the Malaysian Star newspaper published two reports today that show that Khairy Jamaluddin, the deputy youth leader of Malaysia’s ruling United Malays National Organisation (Umno), speaks faulty English. Khairy graduated from Oxford’s St Hugh’s College with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE).
I’ve underlined the mistakes. Can you bloggers out there say what’s wrong with Khairy’s “Oxford” English? Please note that the Star reports are poorly written in broken English.
The context and character of Najib's speech echoes that of Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering, Ernst Rohm and Josef Goebbels in the early days of Nazi Germany - when they addressed and brainwashed thousands of gullible youths into joining the Hitler Youth, Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) to 'defend the Aryan nation' from the imaginary threat of Jews, homosexuals, political opponents and anyone else who refused to subscribe to the Nazi ideology.
These youths went on to commit horrific war crimes. It is fitting that when Najib made this speech, he was flanked by the political eunuchs of MCA, Gerakan and the other BN component parties, whose main function is - as the Chinese idiom goes - to 'act as a decorative vase'.
One million youth? I don't see that many. The gathering has many events thrown in. You even have the army taking part, showing their war machines, organising competitions and training programmes.
So just how many came on their own accord? Please tell us how much money per person were spent to organise such an event to prod up the prestige of BN?
How much did the government spend taxpayers' money to hire those buses and coaches to bring the youth there from all over the country, and how much each get paid for allowances and lunches?
1,000,000 youth divide by 40 per bus = 25,000 buses x RM600 rental each bus = RM15 million. Another RM10 million for allowances and lunch. 'Semua duit rakyat' used to defend the BN government. Where is the ethics?
Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin today rejected accusations of funds abuse in the Million Youths Assembly held in Putrajaya across the weekend, saying the event had not been political in nature.
“I believe the one million youth came voluntarily to take part in all events held during the three-day programme. The opposition is making this an issue because they were worried of the great response from youths,” he was quoted by Bernama Online today.
Khairy was responding to PKR Youth’s claim today that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had spent taxpayers’ funds and exploited the World Youth Day event in Putrajaya to defend the ruling Barisan Nasional’s (BN) narrow political agenda.
In his speech at the event on Saturday, Najib called on attending youths to “defend Putrajaya” from the opposition if they wished to see Malaysia transformed into a developed country.
Today, Khairy claimed opposition parties were taking aim at the event as they hoped it would fall short of its aim.
“The response was unbelievable and it was a sign that the youths are starting to support the government agenda under the 1 Malaysia concept which is youth-friendly and aimed at empowering them,” he added.
'And who are we defending Putrajaya from? Who is Putrajaya's enemy? Those Malaysian citizens who do not vote for BN?'
Najib enlists youth to help 'defend Putrajaya'
When leaders are bankrupt, what they continue to talk about are castles in the air - yes, more programmes, more projects and more hot air.
Have we heard lately from them telling our young people the meaning of ethics, good governance, and the menace of corruption and excessive abuse of power? No, we don't hear these things anymore.
Do you want to know why, young people? Because the leaders have lost the moral fortitude to say things like these. They know the whole world will be laughing at them. They know no one would believe what they say.
Putrajaya does not belong to any particular party or group of leaders. Putrajaya is Malaysia, it belongs to all of us. We, the people, young and old, must defend Putrajaya from the enemies from without and termites from within.
PM Najib Razak is 'defending Putrajaya' at the taxpayers' expense again? And who are we defending Putrajaya from? Who is Putrajaya's enemy? Citizens of this country who do not vote for BN?
Reports from other sources suggest the total number of people present at the One Million Youth Gathering in Putrajaya was around 8,000.
One wonders how many would have turned up without the enticements of goodies, giveaways that have become a defining characteristic of BN-organised events.
The context and character of Najib's speech echoes that of Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering, Ernst Rohm and Josef Goebbels in the early days of Nazi Germany - when they addressed and brainwashed thousands of gullible youths into joining the Hitler Youth, Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) to 'defend the Aryan nation' from the imaginary threat of Jews, homosexuals, political opponents and anyone else who refused to subscribe to the Nazi ideology.
