In 1995 I wrote (printed in Aliran Monthly 1995:14)
The Ghost of Mahathir
It amazes me how one normal human being like Mahathir has assumed such a powerful influence over intelligent thinking humans to such an extent that they make their decisions based on his presence or absence in officiating and delivering a keynote address at a function.
A man like him, who is a drop in the ocean compared to the vastness of the problem, will come and go. He, you or I were not present in 1492 when Colombus landed on the soils of the New World. He too is as helpless as you and I when confronted with the dying children in Africa or the thousands of women raped in Bosnia- Herzegovina.
One must also note that as a human being he too is not an absolute Satan only bent on doing wrong, or an absolute angel with one hundred per cent goodness. He is just a normal human being. He has done wrong, he has done right. Just like you and I.
I wrote the article in defense of a seminar organized by JUST ( Rethinking Human Rights) and my friend Dr Chandra to the immature attitude of certain human rights groups who went into conniption disagreeing almost wholesale the entire effort we undertook simply because TDM was the keynote speaker. (To read the entire article click here)
Sadly, our state of affairs has yet to see much progress. The attitude to curse those who we do not agree with to death and follow those we agree with blindly is still the fashion of the day. No wonder our country is still not moving forward as we wished for.
In a recent facebook discussion (with reference to TDM’s accusation of 9/11 being staged) one of the entries suggests that TDM’s day is long overdue and that it is high time he “kick the bucket”.
To my bigger surprise was when I wrote back to say that his statement is not right and uncouth, decent fellow Malaysians tried to justify his position!!! How sick can we be?
This epidemic of hatred is not confined to one side. It goes both ways. Last year an acquaintance I met at Bangsar, knowing that I am critical of Anwar (eg read here ), openly told me that his one BIG wish for Malaysia is to see Anwar dead! When I told him off, he was taken aback.
How did hate consume our hearts and make us uncivilized? We need to apply the Ghandian mantra “Hate the Sin and not the Sinner”. We need to cleansed our hearts of hatred especially those of which we have towards our enemies.
C'mon brother and sister Malaysians, we are better than this. We need to take action based on a good heart, even when we dislike the other. We can, if we look deeper into our humanity.
As I said, I too have been critical of Tun Dr Mahathir(read here as published in DAP's Rocket in 1988) but in no way I have allowed my heart to hate him.
coz,
"Hate in your heart, will consume you too,"
Will Smith's advise to his 5 year old son in the song, "Just The Two of Us" click here for the music video:)
anas zubedy
Agree with you. Debate the issue, not the person ( don't hate or insult him or her for their views ).
ReplyDeleteThere is a line from Evelyn Waugh'd Brideshead Revisited; "...they are full of hate, when they hate with that energy, it is something within themselves that they hate..."
ReplyDeleteMacha Anas,
ReplyDeleteI must say your efforts to promote arguments with more rationality in our country is applaudable. Having said that, I hope Tun would stay away from making conclusions based on some shady videos, documentaries, some janitor and most of all using personal assumptions. Why now anyway? Yes, healthy skepticism is useful, but a reputable person like him should focus on facts and figures (they did mention about WTC 7 and it did catch fire, they were debris from Pentagon's crashed aircraft, and the collapse can 'look clean'), like how he always have been.
But I do agree with Tun, James Cameron's Avatar is simply outstanding!
Peace!
Let's not go into the extreme & focus on these fundamental facts about TDM:
ReplyDelete1) Did TDM destroy and compromise M'sia's judiciary system?
2) Did TDM squander billions of ringgit during his office & indulge in corruption & cronyism?
3) Did TDM call the Chinese & Indians 'pendatangs'?
4) Is TDM a racist & practice racial politics?
My answer to all the above questions is YES.
What about you?
Nope, Mahathir does not deserve to die for his crimes (unless we're China) but he should be charged and convicted under the law and all his property & wealth gained thru corruption confiscated (just like any other corrputed world leaders).
ReplyDeleteThat's justice, but unfortunately this is sorely lacking in M'sia. So far, none of the corrupted BN crooks has ever been convicted.
After watching a very shocking documentary about Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour on ASTRO History Channel 555 about three weeks ago, I read with great interest about Tun Dr Mahathir’s comments on the 9/11 tragedy. The good former Prime Minister definitely cannot be far wrong as over the years, the United States of America has a history of conspiracies to get things executed in their favour and the most famous one was ‘The Attack On Pearl Harbour’ which is commonly referred to as ‘The Mother of All Conspiracies’.
ReplyDeleteIn the documentary, three prominent historians (I do not remember their names), one from a US university, one from the UK and one from Germany, argued in great detail from records, evidences and facts available pertaining to the attack on Pearl Harbour and all three concluded that President F. D. Roosevelt was the mastermind who engineered the attack.
Their comments were, ‘America was not involved during the initial stage of World War 2 as it was a war between Eastern Europe led by Germany’s Hitler against Western Europe (led by Great Britain) and between Germany and its cronies against Russia and Russia against Japan after the latter attacked the former’s warship and Japan against America’s and Great Britain’s allies in Asia. Japan was sympathetic to Hitler’s cause and was an ally of Germany.
President F. D. Roosevelt was deeply worried that Western Europe would fall because of the sheer strength and superiority of Hitler’s armies. He badly wanted United States to join the war to save their European allies and had to have a good reason as well as create an opportunity for his country.
It was strongly believed that he engineered Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour after deciding that this would be the best reason for America to join the war,’ or words to that effect.
President Roosevelt (FDR) provoked the attack, knew about it in advance and covered up his failure to warn the Hawaiian commanders.
FDR needed the attack to sucker Hitler to declare war, since the public and Congress were overwhelmingly against entering the war in Europe. It was his backdoor to war.
Some reliable reports even concluded that FDR was a traitor.
The attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, took place on December 7th 1941. The attack on Pearl Harbour was called a ‘day of infamy’ by President F D. Roosevelt. It was to bring the United States of America into World War Two.
The attack caused 2403 deaths and 1178 wounded. Eighteen ships were sunk or seriously damaged including 5 battleships including the USS Arizona. 188 planes were destroyed and 162 were damaged.
Japan had an attack force of 31 ships and 353 raiding planes and they suffered 64 deaths, lost 29 planes and 5 midget submarines.
See:
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/pearl/www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/pearl.html .
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p119_Stolley.html
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/pearl_harbour.htm
The movie Avatar aside, there are records, evidences and facts that suggest that what Dr Mahathir said, ‘there was strong evidence that the Sept 11 attacks on the United States that killed nearly 3,000 could have been “staged” as an excuse to mount attacks on the Muslim world,’ as very possible or even true.
I have not researched about the other American conspiracies but I know there are several of them. I will do that very soon.
Let's hope our future will be ok.
Hussaini Abdul Karim
To Anon,
ReplyDeleteNot only his, his sons', his daughter's and his/their cronies too!