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Personal This blog

[2115] Of me, writing in general, blogging specifically

I have not been blogging actively for the past few months. This is mostly due to my commitment to The Malaysian Insider. I have discovered that maintaining a column is harder than consistently updating a blog. I do not know how others do it but I certainly have to make compromise among various choices.

Number of posts per month has dropped drastically. It was typically close to 30 posts per month. Ever since I began contributing to The Malaysian Insider, reaching the number 20 is not a guarantee any more.

Academic demand makes the whole issue harder than I had imagined it would be. Truly, there are times that I have to delay my column to focus on any assignment with looming deadlines. I need to do extremely well during my time in Australia — something that I consider as my time in self-exile — to justify whatever I am doing at the moment and open doors that I desperately want opened wide.

Or maybe that is just an excuse. Now that the semester is in a break, I am still unable to sort out my writing schedule. Funny that even when time is aplenty, I am struggling with my writing schedule. For instance, I missed my column for this week.

I am not regretting about contributing to one of the most popular news outlets in Malaysia. I admit, I do enjoy some of the attention I get from individuals that I could only imagine engaging without the column.

It also forces me to think harder of what to write. I want my idea to be able to withstand criticism.

It is also practice in consistency. By consistency, I mean to test whether my own opinion is consistent with my ideals. I place a huge premium on consistency; I tend to dismiss individuals who are inconsistent with their positions for I typically associate inconsistency with dishonesty.

That is yet another reason why I discover why I have trouble writing. I am becoming a slow mechanistic thinker. I need to consider so many things to come to a point.

Never mind the demand on grammar. I am always careless with grammar. With my blog, I tend to publish my stuff and re-read it after that. I could correct any mistake immediately. With column, that is harder to do. Moreover, with wider audience, bad grammar makes one looks stupid. I do not like to look stupid. Therefore, I need to be attentive to what I write and how I write it. The column helps to instill discipline in me as far as grammar is concerned.

There was one factor that prevented me from writing frankly previously. It was the oppressive public opinion. More than that, it is the opinion of friends and colleagues. By the time I was comfortable writing for The Malaysian Insider, my acquittance ranges from both sides of the political divide, sometimes going as high as up to positions of power.

Then, at my workplace, which was a government-linked company, I had a hard time shutting up as a libertarian. I thought, my decision to quit and come to Australia is one of the best decisions that freed me from that constraint that I found myself trapped in, even if it was not others that imposed it.

Then, there was a consultancy firm that was UMNO-linked. That was another tough spot that I found myself in. Friends within Pakatan Rakyat were definitely suspicious of what was going on, especially in times. And I think clients of the firm were suspicious of me. Nevertheless, it was definitely interesting, especially having the opportunity to attend the party’s general assembly but that is behind me now.

Also, many of my acquittance comes from countries with government that I deeply disagree with. Like the People’s Republic of China, for instance. My general hostility to religion is yet another factor that may open me to unfair criticism. I suddenly became self-conscious about these thing; I began to become acutely aware of all this while reading Mill’s On Liberty much, much earlier. I am glad to share that I have overcome that. Farish Noor wrote a short message to me, encouraging me to ignore the oppressive public opinion.

Furthermore, maybe, I think too highly of myself. Maybe, they do not really care whatever I write. Why should they care? Even if they cared, my liberty cannot be compromised. And so, I dismissed this concern of mine, thanks to Mill.

For the next few months, I intend to catch up with my slack.

Categories
Environment Politics & government

[2114] Of the Liberals are in such a mess

I cannot help but laughed out loud after reading these sentences.

Of all the extraordinary things on display in the past 48 hours in Canberra, two stand out.

The first is Malcolm Turnbull’s chutzpah. The second is his extraordinary lack of political guile. [Nothing to crow about. Laura Tingle. The Australian Financial Review. November 26 2009]

Categories
Conflict & disaster Politics & government

[2113] Of be fair to the police with respect to the November 8 shootout

The November 8 in Klang incident when the police shot dead several suspected criminals after a car chase has emboldened a number of individuals, more prominently perhaps a strong accusation from DAP, of summarily killing. While the Inspector General of Police Musa Hassan’s response of you are either with the police or you are with criminals[0] as well as the police force’s whole reputation are hardly convincing at all, for this particular episode, I view the criticism against the police as utterly unfair.

I am extremely skeptical of implicit accusation of racism, as implied by The Malaysian Insider’s report which frames a DAP politician accusation as “waging a war of revenge against the Indian community by ordering the police to kill suspected criminals.”[1] To be fair to P. Sugumaran, the DAP member of Ipoh Barat, he seemed to be making that statement within context of other incidents which the police acted wrongly. Nevertheless, the statement was made with strong reference to the November 8 incident.

This is a delicate subject to tackle. At its heart is a question why certain ethnic groups are perceived to heighten the likelihood of a person being a criminal. It could be either wrongful stereotype or that the statistical distribution actually sided with the unwanted side of conclusion. One has to be very careful for in fight crime and committing racial prejudice. Nevertheless, increasingly, any police action taken against a certain ethnic group is considered an act of racism, regardless whether there is a strong case or not against a particular person.

