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."
Not all Malays are equal, some are more so than others by Commander (Rtd) S Thayaparan formerly of the Royal Malaysian Navy
Friday, February 08, 2013
"For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their
manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for
those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is
to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then
punish them." - Thomas More (Utopia) COMMENT My
pro-establishment friends get extremely upset whenever I throw around
the term ‘Umnoputra'. "A complete, mischaracterisation of the Malay
struggle," they write in emails in response to articles I have written.Understand now that as someone who has drawn politically incorrect
lines in the racial sands of Malaysian politics, I am not sympathetic to
the idea that racial preoccupations should be dismissed outright. I do
believe that there is a ‘Malay struggle' going on in the greater Malay
polity but the struggle is a reaction against the dereliction of duty
that a sizeable faction of the Malay community accuses Umno of. I
know a few former and current influential Umno members and the
difference between the two is that the latter are completely out of
touch with the conflicting sentiments of the average Malaysian but more
importantly of the average Malay. You could chalk this up to the
divergent Umno cultural differences or maybe as I have argued before
that sycophancy is rewarded in the so-called Umno Baru. Nowhere
is the ‘class' difference more apparent than in the recent expose of
land deals by the Pakatan Rakyat administration in Selangor, where
nobody is shocked to discover that Umno groupies are given a 12 percent discount when they purchase property "cultivated" by Umno. I
wonder what the other component parties in BN think of this. Surely,
the MCA would have something to say about it, notwithstanding the
‘bumiputera' discount. The MIC on the other hand is not even worth
mentioning. Moreover, I wonder does this Umno discount apply to the
Malaysian Indian Muslim Congress (Kimma), which has achieved
‘non-voting/observer' status in Umno? Does ‘big brother' give
their little sibling discounts since it would seem (especially in
Penang) the most vociferous defenders of Malay rights are from the
Indian Muslim community? To say nothing of the fact that by giving Umno
members a discount and not including the other non-Umno aligned Malays a
taste from the gravy train, points to a very real split within the
Malay community engendered by Umno. Left out of Umno's patronage So this Umno sham of protecting Malay rights is revealed and the Malays
who do not benefit from Umno patronage are lumped with the other
non-desirable ‘pendatangs'. However, this is nothing new. Malays
who for whatever reason are unwelcome on the Umno gravy train for years
have been complaining that they have been marginalised under the Umno
watch, much like their fellow non-Malay citizens but the sad reality is
that the discourse is constructed in such a way that racialists have a
field day extending the Umnoputra stereotype to every Malay. Thankfully, this is changing. Despite the many criticism hurled at
Pakatan Rakyat, collectively what they have managed to do is frame the
conflict (on better days) as one of a class not race. In other words,
Malaysia is divided along class lines with Umno being a racial oligarchy
with the rest of us as some kind of serf class, only here to realise
the aspirations of Umno plutocrats. What I find interesting
though is the response of the old school Umno men and women, who view
the current class struggle with bewilderment. Many of these men and
women were present when Felda schemes (for example) were functional
enterprises staffed by non-Malays and Malays who viewed such endeavours
as essential in furthering the goals of the social contract and
uplifting a disenfranchised community. These Malaysians (Malay
and non-Malay) viewed paternalistic laws as a safeguard against
provocations by either side of the political divide. As one
self-described Umno woman, who in another life was part of an education
system which favoured English as a tool to developed nation status,
said: "Take
this charlatan, Ibrahim Ali. If the authorities wanted to send a
message that sensitivities must be protected, they would have sent
balaclava-clad officers to his house in the dead of the night and
bundled him up in an unmarked car. Why not? This is what they have done
to other agitators. In this case, he mocks the laws. I am glad I am out
of it. Such are the unsavoury characters who are the face of Umno." I have no ideas who are the current spin-doctors or strategists of Umno
or even if they are all working on the same page but like the Bush
administration post-9/11, they seem to be living in an era of unreality. The wooing of Chinese tycoons Take Prime Minister Najib Razak's courting of Chinese tycoons.
