Context and intent

I have no problem with the NST cartoon.

It was a commentary on the current state of the world after the Infamous 12 made a lot of people hurt and angry. In the anger, thousands had hit the streets in protests with placards bearing strong words – slay, behead, death. Buildings were stoned, stormed and burned down. People’s lives were taken – not by accident but killed out of belligerence.

This one didn’t mock the good Prophet – that was the reason for the original cartoon furor wasn’t it? – it mocked the belligerence of zealots. The same breed of people who'd kill Christians in Sulawesi, bomb Bali, and to a lesser extent tear down an Orang Asli church in Johor a couple of days before Christmas last year.

Like any typical cartoon, it was multivalent. If any person so chooses, s/he can almost always find an angle or a reason to get outraged. It’s not very difficult at all. Women-libbers can get incensed at cavemen-drag-woman cartoons, dog-lovers will hate Garfield etc etc.

I am no fan of NST – nor any local mainstream media for that matter except The Sun – but no, I have no problem with that particular cartoon. And I am relieved the government did not suspend the publication or roll off a head or two.

I do have a problem with certain parties and how they perceive the Non Sequitur cartoon. Anything with an M and ends with a D can boil their blood. Context doesn’t seem to matter to them.

Well, context matters helluva lot. Likewise, intent.

Without establishing the two in any situation would be poor judgment. What was the Non Sequitur cartoon actually saying? What was it mocking if indeed it was? Was the NST being deliberately spiteful towards Muslims in running that cartoon? Was it being doubly spiteful in running it again with a commentary?

I don’t know about you, but I enjoyed its editorial stance in not standing down for what it believed in on Day 2 of the saga.

I don't care if it's Umno's mouthpiece, every media in this country is some political party's mouthpiece. That's a given. I don't care if Jeff Ooi's hurt and Aisehman's sad. Just this - if anybody cares to do the right thing, I'm behind you. If only NST continues its boldness in tackling national issues, I would start buying the publication again.

Context and intent. I learned how important they are in design school; I’m seeing how just as critical they are in law and enforcement.

Which is why I still vehemently oppose the draconian suspension of the other two dailies, the Sarawak Tribune and Guang Ming. The intent to hurt was just not there and the context in which the pictures were carried actually gained more dimension and credence with the graphics attached.

It actually acknowledged that we are apes with the ability to abstract and hence judge if Danish paper Jylland-Posten did wrong. Or whether religious zealots were running amok for thin reasons. The newspapers’ action did not deserve such punishment.

Good thing the government didn’t go there the third time.

Fresh air above the nonsense

Politics in Malaysia turned around a corner yesterday. The quaking mainstream media however stood frozen in the dark ages by choosing not to report it. Who can blame them, after all they are currently an utterly confused bunch.

Trust Malaysiakini, uncowed by any ZAM-bitions, to write:

'The race for votes has led political parties like Umno and PAS to use Islam as a platform and do things which ‘we do not believe in’ at the expense of the nation, said a minister.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz made this shocking remark in response to a question at a dialogue with lawyers on whether the country was pandering to the whims and fancies of Islamic hardliners. The de facto law minister said the Malay-based Umno was forced to do the same as Islamic-opposition party PAS in using religion as a platform to garner votes. “We are doing a disservice to our nation, we are led into doing something that we don’t believe,” added Nazri, who is also an Umno supreme council member.'


More importantly, finally a minister with the integrity to call a spade a spade. For the first time in a long while, you have a high-ranking Umno person – a Supreme Council member and full minister – speaking about the inherent folly of playing up the case of religion.

In this land of political wimps and zealots, that takes balls.

And it is balls such as this that will pave the way for a better Malaysia. Nazri’s message: “The problem among Muslims is that we rely on people who are knowledgeable (Islamic scholars) but people like you and me are secular… So speak up.”

Nazri Aziz has come quite a ways from his “bloody racist” days of June last year. He stood up in defence of Teresa Kok, MP for Seputeh, when accusations were getting wild and idiotic during the earsquats saga. Nazri has also said he would like to see the University and University College Act removed.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Now the other face. Why didn’t the media carry this story? Was it deemed too sensitive for the news palate these days? Have we come down to that, Zam-banged mute for fear of mutiny? Are we as a masyarakat so fragile? Can I even talk about this in conversation with my Malay-Muslim friend and speak honestly how I feel?

I see this scenario as one that captures the developing differentiation ongoing within the government – an unfolding drama between feudal conservatives fed and bred on Mahathirian diet and the emerging liberals who believe in a freer, but responsible Malaysia. The saga will go on, slowly churning the cultural milk of this country.

