Raja Petra Kamarudin as a “hired Umno blogger” and part of a larger plot to smear Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim ahead of the latter’s sodomy trial verdict.
The PKR de facto leader will learn the verdict on his sodomy charge on January 9. He is accused of sodomising a former aide, a charge he has vehemently denied and claims is a conspiracy to destroy his political career.
Today, PKR secretary-general Saifuddin Nasution said Umno and Barisan Nasional were determined to see Anwar jailed, adding that the attacks against Anwar was meant to deflect from the government’s financial scandals.
“It should not be forgotten that Raja Petra Kamarudin, now more known as a ‘hired Umno blogger’, once made a sworn statement that (Datuk Seri) Najib (Razak) and (Datin Seri) Rosmah (Mansor) were involved in the brutal murder of Mongolian model Altantuya Shariibuu...
“The latest are spins by Utusan Malaysia and Berita Harian, Umno-owned media who ... pick and contort Raja Petra Kamarudin’s statement on lies and allegations about Anwar’s case in their front pages,” Saifuddin said in a statement.
The self-exiled blogger told Utusan Malaysia that Anwar was morally unfit to become prime minister as Malaysians could not accept a homosexual leading the country.
Raja Petra did not explicitly call Anwar homosexual but said there was no room in Malaysia for someone who is gay and wants to become PM.
He also said he was “90 per cent” sure the man in the “Datuk T” sex video was Anwar, and that many of the latter’s friends believed in the authenticity of the video.
Saifuddin said the interview was a part of Umno’s “desperation” to discourage Malaysians from turning up at the Kuala Lumpur High Court on January 9 to show support for Anwar.
“Anwar is the opposition leader of Malaysia, the Permatang Pauh MP and PKR de facto leader. As a political leader, he has his followers and supporters.
“The attendance of his followers and supporters and PKR members to support him should not be seen as an attempt to cause chaos,” added Saifuddin.
The Machang MP went on to claim that Umno would cause havoc on January 9, and urged Malaysians to see past Umno’s dirty tactics.
“All the discrepancies and financial abuse by Umno and Barisan Nasional has not been answered by Najib and his Cabinet,” added Saifuddin, referring to PKR’s allegations of abuse against Senator Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil and her husband in the National Feedlot Corporation (NFC) scandal.
Malaysiatoday my dear friend RPK, you chose to bash Anwar. We don't care if it is your own opinion or that what you thought was not right yesterday is right for you today. As far as we are concerned, we have accepted Anwar and Pakatan Rakyat. Yes, Anwar is no angel as neither as your precious Najib or Rosmah now.
You see, Anwar is charismatic and that's why he can gel the Pakatan alliance and them to move despite the obstacles thrown down by Umno and BN. Anwar, no matter how you hate him, is the catalyst for Pakatan - the only formidable opposition for Barisan Nasional.
We Malaysians need Pakatan to do a check and balance on Barisan Nasional. Pakatan has grown from strength to strength over the last 3 years. It has its flaws. As RPK said Pakatan cannot win GE-13, he may or may not be right, but we don't care we just want a formidable opposition to put an end to the 54 years of gross misrule by Umno and Barisan National. Enough is enough.
No matter what you say, dear RPK, soon, we will have an Opposition in government and they would have matured by then. You said Selangor will be lost, but I can bet with you this will not happen.
Whatever you think of Anwar we do not care, even if Anwar really 'torpedoed' Saiful, and 'banged' the shit out of the Thai prostitute we don't care. It is his own personal problem until it is proven. We care only for Pakatan and Anwar is its catalyst and therefore can do no harm.
Haris Ibrahim resigned as president of the Malaysian Civil Liberties Movement (MCLM) today, accusing Raja Petra Kamarudin of undermining his efforts at ending Barisan Nasional’s (BN) rule.
The self-exiled blogger, who is also MCLM chairman, told the New Straits Times in an interview published yesterday that the civil society movement would not contest the next general election.
Raja Petra was also reported by the Umno-controlled daily as saying “the Egypt-style people’s revolution was not an answer for Malaysia due to the delicate racial balance. (Chinese voters) don’t want Tahrir Square.”
Today, Haris said Raja Petra unilaterally made the decision to stay away from the general election.
“I can confirm now that no such decision has been made after due consultation. In the circumstances, I find it impossible to continue to serve MCLM as its president,” Haris wrote on his blog.
He said Raja Petra’s comments “greatly undermine efforts I am making, albeit through MLCM, in the ‘Anything But Umno (ABU)’ initiative.
“It also saddens me that even as... many others continue daily to undo the ill-effects of Umno/BN’s 40-over years of race-based, divide-and-rule, my friend should continue to see us as Malays, Chinese, Indians,” he said.