These youths went on to commit horrific war crimes. It is fitting that when Najib made this speech, he was flanked by the political eunuchs of MCA, Gerakan and the other BN component parties, whose main function is - as the Chinese idiom goes - to 'act as a decorative vase'.
Najib, if you or any of your cohorts happen to read this comment, be informed that you should not distort the meaning of the political revolution in Egypt. The young Egyptians have successfully booted out the dictator and oppressor, Hosni Mubarak.
You have no right whatsoever to call upon Malaysians to defend Putrajaya. It is time that you should go as you have failed in your sacred mission to unite all the races in this country.
One million Egyptian youths gathered at Tahrir Square to demand change to the corrupted Egyptian government. Another million gathered in Syria and Libya to demand change to their countries, which are ruled by dictators and warlords.
Hopefully, rational Malaysians can see and realise the corruption under Umno/BN and vote for change in the upcoming 13GE. But it will be an uphill task given the uneven playing field and a lopsided Election Commission.
Do these youths who have so enthusiastically responded to the PM's call to defend Putrajaya realise that in 20 years' time, they probably would be hard pressed to find a decent paying job, a house to live in or money to feed their children?
I wonder how many will become disillusioned and seek greener pastures elsewhere when Malaysia becomes a failed economy thanks to poor governance.
The Malays need to discard their feudal mentality and break free from this patronage and dependency. There is no need to defend something so rotten because we all know that it will fall on its own accord.
Goodness Najib, you really still want to 'syiok sendiri' like your right hand man, Dr Koh Tsu Koon? One million in Putrajaya, is that right? Do you know how many live in Kuala Lumpur? Only 1.4 million. Where did you get the one million youths? Felda?
The youths all look very young. Can they vote? If they cannot, then how are they going to help BN defend Putrajaya from the more mature and forward-minded adults which incidentally are voters and more likely to vote Pakatan Rakyat.
If BN can mobilise one million youths as seen here, then maybe this is a good time for Najib to call for an election.
SaveMalaysiaNow: Najib's Manchester United lost badly to a clearly superior Barcelona in the Champions League final. Perhaps a bad omen for him in the coming general election?
Act I of the so-called 'Arab Spring' opened last December, when a young Tunisian street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi--after being assaulted and humiliated by local government officials--doused himself in gasoline and set his body ablaze, kicking off months of revolution and tumult across the Middle East.
With events changing by the hour, most predictions of what was to come were obsolete by the end of the news day. And so state leaders and prominent thinkers of various stripes turned themselves around--and began probing the more settled waters of history, in search of a historical parallel that might explain what is going on in the Arab world.
Surely history can offer some instruction.
As a graduate student of Modern History, I've watched this historical mission unfold with plenty of interest, some amusement--and a fair amount of concern. Because I know that most people aren't used to looking at politics from the vantage point of the historian. That means that even if the Arab Spring brings lasting reform, people are probably going to be disappointed by the pace of the change.
Of all the attempts to play historian, U.S. President Obama's has been least convincing. In the course of a single speech, given last week, President Obama compared the Middle East protests to the American Revolution, the American Civil War, and the American Civil Rights Movement.
But it's hard to see how the Arab Spring bears much resemblance to the Americans' lone battle against the British Empire (1775-1783), or their internal struggle over slavery (1861-1865). And though he said it with style, Obama's comparison of the the Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi to U.S. Civil Rights icon Rosa Parks was less than inspired.
Like Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel claims to have seen this all before.
Referring to the revolutions in 1989 that heralded the end of Communist Eastern Europe, Merkel noted, "We are seeing pictures awaken memories of what we experienced in Europe...people who are shaking off their fear."
This is a comforting thought. We fared well in 1989. The Soviet Union crumbled, the Cold War began to cool, and liberalism rode in triumphantly. What Merkel failed to acknowledge, though, was that Eastern European countries were moving simultaneously to overthrow the yoke of Soviet rule. In comparison, revolts in the Middle East have little in common with each other and less clearly-defined goals.
