Tindak Malaysia http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/ Tindak Malaysia is a political-social-economic forum to educate Malaysians, to empower and encourage them to act towards the goal of a 2-Party State. en Wed, 22 May 2013 10:15:57 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/images/misc/rss.png Tindak Malaysia http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/ Econominc: Malaysian population statistics http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6802-Econominc-Malaysian-population-statistics?goto=newpost Wed, 22 May 2013 08:19:47 GMT (1) Population by local authority
http://www.statistics.gov.my/portal/...id=111&lang=en


(2) Summary statistics by local authorities
http://www.statistics.gov.my/portal/...BT_Jadual1.pdf

(3) Population distribution and basic demographic statistics.
http://www.statistics.gov.my/portal/..._Demografi.pdf
 ]]> pywong http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6802-Econominc-Malaysian-population-statistics GE13: Youths demand EC Chief resign over electoral fraud http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6801-GE13-Youths-demand-EC-Chief-resign-over-electoral-fraud?goto=newpost Tue, 21 May 2013 13:45:59 GMT

Youths pressure EC chief to quit over electoral 'fraud' ]]> GE 13 - 2013 pywong http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6801-GE13-Youths-demand-EC-Chief-resign-over-electoral-fraud <![CDATA[GE13: Malaysia's 222 parliamentary constituencies: FB & Twitter Accounts]]> http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6800-GE13-Malaysia-s-222-parliamentary-constituencies-FB-Twitter-Accounts?goto=newpost Mon, 20 May 2013 15:07:55 GMT
1-100 of 222











Constitutency Info Latitude Longitude PC Number and Name FB Page Twitter Account







P1 - Padang Besar 6.678588 100.311356 P1 - Padang Besar http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...3554029&ref=ts http://twitter.com/1padangbesar
P2 - Kangar 6.490666 100.200119 P2 - Kangar http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...0729781&ref=ts http://twitter.com/2Kangar
P3 - Arau 6.459964 100.282516 P3 - Arau http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...8666652&ref=ts http://twitter.com/3Arau
P4 - Langkawi 6.413566 99.854736 P4 - Langkawi http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...1443901&ref=ts http://twitter.com/4Langkawi
P5 - Jerlun 5.484768 100.925903 P5 - Jerlun http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...6312809&ref=ts http://twitter.com/5Jerlun
P6 - Kubang Pasu 6.041468 100.401735 P6 - Kubang Pasu http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...0963649&ref=ts http://twitter.com/6kubangpasu
P7 - Padang Terap 6.346692 100.664978 P7 - Padang Terap http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...0108338&ref=ts http://twitter.com/7padangterap
P8 - Pokok Sena 6.198582 100.534515 P8 - Pokok Sena http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...4640777&ref=ts http://twitter.com/8pokoksena
P9 - Alor Star 6.164449 100.367661 P9 - Alor Star http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...8762626&ref=ts http://twitter.com/9alorstar
P10 - Kuala Kedah 6.122463 100.302773 P10 - Kuala Kedah http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...9384834&ref=ts http://twitter.com/10kualakedah
P11 - Pendang 6.027214 100.459671 P11 - Pendang http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...632482&ref=tst http://twitter.com/11Pendang
P12 - Jerai 5.6407 100.4864 P12 - Jerai http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...8023554&ref=ts http://twitter.com/12Jerai
P13 - Sik 5.894725 100.747375 P13 - Sik http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...6966235&ref=ts http://twitter.com/13Sik
P14 - Merbok 5.747174 100.36869 P14 - Merbok http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...6081149&ref=ts http://twitter.com/14Merbok
P15 - Sungai Petani 5.693882 100.495377 P15 - Sungai Petani http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...9620072&ref=ts http://twitter.com/15sungaipetani
P16 - Baling 5.754006 100.901184 P16 - Baling http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...3645627&ref=ts http://twitter.com/16Baling
P17 - Padang Serai 5.538079 100.550652 P17 - Padang Serai http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...4849925&ref=ts http://twitter.com/17padangserai
P18 - Kulim-Bandar Baharu 5.43487 100.563354 P18 - Kulim-Bandar Baharu http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...8704878&ref=ts http://twitter.com/18kulim
P19 - Tumpat 6.1951 102.1657 P19 - Tumpat http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...0781170&ref=ts http://twitter.com/19Tumpat
P20 - Pengkalan Chepa 6.1667 102.2928 P20 - Pengkalan Chepa http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...8585951&ref=ts http://www.twitter.com/20pngkalanchepa
P21 - Kota Bharu 6.122 102.2523 P21 - Kota Bharu http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...0670343&ref=ts http://twitter.com/21KotaBharu
P22 - Pasir Mas 6.0427 102.1391 P22 - Pasir Mas http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...9168083&ref=ts http://twitter.com/22PasirMas
P23 - Rantau Panjang 6.0168 101.9825 P23 - Rantau Panjang http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...6954884&ref=ts http://twitter.com/23RantauPanjang
P24 - Kubang Kerian 6.087 102.2763 P24 - Kubang Kerian http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...4358602&ref=ts http://twitter.com/24KubangKerian
P25 - Bachok 6.0547 102.3868 P25 - Bachok http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...8675010&ref=ts http://twitter.com/25Bachok
P26 - Ketereh 5.966 102.2451 P26 - Ketereh http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...2291530&ref=ts http://twitter.com/26Ketereh
P27 - Tanah Merah 5.8074 102.151 P27 - Tanah Merah http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...8581151&ref=ts http://twitter.com/27TanahMerah
P28 - Pasir Puteh 5.8329 102.4053 P28 - Pasir Puteh http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...8258257&ref=ts http://twitter.com/28PasirPuteh
P29 - Machang 5.761 102.2192 P29 - Machang http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...5969315&ref=ts http://twitter.com/29Machang
P30 - Jeli 5.6955 101.8389 P30 - Jeli http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...4210386&ref=ts http://twitter.com/30Jeli
P31 - Kuala Krai 5.5339 102.1996 P31 - Kuala Krai http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...7647312&ref=ts http://twitter.com/31KualaKrai
P32 - Gua Musang 4.86 101.9634 P32 - Gua Musang http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...5545104&ref=ts http://twitter.com/32GuaMusang
P33 - Besut 5.7842 102.549 P33 - Besut http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...1010978&ref=ts http://twitter.com/33Besut
P34 - Setiu 5.4493 102.9048 P34 - Setiu http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...7368675&ref=ts http://twitter.com/34Setiu
P35 - Kuala Nerus 5.3559 103.0603 P35 - Kuala Nerus http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...6102186&ref=ts http://twitter.com/35KualaNerus
P36 - Kualaterengganu 5.3117 103.1199 P36 - Kualaterengganu http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...9326313&ref=ts http://www.twitter.com/36kterengganu
P37 - Marang 5.2023 103.2003 P37 - Marang http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...3561682&ref=ts http://twitter.com/37Marang
P38 - Hulu Terengganu 5.0178 102.7135 P38 - Hulu Terengganu http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...0522718&ref=ts http://www.twitter.com/38Hterengganu
P39 - Dungun 4.7565 103.3997 P39 - Dungun http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...0430481&ref=ts http://twitter.com/39Dungun
P40 - Kemaman 4.1185 103.3264 P40 - Kemaman http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...3671945&ref=ts http://twitter.com/40Kemaman
P41 - Kepala Batas 5.521 100.4368 P41 - Kepala Batas http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...34645293219404 http://twitter.com/41KepalaBatas
P42 - Tasek Gelugor 5.4936 100.5049 P42 - Tasek Gelugor http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=130458113649213 http://twitter.com/42TasekGelugor
P43 - Bagan 5.3704 100.2376 P43 - Bagan http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...24910354210679 http://twitter.com/43Bagan
P44 - Permatang Pauh 5.405 100.4141 P44 - Permatang Pauh http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...15705998473453 http://twitter.com/44PermatangPauh
P45 - Bukit Mertajam 5.3538 100.4744 P45 - Bukit Mertajam http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php...0866537&ref=ts http://twitter.com/45BukitMertajam
P46 - Batu Kawan 5.3186 100.4498 P46 - Batu Kawan http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...7537323&ref=ts http://twitter.com/46BatuKawan
P47 - Nibong Tebal 5.1679 100.4783 P47 - Nibong Tebal http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...7893219&ref=ts http://twitter.com/47NibongTebal
P48 - Bukit Bendera 5.4162 100.2755 P48 - Bukit Bendera http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...3190076&ref=ts http://twitter.com/48BukitBendera
P49 - Tanjong 5.3704 100.2376 P49 - Tanjong http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...7124071&ref=ts http://twitter.com/49Tanjong
P50 - Jelutong 5.3862 100.3168 P50 - Jelutong http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...7284189&ref=ts http://twitter.com/50Jelutong
P51 - Bukit Gelugor 5.3704 100.2376 P51 - Bukit Gelugor http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...6553199&ref=ts http://twitter.com/51BukitGelugor
P52 - Bayan Baru 5.3315 100.2823 P52 - Bayan Baru http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...4170236&ref=ts http://twitter.com/52BayanBaru
P53 - Balik Pulau 5.3772 100.2144 P53 - Balik Pulau http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...6928680&ref=ts http://twitter.com/53BalikPulau
P54 - Gerik 5.4379 101.1398 P54 - Gerik http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...0849802&ref=ts http://twitter.com/54Gerik
P55 - Lenggong 5.1285 100.9929 P55 - Lenggong http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...7001285&ref=ts http://twitter.com/55Lenggong
P56 - Larut 4.8541 100.7376 P56 - Larut http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...3173899&ref=ts http://twitter.com/56Larut
P57 - Parit Buntar 5.1054 100.4854 P57 - Parit Buntar http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...5864522&ref=ts http://twitter.com/57ParitBuntar
P58 - Bagan Serai 5.0477 100.6361 P58 - Bagan Serai http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...3787771&ref=ts http://twitter.com/58BaganSerai
P59 - Bukit Gantang 4.7818 100.7612 P59 - Bukit Gantang http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...6167341&ref=ts http://twitter.com/59BukitGantang
P60 - Taiping 4.8541 100.7376 P60 - Taiping http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...6967176&ref=ts http://twitter.com/60Taiping
P61 - Padang Rengas 4.7813 100.8466 P61 - Padang Rengas http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...6143879&ref=ts http://twitter.com/61PadangRengas
P62 - Sungai Siput 4.8224 101.0891 P62 - Sungai Siput http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...5267748&ref=ts http://twitter.com/62SungaiSiput
P63 - Tambun 4.6344 101.1273 P63 - Tambun http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...7043327&ref=ts http://twitter.com/63Tambun
P64 - Ipoh Timor 4.5678 101.0919 P64 - Ipoh Timor http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...4275286&ref=ts http://twitter.com/64IpohTimor
P65 - Ipoh Barat 4.5678 101.0919 P65 - Ipoh Barat http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...4550721&ref=ts http://twitter.com/65IpohBarat
P66 - Batu Gajah 4.4693 101.0397 P66 - Batu Gajah http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...9987835&ref=ts http://twitter.com/66BatuGajah
P67 - Kuala Kangsar 4.7727 100.9403 P67 - Kuala Kangsar http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...7889403&ref=ts http://twitter.com/67KualaKangsar
P68 - Beruas 4.479 100.786 P68 - Beruas http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...9623238&ref=ts http://twitter.com/68Beruas
P69 - Parit 4.4915 100.919 P69 - Parit http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...1237628&ref=ts http://twitter.com/69Parit
P70 - Kampar 4.311 101.1519 P70 - Kampar http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...6204069&ref=ts http://twitter.com/70Kampar
P71 - Gopeng 4.4619 101.1661 P71 - Gopeng http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...6108070&ref=ts http://twitter.com/71Gopeng
P72 - Tapah 4.204 101.261 P72 - Tapah http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...6177592&ref=ts http://twitter.com/72Tapah
P73 - Pasir Salak 4.1729 100.9466 P73 - Pasir Salak http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...3659541&ref=ts http://twitter.com/73PasirSalak
P74 - Lumut 4.2109 100.6414 P74 - Lumut http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...0317098&ref=ts http://twitter.com/74Lumut
P75 - Bagan Datok 3.9647 100.753 P75 - Bagan Datok http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...0358742&ref=ts http://twitter.com/75BaganDatok
P76 - Telok Intan 3.9667 100.9333 P76 - Telok Intan http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...0593814&ref=ts http://twitter.com/76TelokIntan
P77 - Tanjong Malim 3.6913 101.5236 P77 - Tanjong Malim http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...9977497&ref=ts http://twitter.com/77TanjongMalim
P78 - Cameron Highlands 4.512 101.4793 P78 - Cameron Highlands http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...0055994&ref=ts http://twitter.com/78cameronhigh
P79 - Lipis 4.3828 101.9805 P79 - Lipis http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...2938117&ref=ts http://twitter.com/79Lipis
P80 - Raub 3.7926 101.8584 P80 - Raub http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...5907884&ref=ts http://twitter.com/80Raub
P81 - Jerantut 3.9468 102.3799 P81 - Jerantut http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...7904791&ref=ts http://twitter.com/81Jerantut
P82 - Indera Mahkota 3.8192 103.2981 P82 - Indera Mahkota http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...3898147&ref=ts http://twitter.com/82InderaMahkota
P83 - Kuantan 3.825 103.3239 P83 - Kuantan http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...1520474&ref=ts http://twitter.com/83Kuantan
P84 - Paya Besar 3.7768 103.2743 P84 - Paya Besar http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...0963378&ref=ts http://twitter.com/84PayaBesar
P85 - Pekan 3.5007 103.3901 P85 - Pekan http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...7898315&ref=ts http://twitter.com/85Pekan
P86 - Maran 3.5841 102.783 P86 - Maran http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...0617786&ref=ts http://twitter.com/86Maran
P87 - Kuala Krau 3.6192 102.3862 P87 - Kuala Krau http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...0623427&ref=ts http://twitter.com/87KualaKrau
P88 - Temerloh 3.4532 102.4245 P88 - Temerloh http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...6810317&ref=ts http://twitter.com/88Temerloh
P89 - Bentong 3.5249 101.9097 P89 - Bentong http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...7290626&ref=ts http://twitter.com/89Bentong
P90 - Bera 3.2595 102.5298 P90 - Bera http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...3666815&ref=ts http://twitter.com/90Bera
P91 - Rompin 2.7837 103.0818 P91 - Rompin http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...0142101&ref=ts http://twitter.com/91Rompin
P92 - Sabak Bernam 3.7317 100.9384 P92 - Sabak Bernam http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...6552154&ref=ts http://twitter.com/92SabakBernam
P93 - Sungai Besar 3.6637 101.0159 P93 - Sungai Besar http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...3747175&ref=ts http://twitter.com/93SungaiBesar
P94 - Hulu Selangor 3.5875 101.6158 P94 - Hulu Selangor http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...7251137&ref=ts http://twitter.com/94HuluSelangor
P95 - Tanjong Karang 3.4242 101.1845 P95 - Tanjong Karang http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...7531150&ref=ts http://twitter.com/95TanjongKarang
P96 - Kuala Selangor 3.335 101.258 P96 - Kuala Selangor http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...4200790&ref=ts http://twitter.com/96KualaSelangor
P97 - Selayang 3.2508 101.6549 P97 - Selayang http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...3201401&ref=ts http://twitter.com/97Selayang
P98 - Gombak 3.2289 101.7111 P98 - Gombak http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...0856998&ref=ts http://twitter.com/98Gombak
P99 - Ampang 3.1588 101.7574 P99 - Ampang http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...3209002&ref=ts http://twitter.com/99Ampang
P100 - Pandan 3.135 101.7396 P100 - Pandan http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gi...7857878&ref=ts http://twitter.com/100Pandan