Haris said he was disheartened by Raja Petra’s racial view of Malaysians. — File pic
The political activist said he informed Raja Petra, better known as RPK, of his resignation via email.
Raja Petra has come under fire from PKR after Umno-owned Utusan Malaysia quoted him yesterday as saying Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was morally unfit to become prime minister as Malaysians could not accept a homosexual leading the country.
The blogger, who fled the country in 2009 after alleging that Datuk Seri Najib Razak and his wife were responsible for the murder of Mongolian Altantuya Shariibuu, did not explicitly call Anwar a homosexual but said there was no room in Malaysia for someone who is gay and wants to become PM.
He also said he was “90 per cent” sure the man in the Datuk T sex video was Anwar, and that many of the latter’s friends believed in the authenticity of the video.
Raja Petra had first mooted civil society as a third force in Malaysian politics in October 2010 when he told a forum in London that Pakatan Rakyat’s huge gains in 2008 were due to the civil society action such as the Bersih and Hindraf rallies in 2007, which championed free and fair elections and lobbied for Indian rights respectively.
“We have given PR two-and-a-half years but not a single reform has been implemented,” he had said, forcing Anwar to defend his coalition at the same event by laying blame on the federal government.
The Selangor royal family member had launched MCLM’s Barisan Rakyat Independent Candidate Initiative in December 2010 and the movement began deploying its candidates last July.
MCLM also warned Najib that street protests would follow if the prime minister called for a general election without first implementing the electoral reforms demanded by the Bersih 2.0 election watchdog movement.
“I wish to reiterate here that this was no idle threat,” Haris wrote today.
Unfortunately, many new technologies and business models make money for investors without creating jobs for workers. That causes unemployment and increases what the blogger Clay Shirky calls "cognitive surplus" - unused brainpower.
I won't argue about net job creation here (though I think most innovation fosters it in the long run, so long as the education system prepares people for the new jobs that result). But it is exciting to see a company designed to extract some of the highest-value cognitive surplus around, and to make money both for the company and its - well, they are not exactly workers. Call them members - or even sellers of their own cognitive surplus through an exchange set up for that purpose.
The story starts with yet another recent phenomenon: an increase in corporate transparency, whether companies want it or not. In the old days, most companies sold products and had specified spokespersons; more recently, many have added call centres, creating about 3.5 million jobs in the United States alone, and many more outside it.
But now employees of all kinds, not just those in customer support or public relations, have an online presence. Some mention their employer; most do not. This makes most employers a little nervous. Companies seem to have become fishbowls, their contents visible to customers and strangers alike. You could say that they have a larger "surface area", composed of employees who interact with outsiders.
Insidr.com is now trying to make this phenomenon into a business. (I should disclose that I plan to invest in this company - not necessarily because I think that it will be the next hot IPO, but because I think that it exploits some interesting and accelerating trends. Moreover, I will inevitably learn a lot by being involved, and its business model will likely undergo several transformations while disrupting some existing ones. Along the way, one of its models is likely to work superbly well.)
The problem Insidr addresses is familiar to almost everyone; there are about 45 billion customer-service calls per year in the US, according to Insidr founder Antony Brydon, and six billion of those concern what the customer considers a problem. There are now also one billion tweets of complaint a year.
Insidr.com's answer is not special access or a Twitter feed that will work until the volume overwhelms it, but rather a market for connecting current customers with former insiders who can tell them how to work the system. In other words, it is an open market for information, operating more or less parallel to the closed, non-market systems run by most companies.
Do you want, for example, to pay a service representative to do his job better? That would be a bribe. But it's common in customer-centric jobs to tip your waiter, your barista at Starbucks or the concierge in your hotel. If you can reach that same person after he has left his job for advice, both you and the former rep can benefit from a fair exchange.
I won't argue about net job creation here (though I think most innovation fosters it in the long run, so long as the education system prepares people for the new jobs that result). But it is exciting to see a company designed to extract some of the highest-value cognitive surplus around, and to make money both for the company and its - well, they are not exactly workers. Call them members - or even sellers of their own cognitive surplus through an exchange set up for that purpose.
The story starts with yet another recent phenomenon: an increase in corporate transparency, whether companies want it or not. In the old days, most companies sold products and had specified spokespersons; more recently, many have added call centres, creating about 3.5 million jobs in the United States alone, and many more outside it.
But now employees of all kinds, not just those in customer support or public relations, have an online presence. Some mention their employer; most do not. This makes most employers a little nervous. Companies seem to have become fishbowls, their contents visible to customers and strangers alike. You could say that they have a larger "surface area", composed of employees who interact with outsiders.
