Category Archives: Politics

Politics, Religion

No need to fill in “race” for official forms in Malaysia?

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I find the current debate about dropping the “race” column from many official government forms in Malaysia to be quite amusing. My views on the artificiality of ethnic and even nationalistic groupings are already well advertised on this blog, so I won’t go into them again. On the surface, this move is reminiscent of the French government’s official policy to never collect such details about its citizens. The basic idea is that all French nationals are alike to the government. So long as you hold French citizenship, the government doesn’t care what colour your skin is and treats everyone equally.

Of course, in our case, our minister makes it clear that race information will continue to be collected in cases where it is relevant to bumiputra special priviliges, which means that this is a blatant public relations exercise that will do nothing to change the status quo. Not that anyone expected anything more from the National Front government. But wait, if we go back to that comparison to France, you’ll find that not only does the French government not collect information about “race” from its citizens, it also doesn’t collect information about “religion”. However, as all Malaysians know, not only do our official government forms contain blank spaces to fill in your race, they also contain spaces to fill in your religion. Are we supposed to infer that while the government doesn’t care about your race except when it comes to bumiputra privileges but it does care about your religion or did the minister simply forget that Malaysian government forms also contain that entry?

To me, none of this really matters. Even in France, academics who need to study the demographics of the French population simply bypass the lack of official statistical information on race and religion simply by analyzing names instead. Given two names, say, Michèle Alliot-Marie and Rachida Dati, it’s not hard to tell who’s white and who’s not. Even though I detest the practice of classifying people into races, it’s an undeniable reality in the minds of most people and should be fought against on that level. I feel that as long as this is true, it’s more useful for the government to collect this information than to pretend that the phenomenon doesn’t exist.

One point of contention in Malaysia when it comes to bumiputra privileges is whether or not the 30% equity target for the Malays as stated in the Malaysian New Economic Policy affirmative action plan has already been reached. The government insists that the target hasn’t been reached yet so the continuing existence of the NEP is justified. However economists argue that this is only true because the government fudges its figures, in particular by using the archaic par value as opposed to market value to measure the proportion of shares held by bumiputra. It’s easy to see that by selectively collecting race information in some cases and not in others, the Malaysian government can obfuscate the true picture even more.

Politics, Religion

Did Bush ask France to attack Gog and Magog in Iraq?

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This Free Inquirer article has been making the rounds among atheists and agnostics on the net. In it, a senior editor of the magazine James A. Haught claims that back in 2003 when then U.S. President Bush was trying to assemble his “Coalition of the Willing” to invade Iraq, he told the French President of the time Jacques Chirac that Iraq had to be attacked because the Biblical demons Gog and Magog was at work in Iraq and that the confrontation was willed by God.

To the writer’s credit, the article details explicitly how this information was obtained so it’s hard to dismiss it as just hearsay. Still, I find it hard to believe that Bush actually meant it seriously. It’s one thing for Bush to throw in the Gog and Magog thing as a half joke, quite another thing to use it as justification to implore France to take action against Iraq. After all, why would Bush have expected Chirac to understand the obscure Biblical reference? It should also be noted that Chirac has a history of being quite derisive towards Bush’s religious beliefs, so mischaracterizing what he actually said would not be entirely out of the question.

Far from it for me to defend Bush’s record, it’s just that I believe in appropriating both blame and credit fairly and truthfully. For me, what is both more credible and ultimately more insidious are the accompanying revelations that the U.S. military regularly uses Biblical language in its reports. Quotes from the Bible for example are often used as prefaces to reports especially when it is known that the superior officer who will be reading them is a devout Christian. This practice apparently dates back from before the Bush era but seems to have become more common under his presidency. Needless to say, any attempt to reframe the mission and purpose of the U.S. military in Biblical terms, ignoring the separation of church and state, should make any reasonable person extremely nervous.

Politics, Science

H1N1 Pandemic Fears: Justified or panic reaction?

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So the World Health Organization has declared H1N1 as a pandemic, which prompts questions of whether the fears over it are justified or a panicky over-reaction. I didn’t elaborate on the H1N1 precautions in Hong Kong in my earlier post, so let me say here that while they’re not exactly in a panic over it, it’s obvious enough that they’re taking it a lot more seriously than most people in Malaysia. Posters urging the public to take health precautions are everywhere and every time we used the subway, we were constantly bombarded by warnings and advice about respiratory diseases over the public announcements system.

One particular precaution that we found novel was placing hand sanitizers in many public areas. They seem to dispense some sort of alcohol-based disinfectant that you’re supposed to use regularly. Since the substance just evaporates, it won’t leave your hands slimy or wet. Many surfaces that you might expect members of the public to touch on a regular basis, such as escalator handrails, elevator buttons and even seats in public waiting areas had signs indicating that they’re disinfected on a regular schedule. Obviously all these measures take quite a bit of effort and money to implement, which means that they need to be justified on a cost-benefit basis.

Continue reading H1N1 Pandemic Fears: Justified or panic reaction? →

Politics

Just who is an African-American?

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I’ve done my share of railing against political correctness in this blog, so here’s another. As this news article from abc News relates, Paulo Serodio, a naturalized American citizen, is suing a New Jersey medical school, claiming that he had been harassed and ultimately suspended. His crime: for self-identifying as an African-American. The thing is, Mr. Serodio was indeed born and raised in Mozambique, but he happpens to be white, not black. From the article:

After Serodio labeled himself as a white African-American, another student said she was offended by his comments and that, because of his white skin, was not an African-American.

