Haze – Be a good neighbour like Najib

Vice President of Indonesia, Jusuf Kalla, is praising Najib of Malaysia for not complaining about the haze over several parts of Malaysia. Good boy, that is the way to behave to be a good neighbour. Malaysia does not have a jungle of trees and should be grateful for the oxygen provided by Indonesia.

Now who are the ungrateful ones, the bad neighbours that are complaining about Indonesia causing the haze?  It is unfair, Indonesia cannot stop the haze spreading in the region. That is an undeniable truth. How can Indonesia stop the haze from blowing into neighbouring countries? Impossible right?  Blame it on the winds.

And who are the unfriendly neighbours that did not offer help and only complained and criticised? Not me, not me, I don’t want to be unfriendly to the Indonesians.

Pak Jusuf, actually ah, your neighbours are not complaining about the haze lah. They are just hoping that Indonesia can help to stop the companies lighting up and burning the peat lands to clear them for their plantations lah. This one can help or not? And also, actually your neighbours are not criticizing Indonesia lah, they are  just not happy with the companies that are causing the haze lah. Don’t take it so personally can? Indonesia and the companies burning the peat lands are two different entities lah. Betul? So, can your neighbours criticize these companies or not? Boleh tak?

Or can you please tell the companies not to burn until everyone cannot breathe, even the Indonesians are suffering from the haze.  Tolong, tolong Pak Jusuf, don’t get angry, your neighbours are not criticizing you or angry with you. This part I know. You are alright, nice man. No one is blaming you. Relax!

UN resolution not to recognise land seized by the colonialists

The USA is telling China it is not recognizing the islands in the South China Sea and is sailing its warships there to prove a point. What is so wrong about claiming islands in the South China Sea or improving the coral reefs for humankind, for civilization, for safety of navigation and search and rescue? Inhabited islands with civilizations and full facilities for shipping can only be good for the sailors. Who knows when an American warship is going to be struck by lightning or a perfect storm and needs a safe harbor, or the sailors need to be pick up from the sea?

What is so wrong with claiming no man’s islands as part of a country when the colonialists have been claiming lands occupied by the natives to be theirs? The Americans even terminated the Red Indians, the natives of North America to near extinction that there are so few left today to reclaim ownership of their lost land. What justice or justification can the colonialists depend on, what moral authority to take the natives’ land and be the new owners? The Doctrine of Discovery where the natives are not humans, sub humans, so they have no rights to their lands? Or Manifest Destiny that the USA deserves to conquer and acquire other people’s lands and do as it pleases?

China should work with the countries in the UN to put up a resolution to derecognize all the lands seized by the colonialists and return them to the natives. In addition it is about time for the world to ask for compensation for the looting of resources from colonized countries and also compensation for the humiliation and crimes against the natives and their dignities.  It may be impractical given the fact that the colonialists have multiplied in great numbers and the natives either murdered to extinction or kept at the level of ignorance or low literacy rate, weak and poor, and unable to demand for the return of their lands. But it would be a moral victory to recognize that the colonialists are unjustly, immorally and illegally occupying the lands they claimed from the natives.

The natives of North America, Canada, Australia, Falkland, New Zealand and many colonized lands, now called countries have legal rights to their land and to demand the return of their lands and compensations for being colonised. The UN must derecognise the lands the colonialists robbed from the natives and return them to the natives.

This injustice must not be swept under the carpet as if it is right, just and legal. In today’s civilized world, the unjust acts, the evil and wicked deeds of the colonialists must be reviewed, recognized and set right. The world should not continue to turn a blind eye to the wicked ways of the colonialists and allowed them to enjoy the loots of their evil ways and allowed them to strut around like morally just people and champions of human rights, righteous people!

The time has come for the community of nations not to recognize the largesse of aggression and colonization, not to recognize the land seized from the natives by force and killings. The time has come to return honour and justice to the natives that were slaughtered by the colonialists and to return their land to them. The time has come to condemn the colonialists for the crimes against humanity.

The world must not forget that the land of USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Falkland and many lands now owned by the descendants of the colonialists once belonged to the natives and should be returned to their rightful owners. The occupation of these lands must not be a fait accompli, it’s done, let’s move on.

The natives have rights too.

No Race in the Future of Singapore Race Relations

 

Multiculturalism - Is there enough trust? “LIVE Video”

Trust in Singapore Multi-Culturalism

Are Singaporeans ready to put aside historical CIMO (Chinese, Indian, Malay, Others) racial categories for a better united, truly cohesive and harmonious Singapore?  What would it take to create a truly multi-cultural, cosmopolitan Singapore society which demonstrates genuine respect for cultural diversity?

These were some of the questions discussed “live” by Inconvenient Questions (IQ), Singapore’s emergent conversational square on 28 October 2015.  I was on the Panel with Ho Kwon Ping, Executive Chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings and Dr Nazry Bahrawi, Lecturer, SUTD. The Moderator was Viswa Sadasivan, IQ Editor-in-Chief in their University Town studio, National University of Singapore

First, my take on the issues:

Trust is the Force Multiplier in the War Against Racism and Racialism. 

It is the policy weapon of choice with a specific Goal in Singapore politics as well as socio-economic polices – the creation of a just and equal society regardless of race, language or religion.

The social reality of Multi-Culturalism is Cultural Diversity. 

We need to address the Overlapping Webs of Cultural Diversity; which is made up of Layers of Cultural Fabrics (“norms”, religions, diet, food, dressings, and various social practices, and than some). The Fabrics weaved together form the Multicultural Canvas of Singapore.

Trust measures the density or emotive strength of cohesion and resilience at specific and various parts of the Multicultural Canvas.

