Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
My pick of top news of 2019 - Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Malaysiakini : "The headlines screamed at him as soon as he saw the paper. He almost screamed back." - Terry Pratchett, Going Postal.
COMMENT |
My pick for the top news stories this year is a little different.
Instead of five news stories, I am honing on three narratives and two
news items. The three narratives I am focusing on are not new.
What is new is that it points to the virulence of a system that Pakatan
Harapan is incapable – for various reasons – of dismantling. These
narratives confirm that the new Malaysia Kool-Aid is just as dangerous
as the Kool-Aid Rembau MP Khairy Jamaluddin said BN was imbibing when they lost the last general election.
What
we will be dealing with in 2020 is the collective failure of Harapan to
establish a counter-narrative to the Umno/PAS narrative of racial and
religious supremacy. The reality is that Umno and PAS play the
game better because they do not have to worry about the expectations of a
base which was promised a new dawn in racial and religious dynamics.
PSM
president Mohd Nasir Hisham is correct when he claimed that the agenda
of Harapan seems to be creating superficial differences with the
previous regime. The problem with this strategy is that
eventually the base will either slip into apathy about the political
process or revert to what they know instead of dealing with cynical
pleas to emotion.
Here are the three narratives and two news stories.
The worsening 3Rs
The race, religion and royalty narrative worsened this year. This happened for a variety of reasons.
Umno/PAS’
intellectual and moral bankruptcy is matched by Harapan’s. The Harapan
base which was so long fed on a steady diet of the Kool-Aid, believed
that a change of stewardship in this country meant a change of the
racial and religious dialectic.They could not have been more wrong.
From
PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim's “don’t spook the Malays” to the Old
Maverick’s “react in a very Malay way”, the discourse has not been about
policy but rather about how the majority would react to a policy solely
based on race and religion. From my vantage point - This is why merely pointing to the far-right as the cause of the escalation of racial and religious rhetoric is bunkum.
When Parti
Solidariti Tanah Airku Rakyat Sabah (Star) president Jeffrey Kitingan
says "get rid of race-based parties", what exactly does he mean? Get rid
of something like Bersatu, which we are told is the reason why Harapan
won the election? Or get rid of Bersatu, which dominates the
policy-making decisions of Harapan?
Some
folks will argue that Islamophobia is not a real thing. Religious
extremists made it up to justify their victimhood. The Harapan
government has been peddling this victimhood narrative on the
international stage and in national policy.I have often argued that the most influential minister is the one in charge of Islamic affairs.
Harapan’s religious czar, Mujahid Yusof Rawa (above),
has babbled on about “compassionate Islam” but has done everything in
his power to advance narratives and policies which are exclusionary and
counterproductive to the supposed “moderate” religious agenda of
Harapan.
If people have a phobia about religion, it is because
those in control of the religion have demonstrated that their impulses
are fascist instead of egalitarian, which religion is supposed to be
about.
From my vantage point - Perlis mufti Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin said that he believes the opposition against khat was grounded in a phobia of Islam. My question is, can Muslims understand why some people are Islamophobic?
The
recent close encounter in Selangor with unilateral conversion
demonstrates that religion continues to be weaponised in the Harapan
regime - something we were told would cease under the new management.
The sanctioning of fake news by the state
Umno/BN did it and now Harapan is doing it too.
The
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) threat and the communist threat
have taken a life of their own. They have become a convenient weapon to
attack the minorities in this country and the state has shown no
interests in countering these narratives.
Indeed what the state
has been doing through its security apparatus is legitimising these
narratives. Not only do minorities have to justify their place under the
Malaysian sun, they now have to worry about the blowback from religious
extremists who have a convenient hook to place their imagined
grievances on.
From my vantage point - Demonising minority
groups, politicians and activists as a threat to national security is
not something new in Malaysia. DAP stalwart Lim Kit Siang argued against
the duplicity of the state in 2007, when the then attorney-general
Abdul Gani Patail attempted to link the Hindraf movement with the LTTE
in the infamous Batu Caves 31 murder trial.
"What was the
justification for the attorney-general leading the attack on Hindraf for
its alleged terrorist links? ... Gani said his linking Hindraf to the
LTTE in his argument at the Shah Alam Sessions Court... was based on a
police report. He said: 'Somebody lodged a police report that there is
ground that these people have been going out to (establish) contact with
this LTTE'," Lim said at the time.
The Lynas con
At
a time when the environment is a major issue especially with young
people, Harapan has chosen to backtrack on this by displaying the kind
of mendacity they accuse their opponents of.
Wong Tack, the
activist turned politician, has been left out in the cold and this issue
has become another embarrassing flashpoint between activist groups and
the commercial interests of Harapan politicians.
From my vantage point -
DAP Youth deputy chief Chiong Yoke Kong is on the ball when he demanded
the minutes of the cabinet meeting be made public and the stand of each
cabinet minister on this issue be revealed.
Malaysians have a
right to know which cabinet member does not want to save Malaysia, or
was just playing Harapan supporters for fools when he or she claimed
that stopping Lynas meant saving lives and saving Malaysia.
Lowering the voting age
I am ending this piece on a bright note for Harapan. One of the more productive policies of Harapan is lowering the voting age
to 18. While the “debate” on this issue was nonsensical, what a new
Malaysia needs are young people who want to change the system.
Now
with all the racial and religious indoctrination being carried out by
Harapan, the continued polemics of the far-right, the machinations of
the deep Islamic state and of course the “charisma” of the big cheese,
it remains to be seen if young people will engage with the process or
slip into a fugue state which took their elders decades to come into.
From my vantage point
- A good example of this is lawyer Syahredzan Johan’s tweet last year
after Harapan’s historic win, where he wrote: “You know why #UndiRosak
failed? Because we have not yet come to a point where voters see PH and
BN as identical choices. Even the most cynical see PH as a lesser evil.
And #undirosak proponents could not articulate their views further than
'we need a better opposition'.”