Category: Society

Categories
Environment Society

[1533] Of more than a crisis in China

Several clips over at CNN on TV illustrated how extremely bad weather — snowstorm — is adversely affecting transportation in China at the moment. With the Chinese New Year less than a week away, traffic is spiking in the southern part of China. Delays and cancellations of bus, train and airplane trips have brought traffic to a great halt. The system just cannot process the flow as fast as it needs to be.

The video showed a rowdy crowd with individuals pushing each other. If the congregation in Mecca is intimidating, the one in Guangzhou as depicted in the clips, China is many times frightening. Unlike in Mecca, the crowd in the video was hostile as chaos started to reign in. If news of stampede broke out, it would not catch by me surprise.

The presence of police officers seemed to fail to placate the growingly nervous crowd. Without security personnel, it would have been anarchy. The Chinese government has advised its citizens to stay at home instead of traveling to celebrating the upcoming Chinese New Year but the people is not listening.[1] If the situation goes on unmitigated, it would not be hard to imagine how this crisis would grow to threaten stability in China.

That is not the only ill effect of the worst snowstorm in 50 years. Prices have shot up as the weather hurts food production while electricity has been unceremoniously interrupted to many areas.[2][3] I have been through bad winters and I certainly will not want to experience this Chinese winter without heat.

All in all, somehow I feel if there is going to a some sort of turning point in China, this is it. The snowstorm has grown from merely logistics issue to that of economics and social. Potentially soon, politics too.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

[1] — BEIJING, China (CNN) — China has taken the step of asking millions of migrant workers to forgo their annual Lunar New Year trip home, saying the worst winter weather in 50 years is expected to pummel the country for at least another three days. [China advises millions to abandon travel plans. CNN. January 31 2008][↩]

[2] — BEIJING (AP) — Snow battering central China has dealt an “extremely serious” blow to winter crops, a top agriculture official warned Thursday, raising the likelihood that future shortages would exaggerate already surging food prices. [China Warns of Serious Impact on Crops. AP via Google News. Christopher Bodeen. January 31 2008][↩]

[3] — Huge cities have plunged into darkness, with parts of Chenzhou, a city of 1.2 million in central Hunan province, without power for eight days. [Blizzard chaos costs China $7.5 billion. CNN. February 1 2008][↩]

Categories
Liberty Mudslinging Society

[1531] Of it must be reciprocal in nature

At Mahaguru58, there is a failure to understand that relationship is reciprocal in nature. If one does not wish for others to interfere in one’s life, one should not interfere with others’.

The blogger wrote:

This is the concluding part of my dialogue with MENJ recently. I discussed with him regarding the current situation where Christians in Malaysia are prone to interfering into Islamic and Muslims affairs here since the change of leadership in the BN Government.

We who are Muslim Bloggers feel that this interference ought not be left to run its course by the Muslims of this land especially those from JAKIM who seem oblivious to all the growing number of Islamophobes here in Malaysia. [MENJ – MAHAGURU58 Dialogue Part 2 Final. Mahaguru58. January 30 2008]

He laments about Christians interfering in Muslim affairs. I say the issue is a non-starter and applies double standard. He would only have a moral authority to say such thing when he stops interfering in others’ individual affairs. That, of course, includes refrain from interfering in others’ religious freedom, be the individuals are Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, etc.

Respect goes both ways. Once the interference in individual liberty ceases, I am sure outsiders will stop interfering in Muslim affairs.

Categories
Economics Society

[1523] Of market pressure in Gaza

Witness the power of the market:

RAFAH, Egypt — Thousands of Palestinians streamed over the Rafah border crossing from the Gaza Strip into Egypt on Wednesday, after a border fence was toppled, and went on a spree of buying fuel and other supplies that have been cut off from their territory by Israel.

They used donkeys, carts and motorcycles to cross the border, and streamed back over the fallen fence laden with goods they had been unable to buy in Gaza. The scene at the border was one of a great bazaar. The streets were packed, and people were bringing into Gaza everything from soap and cigarettes to goats, chickens, medicine, mattresses and car paint.

Israel ordered the closing of its border crossings into Gaza last week, halting all shipments except for emergency supplies, after a sustained and intense barrage of rocket fire into Israel by militant groups in the Gaza Strip, which is run by Hamas. Israel allowed in some fuel, medical supplies and food on Tuesday, as temporary relief, but has said that its closure policy remains in place. [Palestinians Topple Gaza Wall and Cross to Egypt. NYT. January 23 2008]

As supplies dwindled in Gaza, prices shot up. It went so high that the prices difference between Gaza and Egypt makes cost of transportation — which includes the cost of bringing down a wall to cross an international border — irrelevant.

Egypt so far has done nothing to stop Palestinians from crossing the border.

President Mubarak said he had allowed the Palestinians to come in.

