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http://themalayobserver.blogspot.my

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Cow head Wanita Umno wants Sedition Act to stay the undescent

Press, stop the undescent and start the dissent

Sedition laws can be meaningless in a democracy, a governance based on the principle of free speech.A democracy asks its citizens to speak their mind. Provided it does not cause riots or public harm.
But when citizens do that in Malaysia, they are warned and browbeaten into submission – even sent to jail.  Malaysia’s sedition law was written in 1860 to empower the British masters ruling India to punish “natives”.
Yes, when a writer or cartoonist says what pleases the ears of the powers that be, he is encouraged to write or draw more. However, when he comments in words or pictures something critical, heavens fall.Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the ugh-est of them all? That’s the questioni seems to ask in his latest cartoon. Errr, Aseem? Yup. The same. This is what happens when an utterly nonsensical sedition case is filed against a cartoonist (high on anger, low on talent) — it’s called a oneday phenomenon. But here’s the upside to the controversy. The recent furor has drawn public attention to the growing antipathy against the ‘ugly politician’. It sure looks likes this is going to be the winter of our discontent.

ACCOMMODATING NAJIB SHAMELESS’ SHAHRIZAT DESTROYING UMNO

 UMNO wants the Sedition Act to stay so that she can continue to plunder and steal and if anyone says anything against UMNO, that person will be charged under Sedition Act! Sedition Act will not touch these arrogant UMNO thieves because the Act is their weapon against everyone who dares to challenge them! To hell with the Stupid Sedition Act! All who are for it are as Stupid as the Act itself! If you observe the want and youth wings of BN component parties. They are so predictable. I am sure not single soul is surprise with the Wanita UMNO resolution. Notice, how silence were they on issue regarding victimising of women particularly on the case of Wan Azizah. Not a single word from them. Understand they belong to BN but what the wing stood is equally important. If their gender has been victimise they should at least stand up for the person regardless of her association. Anyway, UMNO wanita wing will remain irrelevant as long as their chief's condo cow issue not resolve to public satisfaction.NFC equals CBT and Fraud. As a lawyer, Sharizat should know that. Those who approved the project and loan should also be taken to task for dereliction of duty and responsibility!