]]> GE 13 - 2013 pywong http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6800-GE13-Malaysia-s-222-parliamentary-constituencies-FB-Twitter-Accounts <![CDATA[Economics: Doug Casey on Conspiracies, Gold and the Continuing 'Greater Depression' of the World's Economies]]> http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6799-Economics-Doug-Casey-on-Conspiracies-Gold-and-the-Continuing-Greater-Depression-of-the-World-s-Economies?goto=newpost Mon, 20 May 2013 14:38:14 GMT Exclusive Interview


SUNDAY, MAY 19, 2013
Doug Casey on Conspiracies, Gold and the Continuing 'Greater Depression' of the World's Economies



With Staff Report

32

Doug Casey

The Daily Bell is pleased to present this exclusive interview with Doug Casey.


Introduction: Doug Casey has appeared on hundreds of radio and TV shows and has been the subject of articles in People, US, Time, Forbes, The Washington Post and numerous other publications. His books include The International Man, Crisis Investing (17 weeks at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list), Strategic Investing(seven weeks on the NYT list) and, most recently Totally Incorrect. He's the Chairman of Casey Research (caseyresearch.com), which publishes about two dozen newsletters and numerous special reports. Doug Casey, who's travelled to over 175 countries, and his team have been correctly predicting major budding trends in the overall economy and commodity markets for over three decades.


Daily Bell: Nice to speak with you again. Let's jump right in. What's going on with gold? Why are mining stocks down?
Doug Casey: I'm not concerned about gold being down because markets fluctuate. And considering that gold's been in a bull market for a dozen years, I'm very unconcerned about the fact that it's come off. All the fundamentals that underlie the bull market are still in place.


As far as gold stocks are concerned, they've always been a highly leveraged play on gold so when gold catches cold the gold stocks have always caught pneumonia, and that's the case now. Of course, that's amplified by the fact that costs in the mining sector have skyrocketed and it costs on the average $1,000 to $1,200 to get an ounce of gold out of the ground at this point. The world has been pretty thoroughly explored, and it's not easy to find economic deposits. If you do find one, it will only be because you've spent many millions in high tech exploration. You'll then discover that regulation is brutal, and you'll spend more for lawyers and lobbyists than on geologists and engineers. NGO's will plague you with lawsuits, and incite the natives. Governments will extract huge amounts in taxes and royalties. Capital costs are gigantic, usually now in the hundreds of millions, or billions. After all that it takes close to a decade to get the thing in production. There's much more I can say, but mining is a crappy business.


The good news is that now is a superb time to speculate in these stocks. Their prices reflect all the negatives.


Daily Bell: Why did the price of gold plummet?
Doug Casey: Once again, I see it as just the normal, albeit large, fluctuation. It's not like you shouldn't expect a market that's risen steeply for a dozen consecutive years to come off at some point. Especially since not only does everything look rosy in the stock and bond markets, but even real estate spears to be recovering. A lot of conventional – and foolish, in my view – people think that printing trillions of new currency units has solved the crisis, and obviated the need for owning gold. So there's selling. Perhaps a big trader sold a bunch of contracts to set off a lot of stop losses and panic the market. If so, it was a smart trade, and it worked.


Now, I know that that's not a very sexy explanation. But I'm a believer in Occam's Razor, which hold that the simplest explanation of something is usually the correct one. However, I'm afraid it leads me to a pet subject of mine, one that will both take a while to explain, and will, regrettably, antagonize some of your readers. Many gold bugs (but not all, because I too am a gold bug) seem to think that a coterie of malefactors of great wealth sit around a huge boardroom table, perhaps chaired by Dr. Evil cradling his white cat, and send forth their minions, "Da Boyz," to "smack down" the depressed and struggling gold and silver markets. A large number of gold bugs are also conspiracy bugs. They have all of these standard catchphrases for describing what's happening. I've read their stuff for years and, frankly, it impresses me as little more than accusations, name-calling and conjecture.


I don't doubt that the powers-that-be would prefer to have the price of gold lower – just like they would prefer to have the price of wheat and copper and lumber and everything else lower – but there's no evidence that I've ever been shown other than, frankly, just assertions. They point out that large bullion banks are short a lot of gold. But in the past, at the beginning of the bull market, they were long a lot of gold so this doesn't constitute a proof at all, from my point of view. Nor does the fact that central bankers have said they have an interest in controlling prices. Of course they do. That's part of their mandate – and one more reason central banks should be abolished. Maybe they've leased out most of their gold to commercial bullion banks to collect some interest, and the bullion banks sold it in the futures markets to collect the contango. If so, wonderful. If they can't give it back that will only serve to drive the price higher.


If there is, in fact, an orchestrated conspiracy to suppress the gold price, it's been a total failure since the last bottom at around $250 in 2001. You've got to ask yourself: How stupid are these people that they would stay short in one of history's great bull markets? I would be happy to believe that the price of gold is being manipulated as long as I'm shown some evidence for that fact. But these people are asserting that the powers-that-be have been short during one of the biggest bull markets in history. Nobody's got that much money – not even governments; they're all bankrupt. And while it's a safe assumption that central banks would like to see a low gold price, I don't believe they really care; these people truly believe gold is a delusion. To credit it with importance is counter to their education, to all their theories.


Another point. It is well known that during the days of the London Gold Pool, when gold was fixed at $35 an ounce, they were, in fact, trying to control its price. But in those days, in the late '60s, there was only half as much gold in the world as there is now. In other words, as best we can tell there were about 3 billion ounces above ground then; today there are about 6 billion ounces above ground. Governments only own 20% of it. In addition to the fact they had a lot more gold to sell then, they were much more solvent than they are today. Today, all these governments are manifestly bankrupt and running gigantic deficits. So if it was ever possible to control the price of gold it would have been possible up to 1971, at $35 an ounce. But now, with all the other things I've brought up, it's impossible with gold at $1400 an ounce. It makes no sense. Not only don't they care; they don't have the ability.


In addition, on Wall Street, all these traders who are actually putting in the supposed short-sale orders that are manipulating the price of gold like skilled yo-yo masters, all these traders talk to each other like teen-age girls. The word would have filtered out, informally, what was going on over the last decade. But there are no rumors about that, and never have been. All there are is assertions from conspiracy theorists. It annoys me because knowledgeable market players hear these assertions, and they naturally roll their eyes, seeing it as further proof that gold bugs have a screw loose.
One thing we do know is that the governments of developing countries – not just developing countries but Russia, China, India and many others – are buying significant amounts of gold at this point. What possible reason would the US government have to keep the price down? To make it cheaper for the Russians and Chinese to buy? That makes no sense, either. If, in fact, the US is suppressing the gold price, then I personally am grateful as a gold buyer.


I've never gotten any answers to any of these questions that I ask, nor do I hear any actual logical explanations from the people who are making this assertion. It's like a meme that's been created and everybody believes it because everybody else says it. Well, there's no actual evidence that I've ever seen. That's going to prove to be a very unpopular view because a lot of people have become very psychologically invested in the thought that government can control the gold price.


As I said, I can see some reasons why they'd want to do that because governments like to try to control everything and, of course, gold has always been like a fire-bell that goes off when there are monetary problems. But nobody's showed me the evidence. All they say is that the big bullion banks are short a lot of gold. Okay, fine. They've been long a lot of gold in the past and there are good reasons why they would be short; one reason is that the mining companies deliver the gold to them. They're always selling because they keep their accounts in dollars, not ounces of gold.
Anyway, I don't want the GATA guys and their supporters to take this personally. I simply think they're wrong, and those are the reasons why.

