Sankara rubbished Nazri’s call for an RCI. - File picDatuk Seri Nazri Aziz’s arguments have failed to justify the need for an inquiry on the sex video allegedly featuring Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, his lawyer has asserted.
OUR UMNO RESPONSE TO A SCANDALOUS MESS IS NEAT AND CATEGORISED. CASH AND SEX ARE THE NORTH AND SOUTH POLE OF MASS INTEREST, EACH WITH A SPRAWLING MAGNETIC FIELD. WE DIVIDE THE HEMISPHERES WITH THE EQUATOR OF LOGIC. CASH AND CORRUPTION ARE THE PRESERVE OF POLITICS. SEX IS THE PROVINCE OF GLAMOUR. WE REFUSE TO RECOGNISE ANY CROSS-OVEREVIDENCE.
OUR UMNO RESPONSE TO A SCANDALOUS MESS IS NEAT AND CATEGORISED. CASH AND SEX ARE THE NORTH AND SOUTH POLE OF MASS INTEREST, EACH WITH A SPRAWLING MAGNETIC FIELD. WE DIVIDE THE HEMISPHERES WITH THE EQUATOR OF LOGIC. CASH AND CORRUPTION ARE THE PRESERVE OF POLITICS. SEX IS THE PROVINCE OF GLAMOUR. WE REFUSE TO RECOGNISE ANY CROSS-OVEREVIDENCE.
Sometimes it seems like every 40-plus woman in America wants to be on "Oprah." Or wants to be Oprah. We hear from them every day. Ambition is a great thing. We encourage it; in fact, we nurture it when and where we can. But most of the Oprah-wannabes have little more than the germ of an idea and no clue how to make it happen.
This country is filled with people waiting for someone else to make their dream come true. They honestly believe that when people hear their idea, they will drop everything they're doing (working on their own ideas) and devote whatever resources are necessary to make them stars.
We have had the pleasure of doing stories on and interviewing some very successful, interesting, intelligent, articulate, provocative women. These are no wannabes. They are the real deal. They have unique and, most importantly, authentic voices. They are not peddling schtick. Their messages resonate. Without exception, they worked very hard to get to the point where their voices were heard and their projects appreciated. One of these women is Barbara Hannah Grufferman. Barbara is the author of a wonderful book, "The Best of Everything After 50: The Experts' Guide to Style, Sex, Health, Money and More." (We like it so much we've given it the Growing Bolder Playbook for Life Seal!)
This week, Barbara posted a great piece on The Huffington Post about turning positive thoughts into sustainable action. This is one of my favorite topics because we're in the business of inspiring people to live extraordinary lives, to get off the couch and chase their dreams. Barbara offers "5 Sure-Fire Ways to Turn Positive Thought into Sustainable Action" -- five powerful ways to move from a wannabe to a be.
I agree with all of Barbara's great points, but with a slight variation on the first. She says that when you decide to do something, tell the world. Her reasoning is that publicly proclaiming your intentions holds you accountable. I believe that everyone wants to want, but very few really want. Most who say they want to run a marathon don't really want to because it's too hard and requires too much commitment. Most who say they want to write a book like to fantasize about being a published author, but they're not willing to make the sacrifice that Barbara did to write her wonderful book. They like the fantasy but can't handle the reality.
Getting from wanting to want to truly wanting is the trick. I agree with Barbara that at some point you have to speak your intentions to give them life, but telling the world (or telling anyone) too soon delivers an instant ego boost that can actually derail the process before it even gets started. Those who want to want satisfy their need to feel that they're going to do something important simply by saying they are going to do it and then getting back on the couch.
Admittedly, everyone is different (which is why this is such a fascinating topic), but I find I have the most success when I keep personal goals to myself until I've begun to actively pursue them, have fought through the inevitable first stage of self-doubt and have accepted the realization that it's not going to be easy. Once there, I feel like I've earned the right to tell those close to me. Until then, I'm just one of the many who want to want. When I tell someone I'm going after something important, I want them to believe it. There's real power in that. Who wants to be the boy who cried wolf?
Let's face it, if you can't hold yourself accountable, you're doomed to begin with. I agree with Barbara that the Universe has to know what you're up to -- but scream it silently. In your most personal, most private moments let the Universe know that you are committed to losing 10 pounds, starting a new business, writing a screenplay or helping the needy, and then move forward with power and passion. But don't tell a single soul until you've actually wrestled with the wannabe beast, until you've proven to yourself that you can get past the first of what will ultimately be many roadblocks
In a world of 24x7 media, in all probability, there would have been no Gandhi. Can you imagine the field day the media would have with all his eccentricities, his contrarian pronouncements, his often enigmatic positions and actions and of course his tendency to experiment with sexuality? It isn't as if Gandhi did not attract enough critics in his day, indeed his death was through an act of extreme criticism, but Gandhi's greatness was allowed to rise above the criticism that surrounded him. It took a bullet to bring down Gandhi, but the idea that he represents lives on and has proved surprisingly difficult to dismantle.