 When we steal and anyone who finds out that we steal and exposes can be charged under the Sedition Act. Sedition Act is good for thieves and thick-skinned conmen and conwomen.
Umno Wanita today called for the Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to retain the controversial Sedition Act 1948 in the wake of seditious remarks by certain personalities.Shahrizat says this is as seditious remarks can cause 'worrying' incidents.When satire as a national threat Can Malaysians take a joke? Can Malaysians take satire or parodies?
Well, it would seem that there is a segment of society that takes offence at jokes, satires or parodies - and these people are usually your generic Umno member. Malaysians have been treated to the spectacle of some Umno members, including Minister
Will Shahrizat  expose help end corruption? Or will it be just another rib-tickler that titillates the middle class for a few weeks and is then forgotten? Will politics remain Malaysia’s biggest business by far?
The government is not likely to get its money back from the National Feedlot Corporation (NFC) even if it wins a legal suit against the latter, PKR director of strategy Rafizi Ramli said today.
Don’t be too optimistic. Politicians of every party love slinging mud at rivals: as good businessmen, they hope this will improve their market share. But will they cooperate in closing down the business altogether and moving to a less lucrative one? I doubt it. Even if we were to stretch our imagination beyond breaking point, we would be hard put to grant Shahrizat at least the benefit of the doubt.
An Indian cartoonist has been jailed for his drawings highlighting government corruption.
Aseem Trivedi has been charged with sedition for his cartoons that “insulted” the Indian government.
His supporters say the decision is evidence of political leaders’ growing intolerance of criticism and freedom of expression.
A few years ago MF Husain painted Bharat Mata in a way, it was objected by a section of society. He apologised, yet numerous cases were filed against him in different cities by several groups.
Though a celebrity painter, Husain didn’t say much about creative freedom or tradition of nude drawings in India. He was fiercely opposed by Muslims also, who opposed him in newspapers, on the streets and elsewhere too.
Intolerance plays at many levels in India.
We now have the case of a cartoonist, Aseem Trivedi, who was arrested on charges of sedition. Later, he was freed on bail.
Trivedi, who has been part of the anti-corruption movement in India led by the self-styled Gandhian, Anna Hazare, drew a cartoon where he replaced the customary lions in the country’s national emblem with wolves, their teeth dripping with blood. The caption read, Long live corruption.
Another of Trivedi’s cartoons shows the Indian parliament (non-functioning in recent months) as a giant toilet bowl.
Browbeaten into submission
India’s best regarded political cartoonist, EP Unny, wrote in The Indian Express, a paper where he draws:
“We got both our cartoon art and the sedition law from Britain. The two carried on all these decades, including those 21 months of national emergency and censorship in the mid- (nineteen) seventies, without coming to televised blows. Now Aseem Trivedi, a 25-year old cartoonist has been sent to Mumbai jail for the seditious act of insulting the national symbol.”
“The Indian state seems to be more loyal and lawful than the queen. If you Google Steve Bell, The Guardian’s editorial cartoonist, you would think he is cooling his heels in Her Majesty’s prison.  Through some 30 years of merciless cartooning, he gleefully tore into most things British, symbolic and otherwise. Often reduced to bottom wear in Steve’s work, the Union Jack still flies high over Westminster Palace.
“Do four Asiatic lions standing back to back and tall need protection from a doodler, however activist or agitated?  There is bound to be inherent tension between any national symbol and the cartoon. One is meant to be revered and the other is nothing if not irreverent. The two should naturally clash as they do in mature democracies. Between spats they manage to live together – the symbol on its pedestal and the cartoonist at the drawing board.
“Back in 1976 in a Playboy interview when Jimmy Carter confessed to having looked on a lot of women with lust, a cartoonist put a denuded Statue of Liberty into the Presidential thought balloon.  Carter didn’t wage a war on the cartoonist; he worked his way to the Nobel Peace Prize”.
Myths of living religions are politically potent, those of dead ones aesthetically fetching.
Every religion asserts that truth and tolerance are its sole monopoly, though it might sometimes need a prophet to reveal this fact. Christian fundamentalists argue that their inerrant Bible has the easiest seal of all to crack. It needs but a little devotion to understand the many metaphors in it. In Islam and Judaism, there are food taboos that have, over time, taken on a scientific gloss. Hindus too, often couple faith with modern technology to showcase the power of their tradition.
However, the texts on which these claims are based fall far short of being ‘classics’. They may have passionate adherents within, but are usually mocked by those others outside. But once a religion is history and has no surviving followers, it becomes a classic quite easily. Its myths and legends are now subjects of aesthetic appreciation, not scientific validation.
Which Egyptian today will war with Darwinians because their ancients had once claimed that humans emerged from the tears of sun god Ra? If Renaissance thinkers found virtue in Greek and Roman legends it was precisely because the cults of Zeus and Juno had become extinct centuries ago.
In other words, for a myth to become a classic, the religion on which it is based must be dead and gone. It does not matter if it disappeared catastrophically, on a dark night, or slowly dripped down the kitchen sink. What counts is that it does not count for real any more.
This is why Greek, Roman and Egyptian myths have a universal aesthetic appeal and can be savoured at leisure. On the flip side, precisely because Hinduism, Islam and Christianity are living religions, things and thoughts associated with them politically colour our lives. We are now in the thick of the everyday where cultural and religious prejudices spout like spray paint for free.
Therefore, while dead religions inspire reverential awe across the board, living faiths, just as easily, generate sectarian tendencies. As dead gods have only dead adherents, they pose no challenge to the world of the here and now. This allows fantastic claims made by extinct faiths look so much better than equivalent ones crafted by living religions.
Legends of Hinduism, Islam and Christianity may perhaps be grander, and more breathtaking than those in Greek or Roman classics. However, as these qualities appear only in the eyes of the believers, they are not universally appreciated. This is why it is difficult to call the Mahabharata or the Bible or the Quran a classic, but rather easy to confer that distinction on the Iliad or on the fantasy tales of Romulus and Remus.
Before myths become classics, they must necessarily free themselves of time and space contexts. Once that happens that particular past turns precious and all its artefacts and legends take on lofty meanings. Many European Indologists of the 19th century, like Max Mueller, read Hindu texts with respect because they believed that the Vedic culture of the past was truly dead. They despised the living Indians around them but looked up to the magnificent Aryans of their imagination. After this break was intellectually established, it became easy for Indologists to study the Vedas and Upanishads as timeless and profound ‘classics’.
It is not as if there is an intrinsic difference between legends of living religions and those that are dead. The Mahabharata has its near equivalent in the Trojan War. The Hindu notion of the ‘Manthan’ is close to the Egyptian origin tale; and if we have Varuna, the Greeks have Aeolus. Ganesha got his elephant trunk quite in the same way as the Egyptian goddess Isis got her cow head. Many Egyptian deities have visages plucked out of the animal world, ranging all the way from alligators, to foxes, to cats and hippopotami. Yet, as Egyptian tradition is buried two millennia deep, nobody today makes any of this into a sectarian selling point.
As dead religions pose no contest, there is a generous tendency to bestow on them aesthetic appeal. The legend of Helen of Troy is seen as another arty fable replete with sagacious advice and words of wisdom. But had Zeus been a living god then this same benign saga would have fomented territorial wars among Greeks and Turks. The belief that Trojan women were divided among the victorious, plundering Greeks would have rankled in every Turkish body. Not just that, Cyprus too would have been upset because its king had supplied 50 ships to Agamemnon but there was no acknowledgment of this in the mail.
Think also of how Romulus humiliated the people of Sabine by making off with their wives and daughters. Yet, Giambologna’s statue, depicting the mass rape of Sabine women, draws millions of admirers every year to Florence. As neither Zeus, nor Hermes, nor Ulysses is around, it is pure joy to fiddle with Roman and Greek myths. On the other hand, as Judaism is a live faith, it allows Zionists to flog for political advantage the fabled enslavement of Israelites in ancient Egypt.
There are then myths and myths. Those of living religions are politically potent while those of dead ones are aesthetically fetching. Lesson: choose your myths wisely; what is alive can also kick!

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