Daily Bell: Explain how there can be immoderate demand for physical gold and silver while the paper markets are signaling a slump?
Doug Casey: Perhaps the average gold buyer is fearful of what's on the horizon. And he likes a bargain, which gold offers right now. Gold isn't cheap, but it's better value than stocks, bonds, or real estate.

Daily Bell: Why does the London gold exchange "fix the price" of bullion? Why not generate prices from free trading?

Doug Casey: Well, I think that's a good idea. The London gold price is a bit of an anachronism anyway, but tradition is important. And, of course, London is one of the world's financial centers, and certainly the most important in Europe, where a lot of gold is traded, deliveries are made and a lot of gold is stored. In a free-market world anybody should be able to set up a new gold exchange and get buyers and sellers together to determine the price as they will. But that's hard to do. Why isn't Tokyo or for that matter Hong Kong or for that matter Moscow major centers of gold trade? Perhaps Beijing will be some day, since China has become the world's biggest producer, and the Chinese understand the value of gold. But there are already commodity exchanges in New York and Chicago where gold is freely traded. You as an individual can't join in the London fixing, but you certainly can on the Comex.


But you make it sound conspiratorial. It seems that if you don't believe in a conspiracy theory to do with gold today, it's like being a religious heretic. Speaking to this, about conspiracies with gold or anything else, people constantly conspire. Adam Smith pointed this out in his book, The Wealth of Nations. Whenever a couple of people of the same trade get together, they always try to conspire for their interests and against the interests of the public. So it's not that I deny that people conspire; it's just that it's extremely hard to conspire successfully, especially when we're talking about people who are very wealthy and very powerful. It's hard enough for me to conspire with a few friends and decide on what movie we're going to see or what restaurant we're going to go to after the movie. It's extremely hard for wealthy and powerful people to come to what's likely an illegal agreement, and keep it. So I understand the theory, but once again, I'd really just like to see some actual evidence as opposed to name-calling and assertions.


As an aside, I'd like to point out that while conspiracy theories have a bad name – in good measure because of the type of people that often deal in them – that's not to say I accept conventional explanations of things, either. There are huge unanswered questions about many things in today's world – the two Kennedy assassinations, what actually happened at Waco and Oklahoma City, the strange deaths of Vince Foster and Ron Brown, what happened to Building 7 on 9/11, what was really going on with the assassination of Osama bin Laden... it's a long list.

Daily Bell: If the paper price and physical price diverge, will more and more transactions take place privately?
Doug Casey: There's not a lot of trust in the futures exchanges on the part of the average person who's interested in commodities, and with good reason, especially since the collapse of Refco years ago and then MF Global recently – which was a real fraud for which nobody's been prosecuted. It was assumed that it was basically impossible for a clearing broker to go under and cost the public money. And the fact that all of the big banks and brokers that are out there today are only in existence because of government support and bailouts, it's very understandable that there's very little trust in public markets and financial institutions at this point. That's been compounded by the collapse of Cypriot banks last month.
Personally, I'm no longer dealing in gold in the futures markets, but I do buy gold almost every month and sometimes significant quantities of it. I don't see gold as a trading vehicle, but rather as the only financial asset that's not simultaneously somebody else's liability. I therefore buy it for safety, for security, for prudence; I don't see it as a speculative vehicle. Anyway, it was a great speculation 12 years ago at $250; today, at $1400 it's a prudent allocation of capital, but has less upside. That's why I buy it for cash and I keep it in my personal possession or in the possession of another entity, like Goldmoney and the Hard Assets Alliance, that I really trust.


The futures markets are great things. But people who own gold through them – or through ETFs that use them – are missing the point. Gold is a hedge against paper assets. It makes no sense to own it as a paper notion, where you can't take delivery for practical purposes.


As far as the prices of paper gold and physical gold diverging ... that question again seems to imply the existence of a shadowy conspiracy, and we've discussed that. But it does appear that premiums on coins are rising.


Daily Bell: You told us during our last interview that confidence was breaking down in the dollar whereas themainstream media seems to believe that confidence is breaking down in money metals. How can that be?
Doug Casey: The US government is running deficits of a trillion dollars per year, and I expect those deficits will grow dramatically in the years to come. The Federal Reserve is, in addition, buying $85 billion a month in paper and monetizing it. In addition, there are $7 or $8 trillion outside the US held by people who don't have to use dollars, but use dollars only because they're liquid and convenient. Every country is desperately trying to obviate the use of US dollars, and trade with their own currencies – the Iranians and the Indians, the Russians and the Chinese. They don't appreciate the fact that all their transfers have to go through New York. Furthermore, it makes no sense to use the unsecured liability of a bankrupt and unreliable government for trading. The dollar is a hot potato, and confidence in it is going to break down totally at some point.


As far as a lack of confidence in gold and silver, it's as I said before: Markets fluctuate. Nothing goes straight up or straight down. But you certainly shouldn't credit anything you read in the mass media about whether there's confidence in gold or not. The writers know very little about economics, and even less about the metals. They're just journalists who have no economic or financial skills, no personal money and about zero experience in the markets. So it's just the blathering, the uninformed opinion, of somebody who was given a job by a newspaper or magazine, and has to write an article—today about gold, tomorrow about cats, the next day about diets; they feel like they always have to say something, no matter how inane. Their thoughts are meaningless, except as a contrary indicator. Somebody says something and starts a meme, and then other people repeat the meme. It amazes me, actually.


Daily Bell: Is it possible the physical price of gold and silver are higher than the stated price?
Doug Casey: What I hear is that many bullion dealers are sold out of gold coins, that there are a lot of buyers that have to wait a long time for delivery, and that the premiums on physical gold and silver are up considerably from the norm. If you're a big buyer, and you find you can get a 100-ounce contract much more cheaply on the Comex, then perhaps you should buy it and take delivery. Personally, I prefer coins; they're much more fungible.


Daily Bell: Is there a growing black market in gold and silver?
Doug Casey: You only have black markets when there are political controls of some type, in other words, when the government says the price is X but the market says the price is Y. A black market arises in the discrepancy between the real price and the government-mandated price. At this point, there is no black market in gold or silver. Most places in the world, they're freely traded commodities. So no, I don't see how one could say that there's a black-market price because there's not. Maybe there will be if the government attempts to illegalize gold, or set the price of gold.
On the other hand, governments are trying to clamp down on Bitcoin because of its growing use as an alternative currency. They're claiming it aids in the artificial crime of money laundering. I have no doubt that the same thing will eventually happen to the metals. Governments want you to use only their fiat currencies, and only through banking channels. Even using cash, $100 bills, leads to suspicion of a crime today. They're starting to see the metals in that light, as well.
Daily Bell: How will this affect gold miners?
Doug Casey: As I said earlier, mining is no longer a business suitable for prudent investment—it's purely a speculation. The production of gold has been flat to declining for years and it's likely to stay flat or, more likely, decline considerably. The gold mining industry in South Africa used to turn out two-thirds of world production when gold was $35 an ounce, now it's about one-sixth; it used to be highly profitable at $35 and now it's closing down with gold 40 times higher. It's a portent of the future of gold mining. Worldwide production is about 80 million ounces a year; I think it's going a lot lower.
But current production is trivial in determining the price of the metal. What determines it is whether the 7 billion people in the world want to buy or sell the 6 million ounces above ground. My opinion is there's going to be a groundswell of buying as people try to get out of their governments' rapidly degrading currencies. Certainly in Western countries only a tiny portion of the population own any gold. They're ignorant of the fact that its main use isn't for jewelry or dental fillings; it's money. That perception will change. My belief is that in 20 years gold will once again be used in daily commerce as money. I've discussed why in previous interviews here.
Daily Bell: Enough about gold. Let's move on to some other topics. Is Europe coming apart or is the crisis over?
Doug Casey: No, the crisis isn't over. To the contrary, the crisis has a long way to go because all these stupid governments are not just doing the wrong thing; they're doing exactly the opposite of the right thing. They're all bankrupt and the only way that you can solve this problem is by radically cutting expenses, stop printing money, eliminating regulations, radically cutting tax burdens and getting rid of subsidies and welfare programs wholesale. But, instead, they're raising taxes, increasing regulations, printing money by the carload and just marginally cutting some spending.
The European Central Bank, and the central banks of almost every country, for that matter, are attempting to keep old, unsustainable patterns of production and consumption going with more money printing. So no, things aren't getting better. This is going to wind up in a catastrophic depression. And we've been in a depression since 2007. I define a depression as a period of time when most people's standard of living drops significantly. But it can also be defined as a period when distortions and misallocations of capital in the marketplace are liquidated – that should be happening but it really hasn't even started to happen yet. When that starts happening things will really get ugly. So no, this is not over by any means. It's still early days. As Einstein said, after hydrogen, stupidity is the most common thing in the universe.


Things have seemed to have gotten better in the world over the last few years since they've had massive quantitative easing – which is to say currency printing. Sure, if you create trillions of dollars of currency units it makes people feel richer than they really are and it encourages them to continue living above their means. It just guarantees an even worse depression. What's coming up is going to be the biggest thing in modern history. It's not just going to be financial and economic. It's going to be a political, social, and military earthquake, as well.

Daily Bell: Will the euro hold together?
Doug Casey: No. As I've said before, if the dollar's an "IOU nothing," the euro's a "who owes you nothing." It's an extremely badly structured fiat currency. Money is just a medium of exchange and a store of value; it shouldn't also be a political football and a form of taxation. The 19th century was the most peaceful and prosperous time in the world's history. And the rate of growth was far higher, and sounder, than it is today, as well. That was largely because the state was a relatively minor influence in society. Inflation didn't exist because gold was money – gold was the international currency – taxes were extremely low, regulations were low. The answer is to go back to something that actually worked, which was the economic system we used in the 19th century. It wasn't laissez-faire capitalism, but it was far closer to it than what we have today, which is to say nothing but variations of socialism and fascism.


The reason these people want to preserve the euro is because it helps them to control and manipulate economies. But control and manipulation of economies is not a good thing. They will fail totally.

Daily Bell: What's happening in South America?
Doug Casey: I live in Argentina, basically, and the government down here is criminally insane. That's the bad news. The good news is that on an individual basis they leave you alone. And certainly once you're out of Buenos Aires, in the provinces you hardly even know they exist. The currency controls that they have actually work to the benefit of people who have a strong foreign currency to buy things. It's very, very cheap here in Argentina now. It's a fantastic place to live.


But frankly, all over South America they're going the wrong way. Uruguay is very socialistic. Brazil is almost like the movie "Brazil," where it is almost impossible to do anything because of the bureaucracy, the taxes, the regulations. Venezuela – everybody knows that story. From an investor's point of view there are only two countries in South America that make sense – Colombia and Chile. But I'm not here in Argentina for that reason; I'm here for the lifestyle. And from a lifestyle point of view, Argentina's still number one on the list. You've got to decide why you're in a country and that's why I'm here.

Daily Bell: What's going on with China – slowdown or steady as she goes?

Doug Casey: Actually, I just got back from two weeks in the Orient and the Middle East. It seems to me that the Chinese are riding for a huge fall. They've made tremendous advances from being one of the most backward and primitive countries in the world 30 years ago. The country's been transformed. That's the good news. The bad news is that there have been a lot of distortions and misallocations of capital in the process, largely due to the intervention of the Chinese state and politically driven lending by their banks. I suspect their banking system is completely bankrupt, having made lots of uneconomic loans to state enterprises.