I am further unimpressed and disappointed by the stress on alleged criminal. The status of the deceased as alleged criminal has been used to justify condemning the police for killing the suspects. Due to that, they argue the police should not have opened fire. This stress fails to take a holistic view of the event.

Indeed, everybody is innocent until proven guilty but these condemnations ignore crucial two things.

First, the suspects opened fire first. They even tried to force the police off the road.[2] If the police’s assertion is true, then one should not expect the police to go meet up with the suspects to ask kindly them to surrender. What kind of mad man would walk up to a suspect asking, “sir, would you surrender your weapon please?” when the suspect is threateningly pointing a pistol at the officer?

Even if the police decided to be ridiculously polite in their approach, the suspects were running away.

As a third person, I see that the police right to retaliate. Furthermore, while having somebody killed is always deplorable, it is, for the lack of better word, a gunfight.

Second is the very fact that these suspects have guns that should be obvious because the suspects used it in an aggressive manner.

The police deserve a lot of criticism, but not in this case. Criticism thrown at the police so far has been irrationally partisan to the point that the police can do no right.

Be fair.

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

[0] — KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 18 — Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Musa Hassan today said those who questioned police action in shooting suspects should consider whether they wanted to support those who upheld the law or the criminals.

He said this when asked to comment on claims that the police had used excessive force in a recent shooting in Klang, where five suspected robbers were gunned down

 

”The duty of the police is to protect the people. We do not protect criminals,” Musa was quoted as saying by state news agency Bernama. [IGP: To question police action is to support criminals. The Malaysian Insider. October 18 2009]

[1] — IPOH, Nov 15 — A DAP politician has accused the Barisan Nasional (BN) government of waging a war of revenge against the Indian community by ordering the police to kill suspected criminals.

Ipoh Barat DAP secretary P. Sugumaran (pic) lambasted the action, saying that the police had no right to pass judgement without first asking them to surrender.

”Their actions are clearly the BN’s political agenda to take revenge on the Indian community in the country.

”But how different are they from the suspected criminals they murder when their actions are tantamount to a criminal act in itself?” Sugumaran said in a statement here yesterday.

He cited the Nov 8 incident in Klang when the police had shot dead five robbers during a high-speed car chase and the recent shooting of the Deva Gang leader in Penang. [DAP blames BN for cops playing cowboys with Indians. The Malaysian Insider. October 15 2009]

[2] — KLANG: Police shot dead five suspected robbers in a shootout after a high speed car chase in Taman Klang Utama at 12.30am Sunday.

The five, believed to be dangerous and high on the wanted list, were involved in at least 10 robberies in Selangor and the Klang Valley for the past one year.

Selangor CID chief Senior Asst Comm II Datuk Hasnan Hassan said a team from the Klang district serious crime division spotted the five men in a Perodua Kelisa in Lorong Sungai Keramat around 12 midnight.

Realising that they were being followed, the robbers tried to forced the police car off the road while firing a few shots at them. [Five robbers killed in shootout with police (Update). The Star. October 8 2009]

Categories
Education Liberty

[2112] Of a return to basics

One simply cannot overestimate the power of education in shaping a society. It has an awesome capability of influencing a person’s perspective towards the world by impressing certain mind frame, especially to young, whose mind is naively free of skepticism. A liberal society will require an education system that removes that naiveté and develops critically minded skeptical individuals. In an ideal world, that is the function of early formal education. Our world, and certainly our society, is less than ideal, where the agenda of individual empowerment gradually yields its space to other agenda that does not empower individuals but rather seeks to cow them into certain mold that erodes individuality.

By skepticism, it means not a society full of cynics, where each person somehow deep in his or her heart holds on to extremely pessimistic view of human nature and in doing so, distrusting the other person in all places at all times. By skepticism, it refers an independent mind that is capable of evaluating a proposition critically and not merely accepting it blindly. This is the truest and the greatest agenda of individual empowerment. Without this agenda, the path towards liberty is an overly arduous one.

It is for this reason that I prefer for primary and to some extent, secondary level of formal education, to focus primarily on aspects that encourage skepticism. These aspects hark back at the foundation of all knowledge: grammar, logic and rhetoric. It is a demand for a person to think for his or herself by demanding proofs for all propositions. It is a culture of questioning without fear of tradition and its biases. Only when the young truly grasp the basic tools of an independent mind will they then be free to explore areas that may interest them, and effectively at that.

Even if one speaks of holistic formal education that seeks to formalize everything to the point of suffocation to seemingly robs space for informal education, it is impossible to deny how a focus on grammar, logic and rhetoric is the base of any education worth of going through. Any person that is unable to write intelligibly, think critically and speak clearly up to some acceptable degree likely has failed in his or her education.

