctant to emulate the critical approach of Sergeant Roo.
In times past – as I have explained in the history above – lawyers, “If they have suggestions for reform of the judiciary, or comments to make on judicial performance, they whisper them to each other over lunch in the Middle Temple or in professional journals remote from the public gaze. Such heresies are expressed cautiously, in deferential language.” – see Judges, pp 105, 106 where it also said:
In one case, after Lord Mansfield (Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, 1756-88) had given judgment for a Bench of four judges, he asked Sergeant Hill, who appeared for the unsuccessful party, to “tell us your real opinion and whether you don’t think we are right.” Hill replied that “he always thought it his duty to do what the Court desired and … he … did not think that there were four men in the world who could have given such an ill-sounded judgment …
…
More often, it is only in fiction that the conventions of politeness to judges are defied. The judges before whom John Mortimer’s Rumpole appears are perverse and malign. They are ignorant of the ways of the world. They are differential or rude to witnesses depending on the social status of those who have the misfortune to give evidence in their courts. … Only a barrister of Rumpole’s experience (and lack of ambition) can afford to reply in kind to the discourtesy emanating from that fictional Bench.
Ever heard of the expression “truth is stranger than fiction”? In this country we have experienced for real perverse and malign judges, not the fictional ones experienced by John Mortimer’s Rumpole.
In 1680, Nathaniel Redding accused two judges of “oppression” and was condemned in Court to pay the King 500 pounds and lie in prison till he paid it, see Nathaniel Redding’s Case, Sir Thomas Raymond’s Reports 376 n. (1680). Later that term the court remitted the fine and the sentence of imprisonment.
In the Matter of Thomas James Wallace (1866) LR 1 PC 283, a Nova Scotia lawyer wrote a letter to the Chief Justice complaining that “I can’t help thinking that I am not fairly dealt with by the Court or Judges.” He added that he “could also recall cases where the decision was, I believe, largely influenced, if not wholly based, upon information received privately from the wife of one of the parties by the judge. Is this justice?” Lord Westbury, in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, remarked that this “undoubtedly was a letter of a most reprehensible kind … a contempt of court, which it was hardly possible for the Court to omit taking cognizance of.”
I have found a case after 1936, it is R v Logan (1974) Crim LR 609. A man on being convicted shouted from the dock, that it was “a carve up”, was held to be a contempt of court.
But why am I telling this?
Was Matthias Chang charged with contempt for discourtesy to the Bench?
Martyr Without A CauseI should think so. It was crass impertinence of him to behave in such an unruly manner towards a judge. As a lawyer he should know better than to be discourteous to the court.
If I remember correctly he was charged with disrupting the court proceedings while giving evidence as a witness by stomping out of the witness box in a huff and left the court because the judge refused to allow him to deliver a submission or speech from the witness stand.
The only modern case (post 1936) of disruption of court proceedings that I am aware of is the case of Morris v Crown Office [1970] 2 QB 114 where the English Court of Appeal allowed an appeal against their sentence of imprisonment imposed on Welsh students who had disrupted court proceedings. Davies LJ said, at page 127:
On occasions one has the misfortune to encounter someone who makes a disturbance in court. Usually when that happens it is a case of a disappointed litigant who, from a sense of rage or disappointment at the result of his case, loses control of himself and gives vent to his feelings by an outburst either by word of mouth or physically.
In Balogh v St Albans Crown Court [1975] QB 73, a young man was sentenced by Mr. Justice Melford Stevenson to six months’ imprisonment for contempt of court by planning to release laughing gas into the court to disrupt proceedings. He was released by the Court of Appeal because his conduct was not a contempt as he had not disrupted court proceedings. His plan was foiled by the police.
So now we know that the atrocious behaviour of Matthias Chang in court is a contempt in the face of the court. As he did not appeal against the sentence, could it be assumed that he was happy with the sentence of one month’s imprisonment?
Had he appealed, who knows, he could have succeeded following Morris v Crown Office.