The thing to remember is this, however: The world at large should keep getting richer over the years and decades to come, notwithstanding what I call The Greater Depression. That's for two reasons. Number one, the average person will continue trying to produce more than he consumes because even if he knows nothing about economics, he understands that he's got to produce more than he consumes on a personal level just in order to improve his standard of living and have savings to rely on in the future. Even if he thinks the government's a magic cornucopia that will supply everything for him, in the back of his mind there's something that tells him that. So the average person is working to improve himself and build capital. That's number one.


Number two is that there are more scientists and engineers alive today than have lived in all of the world's previous history put together, and technology is going to continue growing and improving for that reason. So I'm optimistic about the long term.


All I'm saying is that we're going to go through a period when the distortions and misallocations of capital that have been cranked into the market place for political reasons are going to be liquidated. That's going to be unpleasant and it's going to have a lot of political consequences, and probably some military consequences as well. So even though the long-term trend is for mankind to ascend from the gutter to the stars, I expect we're going to have some really scary times over the next decade. What we've seen in Cyprus and what we're seeing in Syria and what we've seen in Libya – we're going to see a lot more of that type of thing.


Daily Bell: What's the wisest thing people should be doing right now to be in the best shape for the coming decade, then?
Doug Casey: What should one do, indeed? My advice really remains the same. On a personal level, try to produce more than you consume. Keep your savings in gold, not in currencies. Diversify internationally because your biggest risks today are political, not market risks, not investment risks. The investment risks today are huge because with governments all over the world creating trillions in new currency units they've driven stock markets to what I think are unsustainable levels. They've driven the bond markets to become the biggest bubble in world history. The bond markets are in a bigger bubble now than tech stocks were in the year 2000 or real estate was in the year 2007. Think like a speculator, because they're going to ignite lots more bubbles − including one in gold and gold stocks. Diversify internationally so that all of your assets aren't under the control of one government. And for your savings, keep those savings in precious metals. Also, although it's not a bargain anywhere in the world today, I think well selected, productive agricultural land makes a lot of sense. Also, it is critical to have a crib outside of your native country.


Daily Bell: What about at a personal, lifestyle sort of non-economics level? For instance, perhaps, the reasons you're in Argentina?

Doug Casey: This is perhaps the most European country in the world, from a lifestyle perspective. It's more European than Europe but although it's got all kinds of economic and political problems, it's kind of out of harm's way, down here in the South Atlantic. And it's very corrupt, so that although the government is a kleptocracy, they're in it for the money more than the power. The Argentines are accustomed to chaos, so they're primed for the coming decade.


I've been to 175 different countries in the world and I've lived in 12 at this point and I had to think on what I wanted and where I wanted to go. I pretty well ruled out Europe for all kinds of reasons. Africa is definitely where I would go if I was 30 years younger and wanted to make a huge amount of money, but as a lifestyle choice it's a nonstarter. I really like the Orient and have lived there, but the problem with the Orient is that unless you're a native of a country – unless you're Thai or are Chinese or whatever – you're always going to be an outsider, even if you marry a local.


So basically, for me it boiled down to South America. And having been to every country on this continent, including Guyana and Surinam, both of which I've spent of a lot of time in, incidentally, Argentina, with it's down at the heels elegance and it's corrupt but incompetent government, was just the best place to be. It helps that I played polo for 20 years, too. Also, of all the countries in Latin America, Argentina has by far the longest and best tradition of classical liberalism. There's much more in the way of classical liberal values in this country than in any other in Latin America. So it's got problems, but every place has got problems.


Anyway, I spend most of my time here in the delightful little town of Cafayate, in the wine region of the northwest. We've developed what I feel may be the best resort in the world. Golf, polo, tennis, a world-class gym and spa, a great clubhouse with a big library and video collection is in the works, and about every amenity you can imagine. Plus, the homeowners are from 25 different countries, and they're great folks, very like-minded. I urge your readers to come down and visit. Here's the website: lec.com.ar.


Daily Bell: Why is it the case that there is such a strong base of classical liberal values in Argentina? What brought that about, do you think?


Doug Casey: An excellent question – and one I am not sure how to answer. Perhaps it's because Argentina used to be one of the richest countries in the world, and by far the richest in Latin America. That was due to a free market, and a lot of people remember that – notwithstanding the current government. Perhaps it's because it's always been by far the most international and sophisticated and best-educated country on the continent, and always exposed to ideas from abroad. Perhaps it's because it's a country of immigrants, opportunity seekers, like the US.


Daily Bell: How will all this – The Greater Depression – end? Government confiscations of everything?
Doug Casey: Let me put it this way. The prime directive of all living entities is to survive. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about an individual or a corporation or a government or anything else. The prime directive is to survive. In the case of governments, they will do anything that they can or need to in order to survive. That means that you can expect more taxes, more inflation, more regulations so that they can keep their personal boats afloat. Of course, the way I see government, it is a parasite upon society so eventually, some of these governments are going to kill their hosts.
I think things are going to get worse before they get better because trends in motion tend to stay in motion until a real crisis turns them around. The chance of any of these US government agencies disappearing voluntarily is slim to none. And this is true of any government anywhere in the world. Perfectly useless, even counterproductive agencies, like theSEC, OHSA, FDA, DOE, HUD, FCC, FAA, FTC – there are hundreds of them – all that purport to serve useful purpose but nothing the market couldn't do vastly better and vastly cheaper. The only way you can get rid of them is by pulling them up by their roots. But that's impossible because their employees would raise hell, and the average person in the public thinks he's being protected by them.


So the only way this is all going to come to an end is when it's completely unsustainable, the government's bankrupted and these things go away because they collapse. They're not going to end voluntarily. So I'm not optimistic about the way this is going to evolve over the next decade. I think you're going to see something that was actually foreseen byAyn Rand in Atlas Shrugged.


Daily Bell: Any last thoughts, things you'd like to share with us? Anything new that you're working on now?
Doug Casey: Well, I'd mention this – I'm tired of writing nonfiction and investment stuff. Essentially, that's preaching to the choir. If you want to promote a worldview, you have to do it through fiction. So along with a friend of mine, John Hunt MD, I'm doing a sextet of novels that trace the progress of a normal, middle-class boy as he goes through six unjustly besmirched occupations, occupations that people think only a bad guy would engage in. He first becomes a speculator, then he becomes a drug lord, then he becomes an assassin, then a terrorist, then a warlord and eventually, he turns out to be the anti-Christ. But I'll demonstrate that he can remain a good guy all the while and that all of these things are actually good, not bad things. I find it personally amusing and perhaps I'll develop a cult readership. That's what I'm doing now. It will be Lord of the Rings for a modern audience, Harry Potter for adults...


Daily Bell: Oh, great. That should be interesting. Thank you for taking time with us again.

Doug Casey: Thank you very much.


Doug Casey's interview is interesting on a number of fronts, including the statement at the end when he says:


So the only way this is all going to come to an end is when it's completely unsustainable, the government's bankrupted and these things go away because they collapse. They're not going to end voluntarily. So I'm not optimistic about the way this is going to evolve over the next decade. I think you're going to see something that was actually foreseen by Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged.


We tend to agree with this perspective. Leaving aside various conspiracies and the evidence or lack of evidence, the reality is that this modern system of ours is unstable and certainly apt to degrade ... and thus increases the population that simply decides to drop out. This accounts for the Ayn Rand reference.
Things are certainly changing and will continue to change. For some, those who plan productively and grasp what is going on, these changes will be positive and beneficial. For others, not.


We think we see evidences of it in the increasing decay of civil society, education and infrastructure throughout the West. Additionally, we would tend to believe that the contradictory trends of increased authoritarianism and the larger entropy being generated by an increased flow of information in this Internet Era are going to create an increasingly chaotic environment.


The 21st century will be nothing like the 20th and the coping skills necessary to survive will be different, too. Fortunately, there are people like Doug Casey who can serve as guides as we face a confusing new world. The basics of Casey's perspective include self-reliance, a recognition of the realities of the current dysfunctional economic system and various methodologies we can adopt to cope.
In this extensive interview, he explains his vision in both practical and visionary terms. As with any perspective on controversial subjects, there are probably areas with which you disagree. But reading through it convinces us once again that Casey is one of the clearer thinkers operating in the alternative media today.

 ]]> pywong http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6799-Economics-Doug-Casey-on-Conspiracies-Gold-and-the-Continuing-Greater-Depression-of-the-World-s-Economies Malaysian History: Ways of seeing Malaysia - deconstructing demographic violence, Charis Quay Huei Li http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6798-Malaysian-History-Ways-of-seeing-Malaysia-deconstructing-demographic-violence-Charis-Quay-Huei-Li?goto=newpost Mon, 20 May 2013 06:32:15 GMT Ways of seeing Malaysia – deconstructing demographic violence... Ways of seeing Malaysia – deconstructing demographic violence


BY CHARIS QUAY HUEI LI, GUEST CONTRIBUTOR
– 17 MAY 2013POSTED IN: HISTORY, MALAYSIA, RACE

How we depict or represent something influences how we think about or ‘know’ it, and the reverse is true as well. In the context of visual art, John Berger showed us this almost half a century ago now. Berger also helped us to realise that ‘ways of seeing and knowing’ are seldom as innocuous as they may first appear; they may hide violence beneath their gleaming, airbrushed surfaces or be tools of libido dominandi disguised as benevolence.


For instance, the pin-ups that one might find in a colleague’s office or in the department machine shop are not ‘just’ pictures of almost-naked women in provocative poses in semi-public places, but a particular way of representing and seeing women that ultimately leads to and comes from the objectification of women and their bodies, particular assumptions about women’s role in society, and a certain violence in social relations between the sexes.


Most of those who know of Malaysia are familiar with the ‘Malaysia, Truly Asia’ tourism ads; indeed, for many, these represent the only way they have ever seen Malaysia. It is therefore not surprising that much that has been written on Malaysia’s recent general elections has failed to transcend the carefully-constructed framing narrative which these ads embody and in which they are embedded. As such, the world’s chattering classes were, perhaps unwittingly but nevertheless inexcusably, complicit in reinforcing a ‘way of seeing’ which – in order to serve certain interests – is intentionally blind to Malaysia’s most vulnerable groups, most notably her indigenous peoples ( ~ 12% of her 28 million citizens), but also migrant workers (~2-4 million people) as well as refugees and asylum seekers.


One of the main planks of this narrative (hereafter called ‘MICO’ for ‘Malay’, ‘Indian’, ‘Chinese’ and ‘Others’) is the statement – and oft-quoted ‘factoid’ – that ‘Just over half of Malaysians are ethnic Malays, 7% are of Indian descent, almost a quarter are of Chinese descent and the rest come from Other Races.’ These ‘other races’, whom one might expect to be Europeans or other non-Asians, are in fact mostly Malaysia’s indigenous peoples, reduced by this statement to being negligible ‘others’ in their own land.


In the East Malaysian (Malaysian Borneo) states of Sabah and Sarawak, contrary to West Malaysia, indigenous peoples still form the majority of the population. These oil- and timber-rich states contribute ~60% of Malaysia’s geographical area, a fifth of its population and an outsize fraction of federal government revenue. They are also an embarrassment to the present ruling coalition, the Barisan Nasional (BN), as they do not (yet) fit into the racial framework they impose on the country and present to the world as ‘the only truthful way of seeing Malaysia’. Indeed, when people speak generally about Malaysia – especially in social or cultural terms – most of the time they really mean West Malaysia.


