REAL AND IMAGINARY PROBLEMS OF UMNO YOUTH CHIEF KHAIRY JAMALUDDIN.

When it comes to talk, very few can match Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin. After all, he used to host a talk show. And today, he displayed his prowess when saying Umno is winning the battle for the hearts and minds of Malaysian youth.

there are ominous parallels between “UMNO-land” and the Nazi state. Both political orders rest doctrinally upon an absolute commitment to “blood and soil nationalism”. This is the idea that the only true and real citizens are those who are linked to the land/soil of the motherland by blood. In two ways. First, that their mothers spilt blood here on this land in giving birth to them. And second, that the earth upon which their mothers split that blood was land that had already been made a sacred possession of the nation by the men, their forefathers, who split blood in war to make the land “ours” and who defended it in blood. Only those connected by so-called “ties of blood” to the blood that made the land “ours” are truly “us”, truly citizens. The rest are not. They are not really part of the “nation”. Its funny how an Oxtard can’t see the difference between an election among malaysians and a war. And as mention, the leader himself has mentioned he will not stand and now he will stand for UMNO Youth as well as for general elections. What kind of leader is this, I do and I don’t. Epic fail! Now he speaks about never surrender, boleh balik lah KJ. You think we are dumb kah? No we are not. you are the man behind the keris incident and we shall not forget your arrogance after the 2004 election and your move to the moderate side and now followed by equating a peaceful elections to war.

However, the country’s “richest unemployed young man,” as dubbed by Lim Kit Siang, is just talking up his achievements.

After the disastrous GE12, I was hoping that UMNO will rise to the challenge and prove the electorate wrong by reinventing itself. Instead, UMNO and its affiliates continued to be in denial and like a man caught in quicksand, it sank deeper and deeper into trouble. The antics at recent General Assemblies of UMNO and MCA highlight their desperation- attacking its opposition parties, pouring scorn on individuals and wallowing in self pity to gain sympathy votes. This reminds me of Ultraman movies where at the end, the defeated monster will give a final cry before succumbing. Tragic.To Umno, we are here to take what rightfully belongs to the Malays and what rightfully belongs to the Malays belongs to Mamaks! (Celup Melayu). Just look at the Indian Melayu from Kerala, before calling it a day, he is still actively bloating his lair with ill gotten wealth.

For someone who is gung-ho in parroting Winston Churchill, Khairy Jamaluddin Abu Bakar has a strange way of emulating the complicated former British prime minister. For someone mimicking the “never retreat, never surrender line” his preference of defending his Youth post but sitting out of the next general election is rather perplexing.

Is Umno popular among the young? Khairy says results of the recent campus elections reflects youth acceptance of Umno, where 18 out of 20 elections were won by the pro-government Pro-Aspirasi groups.

Well, the government-backed undergraduates won in elections where rules were stacked against those linked to opposition. In Universiti Malaya and the International Islamic University, where attempts to influence results failed, the pro-opposition candidates swept to power.

Care to explain that, Khairy? This should be compulsory reading for all umno supporters starting with Khairy, the Great Pretender! Sadly, not many would understand it, including Khairy for all his Oxfordian background and education! Kairy, can you hear Churchill chuckling at you? We’re talking about another general election and democracy at work and the only guys in ‘uniform’ -witness the your AGM -are your own ‘storm troopers’ or ‘God’sChosen’! Heil Hitler!

Also, why resort to social media to measure Umno’s popularity? Aren’t most followers fake or phantom accounts, especially in the Twitterverse? They are just eggs without tweets and set up on the same date with the same followers and following the same people.

Of course, you can say Umno president Datuk Seri Najib Razak has over 1.25 million fans on Facebook, and over one million followers on Twitter while Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim only has around 400,000 Facebook fans, and around 200,000 Twitter followers.

That’s what the statistics say. But have you seen the number of likes and dislikes for the recent Google+ hangout? Did you see the number of likes and dislikes for Najib until all YouTube videos of the event had to be made private?

It was embarrassing for the prime minister and the minions who had convinced him that he is popular. And now you say he is popular and that is proof the youth are backing Barisan Nasional (BN).

I had high hopes for you, Khairy, and in some ways, I still do.

So, please make full use of your foreign education and privileged birth by talking about issues that matter, not some kind of lame propaganda for Umno to thank you for the youth vote.

Don’t delude yourself and Umno into thinking you have the youth vote. You don’t. Work hard for it, as hard as Najib is going around the country to keep up support for BN.

Najib needs allies who can tell him the facts and not blow smoke into his eyes. He isn’t the Emperor with his new clothes with sycophantic courtiers. Get your facts right and go out there to get support, not blow your trumpet that the youth vote is with BN.

Rest in peace, they say, when you are poltically dead, though you probably won’t actually hear anyone render such soothing advice. But if you are famous in life, there’s a good chance that your fame will not be interred with your bones. You might be at eternal peace with the universe or end up as dark matter, but your fame will linger as a topic of discussion, evaluation and re-evaluation. You’ll stay undead for the wrong reason.