Let's toss Europe '89 out with Rosa Parks.
Most recently, commentators have embraced a lesser-known antecedent: Europe's 1848 revolutions.
Briefly, here's how it went down: In early 1848, there were rumblings in Sicily, where the Italians were fed up with their meddling Austrian rulers. At the same time, over in France, Parisians took to the street in protest against a national ban on political gatherings; soon, the country seemed to erupt in an orgy of nationalistic, republican fervour--which culminated in the overthrow of sour-faced King Louis Philippe I. That helped the revolution take off: to countries like Germany, Denmark, Austria, Italy, Spain, Romania, and Belgium, where a new class of democtratic(ish) parties and governments were born.
And it all happened so quickly.
And some of the bad guys fell. And others granted liberal concessions.
And while the revolution was not tweeted, Europeans did rely on some newfangled technology: like the railroad, the telegraph, and the mass-produced newspaper.
Sound familiar? Of all the revolutionary "springs" we have to draw on, 1848 Europe is probably closest to what we're seeing today.
The only problem is that, in the short term, the 1848 revolutions failed. Big time. In the words of historian A.J.P Taylor, 1848 was the moment "when history reached a turning point and failed to turn."
If we're going to be useful historians, it is this failure which should interest us.
Within a year or two of 1848, its national revolutions fell apart. In Italy, the monarchy came back. In France, the state was taken over by a new, all-powerful ruler. The German states failed to unite. Hungary fell back under Austria's fold. Elsewhere, things simply fizzled.
This is what we need to prepare for in the Middle East.
We might end up with revolutionary change, as we did in Europe by the 20th century. But it might take more time than we're allowing for. And it probably won't be unidirectional.
Take France: 1848's equivalent to 2011's Tunisia. France was the heart of 1848. That year alone, French revolutionaries managed to throw off monarchical rule and secure suffrage for all men. But then, the revolutionaries calmed down enough to realize they shared nothing in common. There was infighting. And class struggle. And backlash from conservatives, who rallied behind calls for 'Order!' In 1951, Louis Napoleon staged a coup, dissolved the parliament and declared himself France's absolute ruler.
Even lasting changes were slow in coming. The abolition of serfdom in Russia is said to have roots in 1848. But it didn't happen until 1861. Are we prepared to give Damascus or Amman or Cairo 13 years for their revolutionary ideas to bear fruit?
In history, we're used to seeing events on an extended timeline: where a few years, or a few decades don't mean very much.
In current affairs, that's harder to swallow.
That said, Europe is what it is today because of these decades of negotiations. Its liberal institutions are strong because they were allowed, at times, to flounder and fail. It's governments have the general support of their people because so many generations had a role in shaping them.
This week, when the G8 meets in France, Canada and other Western leaders will have to decide how much they want to set the pace of revolution in the Middle East. Already, there's pressure on Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose has been lambasted for not coming down quickly enough on Syria, and for being soft on violence in Tunisia, and for cozying up to Hosni Mubarack.
There's calls for that to change. Most recently, The Globe and Mail opined, "Canada should be an agent of change in those countries in which a transformation from autocracy to democracy is most likely to happen."
The U.S has already promised aid for Tunisia and Egypt, and will undoubtedly call on the G8 member nations to follow suit.
I'm sympathetic to the idea of nurturing liberal revolutions--or, at least, propping up democracies when they take root. I also understand the desire to attach certain core conditions to financial aid packages: conditions like legal protections for women and minorities. Because--at the risk of being dubbed a 'neocolonialist' by my more tight-lipped peers--those things just seem right.
But as a historian, I'm also profoundly nervous about interrupting the Arab world's 'Spring' so early on. Revolutions don't take weeks or months. They take years. Or decades. And there's a real chance that if we don't let some of these new revolutions fail in the short term, they might never really succeed.
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