West Malaysian indigenous groups (known collectively as the Orang Asli/Asal, or ‘original people’) have been a minority for several centuries, and now form less than 1% of the population. As such, the MICO classification – along with the predecessor of today’s Orang Asli Affairs Department (JHEOA) – was created by the British to divide and rule West Malaysia (then called Malaya). For all that, it has never truly described Malaya’s population. In part, this is because each category lumped together and conflated a myriad of culturally distinguishable groups. (An indicator: collectively, Malaysians speak more than a hundred living languages.) In addition, MICO’s categories themselves were already blurring during colonial times through intermarriages and adoptions, and have only become more blurred with Independence and the gradual coming into being of a Malaysian identity.


Nevertheless, the BN, a coalition of race-based parties in power since West Malaysian Independence in 1957, has tried to maintain and reinforce MICO categories. For example, a West Malaysian with Irish, French, Javanese, Filipino, Arab, Hakka and Ceylonese ancestry could be ‘officially’ M, I, C or O depending on their paternal ancestry or their religion, or else by ‘accident’ or for other less-than-transparent reasons. (Both one’s race and religion are recorded on Malaysian national identity cards, as well as many other administrative documents.) To borrow an expression from the British, Malaysians are a mongrel race. Malaysian ethnicity is a fluid concept, forced into hard categories.


These hard categories – the MICO construct – ultimately sustain and nourish a corrupt system of patronage benefitting a small multi-racial ‘elite’ class of rent-seekers. The most obvious of its effects and enabling factors is Malaysia’s all-pervasiveinstitutionalised racism and race-baiting politics, which has led millions of Malaysia’s most highly-qualified citizens to leave the country. Much ink has already been spilled on these topics. We shall therefore focus instead on bringing to light a less-known side of the story – the ongoing narrative and effective ethnocide of Malaysia’s indigenous peoples.


One of the main actors in the entrenchment and perpetuation of the MICO depiction of Malaysia as well as its corollary doctrine of the ‘supremacy of the Malay race’ was, ironically, a man who was himself a square peg in MICO’s round holes. This man was Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. Of Indian ancestry (some say he is the son of a migrant from Kerala), and from a recent-migrant neighbourhood, Dr. Mahathir reinvented himself as a ‘Malay’, not only that, as a ‘champion of the Malay race’. He rose through the ranks to become the leader of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO, the dominant party in the BN).


As Malaysia’s longest-serving Prime Minister (1981-2003), Dr. Mahathir presided over two decades of impressive economic growth and modernisation. His legacy, as well as both UMNO and Malaysia, would be very different today had Dr. Mahathir not attempted to compensate for his origins by becoming ‘more Malay than the Malays’, or had the ideas of UMNO’s more inclusive founding fathers prevailed: One of them, Onn Jaafar mooted in the 1950s the opening of UMNO membership to all Malayans (West Malaysians). As it was, history took a different course.


To cement MICO, widen their ‘Malay’ voter base and to make ‘Malay Supremacy’ a demographic reality, Dr. Mahathir and UMNO played on the fact that, in the Malaysian Federal Constitution, Article 160 defines a Malay as a ‘Malaysian citizen born to a Malaysian citizen who professes to be a Muslim, habitually speaks the Malay language, adheres to Malay customs, and is domiciled in Malaysia or Singapore’. In addition, Article 153 guarantees Malays a ‘special position’ in the country.


This identification between Malays and Islam serves UMNO’s political purposes through two principal mechanisms.


If Malay, therefore Muslim: Over the years, it has become increasingly difficult for a person born Malay – and therefore by ‘legal definition’ Muslim – to convert out of Islam or to practice a non-Sunni form of Islam. Today, as the Lina Joy case has shown, this is for all practical intents and purposes impossible. Some who try are sent to re-education centres. Those classified as Muslims are subject to both civil and syariah law, as well as rulings of state religious departments.


Whereas in principle only civil law applies to non-Muslims, Malaysia’s dual legal system has created numerous legal, administrative and human problems in overlapping areas, notably family law. In the context of demographic manipulation, it is worth noting that non-Muslims who marry Muslims must convert to Islam; as with the impossibility of conversion out of Islam, this has not always been the case in Malaysia.


If Muslim, therefore Malay: Muslim migrants to Malaysia, whatever their origin, are rapidly assimilated into the ‘Malay’ category by the political will of UMNO. Thus, one finds individuals ‘issus de l’immigration récente’, such as Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, having a ‘special position’ vis-a-vis others who have been around for longer, but who simply happen not to be Muslim.


Given UMNO’s social engineering goals, Malaysia’s indigenous peoples clearly represent both a threat and an opportunity. The threat lies in their very existence, which negates the claim that Malays are indigenous ‘sons of the soil’ (bumiputera); in particular, it greatly weakens the position of ‘assimilated’ or ‘constitutional’ Malays such as Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and others like him, of whom there are a considerable number among UMNO’s leaders. The opportunity lies in their status as undefined ‘others’ in MICO.


It does not take a Stanford Business grad at McKinsey to figure out what ‘the solution’ is: the embarrassing existence of the indigenous peoples must be ‘erased’ by making them into ‘Malays’. There have therefore been widespread official and semi-official efforts in this direction.


The most obvious of these was the introduction of large numbers of Muslim migrants (some say up to 700,000) through a covert ‘citizenship for votes’ operation known as ‘Project IC’, which over the past few decades has significantly changed the demographics of Sabah, formerly a Christian majority state. Analysts believe that this may have led to a general destabilisation of the region and in particular indirectly enabled an armed incursion into the Malaysian state of Sabah by militants from the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, who claim the territory of Sabah .


Other ‘Malay-isation’ efforts are less well-documented and more subtle; they include soft – and sometimes not so soft – efforts to Islamise the indigenous peoples of both East and West Malaysia. (At the moment, two thirds of Malaysian Christians are indigenous East Malaysians and, conversely, just under half of indigenous East Malaysians are Christians. These facts seem to have escaped even the Missions Etrangères de Paris, but may no longer be true in the future if MICO persists and succeeds.) A 2008 report by the Asian Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Network called the Malaysian Department of Orang Asli Affairs (JHEOA) – whose ostensible mission is to ‘develop the socio-economic well-being of the Orang Asli’ – ‘a mechanism to control the Orang Asli’, one of whose ultimate aims since the late 1970s has been to integrate the Orang Asli into ‘mainstream Malay society’ through Islamisation.


Socio-economically, Malaysia’s indigenous people are among her poorest and most marginalised groups; they have benefitted far less than the ‘Malays’ from ‘bumiputera’ affirmative action policies, programmes and aid. Worse, land they live on has been ‘grabbed’ e.g. for the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and for its timber. A 2003publication by the Centre for Orang Asli Concerns, an NGO, described the Orang Asli as ‘First in the Land, Last in the Plan’. Similarly, a recent report by the Malaysian Human Rights Commission (SUHAKAM) observed that the ‘economic self-reliance of [East Malaysian natives] has been progressively reduced…forcing them to become coolies in their own land’.


With Malaysia’s tightly-controlled media – many newspapers are owned outright by BN parties, RSF ranked Malaysia 145th out of 179 countries for press freedom – MICO partially succeeded in labelling and sowing distrust among Malaysians for a long time, but the game changed when internet access became widely available. Internet penetration is now at about 60%.


The mushrooming of independent news portals and other online forums starting a little over ten years ago enabled many Malaysians to broach the once-taboo ‘race issue’, first by venting frustrations pent-up for decades, then to engage in more sophisticated analysis, and finally to expose the MICO framework and its inherent violence for what they were and to reject them. This dynamic and rapidly-maturing national conversation has been, quite simply, amazing to watch, even for those who always had faith in the inherent goodness and basic common sense of the Malaysian people. It has resulted in initiatives such as ‘Saya Anak Bangsa Malaysia’ (My Race is Malaysian), Projek Dialog, Malaysian Artistes for Unity, ‘Kita Kawan Mah’ (We are all friends) and theMalaysia Forum, as well as growing support for non-race-based political parties, especially in areas with reliable internet access.


The results of GE13 – where the BN lost the popular vote but retained power amidst allegations of massive and widespread fraud – thus represent more than anything a resounding rejection of the BN and its MICO framework as well as corruption and abuse of public office by young, urban, connected voters. An online poll of 30,000 Malaysians under the age of 21, the age of voting majority, showed 90% support for the opposition Pakatan Rakyat and only 10% for the race-based political parties of the BN.


Unsurprisingly, in the immediate aftermath of GE13, the ruling BN – who do not seem willing or able to change with the times – immediately sought to reinforce their ‘tried and tested’ MICO methods of manipulating and controlling the population by speaking of a ‘Chinese tsunami’ and by inciting hatred between ‘races’ (as defined by them) in the front-page headlines of offline media. Dr. Mahathir Mohamad attributed the BN’s loss to ‘greedy Malays’ and ‘ungrateful Chinese’. Utusan Malaysia, owned by UMNO, screamed ‘Apa lagi Cina Mahu?’ (What more do the Chinese want?) and the Star, owned by MCA, the BN’s ‘Chinese’ party, dutifully played the echo chamber with ‘Chinese will be SIDELINED’.


To the international community, the BN attempted as usual to portray Malaysians as a divided, vengeful and violent people, whom only they are capable of keeping from springing at each other’s throats. And thus, no doubt, protect investments. It is in this light that Najib Razak, the leader of the BN’s disingenuous remarks on ‘national reconciliation’ must be read and understood. It is also in this light that calls for a BN merger with the opposition Democratic Action Party (social democrats) must be read and understood; in effect, the BN has a history of ‘neutralising’ ascendant opposition parties by absorbing and ‘racially pigeon-holing’ them – previous victims includeGerakan, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS).


The foreign press largely fell for, or chose to fall for, the BN’s ploy and continued to report on Malaysia within the MICO framework, ignoring the fact that this was precisely what Malaysians had rejected in the elections. Not only did many take the ‘Chinese Tsunami’ at face value and repeat it thought-for-thought as ‘analysis’; some major news outlets, including the Economist, le Monde and the Financial Times, went one step further and finished the BN’s work for them by ‘absorbing’ Malaysia’s indigenous peoples into the ‘Malay’ category in their ‘ethnic statistics’ of the Malaysian population, thus erasing those ‘first in the land’ in Malaysia with a single stroke of the pen. These were appalling and irresponsible acts of journalistic laziness, hermeneutic arrogance and ultimately demographic violence and narrative ethnocide.


Many Malaysians reading BN’s racist rhetoric, which reached new heights (or depths) immediately before and after the elections and in addition was amplified by the international press, felt like female engineers who popped over to the machine shop to mill a simple piece only to find themselves confronted with a life-size pin-up on the wall.


They were disgusted and outraged, and rightly so.


To tell their side of the story, ordinary Malaysians have come forward in increasing numbers recently to undermine the MICO framework and expose its distortions, in particular by pointing out that it does not accurately represent their ancestry or Malaysia’s complex cultural heritage. Sairana Mohamad Saad’s article in the Malaysian Insider is typical. It begins:


According to my birth certificate, I am a Malay. Based on my…features, I should be from [the state of] Penang. The truth is, both [sic] my grandparents sailed to Malaysia, therefore I was born [in the state of] Selangor…and am married to a foreigner. Most Malaysians would call me “rojak” [mixed]. To me, I am a Malaysian, with rights to speak up. Period.

Erna Mahyuni, an indigenous Sabahan, had this to say about an attempt to label her an ‘ungrateful Malay’ for having said that most Malaysians are ‘pendatang’ or immigrants:


I’m not Malay nor do I have ‘Malay’ blood anywhere in my ancestry. My birth certificate shows my father is Dusun; my mother is Bajau. Incidentally, one of my great-grandmothers is Chinese, as are quite a number of my relatives, and the other great-grandmother is Pakistani Indian. Which still makes me 100 per cent Malaysian.