I suppose he wants to be a martyr without a cause.
courtesy of Loyarburok.com. Article written by N H Chan, who was a former Court of Appeal judge before retiring.
A deliberation on whether Matthias Chang was a victim of judicial oppression through an examination of the law of contempt; from its coming to being to its evolution to what it is today and how it applies to Matthias Chang’s unruly behaviour in court.
In the Sun newspaper of Friday, 2 April 2010 I came across this story:
Dr. M’s ex-aide starts jail term for contempt
KUALA LUMPUR: Matthias Chang, former political secretary of ex-premier Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, was sent to prison after he refused to pay a RM20,000 fine for contempt of court.
Chang was served the committal order by the High Court before he was taken to Kajang prison.
The lawyer was cited for contempt of court on March 25 when he failed to apologise to the court during cross-examination in his defamation suit against American Express (Malaysia).
The committal order stated: “At about 2.30pm to day (March 25) … when the court refused your request to address the court as a witness, you lost your cool and walked out of the witness box and thereafter left the court during the proceedings. Your conduct is a contempt in the face of the court by virtue of Order 52 (1A) of the Rules of the High Court.”
Judge Noor Azian Shaari had ordered Chang to pay a fine of RM20,000 within seven days, in default [to serve a] month’s jail sentence.
The judge says that Chang had committed contempt in the face of the court.
I will first tell about how the law of contempt came into being. Then I will tell about how it had evolved into what it has become in modern times. But before that you may wish to know,
What is contempt in the face of the court?
If you have read my book How to Judge the Judges, 2nd edition, Sweet & Maxwell Asia, you will come across this passage on page 61:
Contempt in the face of the Court
If you attack the character or conduct of a judge it could be termed a contempt by scandalizing the judiciary. If you make the same attack in court or if you disrupt proceedings in court it is called contempt in the face of the court.
This was what the judge Noor Azian Shaari meant when she told Matthias Chang “Your conduct is a contempt in the face of the court.” Chang had disrupted court proceedings as a witness when he walkout in a huff.
The difference between contempt by scandalising the judiciary and contempt in the face of the court is that the latter is dealt with summarily, that is to say, done or made immediately and without following the normal procedures – this is the dictionary meaning. And this is how Lee Hun Hoe CJ (Borneo) put it in Cheah Cheng Hoc v Public Prosecutor [1986] 1 MLJ 299 (SC), at p 301:
The power of summary punishment is a necessary power to maintain the dignity and authority of the Judge and to ensure a fair trial. It should be exercised with scrupulous care and only when the case is clear and beyond reasonable doubt. As Lord Denning, MR said in Balogh v Crown Court [1974] 3 All ER 283, at 288:
“It is to be exercised by the judge of his own motion only when it is urgent and imperative to act immediately – so as to maintain the authority of the court – to prevent disorder, to enable witnesses to be free from fear, and jurors being improperly influenced, and the like …”
This power must be used sparingly but fearlessly when necessary to prevent obstruction of justice. We feel that we must leave the exercise of this awesome power to the good sense of our judge. We will interfere when this power is misused.
Now that we know what is contempt in the face of the court better than any other uninstructed person, we should not listen to a non-lawyer, like Che Det, giving pompous legal advice and telling-off the judge that “no one should be the prosecutor, the judge and the executioner.” Doesn’t our former prime minister know that summary decisions are part of living in a civilized society? The umpire in a badminton match does it all the time, so does the referee in a soccer match and other sporting activities, but most of all, and he should know as he was a parliamentarian, the speaker of the House of Representatives or Legislative Assembly does it all the time at every sitting; they are all, to use his own words, “prosecutor, judge and executioner.”
Contempt in the face of the court means “the power of summary punishment to be exercised by the judge of his own motion only when it is urgent and imperative to act immediately” so as to prevent – as in the case of Matthias Chang – disruption of the court proceedings. This is a necessary power to be exercised only in the most pressing cases so as to deal with the circumstances or situations stated by Lord Denning in Balogh v Crown Office.
