1SYAITAN(DEVIL).MAHASYAITAN UMNO MALAYS, MCA CHINESE AND MIC INDIANS.ARTISTIC EXPRESSION?

 the Mahadevil has finally admitted that BN is the devil. “I can assure you if they ever win, they will make sure they will continue to win forever,”. That’s what I call speaking from past experience. Isn’t that what BN is doing. “Sometimes, angels can also do a lot of wrong things.” Yeah, right. But the wrong things done by you and BN over the past 55 years does not make you angels. The change will be for better, I mean for the peopel , but definitely for the worse for BN and company.

There was a time when elections always meant an UMNO verses PAS battle. And to make a lopsided difference to the battle lines, UMNO roped in the MCA and MIC. DAP was left on its own steam.This is the chilling logic underlying MAD. A section of Voters in Malaysia has reached the conclusion, it would appear, that this is the only way to secure their safety. It is a dangerous trend that could lead to widespread communal polarisation, and has potential for untold violence.The government says that some incendiary pictures, morphed from those taken in other countries in wholly different contexts, were spread among Muslims in malaysia and that these pictures were the handiwork of some people in UMNO. The government of UMNO-Barisan denies any role in such incitement but says  all that BN needed to do, just before elections, is to frighten the population with that imagery of a turbaned, bearded, parang wielding reign by PAS leaders and eureka, you have all Malaysians huddled to a bee-line bent on voting BN.

And like a programmed, habitual mouse, UMNO is back with the same game plan, this time raising the hudud issue to an unprecedented notch in the main stream media.

Question is – will it work again this time around?

Anwar’s persecution returns to haunt Dr M

A true friendship, like a good marriage, endures through ups and downs, gratification and compromises. Do you have a friend with whom you can be yourself without pretence?

Interestingly, none of my close friends wished me on Friendship Day. Nor did I wish anyone. We didn’t feel the need to; true friendship is not dependent on designated days to wish and be wished.

True friendship is, in fact, not dependent on anything, but an understanding and total acceptance. It is a rhythm that just the two protagonists understand. It is said that each friend opens up a new world within by entering our lives; a world that takes birth with the arrival of that friend in our lives, and possibly dies within us when that friend leaves. A friend is a person who supports you despite all odds stacked against you; someone who believes in you when the world doubts you; someone who helps you grow beyond the limits of your own confidence, and then accepts all the changes that growth brings in you. A friend is someone you meet on an equal footing, someone you give to as much as you take from! There is no embarrassment in asking a friend for a favour; nor any hesitation in confessing when you cannot grant one.

My father has friends who have been with him since school days. After retirement, with children settled, they all meet regularly, argue, fight, stop talking to each other for a while, and then make up and are back to being good buddies again! This is a trait peculiar to that generation — friendship that lasts a lifetime. Not many people in the next generation can boast of friendships that are forever. In the hurly burly of life, we leave behind many precious associations. However, as we go along, we do form new associations that may or may not grow into friendship.

As one grows older, it is more difficult to make friends because we become less flexible and more demanding. You will hear many people claim they have rediscovered friends from school with the help of Facebook, but unfortunately, they will also discover that they have little in common with them now. Every relationship is built on the basis of shared experiences and emotions, and the longer the association, the greater the chance of a lasting friendship. A gap of many years can lead to the slow death of a friendship.

What do you look for in a friend? Des i g n e r s Suneet Varma and Ravi Bajaj have been friends for decades. In the cut-throat world of fashion where they occupy the same competitive space, these two men have formed a mature bond, realizing there is space for everyone! Suneet says, “I never think about our friendship; it’s just there, like growing up with a brother. Sometimes we talk a lot, sometimes we don’t; at times we share meaningful dialogue, otherwise, we have meaningless exchanges, but the connection is always there.”

For Ravi, friendship is a deep investment and he has high expectations of his friends. “I am a very demanding friend, but I am also willing to give back as much. Suneet and I are complete opposites and maybe that works for us. I learn from the way he values family and is so demonstrative. He can make people feel good and I value that in him.”

Former models Simar Dugal and Ayesha Prem walked away from the usually bitchy world of modelling with a lifelong friendship. Simar’s mantra for friendship is “No pretence. Ayesha and I can be totally our genuine selves with each other. No matter how long a gap between two meetings, friends should always be able to pick up from where they left off!”

What would you expect from a true friend? Here is what I would say…

Blind trust — To be able to have abiding faith and belief in each other

A good listener — Someone who lends a patient ear when you wish to vent, without trying to bring in his/her own tales of woe!

Empathy — Someone who worries for you and helps you solve problems

Time — Friends must make time for each other Compromise and acceptance— At times, friends need to give way to each other

A boost for your morale — What use is a friend who will not raise a voice or hand in your support?

Support — You need friends to be there for you, even if just as a quiet, supportive presence

Enrichment — Friends who help enrich your lives are most valued!

Can you add anything else? Share stories about your friends on ozone.blogs.timesofindia.com.

No. It is not working already. Why? Because UMNO is being regarded by many as irrelevant for the times. While UMNO diehards will see this stand as blasphemous and profane, the question to ask is “How come?”

To begin with, Mahathir has caused the downfall of UMNO a long time ago. His strategy is akin to that of the story of the boy who cried wolf.

Second, the downfall of UMNO was programmed by Mahathir the day he unceremoniously sacked, captured, caged and tried to annihilate Anwar Ibrahim – a Malay Muslim.