And Karina Bahrin directly attacked the ‘tsunami’ statement in a remark addressed to the ‘Prime Minister and all in UMNO’:


I am, by your definition, Malay. Except…my paternal grandmother was probably biologically Chinese. And…my mother is a former Catholic from the Philippines…[A]s far as you are concerned, I am Malay. Only, I did not vote for you. And neither did a whole lot of other Malays…Do the math.

As a matter of fact, analysts – including independent pollster Ibrahim Suffian of the Merdeka Centre; Dr. Ong Kian Ming, an academic-turned-politician and director of the Malaysian Electoral Roll Analysis Project; and contributors to the Australian National University’s ‘New Mandala’ – have done the math. And they have found that the data do not support the ‘Chinese Tsunami’ hermeneutic but instead point to a swing across the board towards the opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition, whose component parties are not race-based. If one must ‘enliven’ a headline with the word ‘schism’ (Associated Press, New York Times etc.), it would be more truthful to note that in GE13 the schism, if there was one, was along urban-rural, age, gender and class lines rather than ethnic ones.


Malaysians have undertaken a much-needed and democratically-driven paradigm shift. To a certain extent, it could even be said that the Malaysian people are finally constructing their own paradigm and finding their own voices. Commentators would do well to take note of and record if not applaud this historic event instead of acting as deadweights stuck in the old, racist paradigm; otherwise, they risk finding themselves on the wrong side of history.


Charis Quay Huei Li is a Malaysian academic working abroad. An outline of the main points in this article appeared in the form of comments on the Economist’s website. These were removed by the moderator; no reason was given.
 ]]> Malaysian History pywong http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6798-Malaysian-History-Ways-of-seeing-Malaysia-deconstructing-demographic-violence-Charis-Quay-Huei-Li Indelible ink is an eyewash, TH Liew http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6797-Indelible-ink-is-an-eyewash-TH-Liew?goto=newpost Mon, 20 May 2013 02:09:20 GMT The use of "1% silver nitrate" is an eyewash, literally!

"1% silver nitrate" is known as "Crede's prophylaxis" and was used, as eyedrops, very effectively previously to prevent blinding infections in newborn babies in underdeveloped countries.

The eyes of the babies were NOT stained black at all. If they were allowed to vote, there would have been NO "indelible ink" in their eyes.

See below:

"Carl Siegmund Franz Credé (23 December 1819 – 14 March 1892) was a German gynecologist and obstetrician, who is famous for introducing the use of silver nitrate eyedrops as an antiseptic for the prevention of ophthalmia neonatorum in newborns. He used a 2% silver nitrate solution, and first demonstrated its effectiveness in the early 1880s. During a three-year period, Credé treated 1160 newborns with silver nitrate, with only two infants developing ophthalmia. The silver nitrate solution is sometimes referred to as "Credé's prophylaxis" in medical literature. Later, the solution was diluted to 1% silver nitrate, and became a standard practice in obstetrics."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Si...anz_Cred%C3%A9

How effective was it?

Here is a 2001 publication from no less than the World Health Organisation, stating that in many parts of the world, this "1% silver nitrate" remains the "gold standard" ("irony" in reference to the metals?).

"The risk of blindness due to ON (Ophtalmia Neonatorium) depends on the availability of medical care, which is still a problem in rural areas of developing countries and in urban slums.

As a public health measure it is important to prevent STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases) and their consequences in pregnant women and the neonates. The choice of different intervention strategies will depend on the prevalence of the causative STD agents in the population and on financial, laboratory and diagnostic resources. Therefore the ‘‘gold standard’’ in most parts of the world is still the method that was introduced by Crede´,though the recommended concentration was later reduced to 1% silver nitrate solution to lessenirritation(1,2).The preventive measure was very effective, and within a few years the prevalence of gonococcal ophthalmia declined from 10% to 0.3% of births."
http://www.who.int/ncd/vision2020_ac....3.262-266.pdf

Hope you can use this in your arguments against he EC's use of 1% sliver nitrate, while in INDIA, the industrial strengths of 14-18% was used, as indelible inks.

India has more than 700million voters.

EC's "indelible ink" is probably not very much more than stamp pad ink. Any 1% silver nitrate did not add indelible properties to it.

WHO exactly in the Ministry of Health advised EC about the ill effects of silver nitrate?

cheers,
TH Liew
Attached Files
]]> 9. Indelible ink pywong http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6797-Indelible-ink-is-an-eyewash-TH-Liew Action: 11 Ways to Build a Better Malaysia DIY Toolkit http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6796-Action-11-Ways-to-Build-a-Better-Malaysia-DIY-Toolkit?goto=newpost Sun, 19 May 2013 06:36:11 GMT 11 Ways to Build a Better Malaysia DIY Toolkit...
11 Ways to Build a Better Malaysia DIY Toolkit





by Yong Wei Chong Gabriel (Notes) on Monday, May 13, 2013 at 10:28am




A week ago one of my statuses in the aftermath of the 13th Malaysian general elections was circulated, and many people asked me where/how to start participating in civil society efforts. Here are some preliminary thoughts.

Access to Information: Legal





If you believe that information is power, than one of the biggest handicaps in this country is that there is no Freedom of Information Act at the Federal level. This means the government can withhold or censor information at its whims and fancies. Access to state information is crucial for discovering the decision-making processes that lead to the drafting and implementation of public policies, the distribution of government contracts, the detailed allocation of state funds, etc.


What you can do:


What you can do: There have been ongoing efforts by legal practitioners and the Selangor state government to push for a Freedom ofInformation Act in Malaysia. If you have a legal background and/or have expertise in this area, do your research and contact the relevant parties to see how you can help. (section needs to be updated)


Access to Information: Mechanical


A DIY wifi kit made with wireless router, solar panel, and cigar box




In view of the restrictions to media freedom in Malaysia, and the high level of distrust towards the mainstream media, social media is the prevalent mode of information distribution among the urban class in Malaysia. Najib himself termed the 2013 general elections as the first “social media election” in Malaysia. In spite of the total internet users/population in Malaysia standing at a mere 50%, our social media engagement is staggering: a study by TNS lists Malaysians as the heaviest social media users, as well as having the most online friends (out of 46 countries surveyed).


The rural who do no have access to alternative media inhabit a shadow world that is drastically different from the daily information overload that saturates the urban and web-savvy. There is a dire need to counter this imbalance in access to information.


What you can do:


Even if you’re not a tycoon who can finance the construction of large-scale telecommunications infrastructure in rural states in Malaysia, there are small ways that you can help. If you have some basic engineering expertise, you can design, build, and distribute portable, modular, solar-powered radios or Wi-fi routers to rural areas. Free Sarawak, for example, has raised funds for and distributed over 2,000 shortwave radios in Sarawak. These instruments are meant to increase media access for rural residents who are usually cordoned off from a huge amount of public information. In the wake of the Arab Spring, engineering-savvy Egyptians took to creative ways to circumvent the national internet blockade and built ad hoc internet routers to leech onto ISPs that were still operating. If you have expertise in hacking and appreciate the work that MalaysiaKini has done, contact the MalaysiaKini tech team at (http://mkini.blogspot.com/p/contact-us.html) on how you can help them circumvent DDOS attacks.

Information Assessment: Qualitative



Recommended: “Aristotle and an Aadvark Go to Washington”






If you’re like me – a philosophy student, you probably enjoy sitting around, being an ******** and occasionally sharp-shooting statements made by so-and-so. But textual analysis is a crucial tool in deconstructing the statements made by public officials.


What does it mean, when someone says, “Annual GDP growth increased to an average of 5.6% over a five-year period under the regime of so-and-so”? What is the implicature of this sentence? Does it convey an event of causation or correlation? What does it mean when someone says, “We must uphold Asian/Islamic values and not imitate the depravity of Western societies”? Is the Asian-Western dichotomy implied by such an argument a fact or a presumption? What does it mean when someone says, “Legalizing same-sex/gay marriage will inevitably lead to legalization of polygamy and bestiality?” What kinds of logical fallacies does this argument employ – slippery slope, strawman attack, appeal to emotion/mass sentiment, false alternative, or all of them?


How many of our public leaders publicize their nonsense on a daily basis, pulling sources out of their fat asses, making statements that make little or no logical sense at all? How do we stem and break down this mass of convoluted information?


What you can do:


Malaysia needs something of the equivalent of PolitiFact (www.politifact.com) or FactCheck (www.factcheck.org) - an aggregator of high-profile misstatements released by public officials/organizations, and a dedicated team of qualitative analysts who can refute them in a clear and concise manner.


Information Assessment: Big Data





The aftermath of the 13th general elections saw a flurry of preliminary data assessment (measuring malapportionment, “gerrymandering” of parliamentary constituencies, tabulating the distributionof votes vs constituency size, etc.) from ordinary members of the public. Which is great, because whether you’re a Malaysian student or a working professional or an ordinary housewife with basic programming/statistical knowledge, anybody can be a data scientist.


The Malaysian Electoral Roll Analysis Project (http://malaysianelectoralrollproject.blogspot.com/) led by Ong Kian Ming (who is now leading a parliamentary committee in reviewing redelineation of constituencies ahead of the Malaysian Election Commission’s upcoming redelineation exercise), for example, is an excellent example of an independent project that harnesses available data for public good.


What you can do:


Here is an independent group interested in studying data about Malaysia: (https://www.facebook.com/groups/641535625862722/).

Sinar Project (http://sinarproject.org/) is an example of an independent initiative to make important information accessible to the public. Currently it's manned by three people and they probably need many more volunteers.



There are a million independent research projects/public services you could do with Big Data. If you’re a programmer, consider contacting your MP/state government on how you can develop web/mobile platformsto aid urban/state planning. Examples of areas you can work on are local crime watch, traffic monitoring, utilities and garbage disposal management, public transportation scheduling, e-bill payment and e-ticketing for public goods, publicity for social welfare programmes, etc. If you’re a designer, think about how to represent information in a coherent, intuitive manner (http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/is an excellent resource), especially to the less tech-savvy.


Here are some possible things to study with available data (again, just some preliminary suggestions – there’re a million other things you could possibly do):


- Media content analysis (positive vs negative mentions of ruling coalition vs opposition coalition) by media outlet
- Personal net worth of public officials in Malaysia and distribution of state and federal funds
- Retrospective review of success of implementation of past National Budgets
- Comparative study of public policies in Malaysiavs similar public policies in other countries
- Family trees in management boards of all government-linked corporations*


* I propose we have something of the Malaysian equivalent of Erdös Number Project (http://www.oakland.edu/enp/). Say, Mahathir can have a Mahathir number of 0, and Mukhriz being his next-of-kin can have a Mahathir number of 1, and so on. It’d be fun to track the incestuous network of C-level executives and directors in government-linked companies who have a Mahathir or a Najib number of less than 5.

Note: By 'Big Data' I mean the mass of accessible information on any trend available to the public.
Also see 'Reinventing Society with Big Data', Alex Pentland at Edge.org, http://www.edge.org/conversation/reinventing-society-in-the-wake-of-big-data.


Finance Matters I: Micro-funding








I thought of working on this last year but never got around to it. Basically, there is a huge imbalance in campaign funds available to bothsides of the political divide – one of measures of political freedom and campaign fairness. Essentially, the political coalition that controls the federal government has an unfair advantage in sourcing campaign funds becausethere is little/no legal cap on campaign funding (again, someone with greater expertise than I do needs to do research on this).