Matthias
Inset: Matthias Chang, source:minaq-jinggo.fotopages.com
The history of this awesome power of the judges
But first let me relate the historical evolution of this awesome power of a judge at common law. I won’t say it is a draconian power because nowadays, that is, ever since 1936 – since Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago, a more tolerant attitude is taken by the common law towards critics of the judiciary.
*
On how the law of contempt came into being
At the beginning, before 1936, it was an excessively harsh power; one could say it was a draconian power. But why was it so? Because during the time of despotic kings of England, the king’s judges were lions under the throne of the king, and they were wielding the power of the king in the administration of the king?s notion of justice – do remember that the common law of England is entwined in the history of England. This was how Mr. Justice Wilmot (in an opinion which was not delivered because the prosecution was dropped) explained the purpose of this law in R v Almon 97 ER 94, 100 (1765):
The arraignment of the justice of the Judges is arraigning the King’s justice; it is an impeachment of his wisdom and goodness in the choice of his Judges, and excites in the minds of the people a general dissatisfaction with all judicial determinations and indisposes their minds to obey them; and whenever men’s allegiance to the laws is so fundamentally shaken, it is the most fatal and most dangerous obstruction of justice, and, in my opinion, calls out for a more rapid and immediate redress than any other obstruction whatsoever; not for the sake of the Judges, as private individuals, but because they are the channels by which the King’s justice is conveyed to the people.
In 1788 in the case of R v Watson 2 Term Reports (Durnford and East) 199, 205 (1788) Mr. Justice Buller expressed similar sentiments:
Nothing can be of greater importance to the welfare of the public than to put a stop to the animadversions and censures which are so frequently made on courts of justice in this country. They can be of no service, and may be attended with the most mischievous consequences. … When a person has recourse … by publications in print, or by any other means, to calumniate the proceedings of a Court of justice, the obvious tendency of it is to weaken the administration of justice, and in consequence to sap the very foundation of the Constitution itself.
*
And how from such beginnings the law of contempt had evolved to what it is today
Despite the demise of the reign of despotic kings where it ended with the flight of King James II from the realm (James II was the last of the Stuart Kings of England, 1603-1714) – “the grandiloquent fear that criticism of the courts may endanger civilization” had continued right up to the early twentieth century. “The branch of contempt of court known as ’scandalising the judiciary’ served to inhibit criticism of the courts by laymen. To a limited extent it remains a fetter on freedom of expression about judicial performance.” – see Pannick, Judges, page 109.
In R v Gray [1900] 2 QB 36, 40, Lord Russell of Killowen CJ laid down the law of contempt in this way:
“Any act done or writing published calculated to bring a Court or a judge of the Court into contempt, or to lower his authority, is a contempt of court.”
This is nicely summed up by David Pannick in his book Judges, at page 110:
“The grandiloquent fear that criticism of the courts may endanger civilization has, in the twentieth century, continued to lead to the punishment of persons who have insulted members of the judiciary or impugned their impartiality.”
The book then goes on to say, pp 110-112:
English law remained unwilling to leave it to public opinion to assess whether criticism of the judiciary had any basis.
Mr. Justice Darling was the presiding judge at the Birmingham Spring Assizes in 1900. Before the start of a trial for obscene libel, he warned the press that they should not publish indecent accounts of the evidence. After the conviction and sentence of the defendant in the criminal case, Mr. Gray wrote and published in the Birmingham Daily Argus, of which he was the Editor, an article [in which he described] how Mr. Justice Darling,
” … filled in a pleasant five minutes yesterday. … Mr. Justice Darling … [warned] the Press against the printing of indecent evidence. His diminutive Lordship positively glowed with judicial self-consciousness. … He felt himself bearing on his shoulders the whole fabric of public decency. … There is not a journalist in Birmingham who has anything to learn from the impudent little man in horsehair, a microcosm of conceit and empty-headedness. … One of Mr. Justice Darling’s biographers states that ‘an eccentric relative left him much money.’ That misguided testator spoiled a successful bus conductor.”