And so we were driven to that point of having Malays for UMNO and Malays for KeAdilan and Malays for PAS as much as we have Chinese for MCA and Chinese for DAP.

Malaysians vs Malays, Chinese, Indians, KDM

Along with the changing times, the above development transformed further and today we have Malaysians for Opposition while BN keeps glued with UMNO Malays, MCA Chinese and MIC Indians.

Therein then lies UMNO’s irrelevance.

In fact it is also too late in the day for UMNO to reinvent itself for it is left with only BN whereas the opposition coalition has emerged as a truly Malaysian political platform with Malays, Chinese and Indians in all parties – DAP, KeAdilan and even with promising talk in PAS.

Already well-known for his ‘anything-to-win’ political ruthlessness, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad is no stranger to controversy.

In the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, he is now regarded as the most dangerous fuse capable of sparking self-destruction and setting in motion the dismantlement of the 14-member grouping that has ruled the country for the past 5 decades.

Calling the MCA’s bluff

Indeed, Mahathir’s recent U-turn over a controversial Muslim penal code that calls for outrageous punishment including beheading, stoning to death and the amputation of limbs has cast the spotlight on MCA, adding to the pressure on the Chinese-based party to leave BN.

Led by the scandal-tainted Chua Soi Lek, MCA has been trying hard to regain the huge ground lost to the Opposition in the 2008 general election. Many believe it faces annihilation in the next polls, with colleagues Gerakan and MIC also sharing the same fate.

The rest of the BN parties are mostly from East Malaysia, where some senior leaders have already resigned, preferring to contest the 13th general election under the Opposition banner.

In recent months, the MCA has been rehashing an old BN strategy – using the Muslim hudud law to scare Chinese voters back to its fold.

To prove their ‘sincerity’, MCA leaders have vowed that if ever Mahathir’s UMNO – which is the BN’s biggest party – implements an Islamic state or the harsh hudud law, it would walk.

“UMNO will ensure a fully compliant Islamic state if PAS has a big heart to join UMNO. Other Islamic countries are also putting hope on Malaysia, but there are still people wanting to split the Muslims. That’s why our goal is not achieved,” Malay daily Sinar Harian had quoted Mahathir as saying last week.

Now, how clear can Mahathir be. But instead of issuing a sharp and immediate rebuke, the MCA leaders have again chosen to close an eye. Instead of demanding an explanation from UMNO, the MCA fired out a barrage of illogical statements at arch rival DAP to deflect attention.

One MCA chieftain even went so far as to chastise DAP for not being able to control its Pakatan Rakyat partner PAS and getting it to drop its quest for hudud and an Islamic state. Selangor MCA even declared ‘choose us and we’ll prevent an Islamic state’. Other wild utterances from Soi Lek and team include ‘PAS equals hudud’.

Yet they made no effort made to allay the Chinese community’s fears about hudud and what would the MCA and other non-Malay BN components do if UMNO decided to ride roughshod over them and hammered through the Muslim law.

What a sham and a shame was the public outcry against the errant MCA leaders. Perhaps their critics are right in declaring that MCA members have no room left to hide their faces, they have to slink around in embarrassment due to the deafening silence from their own top leaders.

psychological undertone of his evolution.

Catapulted to stardom as creative collaborator for the Bird’s Nest – symbol of the Chinese 2008 Olympics — Ai Weiwei turned acclaim on its head when he declared that the games had morphed into a propaganda tool for the Communist Party. Noting that the event had forced migrants out of Beijing, while advising “ordinary citizens” they were not welcome participants, Ai Weiwei stated, “When I conceived Beijing’s Bird Nest stadium, I wanted to represent freedom — not autocracy. China must change.”

Ai Weiwei learned early on about politics and art through the experience of his father Ai Qing, a renowned poet who was imprisoned by Chiang Kai-shek. When freed, Ai Qing joined the Communist Revolution. However, after criticizing the regime in 1957, he became an “enemy of the state.” The family was exiled for nineteen years to the north, and then the west of China, for “re-education through labor.” For Ai Weiwei’s father, this often meant cleaning toilets. Ai Qing was not exonerated until 1978. When Ai Weiwei speaks of those times he relates to Klayman quietly, “These are experiences I can not erase.”

Living in New York City from 1983 to 1993, Ai Weiwei watched the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings on television, as well as the 1989 events in Tiananmen Square. It was a lesson in the way two different governments dealt with inquiry and dissent. His activism crystallized around the 2008 earthquake in China’s Sichuan Province, when approximately 70,000 people died. A large number of those who had perished were children, trapped in poorly built government schools, which had collapsed. With no transparency in the Chinese media about the disaster, Ai Weiwei launched his own investigation into the truth, building “anti-government noise on the Internet.” Reaching out to volunteers, Ai Weiwei assembled a team that fanned out to towns across the province. The result was a compilation of names and birthdays of 5,212 student victims.

On the one-year anniversary of the disaster, Ai Weiwei posted the list of students on his blog. This act defined the beginning of what would become an ongoing conflict and chess match with authorities–as well as his use of the web and social media to craft a 21st Century riff on conceptual and performance art. The Internet, which Ai Weiwei sees “as a great equalizer,” became a vehicle of expression and connection–a counterpart to his exhibited work. His act of defiance in calling out the surreptitious handling of the earthquake aftermath led to surveillance cameras being installed in his home studio (later addressed in his artwork). Using his involvement on Twitter, Ai Weiwei pointed out, “If you don’t act, the danger becomes stronger.”readmorehttp://muslimjournalmalaysia.blogspot.com

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