Rudyard Kipling"
āWhen 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 soldierā
General Douglas MacArthur"
āWe are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.ā
āIt is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.ā āOld soldiers never die; they just fade away.
āThe soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.ā
āMay God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .ā āThe object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
āNobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
āIt 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."
Anonymous : Why did that school principal bow down to the stupendous demands of the racist bigots?
Was the principal threatened by the authorities? How come our Police support the racist bigots instead of arresting them? The reason why so many racist bigots like Putra and Perkasa are so active is because our Police and govt are supporting them and let them do as they like. The IGP and the Home Minister are responsible.
What next, will the Police ask the shopping malls to take down all their Chinese New Year decorations as well? And not allow Christmas and Deepavali decorations too? The only decorations allowed are Hari Raya decorations in future? Malaysia has reached another new level of stupidity!
Malaysiakini : "Ha-ha !" - Nelson Munch (The Simpsons)
COMMENT
| Mohd Khairul Azam Abdul Aziz, vice-president of some far-right
outfit, managed to troll the Pakatan Harapan cabinet with his letter of
demand, which resulted in the spectacle of several ministers visiting a
high school in Puchong. A shyster somehow managed to convince a
schmuck of principal (with the help of the police) to take down Chinese
New Year decorations because it meant propagating to Muslim students.
Now
some folks like the spectacle of cabinet ministers parading about
affirming the multicultural foundations of this country, but the reality
is that these feel-good moments are nothing but spitting in the wind of
the systemic dysfunction of the government. First off, what kind
of principal removes Chinese New Year decorations because of a dodgy
letter of demand? Did the principal alert colleagues at the Education
Ministry of the bizarre race-baiting letter? Did the principal alert the
press that some racist provocateur was threatening a public school?
And the really silly excuse by Deputy Education Minister Teo Nie Ching that the police merely āadvisedā the school to remove the decorations to de-escalate the situation. First
of all, what kind of police do we have here? Removing the decorations
by definition is an escalation. This is what raises the temperature,
especially on social media, where the perception is that a lone
far-right person has more influence over a public school than the
principal, the parents and even the police.
Also, removing
cultural symbols of non-Muslims from public spaces is the definition of
the Islamisation process that many folks fear. But I do not
really blame the school in this instance. What happens if they decided
to ignore the advice of the police? What would have been the
consequences of ignoring this advice? Which is why I find the
deputy minister's rather facile excuse intolerable. As usual, Harapan
does everything in its power to ignore the real issue.
What
the cabinet should be doing instead of handing out autographed lanterns
or whatever they were doing in that school, was to inform that the
police should no longer back race-and-religious-baiting people like this
lawyer. And this is really what the police did. They enabled this shyster and he got a win out of this.
Harapan
cabinet ministers who are losing credibility by the day, got a chance
to trot over to this school and have a feel-good moment when most of the
ministers who were there are either by silence or overtly perpetuate
the very system that allows this conman to get away with sending letters
of demand based on racial and religious agendas. Just take a moment and look at the pictures of those Harapan ministers joyously holding lanterns.
We
have the boy minister Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman engaging in a
little bit of multiculturalism while asking us to move on from the Zakir
Naik issue. Then read what this far-right lawyer said about the
excessiveness of the decorations. On why he deemed the SMK Pusat Bandar
Puchong 1 decorations to be excessive, he said: āBecause I feel like
it!ā
This is exactly the kind of thinking that is behind most
religious provocations in this country carried out by the far-right. And
they get away with it because Harapan regime has no counter-narrative
that differentiates it from these buffoons. Can anyone really
make the argument that the Harapan religious czarās ācompassionate
Islamā is different from the likes of this lawyer? Harapanās religious
czar Mujahid Yusof Rawa pontificates about a moderate Islam, but has no
problem with a religious department in a supposedly āprogressiveā state
labelling a womanās movement within Islam as deviant.
This sends
out a message to every Muslim that the far-right and the religious
bureaucracy control the official narrative of the state and Muslims had
better watch their step. Harapan loves to talk about how people
are inciting the populace with racial and religious provocations. But
what they canāt do is justify why they have a race-based party in their
alliance, carry out ādonāt spook the Malaysā agendas, bow out of
international treaties which eliminates racism and of course, why the
state security apparatus which is supposed to be an independent
institution coddles far-right extremists while doing the bidding of
their political masters with regards to targeting their political
opponents or those in the favour of the power elite.
I
mean balaclava-clad state security operators take down Indian citizens
of this country for possessing āLTTE literatureā and this shyster sends
the equivalent of a parcel bomb to a school ā how can you think of it as
when Harapan cabinet ministers feel they have to visit the school to
make a point ā and Khairul Azam is all smiling after he was interviewed
by the state security apparatus.
This shyster trolled the cabinet and probably the Harapan base, and no doubt there are others waiting in line to do the same. I will close this piece by referencing the whole Jawi controversy. Did anyone else read A Kadir Jasinās piece on the subject? Eye-opening for sure but is Kadir going to court the displeasure of the far-right? Remember
when Pakatan Harapan lawmaker Wong Shu Qi was accused by the far-right
for insulting Jawi by linking it with pornography?
āSlide two gave examples of other reading materials which used Jawi, including pornographic reading materials,ā her statement read. Now we have Kadir writing about reading Utusan Melayu. āI remember the many hours of sheer ecstasy I had reading the lurid
details of sexual relationships among the beautiful teenage model
Christine Keeler, the British War Minister, Lord Profumo, and the
Russian spy, Yevgeni Ivanov, in the Utusan Melayu. Thanks to my Jawi proficiency and the liberalism of the Utusan Melayu at that time ā 1963 if my memory serves me right ā I had many hours of excitement and gratification.ā
Indeed.
I
guess Harapan needs to reconsider how it sells Jawi to the non-Malays.
Itās always about the sell. I guess Khairul Azam is not the only one who
likes to troll Harapan.