This splendid piece of invective effectively punctured the vain pretensions of Mr. Justice Darling whose injudicious behaviour on the Bench was frequently a disgrace. …
Mr. Gray’s prose was not appreciated by the courts. He was brought before the Queen’s Bench Division charged with contempt of court. He swore a groveling affidavit of apology, no doubt on sensible legal advice that otherwise there would be even more serious consequences for him. …
Lord Russell, the Lord Chief Justice, … gave a solemn judgment, noting that it was “an article of scurrilous abuse of a judge in his character of judge – scurrilous abuse in reference to the conduct of a judge while sitting under the Queen’s Commission, and scurrilous abuse published in a newspaper in the town in which he was still sitting under the Queen’s Commission.” He concluded that there was no doubt that the article amounted to a contempt of court. … he was fined 100 pounds and ordered to pay the costs.
The above case was reported in the Law Reports series as R v Gray [1900] 2 QB 36, 39-42. This is the case where Lord Russell of Killowen had laid down the draconian law of contempt which had stifled criticisms of the judiciary in the early part of the twentieth century until the judgment of Lord Atkin in Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago ended it in 1936.
Here are a couple of examples of those pre-1936 cases:
i) In R v Vidal, The Times 14 October 1922 a dissatisfied litigant who believed that the President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court was a party to a conspiracy against him walked up and down outside the Law Courts with a placard accusing the judge of being “a traitor to his duty.” He was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment.
ii) In R v Freeman, The Times 18 November 1925 another dissatisfied litigant sent a letter to Mr. Justice Roche, who had decided a case against him, accusing the judge of being “a liar, a coward, a perjurer.” He was held of being in contempt of court.
* But the tide of the pompous attitude of the judges in their own conceit and self-importance changed abruptly in 1936
At page 114 of David Pannick’s book Judges: “More recently, courts have emphasised that only in very exceptional cases will charges of contempt be brought against those who criticise the judiciary.”
Lord Atkin explained it in the Privy Council case of Ambard v A-G for Trinidad and Tobago [1936] AC 322, at p 335:
… whether the authority and position of an individual judge, or the due administration of justice, is concerned, no wrong is committed by any member of the public who exercises the ordinary right of criticising, in good faith, in private or public, the public act done in the seat of justice. The path of criticism is a public way: the wrong-headed are permitted to err therein; provided that members of the public abstain from imputing improper motives to those taking part in the administration of justice, and are genuinely exercising a right of criticism, and not acting in malice or attempting to impair the administration of justice, they are immune. Justice is not a cloistered virtue: she must be allowed to suffer the scrutiny and respectful, even though outspoken, comments of ordinary men.
This case was decided in 1936, so it is embodied in our common law of contempt by virtue of section 3(1) of the Civil Law Act 1956 which says:
(1) Save so far as other provision has been made or may hereafter be made by any written law in force in Malaysia, the court shall:
(a) in Peninsular Malaysia or any part thereof, apply the common law of England and the rules of equity as administered in England on April 7, 1956;
(b) in Sabah, apply the common law of England and the rules of equity, … as administered or in force in England on December 1, 1951;
(c) in Sarawak, apply the common law of England and the rules of equity, … as administered or in force in England on December 12, 1949, …
But tragically, to the many who have suffered at the hands of the judges, the blame has to be placed on our Supreme Court for being under the delusion that the common law of England on contempt was that as stated in R v Gray [1900] 2 QB 36 and they have applied it as the common law which applies in this country by virtue of section 3(1) of the Civil Law Act 1956. They were oblivious of Ambard v A-G for Trinidad and Tobago which was decided in 1936 and which has since then completely changed the way the common law world looked at the law of contempt of scandalising the judiciary.
The result that Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago has brought about is that all previous Supreme Court cases that depended on R v Gray were decided per incuriam (by oversight, failure to notice).
The effect is that all those cases of contempt mentioned in the judgment of the Supreme Court in Attorney-General, Malaysia v Manjeet Singh [1990] 1 MLJ 167 have failed to apply the common law of England on contempt as it stood in 1956 – in other words, our courts by applying R v Gray, a 1900 decision, have consistently applied an obsolete law.