Take Abraham Lincoln. Most people today would agree that he was a great, perhaps the greatest, president of the United States. He died nearly a century and a half ago but his life and works are under ceaseless evaluation and interpretation. During his lifetime, he had many enemies and critics. To preserve the unity of the country he waged and won a war against the southern states of the US at the cost of at least 650,000 lives. One man, John Wilkes Booth, hated Lincoln enough to shoot him dead.

Yet his fame lived on and billowed into a giant aura of one of the world’s legendary historical figures. His colossal statue stares from Washington’s Lincoln Memorial at Capitol Hill in the distance. In his life, people on the Hill gave him much discomfort but he coaxed and cajoled a majority into passing a Constitutional amendment to abolish slavery from America’s soil. His complex, many-sided personality comes out in Steven Spielberg’s brilliant new film ‘Lincoln’.

What emerges is the character of greatness, warts and all. It is a revisionist view in the sense that the film shows Lincoln as a crafty enough politician to be as devious as necessary to ensure that his goal would be achieved. Like another great politician, M.K. Gandhi, he knew when to wink and when to nod while defending his principles.Revisionism in search of ‘true’ portraits of the dead is rampant. A new book, ‘Master of the Mountain’ by Henry Wiencek, has riled many historians by revising the prevalent account of the life of Thomas Jefferson, also a great American president, who the author says was cynically interested in the economic benefits of slavery.

Some want to re-examine aspects of the real thing. Albert Einstein’s brain has been preserved for posterity and is now being examined by scientists for clues to genius. Others want to exhume bodies to find out how the fellow really died even as he rests in pieces. Yasser Arafat has been dug up to check whether the Israelis poisoned him.All this rumination on what happens when a famous person passes away stirred my mind while reading several glowing accounts, and a few critical ones,

That, of course, depends on how you define greatness. Bal Thackeray was an enigma. He was no Hitler, though he admired the Fuehrer and may have wanted to be like him.  Thanks to my professional access at the time, I once had an opportunity to have lunch with him back in the mid-1990s. He came to the hotel lobby where we were to meet with a six-man, carbine-toting posse of bodyguards. We went up to a secluded room, where Thackeray fished out cans of chilled Heineken from a bag and launched into a delightful, often very funny, discourse on his view of life and politics.

For me it was an exercise of trying to understand where a famous personality came from without having to talk about myself. After three hours, he was still an enigma.What intrigued me was how such a cheerful seemingly happy person could be a fountainhead of the politics of intolerance.

Never confuse compassion with weakness

An interview with the Dalai Lama to celebrate World Compassion Day. Excerpts:

Do you occasionally feel that compassion has failed as an instrument of change in recent times? Does this disappoint you?
No, compassion never fails. It is our understanding of compassion that occasionally does. We are not always sure what we expect from compassion. That is our failing. We are disappointed because we do not always understand how compassion works. It is a very powerful emotion and only those who have courage and a strong sense of self esteem can afford to be compassionate.

Since you speak in defence of animals and how they need to be protected, have you ever had pets?

Yes, birds to begin with. Then some dogs. Now I have a cat. Children should be encouraged to have pets because it helps them to bond with other species and, as they grow older, they understand the importance of compassion in all relationships. It makes them stronger, better people.

You have been recommending vegetarianism? Are you one?
Tibetans are not vegetarians by birth. I tried very seriously to be one but because of certain medical reasons I had to give it up after a while. But that does not mean I do not support and recommend vegetarianism. It is the best thing for your health and well being, as any doctor will tell you. We have often been offered money to do poultry farming, rearing animals for food. But I have always turned it down. I would like my people to reduce their intake of meat and meat products. Good health and good eating habits go together. Research shows that food that does not involve killing makes you emotionally stronger.

What is your favourite food?
South Indian vegetarian food. It is nutritious, very tasty and I like it very much.

Does it disappoint you that China does not respond to your voice of compassion?
No. I still believe compassion is the only way we can resolve such issues, even in politics. But compassion does not mean weakness. We Tibetans are a strong people. We do not accept defeat so easily. Things are rapidly changing. The China of today is not what it was thirty years ago. Their leaders are also changing. They are no longer so strong and stubborn as they once were. I have every reason to believe that the future will be better than the past.

Are you happy?
People sometimes call me the mischievous Lama because I laugh, I smile, I speak in jest. Yes, I believe that nothing can be achieved if you are not happy. But you cannot be happy unless others around you are also happy. So I seek happiness for everyone. People. Animals. Birds. Even insects. As the Japanese believe, even plants and flowers have life and feelings. I do not know about feelings but life they certainly have and we must learn to love and protect anything that has life. That is what compassion is all about. Though sometimes I must confess I do not feel very compassionate about mosquitoes when they come and bite me. (Laughs).