The swirling criticism around the Anna Hazare-led movement makes one wonder about the role that criticism plays in our life today. The objections have been so intense and the effort so concerted that it does not feel out of place to ask if there is a deeper intent, a deliberate effort behind all the critiques, objections, characterisations and dirty tricks that the movement is attracting. Nothing is easier in argument than to either characterise the other side with adjectives of your choosing and to inflate a germ of doubt that you can plausibly detect into a full blown epidemic of distrust or try and denigrate the credentials of those one is opposed to and to focus on who they are rather than on the idea that they represent.
The most powerful characteristic of this movement is also the greatest reason for its vulnerability- it lacks an ideological bunker; it does not as yet have a settled worldview and an articulated way of dealing with objections. It is composed of a diverse group of people, loosely connected and of different ideological persuasions and led by a person whose greatest strength is plausibility- he looks the part and feels right for it. Its attraction lies in this rawness, in its bumbling naivete and crude desire for change. It draws people in because it seems unrehearsed and vaguely impractical, and the energy it generates has a primitive quality. Tired of the articulate, weary of the ideologically sophisticated, spent by the incessant name-calling that hides a deeper, intractable complicity between apparently opposed sides (left and right, govt and opposition, the state and its intellectual critics), there is an audience, however middle class, that responds to the idea that this movement seems to espouse.
The trouble is that it runs afoul of every established formation that exists. Political parties have an obvious interest in running this desire for change to ground, but so do others. The protest industry and its supporters see this as a coup from unexpected quarters involving an unworthy constituency- it was all right for Anna Hazare to be using similar strategies when he was working for the rural poor, that was familiar and harmless, largely because it was operated on a small scale and looked appropriately romantic. Now of course, he has catapulted his group into national limelight and a core policy making role, bypassing those who thought they had the exclusive right of speaking for the powerless in the language of protest. For other liberal commentators, the movement is simply not sophisticated enough for it throws up a jumble of ideas that cut across the ideological divisions that have been so neatly carved out. It is an upstart movement that defies categories and shows no respect for settled perspectives formed over decades and hardened into smug little islands of certainty. There was an established world in the world of disaffection, a protocol that everyone followed, and here comes a rag-tag band that brashly bypasses these all.
It seems there is no room today for a new idea that is born in imperfection and that grows into something meaningful. Without the umbrella of a sponsor, and bereft of the protection of someone loud and powerful, it will wither under the combined assault of existing entrenched groups. The scrutiny any new idea is subject to is too intense and such deliberate intent is used to invalidate it, that its ability to survive becomes highly uncertain. In a larger sense, the tendency is to reduce ideas to the people who espouse them and then to reduce these people to their basest motivations. In doing so, we take pride in finding what we already knew- that eventually all new ideas are nothing but old vested interests dressed up seductively and go back to the stability of the status-quo, that wonderfully comforting zone where we know who our friends and enemies are and where no ideas of unknown origin and uncertain lineage come to unsettle us.
The curious part of this is how as our world becomes more imperfect, the quest for an unreasonable kind of perfection grows. It is not enough, for instance that this movement pushes for something that has been in the works for 42 years and is something that most mature democracies have a version of. Nor is it sufficient that all that has been asked for is inclusion in the process of drafting a bill which the legislature is in any case free to reject or modify as it deems fit. What the critics do is to focus on every molecule of the movement- they take apart every constituent fragment and subject it to intense scrutiny. Unless it all works, nothing does, is the implicit argument.
This need for perfection in every atom, this belief that unless every bit of an idea or a person is above reproach, all of it gets invalidated is a curious idea in today's world where all feet have some clay in them. The current uproar over the new Gandhi biography carries the same hysterical note- how dare someone impute something inappropriate about him? Even retrospectively, we find it difficult to deal with imperfection. In a world full of critics and in an arena dominated by competitive certainties, new ideas don't have a chance. As wouldn't Gandhi today.
The swirling criticism around the Anna Hazare-led movement makes one wonder about the role that criticism plays in our life today. The objections have been so intense and the effort so concerted that it does not feel out of place to ask if there is a deeper intent, a deliberate effort behind all the critiques, objections, characterisations and dirty tricks that the movement is attracting. Nothing is easier in argument than to either characterise the other side with adjectives of your choosing and to inflate a germ of doubt that you can plausibly detect into a full blown epidemic of distrust or try and denigrate the credentials of those one is opposed to and to focus on who they are rather than on the idea that they represent.
The most powerful characteristic of this movement is also the greatest reason for its vulnerability- it lacks an ideological bunker; it does not as yet have a settled worldview and an articulated way of dealing with objections. It is composed of a diverse group of people, loosely connected and of different ideological persuasions and led by a person whose greatest strength is plausibility- he looks the part and feels right for it. Its attraction lies in this rawness, in its bumbling naivete and crude desire for change. It draws people in because it seems unrehearsed and vaguely impractical, and the energy it generates has a primitive quality. Tired of the articulate, weary of the ideologically sophisticated, spent by the incessant name-calling that hides a deeper, intractable complicity between apparently opposed sides (left and right, govt and opposition, the state and its intellectual critics), there is an audience, however middle class, that responds to the idea that this movement seems to espouse.