Dialogues will continue to take place not shunned, I hope. In fact, it must. One of my favourite Malaysians is Marina Mahathir for she has a beautiful mind. She has this to say:


‘Then we have this wonderful word “sensitive” in our vocabulary, which in Malaysia, means “don’t talk about it”. We give no quarter to the thought that people might be more mature and resilient than we think, and can discuss issues without resorting to mental breakdowns or violence.

Perhaps it is the people who deem things sensitive who do not have the facility to deal with things in a calm and rational manner. That’s why they assume everyone else will be the same.

… Instead of over-using the word “sensitive” as a codeword for censorship, why not use the word “respectful” and really mean it?

We should say that people of all faiths, races and genders should be respectful of one another in every situation. We should be able to discuss anything at all as long as the ground rules are that we speak respectfully to one another.

But most of all, respectful discussion should not be limited to a tiny space only. It should extend to everything that human beings can discuss. Only then can democracy be meaningful.’


Heart and balls. Hear, hear, the voice of moderate Muslims. Such attitudes will certainly get us farther than duct-tape over our mouths.

Western-style journalism, Zam?

The BBC carries the story about five bodies pulled out from a lake in Selayang. They had been migrant workers.

Some workers in the area said there had been an immigration raid by Rela a few nights before and things got ugly.... as in thug ugly.


BBC journalist Jonathan Kent writes:

"He could not see the Rela officers in the darkness so I asked whether he had heard them speaking Malay.

"Yes, there were, there were," he said. "The police were shouting: 'Come out come out, if you run away we will kill you'.

"Those caught in their hands were beaten by two or three policemen. They treated them like cattle. Their voices were very haughty and arrogant. Their voices were like soldiers and policemen." The first of the bodies was found later that day."


I didn't even see a mention of this in Bernama or our local papers, and Kent makes a note of this, too.

The BBC report - a case of Western-style journalism by Info Minister Zam's definition - is fine balanced reporting, in my opinion. And it reads well. It sought and included responses from the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of Rela, about the raid. It provided perspective to the issue of migrant workers here and human rights organisations stand against groups such as Rela.

As almost always, the official response - Malaysian-style - doesn't quite square with eye-witness accounts.

Five lives have been lost, migrant workers no less. Their bodies were all found in a nearby lake a few days after a raucous raid.

So Zam, with your Malaysian-style belukar of information dispersal, how does one approach the actual truth? How does one even know anything if it's censored right in the bud?

It's about reaching for truth. It's about ripping apart the cloaks of deceit. It's about growing up. It has never been about style. Not western, not eastern, not Malaysian. Transparency wears nothing.

Two crests and the rain

Pak Lah, with the noble Crest of Malaysia filling the backdrop, announced his cabinet reshuffle yesterday. It was a short press conference. Simultaneously, it also had an intriguing multi-media display. I don’t imagine anybody planned it, but it graphically explained the implications of his decision.

If you caught the live telecast you may have observed one peculiar thing perhaps emblematic of the current spirit and directions of our land. The Malaysian Crest they projected onto the backdrop was tacky, heavily pixilated and fuzzy. It had poor resolution.

That, combined with recent events, made for a very clear speech.

No wonder reporters had only a total of eight questions to ask.

As he mumbled off the names of who’s going where, employees of the Guang Ming Afternoon Daily mulled a two-week shutdown, courtesy of the government for printing a picture of a person reading a newspaper with those cartoons. While the decision was dim enough, it further reinforced favouritism when TV3 was spared even though it carried the same image and reaches a far wider audience.

Silly me for thinking politicians use the common dictionary to define ‘integrity’ and ‘transparency’.

Pak Lah’s announcement reminded me of the wonderful Commencement Speech at Stanford last year by Apple chief Steve Jobs, but in an incredibly distorted and morbid way.

In parting, Jobs had said: “Stay Hungry. Say Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

The corrupted and the feudal beasts in government would certainly love that. Literally.

Is there any light to all this? A sign perhaps?

Me, I’m drawn to another crest, a seemingly unrelated event developing in Terengganu. The Kenyir Dam has surpassed the 145m red-alert level. If rains continue to pour in that region, we could see massive floods all the way to Kuala Terengganu.

Similarly, 92 percent of voters placed their trust in Pak Lah’s BN government which had promised reforms. That’s a lot of trust. Out with corruption, in with transparency, in with integrity!, the Barisan band played. Two years of unexplained exposes and unfulfilled promises, it’s beginning to feel like a dam filled to the brim. Instead of keeping to their word, they shut the 'Western-style' sluicegates of information and sound a stern warning.

In maintaining the reactionaries and incompetents in the bloated Cabinet, Pak Lah has turned his back on the wishes of the people. He may have forgotten ‘kenyir’ in Malay means ‘to long for, to desire’. The Barisan dam may be big, but it is also finite and can only hold so much.

Come elections, the rains might just render the dam useless.