One way to correct this imbalance is to improve public access to political donations by means of micro-funding. I take lessons from Obama’s ’08 presidential campaign. As a newcomer, he did not have the strong corporate network of his more senior contenders (and even in ’12 campaign, Romney arguably had a much stronger corporate base), but his brilliant campaign did what none of his contenders could do – it managed to get hundreds of thousands of Americans to attend the primaries and chip in small amounts of donations ($100 or less). Collectively, these micro-funds superceded his opponents’corporate coffers.


What you can do:


The bulk of political micro-funds in Malaysia are donated in situ at ceramahs and fundraising dinners. This is rather inconvenient and time-consuming. What’s needed is for someone to design and implement a singlelog-in, multi-platform donation portal that allows members of the public to specify the exact causes/party platforms they want to support, as well as track the distribution of their donations. This should be fair game for all – people should be allowed to donate to both sides of the political divide.


Here is a list of legal payment methods in Malaysia: http://www.bnm.gov.my/index.php?ch=p...pg=ps_mps_type.I would suggest mobile (SMS, Maxis PayPal, mobile internet) as the most crucial platform given the widespread access to mobile phones in Malaysia. (Mobile phone/capita exceeds 100% while internet usage/total pop is 53%.)


Finance Matters II: Micro-auditing





As with access to information, access to state financial records is a crucial component of transparency in the government. Global Financial Integrity recently ranked Malaysia as the country with the third highest amount of illicit capital outflow ($285.24 billion/RM872.8 billion) inthe world. There is a mass of financial documents (whatever that is available and obtainable, at least) that needs to be micro-audited to determine exactly how public funds are allocated and distributed.


What you can do:


You can join a small group of independent Malaysian financial analysts who are interested in initiating an effort to micro-audit state records. (section needs to be updated)


The Malaysian Whistleblower Protection Act was introduced in2010. (more info needed) And more information on the Capital Markets andServices Act 2007 can be found here:http://www.sc.com.my/main.asp?pageid=1186&menuid=&newsid=&linkid=&type=.


Eradicating Race Visibility






One obvious and potential way of reforming thiscountry that no one talks about, is the boycott of mandatory race records. Itis this 'racial footprint' - our race records in the national register - that enables the political parties/governments to track our voting records, engineer their propaganda to cater to specific races, and justify racist rhetoric. Now imagine general elections in the future in which large swamps of voters are racially invisible. It will force political parties/governments to strive to truly serve all races, as they won't know who is voting for them.


What you can do:

It's too late for our generation to do anything about our IC records. But for those of you with children/younger siblings with children/younger siblings with children/younger siblings less than 12 years ofage who will register their IC at some point, try to get them to register as 'Malaysian'as opposed to Melayu/Cina/India/Punjabi/Bumiputera/Kadazan/etc. I'm serious. (The US Census, for example, made available the category of 'Other' in 1980, which to some extent has reduce racial visibility in state documents in America.)


To my knowledge, nobody has tried registering as ‘Malaysian’. But if ‘Afghanistan’, ‘Bangladeshi’, ‘Italy’, ‘Vietnamese’, etc. are all actual and legitimate (although rare) race options in the national register/electoral roll, I don’t see why (at least from a legal standpoint) one cannot simply register as ‘Malaysian’. Worst comes to worst, try registering under ‘Lain-lain’.

There are obvious drawbacks to racial erasure, mostly the lack of data for potentially useful and important research, but in light of the way our biodata is abused in this country, I think it's a worthy compromise.


Citizen Journalism






Journalism isn’t limited to journalists.Citizens play a vital role in acting as the eyes of society and providingchecks and balances to government.


What you can do:


Join the fourth estate. There are already ongoing initiatives to promote citizen journalism. Malaysiakini’s Citizen Journalism workshop (http://cj.my/), in particular, has provided training to400 citizen journalists. There is also an independent group citizen investigators (https://www.facebook.com/groups/Citi...aysia/members/)who volunteer to assess public information.


Translate Everything









I know we’re all proud in claiming to be multi-lingual, but how many of us (by “us” I refer to the urban-dwelling, probably students or working professionals who would chance upon this note by virtue of being within 2-3 degrees of my personal network) are truly fluent in conversational Malay/Chinese, or use Malay/Chinese beyond our personal circles of conversation? I went through 11 years of schooling in Malay, and 13 years in Chinese, and though I got SPM A's for both, I can't handle an extended conversation with a heavily-accented Malay or Chinese villager (another indicator of how the SPM exam is fucked) to save my life, and I'm ashamed of that. And there is a large section of people who speak exclusively in Tamil/indigenous languages that most of us can't even begin to reach.

One of the major and obvious obstacles to the rural-urban divide is that those of us on the urban side of the divide don't even know how to communicate with our rural counterparts.

What you can do:


Learn to talk to those around you, especially the disenfranchised. And by "talk" I don't mean hi-bye, I mean getting to know the stories of their lives, whenever you can. There is absolutely no excuse to not being fluent in Bahasa Malaysia.

We need a mass translation project. Some universal library and a mass group of volunteers who can make available every important national document (National Budget, policy blueprints, party manifesto, etc.), every major press release/media statement by every public official, and other crucial media content instantly available in all widely-used Malaysian languages.




Teach for Malaysia





There is simply no better way in shaping the next generation and bridging the rural-urban divide than in joining the teaching corps. Under the Teach for Malaysia programme, dozens of young Malaysians – graduates from a wide variety of disciplines (from mathematics to English literature) from local institutions and prestigious schools abroad (Harvard, Imperial, Cambridge, Mt. Holyoke, etc.) alike have already pledged to devoting at least two years to serving at some of the most challenging schools in Malaysia. There are hundreds of thousands of children in this country who are struggling to attain basic literacy, much less become informed of the political system.


Inequality and lack of social mobility in Malaysia is endemic. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics puts primary school enrollment in Malaysia at 96.3%, significantly below the average primary school enrollment rate in Asia and East Pacific rate of 110.2%.


Now, that figure drops drastically to 66% and 71% for males and females respectively in terms of secondary school enrollment. (2007-2010, UNICEF) That means ONE OUT OF EVERY THREE Malaysians of secondary schooling age do not attend school. We haven’t even begun to talk about graduation rates.


The CIA Gini Index (distribution of familyincome) puts Malaysia at no.33 on its list of countries with the most unequal income distribution, out of 136 entries. We are ranked worst off of Iran, Mali, Cambodia, Mongolia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, etc.


To read more on the extent of the education gap in Malaysia, see the excellent, in-depth article by Wong Chin-Huat in the latest issue of Penang Monthly: http://penangmonthly.com/malaysias-e...vide/view-all/.


The caveat here is that the goal of teaching isn’t to tip them towards voting in favour of one political party or another – that is merely the by-product of choice and freedom. As David Foster Wallace sums it up so beautifully in his commencement speech, “This is Water” to the Kenyon class of 2005 here:http://youtu.be/xmpYnxlEh0c, the real purpose of education has very little to do with actual knowledge, and everything to do with awareness. Awareness of one’s rights, one’s place and power in larger society, one’s options, one’s freedoms - all the vital ingredients in making every Malaysian a more well-informed, critical, empowered citizen.


What you can do:


If you can, when you can, teach. Apply at www.teachformalaysa.org/apply.


***End Note: I’ve received dozens of messages from well-meaning people asking me how they can join me. I appreciate the enthusiastic response, but for the record, I am not organizing or leading anything. I’m just a tired/lazy college student with poor management skills who is already over-committed to various projects. The prerogative of civil society is that governing cannot be left solely to governments. We are all vital instruments in nation-building. If you do not see an appropriate organization/movement listed above that caters toyour project/goals/needs, then start one of your own. Or you can always just contact your local MP/NGO and ask how you can help. We all start somewhere. ]]> Action pywong http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6796-Action-11-Ways-to-Build-a-Better-Malaysia-DIY-Toolkit Singapore - friend or foe? http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6795-Singapore-friend-or-foe?goto=newpost Sun, 19 May 2013 06:33:35 GMT Image:...
Singapore - friend or foe?





  • 11:31AM May 13, 2013


The greatest fear of the Singapore government is a Malaysia that is better governed and less corrupt. The extraordinary events in Malaysia over the past few years, plus the courageous stand of her citizens in the last few days, has been closely monitored from across the causeway.


If the infection spreads, the pent up feelings of Singaporeans may be unleashed. The two nations have a shared history.


Singapore may be a first world nation, but when it comes to an outpouring of feelings, the Singaporeans still look up to their cousins in Malaysia.


Dictatorship could be described as the new democracy in our neck of the woods; Umno Baru’s Najib Abdul Razak together with his Singaporean counterpart, Lee Hsien Loong, have every reason to be rattled by the ‘Anwar Ibrahim phenomenon’.


Not since independence has Malaysia been rocked by a political force which has captured the rakyat’s sense of frustration at the nation’s archaic order.


The older generation are weary of the wanton waste of resources, the lack of discipline shown by its leaders and the disintegration of society. The young yearn for a new order where their contributions are acknowledged, where everyone is treated as equals and where they are rewarded for hard work, rather than their connections.


Anwar has articulated their needs and galvanised the rakyat into action. Two weeks ago, some Malaysians residing in Singapore were cautioned by the Singapore police for reminding Malaysians to return home to vote. A few days ago, some were arrested in Merlion Park for protesting about the fraud perpetrated during GE13. The Singaporean government does not like its citizens to have a mind of their own.


Najib wants Malaysia to be “the best democracy in the world”, but the hallmarks of his version of democracy are cheating, intimidation and bribery. In Singapore, the authorities also intimidate and take legal action against anyone who dares besmirch the characters of its leaders.


In Malaysia, insecure Malays reject the DAP because of the implied threat that Malaysia will be swallowed up by Singapore. Their fears are enhanced by some Chinese Malaysians, who look up to an idealised version of Singapore. Singapore absorbed many of them into learning institutions, gave them scholarships and jobs. These Malaysians forget that the price paid for Singapore’s transformation into a first world nation has been high.


'Soulless inhabitants'


What use are towers that reach up to the sky when deep down, its inhabitants lack a soul? Children suffer from mental health issues because of academic pressures. Adults complain of a poor work-life balance. Many Singaporeans are unhappy and a number of them have migrated.


When Anwar held a talk at the London School of Economics a few years ago, the event was oversubscribed and several hundred participants were accommodated in an adjoining lecture theatre to listen to him via video link.


The audience were mainly young adults in their early twenties, but the most amazing thing, was that a sizeable proportion were Singaporeans.


Many people disagreed with me, when in an article, I mentioned the possibility that Singapore feared a strong, successful and less corrupt Malaysia, and that the People's Action Party (PAP) would prefer Umno Baru to govern Malaysia, rather than an Anwar-led administration.


Without a doubt, Singapore is clean, its public transport is efficient, the entertainment and the promotion of the arts is good, English is widely spoken, it is safe, local and international cuisines are easily available, and the island state is an international transport hub.


In many ways, Singapore is like Malaysia. Both have state-controlled media, its armed forces are dominated by one race, and they are ruled by autocratic governments. The cost of living is high, housing and car ownership are expensive.


Both Malaysia’s Umno Baru government and the Singapore PAP have alienated themselves from the population.


Although change is within the grasp of the ordinary Malaysian, change in the near future is only a dream for many Singaporeans. Wasn’t it Lee Kuan Yew (left) who once said, “...I spent a whole lifetime building this, and as long as I am in charge, nobody is going to knock it down.”


Like Dr Mahathir Mohamad, will Lee ever relinquish his hold on the island?


Last month’s Global Witness exposé highlighted the flip-side of the financial world of Singapore. It appears that dodgy South-East Asian governments and drug barons find Singapore a convenient place to launder money.