Insidr.com is now trying to make this phenomenon into a business. (I should disclose that I plan to invest in this company - not necessarily because I think that it will be the next hot IPO, but because I think that it exploits some interesting and accelerating trends. Moreover, I will inevitably learn a lot by being involved, and its business model will likely undergo several transformations while disrupting some existing ones. Along the way, one of its models is likely to work superbly well.)
The problem Insidr addresses is familiar to almost everyone; there are about 45 billion customer-service calls per year in the US, according to Insidr founder Antony Brydon, and six billion of those concern what the customer considers a problem. There are now also one billion tweets of complaint a year.
Insidr.com's answer is not special access or a Twitter feed that will work until the volume overwhelms it, but rather a market for connecting current customers with former insiders who can tell them how to work the system. In other words, it is an open market for information, operating more or less parallel to the closed, non-market systems run by most companies.
Do you want, for example, to pay a service representative to do his job better? That would be a bribe. But it's common in customer-centric jobs to tip your waiter, your barista at Starbucks or the concierge in your hotel. If you can reach that same person after he has left his job for advice, both you and the former rep can benefit from a fair exchange.
The inside scoop
Specifically, Insidr brings together consumers who have practical questions about how to deal with a specific company and (mostly) former employees of that company. For example, you want to know whether you can still get the unlimited-data-roaming plan that your friend has, but the company refuses to give you a straight answer. Somewhere, a former employee (or perhaps a knowledgeable phone-store saleswoman) knows the answer.
Amazingly, says Brydon, two companies have embraced the idea. Dish Networks now seem to encourage its employees to join the system, while a manager at another company has asked for a "white-label" version that would serve only it and its customers.
But, inevitably, the whole idea will make many companies anxious. Insidr lets users select the companies by posting questions, and adds the most-mentioned companies first; so far, it has 10, including AT&T, Bank of America, Sprint and United Air Lines. I can imagine some advertisement of the future that boasts, "We're so helpful that Insidr.com ignores us!"
The users post questions, with or without a reward. (Insidr gets a 50 per cent cut of rewards when they are offered). "We originally thought that it would be mostly about information," says Brydon, "and that the free answers would erode the revenue opportunities. But it has turned out to be more about relationships and connecting a person who needs help with a person who can and wants to help. This basic desire to help seems as important as the rewards. Questions are answered more quickly when there is a reward, but many of the workers help even when there is no reward."
In fact, the free answers are a way for the "workers" to establish a reputation, and they make more money actually performing services, whether helping someone book a complicated flight route or get a new loan officer. In one case, a current United Airlines employee asked for a telephone number for a person, not a machine, in the company's human-relations department.
By making the market for insider knowledge and access transparent and open, Insidr raises a lot of questions about why companies operate as they do. People inside companies are paid to provide a certain level of customer service on the assumption that they will help to sell products, instruct users how to benefit from them and improve customer satisfaction.
But customers are generally stuck with one-size-fits-all service. Can Insidr.com do a better job by unbundling the market and allowing a more direct relationship between consumers and workers, and give more power to both of them vis-a-vis companies?
This brings to mind persistent retail-business disputes about who can sell and service products. Some companies insist on controlling distribution channels - in order to deliver a full-service product, they say, though sometimes the goal seems to be merely to control the price. That tension - between the manufacturer and authorised resellers on the one hand, and cheap resellers and independent third-party service companies on the other - continues today in many markets. With Insidr.com, that same tension will spread to consumer-service companies as well
Specifically, Insidr brings together consumers who have practical questions about how to deal with a specific company and (mostly) former employees of that company. For example, you want to know whether you can still get the unlimited-data-roaming plan that your friend has, but the company refuses to give you a straight answer. Somewhere, a former employee (or perhaps a knowledgeable phone-store saleswoman) knows the answer.
Amazingly, says Brydon, two companies have embraced the idea. Dish Networks now seem to encourage its employees to join the system, while a manager at another company has asked for a "white-label" version that would serve only it and its customers.
But, inevitably, the whole idea will make many companies anxious. Insidr lets users select the companies by posting questions, and adds the most-mentioned companies first; so far, it has 10, including AT&T, Bank of America, Sprint and United Air Lines. I can imagine some advertisement of the future that boasts, "We're so helpful that Insidr.com ignores us!"
The users post questions, with or without a reward. (Insidr gets a 50 per cent cut of rewards when they are offered). "We originally thought that it would be mostly about information," says Brydon, "and that the free answers would erode the revenue opportunities. But it has turned out to be more about relationships and connecting a person who needs help with a person who can and wants to help. This basic desire to help seems as important as the rewards. Questions are answered more quickly when there is a reward, but many of the workers help even when there is no reward."