The judgment of Mohamad Yusuff SCJ at pp 177, 178 belies the mediocrity of the judgment itself. He said:
The Supreme Court has this far consistently applied the common law principle of contempt of court as seen in the judgments of these cases, viz: Arthur Lee Meng Kwang v Faber Merlin (M) Bhd & Ors [1986] 1 MLJ 193, Lim Kit Siang v Dato’ Mahathir Mohamad [1987] 1 MLJ 383 and Trustee of Leong San Tong Kongsi (Penang) Registered & Ors v SM Idris [1990] 1 MLJ 273. All these cases dealt with contempt in scandalizing the court. … the common law, as has been expounded, applied and decided by our courts after April 7, 1956, by virtue of the Civil Law Act 1956, has become part of our law.
… On the law applicable to this case … as mentioned earlier, the principle of common law of contempt as stated in R v Gray [1900] 2 QB 36 still applies in our country.
This judge and all the other judges who have decided the cases of Manjeet Singh, Arthur Lee, Lim Kit Siang and Leong San Tong Kongsi did not realize that R v Gray had been superseded by Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago. This judgment of the Privy Council as to the obsolescence of the offence of scandalising the judiciary has demonstrated that R v Gray is no longer good law. (Emphasis by LoyarBurok)
Therefore, the common law of England on the law of contempt of scandalising the judiciary as it stood in 1956 is Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago; the judgment of the Privy Council by Lord Atkin allows for criticism of the judiciary even in the ferocity of the language used. The common law of England on the law of contempt as administered in England in 1956 is not R v Gray (which is obsolete) but Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago.
Poor Arthur Lee, and poor Lim Kit Siang, and poor Manjeet Singh and poor Murray Hiebert (Murray Hiebert v Chandra Sri Ram [1999] 4 MLJ 321), they have all been convicted of the offence of scandalising the judiciary on an obsolete law.
Tragically, the obsolescence of the offence of scandalizing the judiciary has escaped the uninspired minds of our judges.
Mr. Martin Jalleh has suggested that I be charged with contempt of court. I think it was an unreasonable request because such an event would put the entire judiciary in a quandary. Those cases, such as Arthur Lee, Lim Kit Siang, Manjeet Singh, and even Murray Hiebert are over, bar the shouting, – the phrase is used when any controversial event is said to be technically settled but arguments about the outcome continue, albeit with little effect on the result: see Red Herrings and White Elephants, Albert Jack, Metro Publishing Ltd, London, 2004. I would suggest that it is best to let sleeping dogs (or should I say, lions) lie.
Even our former prime minister Tun Mahathir admitted in Che Det that when he gave his opinion that the judge should not be prosecutor, judge, and executioner in Matthias Chang’s case – he did so with trepidation. Actually, he has nothing to worry about. We are both on the same boat. Our defence is this:
By virtue of section 3(1)(a) of the Civil Law Act 1956, the common law of Peninsular Malaysia is the common law of England as administered in England on April 7, 1956. The common law of England on the law of contempt of scandalising the judiciary as administered in England in 1956 is Ambard v A-G for Trinidad & Tobago which allows for criticism of the judiciary even in the ferocity of the language used.
This briefly tells the history and evolution of the law of contempt up to the present time.
We can now proceed to look at Matthias Chang’s case with a broader and better understanding.
How does the law of contempt in the face of the court apply to Matthias Chang?
As far back as in 1527 there is this tale of Sergeant Roo, “a great lawyer of that time, more eager to show his wit than to be made a Judge,” who had composed a satire on the abuses of the law for which Lord Chancellor Wolsey was responsible. The satire was delivered in the presence of the King. Roo was summarily dispatched to prison – see Judges by David Pannick, Barrister; Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, OUP, 1987, at page 105 to which he has also included the rider:
Nowadays a more tolerant attitude is taken towards critics of the judiciary. Nevertheless, lawyers and non-lawyers remain reluctant to emulate the critical approach of Sergeant Roo.