He said he had told Egyptian troops to “let them come to eat and buy food and go back, as long as they are not carrying weapons”. [Gazans flood through Egypt border. BBC News. January 23 2008]

If the Egyptian government does nothing, Israel’s policy of border closure, or at least the side effect of the policy, will be as irrelevant as the cost of transportation.

Categories
Liberty Society

[1515] Of boogeyman stay away. We have CCTVs!

With two high-profile kidnapping cases along with perception of high crime rate, the Malaysian authority is advocating mass installation of closed circuit TV to fight crime. Advocates of CCTVs are convinced that the device will help in bringing crime rate down. While that may be so — there are debates on whether presence of CCTVs reduces or merely displaces crime — I am not too keen on the plan. Given authority’s reputation in disrespecting individual liberty, I fear that the authority will misuse the cameras installed in public spaces for other purposes.

I would imagine that self-proclaimed moral police would be the first to celebrate mass installation of CCTVs. With it, they could more effectively enforce their moral standard on others. No more would the moral police as well as vigilantes need to make rounds to catch those that reject certain moral standard. It happened before and it will happen again if the plan to install CCTVs in public face goes through.

With CCTVs sprouting like mushrooms after the rain, gone would be the days when one could sit on the bench alone to savor the evening. Deep in one’s heart, there is knowledge that somebody is watching him diligently, trying to catch the smallest of mistakes in the name of some questionable order.

The religious right would like to believe that god watches each one of us. It maybe absurd but with CCTVs everywhere, that would not be too absurd at all anymore. God is now equipped with cameras and lots of them. God now is omnipresent, wherever CCTV is available.

God is a dictator and mortal dictators love to be gods. These gods employ dogs to do their biddings and this has been true for the longest time. Gods want to know everything that private citizens do for they are jealous. While it was hard to do so in the past, cameras CCTV cameras lift godly burden off the gods.

Unchecked conflict of interest occurs widely in our government. We have seen how public fund is being used to tighten the incumbents’ grip on power without the slightest of shame. Extrapolating that trend, it is not at all too remote for the government to misuse the CCTVs for purposes other than fighting crime like theft or murder. The facilities could be use to fight “crime” such as practicing liberty.

From a terminal connected to a wide network of CCTVs, the state would be able to keep an eye anybody for whatever reasons, be it a tyrant scheming to force all into obedience or simply peeping-tom the dog running his own errands while the gods sleep soundly in their thrones far abovenaway from the wretched earth.

But surely, they would not do that. CCTVs are for fighting crime!

And maybe my liberty should be sacrifice for Sharlinie and in honor of Nurin. How selfish of me to not to sacrifice my liberty for the two children. Never mind that the parents made mistakes that cost them their children. Never mind that a lot more parents never learn from that mistakes and when somebody points out that they need to change, they fiercely bark back at that somebody. Never mind that. Forgive me. It is now the responsibility of the police, the state, to keep children safe, not parents anymore. Forgive me to not noticing that changing zeitgeist. I suppose personal responsibility is outdated.

Maybe we need the CCTVs after all. Maybe, we need the gods to install those CCTVs in our bedroom to protect us from the monsters that lurk under our beds, outside our windows at night. We need to be assured that somebody is watching us, keeping us safe all the time so that we could sleep well at night, away from the boogeyman.

Or maybe just for those whom are too scared to have personal responsibility.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

A version of this article was first published at Bolehland.

Categories
Society

[1505] Of in the name of religion, in the name of atheism, or not

Not too long ago, just after I finished Dawkins’ The God Delusion, I spotted a review of the book by Mr. Asohan in The Star. While I do think some of the points are valid — truly, atheism has no monopoly over goodness just as religion has no claim over goodness — I simply have problem letting the following pass without a comment:

They’ll just refuse to look at how religion can be a force for good. They will also ignore the acts of famous atheists like Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong, and the atrocities committed throughout the years by revolutionaries and rebels fighting against religious and other types of institutions. [The dogmatic atheist. A. Asohan. The Star. December 30 2007]

Dear sir, you are committing an awful mistake.

They were atheists but they did not commit the atrocities in the name atheism. As an example, if a Christian murdered somebody, he may not necessarily kill in the name of Christianity; he may murdered somebody in the name of nationalism and thus, has nothing to do with Christianity. Or, another example, a man may kill a woman but that does not mean he killed the woman in the name of male chauvinism; it may do so in the name of religion. That are the cases for Stalin and Mao. It is communism, not atheism. This is unlike religious people and institutions — be them dogmatic Christian churches in the past, modern Islamist terrorists, Hindutva, or any other religious extremists — that killed others explicitly in the name of religion.

The difference cannot be overemphasized and the causal relationship has to be clearly identified. The cause has to be explicit and not made up because it is convenient to do so. What you have done sir is merely appealing to guilt by association.