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."
Sickness of May 13 still troubles the nation By Steve Oh
Sunday, May 14, 2023
Malaysiakini : The truth about May 13 was buried in layers of deceit and lies.
Unprincipled politicians have stooped to exploit it in their political
propagating and fearmongering.
Someday, the nation will have to
exorcise the lies and heal the nation of the insidious āsicknessā of
spreading lies. It has to reconcile with the truth of a bloody past and
place the blame squarely on political conspiracy and not race rioting.
Incitement can't ever be legitimate in Malaysian politics.
āThe
May 13 incidentā, as Wikipedia describes it, was āan episode of
Sino-Malay sectarian violence that took place in Kuala Lumpur, the
capital of Malaysia, on May 13, 1969ā.
However,
if the truth is the basis of history, then the conventional description
of May 13 as āracial riotsā is but a half-truth.
One misses the true picture, the kernel of truth, like skipping the
pages of a book or fast-forwarding a video to only watch the action
scenes and miss the crucial plot.
May 13, the official narrative
of racial riots and bloodshed, describes the symptoms. What one may
describe as the āsickness of May 13ā however was something more sinister
beyond the riots and it still troubles the nation.
Coup dāetat
A
credible diagnosis of the āsicknessā and its cause that still bedevils
the country is a book titled 'May 13: Declassified Documents on the
Malaysian Riots of 1969' written by Kua Kia Soong, referencing British
declassified documents. It explained the truth behind the May 13
massacres.
Kua's
truth was that: āThe May 13 Incident was above all, a coup d'etat by
the then emergent Malay state capitalist class to depose Tunku (Abdul
Rahman) who represented the outdated Malay aristocracy.ā
The truth
becomes clearer when it comes from the horse's mouth. Then prime
minister Tunku Abdul Rahman himself the raison d'etre for the political
purge, later openly blamed certain politicians āwho were all working
with (Abdul) Razak (Hussein) to oust me, to take over my placeā.
It
was a bloodless coup for Tunku himself but many more than the official
statistics of 196 deaths of unwary Chinese and Malays lost their lives.
The
country has yet to reconcile the mass murders of the innocents, whoever
they are. Accounts from individual eyewitnesses of the brutalities are
chilling.
Conversely, stories of Malays protecting Chinese neighbours and vice
versa portray the real Malaysia - a success story of multiracial harmony
and caring for one another.
It is a story worth telling and what Anwar Ibrahim's government is achieving for the nation at the macro plane.
Malaysiakini did an excellent May 13 story worth reading four years ago.
Former prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman
Razak
deposed Tunku and ushered in the era of entitlement. It paved the way
for maverick leaders to plunder the nation and amass incredible wealth
to the detriment of ordinary Malaysians still bogged in poverty.
Razak,
in pushing the ethnocentric agenda, planted the seed of the political
idea of āketuananā, much criticised by reform politicians and civil
society.
Malay supremacy
The concept of
Malay supremacy was incompatible with the national motto and ideology of
āunity is strengthā, integral to a nation built on equal constitutional
rights of the diverse races. The add-ons such as creating a
ābumiputeraā classification of citizens were plainly unconstitutional.
Subsequent
to May 13, 1969, successive governments, particularly under Dr Mahathir
Mohamad's inordinately long 22-year leadership, failed to achieve the
desired and much-hyped national goals.
The mainstay New Economic
Policy, which had a use-by date, has been extended ad infinitum because
it failed in its goals and created the new problem of wealth disparity
among the Malays.
Former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad
If
sedition is understood as the overthrow of a government and people
accept Kua's diagnosis and Tunkuās allegations, then those who deposed
him were unequivocally guilty of sedition.
That's what a coup d'etat involves and what some politicians are doing to overthrow the current government by misusing religion.
Like
the clandestine overthrow of Tunku, there are overt and secret forces
organising against the incumbent Pakatan Harapan/BN government today.
They
want to get rid of the Agong-sanctioned government helmed by Anwar
Ibrahim and deploy the same dirty trick of race-baiting, slander, and
lies and add religion to their political arsenal. They carry the āMay 13
virusā, deadlier than the mutating Covid-19 virus.
They are
āsickā not because they want to win power fair and square, but because
they resort to subterfuge and spin lies against the government.
The
original May 13 conspirators lied that Tunku was a traitor to the
Malays, they lied that the communists were Chinese, ignoring the truth
that many were Malays. Later, their political descendants lied that Lim
Kit Siang was accountable for May 13, 1969, when he was not even in
Kuala Lumpur, and so on.
Virus of lies
Today,
the liars are cut from the same evil cloth and lie against the
government. While the authorities are busy arresting amorous young
courting couples, the liars are actively courting impressionable young
Malays.
Academic Mohd Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi sounds the timely alarm in his MySinchew
article, āOur country is on the precipiceā, and beckons his fellow
Malaysians to save the country through the ballot in the forthcoming
state polls.
The āMay 13ā virus of race, subversion, and lies has
mutated to include religion. Alarmingly, the sickness has spread and if
Tajuddin's worst fears come to pass, Malaysia will be another sad story,
a basket case, a failed state.
A country run by zealots will end
up ruined. Which country run by zealots is a happy, prosperous, and
successful place? Why turn the country into another Afghanistan or
Pakistan when it is uniquely and truly Asian and free?
DAP leader
Lim Guan Eng is right in calling for PAS leader Abdul Hadi Awang to be
taken to task for constantly making untrue, offensive, and subversive
lies against the government.
How a religious leader can spin the
way he does is beyond belief. How can anyone contravene not only his but
all faiths and their teaching against slander?
PAS president Abdul hadi Awang
May
13 will not repeat itself in bloody racial fighting between the Malays
and Chinese. However, the threat of the āvirus of liesā that brainwashes
the impressionable to follow the crowd in doing wrong is real. The
āsicknessā is real and if it spreads will create havoc. No one should be
complacent.
What Tajuddin warns the nation is foreboding and
should be taken seriously. Every vote against the retrograde agenda of
PAS is hope for the nation and saving it from the precipice.
For
too long, the lies and subterfuge have eaten away at the innate harmony
of the diverse races in the nation. The lying, the organised wholesale
poisoning of Malay minds by unprincipled political and religious leaders
must stop. Umno has much to answer for past wrongs in this regard and
must work overtime to redeem its past.
On May 13, they usurped
Tunku's position and then spread lies about him. They spread lie after
lie to arouse the anger of the Malays to go berserk and massacre the
Chinese. Violence then begot violence. History tends to repeat itself in
different manifestations but be warned.
Religion has overtaken
race as the cause of conflict. If ever there is fighting again, it will
be instigated by callous politicians who abuse religion to satisfy their
retrograde agenda. It happened to race on May 13, 1969, but race was
not the raison d'etre, the ousting of an incumbent prime minister was.
The
subversion of the government and the nation must be quelled. The spread
of lies against the government and ethnic communities must be stopped.
The
insidious āMay 13ā virus must politically perish and its spreaders
immobilised or kiss Malaysia as we know and enjoy goodbye.