According to the lawsuit, Serodio was summoned to Duncan’s office where he was instructed “never to define himself as an African-American … because it was offensive to others and to people of color for him to do so.”

“It’s crazy,” Serodio’s attorney Gregg Zeff told ABCNews.com. “Because that’s what he is.”

The problem of course is that the term African-American doesn’t really mean an American citizen of African ancestry. Instead it’s a code-word for being black, but due to political correctness, actually calling someone black is considered offensive these days. In the US, being labelled African-American opens the possibility of being eligible for affirmative action programs and other forms of assistance that specifically target minorities, but the unstated assumption is that the aid is supposed to be directed to blacks, so things get ugly when a white guy calls himself an African-American.

More generally, this case represents yet another example of why special assistance directed towards specific groups based on their culture or ethnicity always run into problems of defining just who is a valid member of the targeted group. It just makes more sense to qualify aid using objective criteria, such as poverty, scholarly excellence etc. It’s just another case of trying to shoehorn people into pre-defined groups, instead of seeing them for the individuals that they are.

Politics

BN politician compares himself to Mandela and Gandhi

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I admit that I’ve been a bit too apathetic of late to pay much attention to Malaysian politics. This means that most of the subtleties and intricacies of what’s going on in the power struggle over the state of Perak has gone way over my head. Still, when a politician from the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition is oblivious enough to compare his struggles with those of Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, even I have to sit up and take notice. An excerpt from an article from The Star that’s looks like it should have appeared in a Malaysian version of The Onion, but sadly isn’t:

He said a person did not need to hold a post in his struggle to uphold the truth, and likened the recent struggles faced by him and his “comrades from the Barisan Nasional” to those endured by politicians like Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi.

“Nelson Mandela sacrificed his freedom for 27 years in order to free South Africans from the grip of ‘apartheid.’

“Gandhi also sacrificed his life for the sake of India’s independence and so his people would be able to live without caste or religious boundaries,” he said.

Dr Zambry said however that it was lucky for him that his struggles had not caused him physical harm or loss of freedom.

“I only had to withstand the negative perceptions that Nizar and his people have created of me and the Barisan’s image.

This is a truly a wtf moment of mindblowing proportions. The Barisan Nasional, which has ruled the country uninterrupted since its independence, being cast in the role of the poor underdog. Let’s just say that some people have really thick skins.

Politics

Electoral fraud in Russia, claims the election winner

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If I were really snarky, I’d headline this post with a title like “In Soviet Russia, election frauds you!” Electoral frauds in Russia aren’t particularly shocking news, especially in Russia, but how often do you see it being claimed by the winner rather than the loser? Yet this is exactly what happened when a first time candidate for Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia, Anton Chumachenko, claimed that his victory was due to electoral fraud and that his opponent should have won instead.

Of course, the really tragic part is that the party seems to be doing everything it can to downplay the announcement and stall investigations. From the article in The Washington Post:

Chumachenko has provided evidence to the court and urged it to transfer his mandate to Vishnevsky. A ruling is pending. Meanwhile, prosecutors have sought to examine the original ballots. Election officials say they were damaged when a water pipe burst, an explanation that has been used before in Russia to stall investigations into election irregularities.

“We have very smart pipes,” Chumachenko said with a grin. “They know exactly where to leak.”

I post this because I think it jives well with my point about democracies. They’re the best form of government there is, but simply holding elections, even if they were free and fair which this one obviously was not, is not enough to qualify a country to be called a democracy. Yet repressive governments are fearful enough that they go to great lengths to show that they are democratic. Which is why we should all be ever ready to condemn them when they are not.

Politics

Jackie Chan joins in the anti-democracy bandwagon

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Just a bit of news that popped up over the weekend:

Action star Jackie Chan said Saturday he’s not sure if a free society is a good thing for China and that he’s starting to think “we Chinese need to be controlled.”

Chan’s comments drew applause from a predominantly Chinese audience of business leaders in China’s southern island province of Hainan.

The 55-year-old Hong Kong actor was participating in a panel at the annual Boao Forum when he was asked to discuss censorship and restrictions on filmmakers in China. He expanded his comments to include society.

“I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not,” Chan said. “I’m really confused now. If you’re too free, you’re like the way Hong Kong is now. It’s very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic.”

Chan added: “I’m gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we’re not being controlled, we’ll just do what we want.”

And of course the predictable backlash from Hong Kong and Taiwan:

“He’s insulted the Chinese people. Chinese people aren’t pets,” Hong Kong pro-democracy legislator Leung Kwok-hung told The Associated Press. “Chinese society needs a democratic system to protect human rights and rule of law.”

Another lawmaker, Albert Ho, called the comments “racist,” adding: “People around the world are running their own countries. Why can’t Chinese do the same?”

…

In democratically self-ruled Taiwan, which split from mainland China during a civil war in 1949, legislator Huang Wei-che said Chan himself “has enjoyed freedom and democracy and has reaped the economic benefits of capitalism. But he has yet to grasp the true meaning of freedom and democracy.”

My wife’s first reaction was to say that he’s an uneducated idiot prone to make shallow comments. Someone on QT3 commented that he’s actually illiterate and needs people to read his scripts to him, but I don’t know how true that it. Anyway it’s clear enough that he’s an airhead who only gets attention due to the gigantic soapbox he gets from his superstardom, but I still wish someone famous from the Chinese entertainment world would be brave enough to speak out on behalf of democracy and freedom.