In times past – as I have explained in the history above – lawyers, “If they have suggestions for reform of the judiciary, or comments to make on judicial performance, they whisper them to each other over lunch in the Middle Temple or in professional journals remote from the public gaze. Such heresies are expressed cautiously, in deferential language.” – see Judges, pp 105, 106 where it also said:
In one case, after Lord Mansfield (Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, 1756-88) had given judgment for a Bench of four judges, he asked Sergeant Hill, who appeared for the unsuccessful party, to “tell us your real opinion and whether you don’t think we are right.” Hill replied that “he always thought it his duty to do what the Court desired and … he … did not think that there were four men in the world who could have given such an ill-sounded judgment …
…
More often, it is only in fiction that the conventions of politeness to judges are defied. The judges before whom John Mortimer’s Rumpole appears are perverse and malign. They are ignorant of the ways of the world. They are differential or rude to witnesses depending on the social status of those who have the misfortune to give evidence in their courts. … Only a barrister of Rumpole’s experience (and lack of ambition) can afford to reply in kind to the discourtesy emanating from that fictional Bench.
Ever heard of the expression “truth is stranger than fiction”? In this country we have experienced for real perverse and malign judges, not the fictional ones experienced by John Mortimer’s Rumpole.
In 1680, Nathaniel Redding accused two judges of “oppression” and was condemned in Court to pay the King 500 pounds and lie in prison till he paid it, see Nathaniel Redding’s Case, Sir Thomas Raymond’s Reports 376 n. (1680). Later that term the court remitted the fine and the sentence of imprisonment.
In the Matter of Thomas James Wallace (1866) LR 1 PC 283, a Nova Scotia lawyer wrote a letter to the Chief Justice complaining that “I can’t help thinking that I am not fairly dealt with by the Court or Judges.” He added that he “could also recall cases where the decision was, I believe, largely influenced, if not wholly based, upon information received privately from the wife of one of the parties by the judge. Is this justice?” Lord Westbury, in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, remarked that this “undoubtedly was a letter of a most reprehensible kind … a contempt of court, which it was hardly possible for the Court to omit taking cognizance of.”
I have found a case after 1936, it is R v Logan (1974) Crim LR 609. A man on being convicted shouted from the dock, that it was “a carve up”, was held to be a contempt of court.
But why am I telling this?
Was Matthias Chang charged with contempt for discourtesy to the Bench?
Martyr Without A CauseI should think so. It was crass impertinence of him to behave in such an unruly manner towards a judge. As a lawyer he should know better than to be discourteous to the court.
If I remember correctly he was charged with disrupting the court proceedings while giving evidence as a witness by stomping out of the witness box in a huff and left the court because the judge refused to allow him to deliver a submission or speech from the witness stand.
The only modern case (post 1936) of disruption of court proceedings that I am aware of is the case of Morris v Crown Office [1970] 2 QB 114 where the English Court of Appeal allowed an appeal against their sentence of imprisonment imposed on Welsh students who had disrupted court proceedings. Davies LJ said, at page 127:
On occasions one has the misfortune to encounter someone who makes a disturbance in court. Usually when that happens it is a case of a disappointed litigant who, from a sense of rage or disappointment at the result of his case, loses control of himself and gives vent to his feelings by an outburst either by word of mouth or physically.
In Balogh v St Albans Crown Court [1975] QB 73, a young man was sentenced by Mr. Justice Melford Stevenson to six months’ imprisonment for contempt of court by planning to release laughing gas into the court to disrupt proceedings. He was released by the Court of Appeal because his conduct was not a contempt as he had not disrupted court proceedings. His plan was foiled by the police.
So now we know that the atrocious behaviour of Matthias Chang in court is a contempt in the face of the court. As he did not appeal against the sentence, could it be assumed that he was happy with the sentence of one month’s imprisonment?
Had he appealed, who knows, he could have succeeded following Morris v Crown Office.
I suppose he wants to be a martyr without a cause.
courtesy of Loyarburok.com. Article written by N H Chan, who was a former Court of Appeal judge before retiring.
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