Try fly, he said

It was 3.46am when the cell-phone beeped. My elder brother had messaged to say he’s now a dad. First-time dad, and twins too. I was still up working – I work best at night – and immediately called to congratulate the dude. Too bad you’re in Singapore, I told him, I’d love to have a cigar with you right now.

The mother’s doing well, he tells me. Good.

We laughed quite a bit. He was obviously overjoyed with the new additions. We laughed the laughter only brothers share with each other. I felt good for him. The man deserved it.

He's three years older than me and we’ve come a long way together.

It was he who untangled me from the chain-link fence way back when I was a five-year-old. We were trying to do a shortcut to a neighbor’s birthday party and I got stuck in all the wires. When I was six, he held my hand and taught me to draw. At seven, he placed a ball at my feet and said, kick dammit.

At 16, he placed a book by my head prone on the pillow and said, read this dammit. It was Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I tried but it hurt my head. It was full of those Aristotle and Socrates and Plato stuff, and my hormones were pointing to another direction altogether.

In the ensuing years, we developed along separate paths. He remained steady as a rock, and I, the middle child, became the wanderer. As we grew older, he didn’t so much as teach anymore – he couldn’t, we ran on different fuels – rather he enabled.

He didn’t know it then, but these hands that he taught to draw would today draw for a living. These feet he taught to kick, well, they’ve grown to shun mediocrity and strive to kick ass instead. As for Pirsig’s ZAMM, I did finish it and have since reread it numerous times. It remains one of my favourite books, although my head still hurts. Perhaps even more.

In many ways, while my brother dug down in the trenches and moved in-step with the workings of the world, he set me on a ledge and said: “Go ahead. Try to fly. Or you’ll never know.”

I tried and I still don’t know. But I do know the man’s there when I need deep insights. That’s only because he helps me answer my own questions. Like the time I seriously wondered if I shouldn’t be working in Singapore. I was fresh back in the region and feeling the discomforts of culture shock. By all rational measures, the scales tipped heavily towards Singapore. I made a trip to the island and sought my brother’s views.

Over at the kopi-tiam below his HDB flat that evening, in between gulps of kopi-o, I described my dilemma. I skewed it in favour of the Lion City.

“Look,” I pointed to an SBS bus driving past, “Public transport works here! The civil service works here! Things just work! It seems commonsensical, but people with the right skills are in the right place, by and large. And they’re constantly thirsting for ideas. Architecture-wise, you can tell there’s more discourse. They’ve done wonders to the river. We? We turned Klang River into a bloody longkang….yadda yadda yadda…. Tell me how we measure against that back home.”

Brother was silent for a while. He chewed on his boiled kailan and stared towards the shady angsana-lined street.

“I moved here because I’m more relevant here. You did too, many years ago,” he finally said.

“And then you left. Now – what eight, 10 years? – you’ve come back to this region giving up what you had described to be a good life in Oregon. A rich and challenging experience, you said. But between a Green Card and Southeast Asia, you decided this place had stronger appeal. You’ve actually come back.

“Why did you really come back?

“Was it to fight the good fight or did you expect a bed of roses?

“In your emails from abroad you wrote about the unique texture of Southeast Asia and its towns and cities and how these need to be managed with sensitive hands. You wrote about how local materials ought to be pushed. You wrote about the beauty of brick and clay and rattan and bamboo. And you talked about rain and how it is material, like light is material. You talked about social architecture. Frankly, I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I’m trained in accountancy. But I’m damned curious.

“So, you gave up the good life and chose a cause. Why did you really come back?”

This time it was I who was silent for a while. In simple symmetry, I chewed on boiled kailan and stared towards the darkened angsana-lined street.

Two youths on trendy mountain bikes complete with biker shorts and torpedo-shaped helmets zipped by. Canggih to the max. And almost instantly, I recall a scene just outside Temerloh many years ago. A father – he must have been a farmer – cycling his little daughter back from school in the bleaching afternoon sun. I remember our bus passed the primary school quite a few kilometres back. Somehow for that brief second, the little girl sitting on daddy’s crumbling bicycle, uniform reddish from laterite dust, looked at me and I her. She smiled the toothiest grin. Two bicycle scenes sat side by side inside me for a brief moment – sleek versus warmth divided by a razor-thin wall.

It was then when I realized why I really came back.

Brother does that to me. He knows the acupuncture points to my Being. Brother has been there as an anchor and a compass all through my life. He’s gifted at that but probably doesn’t realize it.

He’ll make a fabulous father and I am happy for his kids.

And brother, I’ll try my darndest to show you rain is material. I’ll show you sensitive social architecture is more beautiful than any fancy-ass architecture anyday. I’ll walk the walk and fight the good fight. Now that you’ve pointed me home.