The trouble is that it runs afoul of every established formation that exists. Political parties have an obvious interest in running this desire for change to ground, but so do others. The protest industry and its supporters see this as a coup from unexpected quarters involving an unworthy constituency- it was all right for Anna Hazare to be using similar strategies when he was working for the rural poor, that was familiar and harmless, largely because it was operated on a small scale and looked appropriately romantic. Now of course, he has catapulted his group into national limelight and a core policy making role, bypassing those who thought they had the exclusive right of speaking for the powerless in the language of protest. For other liberal commentators, the movement is simply not sophisticated enough for it throws up a jumble of ideas that cut across the ideological divisions that have been so neatly carved out. It is an upstart movement that defies categories and shows no respect for settled perspectives formed over decades and hardened into smug little islands of certainty. There was an established world in the world of disaffection, a protocol that everyone followed, and here comes a rag-tag band that brashly bypasses these all.
It seems there is no room today for a new idea that is born in imperfection and that grows into something meaningful. Without the umbrella of a sponsor, and bereft of the protection of someone loud and powerful, it will wither under the combined assault of existing entrenched groups. The scrutiny any new idea is subject to is too intense and such deliberate intent is used to invalidate it, that its ability to survive becomes highly uncertain. In a larger sense, the tendency is to reduce ideas to the people who espouse them and then to reduce these people to their basest motivations. In doing so, we take pride in finding what we already knew- that eventually all new ideas are nothing but old vested interests dressed up seductively and go back to the stability of the status-quo, that wonderfully comforting zone where we know who our friends and enemies are and where no ideas of unknown origin and uncertain lineage come to unsettle us.
The curious part of this is how as our world becomes more imperfect, the quest for an unreasonable kind of perfection grows. It is not enough, for instance that this movement pushes for something that has been in the works for 42 years and is something that most mature democracies have a version of. Nor is it sufficient that all that has been asked for is inclusion in the process of drafting a bill which the legislature is in any case free to reject or modify as it deems fit. What the critics do is to focus on every molecule of the movement- they take apart every constituent fragment and subject it to intense scrutiny. Unless it all works, nothing does, is the implicit argument.
This need for perfection in every atom, this belief that unless every bit of an idea or a person is above reproach, all of it gets invalidated is a curious idea in today's world where all feet have some clay in them. The current uproar over the new Gandhi biography carries the same hysterical note- how dare someone impute something inappropriate about him? Even retrospectively, we find it difficult to deal with imperfection. In a world full of critics and in an arena dominated by competitive certainties, new ideas don't have a chance. As wouldn't Gandhi today.
There must some committee or group strategising on how best to use the porn video to implicate Anwar Ibrahim and yet keep some space between the Datuk Trio with Umno.
That explains the strange happenings in the last few days.
WATCH: "You could tell UMNO was scoping out the trouble aspects of it."
But eventually the ANWAR loses patience with UMNO.
First, some senior police officer comes out and says that the probe is completed BUT the identity of the man in the video is not important. Also not key to the probe is the ownership of the Omega watch, presumably owned by the man in the video.
This is a complete turnaround from what Ismail Omar, the Inspector-General of Umno (oh sorry, the police), said last week. Then, he was really gung-ho about the police finding out the man in the video and tracing who owns the Omega.
Here is my take on this change of strategy (I have no evidence but then I am in good company because neither do the police, MACC and other agencies).
Some people in Putrajaya really want to use the video tape, believing that it will end Anwar’s political career but they also realise that because of some missteps (not charging the Datuk Trio for displaying porn material) the potential of backlash from public is there.
So it was necessary to take a few steps back and announce that the identity of the man in the video was not key to the police probe. The only thing important was to find out the people behind the video.
That is why the police changed tack. So we can expect the Datuk Trio to be charged and probably given a slap on the wrist.
If all goes well with this new strategy, the Datuk Trio will insist on their day in court and level all sorts of accusations against Anwar. So in effect, they will do the political killing instead of the authorities.
Then Umno can hold up its hands and say that it had nothing to do with this porn movie.
Umno wants to distance itself from the affair. That is why now Shazryl Eskay Abdullah says he is the only one responsible for the tape.
Think about this. After weeks of this scandal and many press conferences, he now says that he is the only one involved, not Abdul Rahim Thamby Chik or Shuaib Lazim.
Is the fact that Rahim is an Umno supreme council member or Shuaib the father in law of an Umno minister have anything to do with this change?
Again, the puppet masters in Putrajaya must believe that cutting off the Umno membership from the Datuk Trio will cut the party’s involvement from this scandal.
They must believe that Malaysians are as naïve and dumb like them.
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