This very image conjures up a bygone era where racial preoccupation, or
more specifically Chinese preoccupations, where serviced by the
plutocrats who held sway in MCA. As I have argued before, the
needs of the Chinese community have changed and through their
subservience to Umno, the MCA have become the fat cats who had no
problem licking the cream but were negligent in carrying out their
duties to the community they were supposed to represent. Najib,
in a Suharto-like moment, is extolling these bottom feeders that Umno
was the only way to go, but ignores the fact that the alternative
alliance is not only financed by popular will but also covertly by the
very business interests that Najib seems to think holds sway over the
community. It only partially worked for Suharto who was a
shrewder political operative than anything Umno could come up with, but
successive Indonesian administrations discovered the folly of actively
encouraging the perception that race and money as a political bargaining
chip would create a harmonious multiracial/religious polity. It
would have been more constructive if Najib had delivered his speech
from a pulpit instead of a gaudy dinner (I am assuming it would have
been gaudy) if he wanted to attract a certain section of the Chinese
vote. After all, the DAP has locked down the Chinese/Christian
vote and has made significant inroads in Sarawak by pursuing themes of
religious oppression (engineered by Umno). In the peninsula, DAP has
successfully made the case with its coalition partners that issues such
as the environment (Lynas) , religious freedom (the ‘Allah' issue) and
compromised security apparatus (Teoh Beng Hock, et al) are human rights
issues which should be the concern of everyone, not only those in the
Chinese community. Even though in the case of Lynas and the
‘Allah' issue for instance, it is a certain vocal section of the Chinese
community which is leading the cause. So, not only is the MCA out of
touch with the Chinese community, so it would seem is Umno. Fomenting divisions is Umno's art Umno may be confident that the vote banks in Sarawak and Sabah would
ensure that they remain in power, which would probably explain why Najib
is involved in a vicious power struggle with the vultures who subscribe
to the go-at-it-alone policy. I do wonder though that even if the
"Malay numbers" are enough to maintain hegemony, the reality on the
Malay ground would ensure that Umno's dream of perpetual rule would be
in jeopardy. I wrote about how the armed forces were mired in the Umno quagmire. The recent revelationsby
former army deputy chief Lt-Gen (Rtd) Abdul Ghafir Abdul Hamid that
military facilities and equipment were like "third world facilities" is
evidence that the culture of corruption or "leakages", to use a Khairy
Jamaluddin euphemism, has eroded the goodwill of a certain section of
the Malay polity. When a now retired air force general makes the
Umno pitch that the armed forces personnel should be grateful to the
ruling coalition for "taking care" of them and the resources available
to armed forces personal are the envy of most countries conflicts with
the reality that this general exposes, one has to wonder how long can
Umno rely on the gratitude of a bloated civil and military service whose
welfare Umno seems disinterested in? Splitting
communities and reinforcing prejudices is what Umno really excels at.
Only now, a foreign president has denounced what we Malaysians have
known all along. Of Najib's visit to Gaza, Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas declared, "[The visit] undermines Palestinian representation and reinforces the division and does not serve Palestinian interests." At the end of the day, the only interests Umno serves is its own. Every
institution is compromised. The judiciary seems to be slowly waking up
but in this period of prolonged shadow play, everything is suspect.
Eventually the gravy train will stop and those unlucky Umnoputra
passengers left on board will be at the mercy of their own splintered
community with nothing left to lose. Malaysiakini
"Take
this charlatan, Ibrahim Ali. If the authorities wanted to send a
message that sensitivities must be protected, they would have sent
balaclava-clad officers to his house in the dead of the night and
bundled him up in an unmarked car. Why not? This is what they have done
to other agitators. In this case, he mocks the laws. I am glad I am out
of it. Such are the unsavoury characters who are the face of Umno."
Splitting
communities and reinforcing prejudices is what Umno really excels at.
Only now, a foreign president has denounced what we Malaysians have
known all along. Of Najib's visit to Gaza, Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas 