Losing faith

This blog is hosted by Blogger. It is free. I can use it to deride Blogger, try to start a war against it or the country it is based. I can post pictures of naked women and yes, cartoons. But Blogger still says go ahead, its yours for free. Use it.

Yes, I am still answerable to the laws of my country.

Blogger is but one of many dozens of free blog hosts out there that essentially believe a larger common good comes out of freedom and local control. Together with wikis, it believes in the individual as being a vital component to human society, not a digit. It believes that the more people exchange the more resolutions can be reached. It believes that through information dispersal people find their way, make their friends, turn on the lights and grow up.

It doesn’t promise instant paradise, rather baby steps and stumbles. It doesn’t believe in monoculture rather diversity of the richest kind imaginable.

That, to me, is faith.

Faith that the individual has a brain and collectively helps pave those treks we call culture. It is the believe that while lies, fraud, bigotry and chauvinism will continue to operate, they will be exposed and sublimated. And an individual empowered is worth more than having the title datuk by his name.

The Malaysian Cabinet met on Wednesday and decided unanimously that the Sarawak Tribune needed to be whipped bad for publishing those controversial caricatures. Apologies and an editor's resignation did not do enough. Pak Lah, prime minister and internal security minister today announced that the newspaper has been suspended indefinitely.

Pak Lah also “issued a blanket prohibition in the whole country starting today on the printing, import, production, circulation, distribution or possession of the Sarawak Tribune publication which undermine public order, security and national interest or which may disturb the minds of the people”, reports Bernama.

Now, that disturbs my mind. That basically means context of the article surrounding the cartoon shall remain undisclosed, not to be discussed. All we know is the headline: ‘Cartoon not much impact here’.

Of course the public is not privy to what was discussed in the meeting of our nation’s top honchos. Was it all over in a minute? Was there any debate? What was the real reason? Nope, not a single disclosure. Just a tsk-tsk-tsk from Deputy Information Minister Donald Lim saying here’s a warning, y’all.

The basic message: Why does the individual need to know? Don't get too smart. Don't dig too deep.

In muzzling the press, the cabinet has shown it is insecure and has no faith in the individual. Some government folks have begun to say the press has been sensationalizing issues to sell papers. Pardon me? It’s far, far easier to dig dirt and juicy details on local personalities than to take on non-issues with the government. The government must have so much dirty laundry that the few write-ups by our local Pravdas can cause its knees to shake or jerk. And why am I not surprised?

The Malaysian cabinet made a poor and reactionary judgment on Wednesday which echoed another stupid one barely a month ago with the forced resignation of two China Press editors. It has pulled one out from the old play-book of the Operation Lalang days, the only other time any local newspaper had been suspended.

One would wish such swift action in the many problems facing this country - corruption, police indignation and abuse, APs, transparency, lawatan sambil belajar - but alas, we are but digits.

Just about two years ago, our benign-looking PM said: Work with me, not for me.

I’m sorry Mr Prime Minister, but with such a message coming out of that harsh punishment, you fail to convince.

Mud pact

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour

William Blake
excerpt from Auguries of Innocence


Reverence. We need more of that juice in times like these. Blake’s lines might sound clichéd to some, but every so often I find it well to play an old record. Just so to balm a frustrated soul and knock in perspective. Globally and locally, things just seem a little off-orbit lately.

Newspaper cartoons leading to cries of beheading and boycotts and actual arson. Heads shaved over a mahjong session. Toxic dumping. Illegal logging. Allegations of citizenship and Bumi status up for lelong in Sabah. Crooked bridge and airspace. It’s getting tiresome.

Especially infuriating is when groups or individuals do cheap sales talk in the capacity of an honoured position. Justifying that black is white. I don’t know about you, but I can smell false patriotism from the real thing, vindictive law-enforcing from true peacekeepers, and all the pong of serve-myself-first attitudes. It smells like fresh vomit.

Selfishness impoverishes. Our bank accounts may get fat but our marrow dries up.

Reverence. If only we could begin to see the halo in all things – be it mud, rock, fire, animal, humans – as a direct extension of ourselves, of an Immensity beyond meager scriptures, that I am you and we are one, then maybe we can safely halve the problems we face today.

Belligerence beheads everybody, not just Danish newspaper folk.

"But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all.
I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried. I run all around the house. I knew just what it was…
Listen, God love everything you love – and a mess of stuff you don't.
But more than anything else God love admiration.

You saying God vain? I ast.

Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing.
I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."

Alice Walker
excerpt from The Color Purple


If there was something I’d dearly wish to behead, it’d be the medusa of belligerence. If there was anything worth shaving, it'd be the locks of ignorance and deceit. If there was one bridge I’d die to help build, it’d be the bridge of commonality. Nothing much else.

Look, look, look… and then see. See the halo. We are all mud and spit and fire. What’s there to hate in that.