Admittedly, so basic a goal is hardly inspiring. Many are not impressed with such uninspiring goal. And so, they suggest for additional roles for schools and therefore, formal education to take up.

One that has been proposed from time to time is the inculcation of entrepreneurial spirit. For the religious, they want an education system with spiritual aspect tags included in multiple areas of education; probably, to have the fairy tale of creationism taught as part of science too. Another popular suggestion is a stress on unity. This is not merely weasel words; Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Murugiah Thopasamy has proposed for a course called 1Malaysia to replace moral studies, where the new course would apart from unity, encourages patriotism among Malaysians.

We live in a world of constraints and introduction of additional items to school syllabus will necessarily mean less time for foundation of knowledge found in vital courses such as language and mathematics. This concern of constraints is true at any level of education as well as within and without the realm of education.

One has to understand that formal education can only do so much. Entrepreneurial spirit, spiritualism and unity for instance cannot be taught through textbooks. Many of these additional goals necessarily belong to the realm of informal education. It is something acquired through interactions outside of schools and out of pure interest.

Granted, schools can play a huge role in prodding students toward whatever goals that one may desire, especially through after school activities. Any effort at that should not however turn the syllabus into a hodgepodge of additional goals that eventually dilutes the agenda of individual empowerment that seeks to set a strong foundation of knowledge.

Really, many of these additional goals are not educational of value, but more likely than not appear to impress on young students’ psyche to accept certain ideas. It is really propaganda. Such impression would likely be successful impact on young students who have yet to acquire the foundation. Unable to think for themselves and access any proposition effectively, young students may become sad victims of propaganda.

Advocates of holistic education especially miss and at worse ignore the importance of informal education. UMNO Youth for instance has proposed to lengthen school hours to enable implementation of holistic education. It is exactly this kind of so-called holistic education that considerably expands the possibility of role of formal education to include items of little if no educational value at all. The odds are that these items are only trying to influence students to accept certain things that might not survive inspection of a critical mind.

Even if the proposal of holistic education is purely innocent in its consequence and aimed at producing well-rounded individuals without having the potential of diluting the focus on foundational knowledge, it robs students of their time to explore not what the state what them to have interest in, but of their own interest. Such holistic education robs these students from the opportunity to undergo informal education. In fact, it robs them from living their life, to trap within school compound and oblivion that there is a whole wide world out there full of adventures that no formal education can provide. It robs them from a chance to practice their senses and deciding their own destiny.

The oft-repeated complaint that employers have against far too many fresh graduates is a lack of quality. I dare say the employability of these graduates is low because their foundation is not strong. Weak foundation affects how knowledge is received. When it is received uncritically, one will have trouble applying knowledge obtained through books and blackboard into practice.

One is tempted to solve the problem at tertiary level but it may be too late at that level. Tertiary level is the place where specialization is supposed to begin. While foundation may further be expanded and strengthened as liberal arts tries to do, this kind foundation itself will crumble without the foundation involving solid competency in grammar, logic and rhetoric that accommodate thinking process.

The problem of such employability can be solved by returning to basics and doing away all unnecessarily fluff. Focus on the grammar, logic and rhetoric as formal education and give the young the liberty to explore their life as part of their informal education.

Through this, not only we will have a competent individual, but also a free individual making up a free society.

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

First published in The Malaysian Insider on November 17 2009.

Categories
Economics

[2111] Of no robot, just manual labor

Sitting outside of a library trying to finish up my sandwich under a bright sunny sky, I smirked.

Two reasons.

One — less important than number two and not quite the reason why I am posting this up — is an action that reminds me of fiscal stimulus mentality.

At the university, which is a public school, a small army of workers was redoing the pavement. Before the work began, I could find nothing wrong with it. It was built quite well and pleasing to the eyes too. Yet, there went the works. Although I can never be certain if that effort was funded by Australian stimulus money without further information, I am inclined to believe it was related.

And now, the new pavement awaits me, which splendidly looks and functions exactly that it was before.

It has to be related with stimulus program. It simply has to be. Nonsensical project, public works, the recipe of stimulus project is all there.

Of more interesting is that no robot was involved in the process of redoing the pavement. You might think that I am joking but I assure you that I am only half joking. No robot. No fancy machine. Just plain manual laborers working under the sun.

Where am I getting at?

If you have been visiting this blog for a very long time, you will notice that I am particularly peeved with some groups of Malaysians who rile up against the country’s so-called addiction to cheap labor. They blame general low wages in Malaysia is caused by the availability of cheap labor from abroad. Furthermore, due to availability of cheap labor, companies in the countries continue to not move up the value chain or not employ better technology. If only there is no cheap labor, Malaysia would be supremely technologically advanced and Malaysians would be better paid, or so they argue.

Well, here in Australia, one of countries with the highest GDP per capita in the world, no robot still. Just manual labor.

I could imagine those anti-cheap labor people saying “construction is but one industry and there are other industries that will employ better technology if only the cost of labor is greater than the cost of capital.”

Maybe, but I smirked still. And I am smirking now too.