In fact, the free answers are a way for the "workers" to establish a reputation, and they make more money actually performing services, whether helping someone book a complicated flight route or get a new loan officer. In one case, a current United Airlines employee asked for a telephone number for a person, not a machine, in the company's human-relations department.
By making the market for insider knowledge and access transparent and open, Insidr raises a lot of questions about why companies operate as they do. People inside companies are paid to provide a certain level of customer service on the assumption that they will help to sell products, instruct users how to benefit from them and improve customer satisfaction.
But customers are generally stuck with one-size-fits-all service. Can Insidr.com do a better job by unbundling the market and allowing a more direct relationship between consumers and workers, and give more power to both of them vis-a-vis companies?
This brings to mind persistent retail-business disputes about who can sell and service products. Some companies insist on controlling distribution channels - in order to deliver a full-service product, they say, though sometimes the goal seems to be merely to control the price. That tension - between the manufacturer and authorised resellers on the one hand, and cheap resellers and independent third-party service companies on the other - continues today in many markets. With Insidr.com, that same tension will spread to consumer-service companies as well
.As a sceptic pointed out, predicting the end of the world is a mug's game. If the world doesn't in fact end as you'd predicted it would, you'll be made to look like an idiot. And if it does in fact come to an end, there'll be no one left to hear you say 'I told you so'.
Despite this, doomsday prophecies have always been part of religion and popular folklore. From the Biblical story of the Flood, through Nostradamus's predictions, down to the present day. The latest of a long lines of deadlines for the end of the world is based on Mayan mythology, according to which doomsday has been scheduled for December 21, 2012.
Ever since it was first announced earlier in the decade, Apocalypse 2012 captured public imagination and became a huge commercial success. It has spawned hundreds of websites, songs (including Britney Spears's 'Till The World Ends'), movies, and books (including Dan Brown's 2009 best-seller, 'The Last Symbol'. The 2009 Hollywood disaster film '2012' devised a marketing campaign of TV spots and websites run by a made-up 'Institute for Human Continuity' which warned people to prepare for the end of the world. Criticised for scare-mongering and creating public panic, the campaign ensured that the movie became a huge box-office hit and made almost $770 million worldwide.
Cashing in on the doomsday growth industry, the Mexican tourism authorities have started promoting ancient Mayan sites as appropriate destinations for travellers who want to have a ringside seat, so to speak, from which to witness the end of the world. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a tourist brochure.
What is it about doomsday scenarios - from comets striking the Earth and wiping out all living creatures, to pandemics of a killer disease, to radical climate change, to alien invasion or nuclear annihilation - that gives them their popular appeal, makes us drawn to them as to a compellingly fascinating horror movie which we watch through the gaps in our fingers with which we have covered our eyes? Part of the reason could be what might be called the inverse calculus of death: the untimely death of an individual is the subject of a tragedy; the mega death of a million people is a statistic. The death of the entire planet goes beyond statistics, as it does beyond anything at all that we can conceive of, including death itself: if everyone dies, then no-one dies, because death itself is already dead.
There could be another reason, based on the genetic instinct which reaffirms the inevitable circle of life and death, of destruction and regeneration. In Indic philosophy the cosmos goes through cycles in which it is eternally created and destroyed. This concept is reflected in the scientific theory of the oscillating universe, according to which the universe was created by the Big Bang and will continue to expand till gravitational forces pull it back together to a 'singularity which once again will explode in another Big Bang, ad infinitum.
Subsequent studies have suggested that the oscillating universe theory could be flawed as there doesn't seem to be enough cosmic mass to coalesce once again into a singularity and that the universe is fated to expand till the end of space and time. However, this does not rule out the cyclical cosmic theory working on the micro, or molecular level.
Mirroring the belief in reincarnation, cellular science tells us that from day to day, from hour to hour, we 'die' as one entity and are reborn as another. Each of us is a microcosm
of the universe, composed as we are of billions of cells which are constantly dying and constantly been renewed: you are not the same 'you' that you were yesterday but a new, reborn 'you', composed of new cells which have replaced your old cells and which in turn will be replaced by other cells.
Even after the death of an individual, the atomic matter that formed that individual lives on in different forms - as insects, or plants, or trees, or philosophers - inextricably interwoven with other cells, all of which will perish, be replenished, and get reborn over and over again. Death is the mother of life. All those who have ever lived - Gautam Buddha, and Plato, and Christ, and Newton, and Einstein, and, yes, Attila, and Hitler, and Stalin, and Mao - live on in us, in the form of molecular matter descended - reincarnated, if you like - from the molecules that once made up those individuals.
In a way, doomsday predictions are allegories of this endless circle of dissolution and regeneration, decay and rebirth. Prophecies of Apocalypse now are in a sense an affirmation of Apocalypse Never. For, if doomsday comes, can rebirth-day be far behind?
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