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."
DAP's tail wagging the dog conundrum By Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Friday, February 23, 2024
Malaysiakini : Not only is this statement ahistorical but it also gaslights
supporters into thinking that serving the nation is devoid of politics,
which is blatantly untrue when it comes to the DAP and how it has
handled its relationship with Malay power brokers.
Honestly, when
DAP secretary-general Anthony Loke said this - āAnyone in DAP who cannot
keep their mouth shut on this matter is not welcome at all to speak on
the DAP stage,ā in response to former Damansara MP Tony Puaās contention
in a fundraiser that BN was a corrupt coalition, you canāt make the
claim that leaders in the DAP are altruistic and leaders in the MCA are
not when it comes to not only corruption but enabling kleptocratic power
structures.
It also makes every other party seem like a bunch of
self-serving power-hungry crackpots and the DAP is the only party who
have leaders who want to serve the nation but are willing to work with
these self-serving power-hungry crackpots.
Former Bangi MP Ong Kian Ming
Ok,
forget about the rest of the parties but if you think that the MCA did
not have leaders who wanted to serve the nation but were constrained by
the power-sharing nonsense that the DAP now finds itself grappling with
and did nothing for the country, then you are truly drunk on the
kool-aid.
As former DAP whipping boy and someone Pua called a Chinese chauvinist, Ronnie Liu, said
- āThe ones (who have) tasted power, position and perks have lost sight
of (their) values and virtues and why theyāre in politicsā¦ This is not
the way to go.ā
DAP is already MCA 2.0
Since
I have not noticed any Pakatan Harapan - especially DAP - big shots
calling Anwar a Malay chauvinist, it is hypocritical to level the charge
against anyone speaking up for their community while at the same time
condoning the rhetoric and policies that favour one community over the
other in the name of political compromise, while claiming we are all
āMalaysiansā.
And this has always been the problem with the DAP.
It has to ignore the racialist and sometimes downright racist policies
and rhetoric of its partner but has to police its own and ensure that
the party apparatchiks conform to the multiracial/multicultural horse
manure, which it does not have to defend.
Iāll leave the really
nonsensical statement that the DAP āhas not become part of the Chinese
business and corporate landscapeā alone because I assume that these
types of statements would only be believed by the most naĆÆve of the DAP
base.
Ongās claims that what people really mean when they ask if
the DAP is turning into MCA 2.0 is if the DAP remains vocal on issues
they raised before they got into power. By this definition, the DAP has
already turned into MCA 2.0 because, of course, they have been silent on
issues they were vocal about before they attained power.
From
issues such as systemic reform, to M Indira Gandhi and Teoh Beng Hock,
to Lynas, to Chinese education - you name it and the DAP has been quiet
as church mice.
Once, DAP chairperson Lim Guan Eng, when debating
with former MCA president and former health minister Chua Soi Lek,
admonished the latter that the Chinese should not beg for scraps.
However, when Lim became finance minister, we now know that the
non-Malay community was given far less than the Malay community, but
nobody in DAP said anything because it would spook the Malays and anger
the Chinese community.
DAP chairperson Lim Guan Eng
Furthermore,
when Ong argues that the DAP did not manage its relationship with
Bersatu, especially when it came to 3R issues, it points to how
non-Malay power structures have to deal with lesser (in terms of vote
share) Malay power structures to retain any kind of power and have to
kowtow to Malay power brokers even though ābetrayalā is all they get,
which is then used by propagandists to firm up support for the DAP and
which only advances racialists narratives.
Ong thinks that the DAP
could have managed the relationship better, however, for party
strategist Liew Chin Tong, DAP was a great friend to Muhyiddin Yassin
and yet he betrayed the party.
As Liew wrote
in the strange case of Muhyiddin Yassin - āIn four years between 2016
and 2020, each time you asked DAP for help, we never failed you, we did
everything possible to assist you. Playing the anti-DAP card to justify
the existence of the Perikatan Nasional coalition would only make you
seem hypocritical.ā
Real and imagined fear
What
we are dealing with here is a new political terrain where there are no
truly progressive political parties in the mainstream establishment.
Yes,
we could hope for independent candidates and outlier coalitions but
people are too afraid to take any kind of chances, which is what these
legacy parties are banking on. This is about fear.
The Malays feel
that they are under siege, which is total bunkum because the political
establishment does everything in their power to ensure that they are not
spooked and that entitlement programmes disproportionately favour them.
These are the so-called Malay rights that everyone keeps babbling
about.
However, what the non-Malays fear is very real. The
encroachment into our public and economic spaces. The way the religion
of the state sometimes means children are kidnapped because of
unilateral conversions. The way the state controls the words we can and
cannot use. The way the state disenfranchises non-Malays from public
education.
The tragedy is that while the DAP has electoral power
for a myriad of reasons, this does not translate to political power. The
same could have been said about the MCA. When it comes to non-Malay
power structures, the tail does truly wag the dog.