On the Top Surface, the Multicultural Canvas operates at the National Level where a strong demonstration of racial co-existence and harmony have existed for most of the past 50 years; surviving national economic and social crisis eg economic recessions, CPF cuts, SARS and JI.   

At the Middle of the Multicultural Canvas are the various socializing domains of Education, Defense, Housing, Employment, Business Contracting, Cultural Expression Opportunities, Family and Community Life, Medical and other Social Benefits … and where the distributions of benefits and privileges are regulated by the rules of meritocracy and equal opportunities access.  The Trust density varies in respective Domains.  Perceptions of equal opportunities differ across ethnic groups, and Meritocracy has its own peculiar path to favour those who can afford to prepare better to qualify for its award criteria.  There is as yet no final absolute consensus that the rules of meritocracy and equal opportunity access actually resulted in a more just and more equal society; especially given the widening income disparity across Singaporean society.

At the Bottom-most, the Multi-Cultural Canvas is made up of the day-to-day interaction of ordinary Singaporeans whose perceptions of relative social mobility vis-à-vis other ethnic members affects the Trust Value.  Perceptions of discrimination in employment, in job promotion opportunities, in exclusion from selecting choice HDB apartment, or from enrolment into elitist exclusively Mandarin-speaking schools only serve to undermine the Trust density, thereby weakening the Multicultural Canvas.      

The New Singapore Multicultural Canvas now includes MORE ethnic groups beyond the traditional CIMO.  New Chinese, New Indians and New Others have created “patchworks” on the Multicultural Canvas, rather than reinforcing the C, I or O.  Fault lines at the patchwork boundaries will crisscross the traditional fault lines of the CIMO, and make enhanced Trust even more challenging and daunting.

The Conversation was further distracted by referencing some who imported the concept of “Chinese Majority” privilege which I have argued in my MIKOspace Blog to be wholly inapplicable to the Singapore’s race relations.  

The immediate imperative is to create a Stronger Sense of Common Citizenship, instead of a Greater Sense of Multi-Racialism.  We need to imbue in our emergent generations a greater acceptance of Cultural Diversity instead of encouraging a deeper sense of their respective racial or ethnic identity.  We need to build a “united” Society by trusting the things that strengthen us as Singaporeans, and not on the things which potentially separate us. Remember, our cherished values of Family and Community reached “beyond race, language or religion” to overcome the national crisis of SARS, JI Terrorism and Recessions. 

Singapore Exceptionalism is in our National Resilience, our National Servicemen, our Community and our Family.  This is Our Very Own Small Red Dot, the Home of the Daring and Land of Opportunities for all.     

WATCH the Video: “Multiculturalism - Is there enough trust?”

IQ believes that the time is right to start a serious and more open – yet calibrated - discussions on this important issue. 

Watch the Conversation.

Related:

No Race in the Future of Singapore Race Relations

Racial Harmony in Singapore (9 Video)

No Chinese Majority Privilege in Singapore

Racial Harmony or Peaceful Co-Existence

Nichael HENG

What is the problem with SMRT?

I think I know the problem why so many train breakdown problems. The service quality is going down. And if the commuters want better quality train services they must be prepared to pay more. Did not the commuters know that for so many years the fare has been going up and the quality improving all the time, better and betterer. Everytime there is a fare hike, the quality improved or at least the commuters believed so. Paying for quality is the way to go.

Now suddenly got fare decrease, 1.9% some more. Lower fare price means lower quality lah. Tiok boh? Pay less how to expect better quality? When good quality means must pay more, now can pay less, please accept quality must come down lah, at least a bit.

Just look at the universities, every year hike and hike tuition fees. Now the fees so high, and the quality of university education also go up. Now our universities are among the best in the world. Thanks to the high tuition fees. Another few fee hikes they will be better than Harvard and Cambridge and be the best of the best.

SMRT must learn to hike fares to improve the service quality. Want good quality must pay good price lah. How can cheap be good?

So, you want train service quality to improve or not? So simple!

The Americans complicit in crimes against the Chinese people

The hideous crimes of the barbaric Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army have been carefully documented an displayed in a museum in Harbin despite the pain caused to the Chinese people of such vile inhuman acts befitting of animals and not human beings. The Japanese Unit 731 as reported by The New York Times, headed by Dr Shiro Ishii, ‘bred plague microbes, then deliberately infected thousands of men, women and children. It conducted vivisection, frostbite and air pressure experiments, transfused prisoners with horse blood, and studied the effect of weapons on the body among many things.’

What was the Americans role that made them complicit to such unspeakable crimes against humanity? While the German criminals of biological warfare were prosecuted for war crimes by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, the Japanese criminals were let off under a private arrangement between Japan and the USA that benefitted the Americans with all the records and research material of biological warfare conducted by Unit 731 against the Chinese people.

Such dastardly act of the Americans, to take possession of wicked and cruel records of biological warfare and experiments and in return to free the criminals from war crimes is as good as the Americans condoning the crimes of the Japanese and complicit to their crimes.

The world and the Americans are told today by The New York Times of this American hypocrisy against humankind in general and the Chinese people in particular. What have the American people got to say of their forefathers’ insidious acts while going around the world claiming that they are the protector and champion of human rights and humanity?

Are the Americans ashamed of their forefathers for being a part of such crimes? Maybe not. It is in the American blood, in American history that they also spread and infected the native Red Indians of infectious diseases to wipe them off the prairies of North America.  There is nothing new about such crimes. It is very American. They did it in the Korean and Vietnam War, spraying biological and chemical agents in Korea and Vietnam.

The New York Times must be pricked by their conscience to publish this piece of news today which they knew long ago. And the revelation did not really make the Americans nauseated for the part they were involved.

Japan’s war atrocities committed by the Unit 731 would go unnoticed and the Americans uninterested in them. They are allies against China today.