To add to Singapore’s woes, there are the worldwide syndicated football rigging and sex scandals which have rocked the world.


Only the naive would think that corruption does not exist in Singapore - they are simply better at concealing their underhanded practices. An acquaintance who handled the Malaysian side of business for a Singapore firm, alleged that he was given a sizeable allocation to sweeten any business deals in Malaysia.


The Singaporeans like to project a clean image, but it is the Malaysians who gets the bad reputation.


The government of Singapore is concerned by the moral awakening in their people, but they fear most the economic repercussions if Umno Baru were to be replaced. If Anwar’s administration gave Malaysians meritocracy, and excellent learning institutions were open to all, the majority of Malaysians would not need to go to Singapore to study.


No more brain drain?


There are tales of children being woken up at 4am to travel to Singapore to go to school because their parents could not enrol them in a local Malaysian school. Bright children are deprived of scholarships because they belong to the wrong race or religion. Families are broken up when some family members moved to Singapore for employment.


Singapore has every right to be scared if Umno Baru were ousted. The brain drain would stop. If working conditions in Malaysia were improved, the daily migration of workers to Singapore would be stemmed and Singapore might suffer a shortage of workers. If corruption was reduced, Malaysia would attract more foreign investment.


The feeling of xenophobia is high in Singapore, and is mostly directed at the Chinese from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Singaporeans consider them to be loud, brash, arrogant and lacking in culture. They are wary of their government’s desire to attract more people from the PRC to increase the dwindling population, to take care of the elderly and to bolster the economy.


The recent wave of xenophobia in Malaysia was generated by Umno Baru because it gave away identity cards (ICs) to foreigners - like the Filipinos and Indonesians - in exchange for votes to stay in power.


Leaders in Umno Baru have lost valuable Malaysian land to the Singaporeans, such as the Pedra Banca island off Johor and the land swap deal involving Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM) land in Singapore.


To increase their land mass, Singaporeans have obtained sand from Malaysia, through legal and illegal means. The buying power of the Singapore currency means that they can buy property cheaply in Malaysia and in some places, have priced the locals out of the housing market.


In Ipoh, Singaporeans have built skyscrapers beside limestone hills and many locals fear that this has set a precedent and before long, the natural beauty of Ipoh will be marred forever. The Perak Umno Baru seem oblivious to the concerns of the locals.


A clean and efficient government can improve our economy, but Umno Baru will continue to hamper our progress. Without cronyism and corruption, Malaysia will emerge a stronger, richer nation, no longer the poor relation of Singapore.


MARIAM MOKHTAR is a non-conformist traditionalist from Perak, a bucket chemist and an armchair eco-warrior. In ‘real-speak', this translates into that she comes from Ipoh, values change but respects culture, is a petroleum chemist and also an environmental pollution-control scientist.
 ]]> Singapore pywong http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6795-Singapore-friend-or-foe GE13: Uthaya: Waytha is the new Samy Vellu http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6794-GE13-Uthaya-Waytha-is-the-new-Samy-Vellu?goto=newpost Sun, 19 May 2013 05:20:44 GMT Image: http://mk-cdn.mkini.net/507/6a1bdfce4e044c7de49237c575afe867.jpg *Uthaya: Waytha is the new Samy Vellu...
Uthaya: Waytha is the new Samy Vellu


8:22PM May 15, 2013

P Waythamoorthy's appointment as a deputy minister has drawn scorn from Hindraf de facto leader P Uthayakumar, who insisted that the former no longer represented the Hindraf movement.

“Congratulations to Waytha as the latest Indian mandore (head coolie)! A new Samy Vellu,” said Uthayakumar in a text message toMalaysiakini.

Uthayakumar, who is Waythamoorthy's elder brother, said the latter had been sacked by the Hindraf supreme council on April 25 for betraying the movement's 18-point demands and for joining BN.

“Waytha (in orange T-shirt) was diverted by his personal agenda and is a political opportunist,” said Uthayakumar.

Uthayakumar said that he was the legitimate leader of the Hindraf movement and not Waythamoorthy, who only took charge of the movement while the former was incarcerated for 514 days under the Internal Security Act (ISA).

He stressed that the Hindraf rally on Nov 25, 2007 – Hindraf's most iconic moment – was held under his orders and not Waythamoorthy's.

In view of this, Uthayakumar said that he will continue to lead Hindraf and its “anti-BN crusade”.
Kimma also upset

After going into exile before Uthayakumar was incarcerated in December 2007, Waythamoorthy returned on Aug 1 last year and actively led a faction within Hindraf.

His activities culminated with the signing of a memorandum of understanding between BN and the Hindraf faction led by Waythamoorthy.

BN had endorsed a “blueprint” for the Indian community, prepared by Waythamoorthy's faction, prompting Uthayakumar to break his silence on his younger brother's actions.
Meanwhile, Kimma Youth exco member Muhamad Johan also questioned Waythamoorthy's appointment because Hindraf was involved in street demonstrations before.

"He is someone who caused chaos in the country and sullied Malaysia's reputation abroad," he said on his Facebook page.

Muhamad said that Kimma had been loyal to BN for a long time but their efforts are not being recognised.

"Do we have to do street demonstrations for Kimma to be recognised?" he asked.
Samy Vellu: MIC will still serve Indians
 ]]> GE 13 - 2013 pywong http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6794-GE13-Uthaya-Waytha-is-the-new-Samy-Vellu GE13: Sabah rep slams inept EC, cites irregularities http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6793-GE13-Sabah-rep-slams-inept-EC-cites-irregularities?goto=newpost Sat, 18 May 2013 00:06:18 GMT Sabah rep slams inept EC, cites irregularities... Sabah rep slams inept EC, cites irregularities



[COLOR=#707070 !important]Queville To
| May 17, 2013[/COLOR]
Polling centres in Kota Kinabalu were almost inaccessible to the old and were located in “senseless and unsafe” places.
KOTA KINABALU: New Luyang state legislative assembly representative Hiew King Cheu has urged voters in the state whose names were found missing from the electoral roll or who were relocated to another location to lodge a complaint with his office.


He said many voters had claimed their names were missing from the electoral roll in the just-concluded 13th general election.


“This is highly illogical and some thing is seriously wrong. How can a person who has been staying in the same place, having the same address and had voted for eight times in the same polling station suddenly find his name missing?” he asked.


He cited the case of a woman who flew back from oversea to vote in Luyang, and found her name not in the electoral roll.


Another voter who only wished to be known as Madam Wong found her name listed in Tenom when she had never been there before.


Stating that his office is currently in the midst of collecting all these complaints as evidence to submit to the Election Commission, he stressed that this should not have happened in the first place.


Hiew believes the problem is not due to computer error but a “deliberate mistake”.


“We want to seek justice and we demand a thorough investigation in the matter. This has caused injustice in the voting and the candidate’s defeat.


“The situation where imported voters are allowed to vote has to be investigated too because there are evidences showing that this kind of incident is true,” he stressed.


He also claimed that there were many cases of voters who found someone had voted on their behalf before they reached the polling station, citing the case of one Mr Chong who had complained to him.


Poor arrangements


When the disgruntled voter lodged a complaint with the election officer and showed the latter that he had no indelible ink on his finger, the election officer refused to accept his explanation because he suspected that he had washed away the indelible ink on his finger.


“How can this happen, and how come the RO (Returning Officer) knew that the indelible ink can be washed? The indelible ink is really a joke and a waste of public funds,” Hiew said.


Hiew also took the EC to task over the poor selection and arrangement of the polling centres in Kota Kinabalu City, citing that the Gaya Teacher Training College polling centre in Luyang was not only senseless, but unsafe.


“This is because the polling centre is situated right at the bottom of the hill, and the voters have to walk down a steep staircase and climb back up to the hill top after making stops at least three times.


“There were a few older people who had to be helped to get down and up the steep staircase. The voters had helped to carry a handicap person down to vote in the centre. A young girl had trouble climbing the steep staircase,” he said.


There were also complaints that the routes to polling centres were jammed with traffic during the peak hours of voting and traffic police were scarce.


“The polling centre in SK Kiansom was the worst because of the narrow road which cannot allow the passage of two cars to pass by. People had to park their cars by the roadside and walk two kilometres to the polling centre,” he said.


Hiew said this was unacceptable as there were also elderly voters and the infirm who had trouble getting to the polling stations.


“The SPR (EC) should review polling centres for future elections,” he stressed.
 ]]> GE 13 - 2013 pywong http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6793-GE13-Sabah-rep-slams-inept-EC-cites-irregularities GE13: Malaysian Elections Post-Election Report http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6792-GE13-Malaysian-Elections-Post-Election-Report?goto=newpost Fri, 17 May 2013 23:18:38 GMT *Malaysian Elections Post-Election Report: Part I (http://themonkeycage.org/2013/05/08/malaysian-elections-post-election-report-part-i/)* by... Malaysian Elections Post-Election Report: Part I

by JOSHUA TUCKER on MAY 8, 2013 · 4 COMMENTS
in CAMPAIGNS AND ELECTIONS,COMPARATIVE POLITICS,ELECTION REPORTS

We are pleased to continue our series of Election Reports with the first of two post-election reports on the Malaysian elections by Thomas Pepinsky, who teaches in the Government Department at Cornell University. You can follow his series of Malaysian election previews at his blog Indolaysia. The following post builds on analyses which were previously posted at the Australian National University’s New Mandala and the University of Nottingham’s CPI blog.

*****
On May 5, Malaysians went to the polls for the country’s thirteenth general elections, known to Malaysians as GE13. The results are now in, with the incumbent Barisan Nasional government eking out its narrowest ever parliamentary victory of 133 seats to Pakatan Rakyat’s 89. These results are a bitter disappointment to the many Malaysians who viewed these elections as an opportunity to oust the ruling BN from federal office, which the BN and its predecessor known as the Alliance have held in one form or another since 1957. For the BN, the results are surely a welcome relief given the opposition’s vigorous challenge, but they are a weak enough result for this longtime political juggernaut that they will almost certainly necessitate a shake-up at the highest levels.

Here, in the first of two posts on GE13, I outline the historical and contextual background needed understand the results, focusing on three basic features of Malaysian politics: ethnicity, regionalism, and authoritarianism. In my next post, I will analyze the results in light of this discussion.

Ethnicity

Malaysian politics has always centered on ethnicity. The United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) is by far the largest party in the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN, National Front) coalition. Other major parties in the BN include the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), and a roster of smaller parties which also tend to have ethnic bases, even if they are usually not explicitly ethnic parties in the way that UMNO/MCA/MIC are.

The historical alliance of UMNO, MCA, and MIC reflects the basic tripartite categorization of Malaysia’s ethnic landscape into bumiputera, Chinese, and Indian. Bumiputeras (or “sons of the soil”) are mostly ethnic Malays, with the remainder including the indigenous people of the upland regions of the Malay peninsula (orang asli) as well as various indigenous peoples residing in the Malaysian part of Borneo. The ethnic groups today known as Chinese or Indians are themselves also quite diverse communities, with different histories of settlement and regions of origin in southern China and the Indian subcontinent. If this all seems confusing, it is: here is a lecture slide for undergraduate Southeast Asian Politics course at Cornell that tries to organize these cleavages in a systematic way.

Importantly, opposition politics also follows an ethnic logic too, but in a rather different way. The three members of Pakatan Rakyat (PR, or People’s Pact), are the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), the Democratic Action Party (DAP), and the People’s Justice Party (PKR). Most Muslims in Malaysia are ethnic Malays, so while the Islamist PAS rejects ethnic or communal politics vociferously, its natural constituency is almost entirely Malay. The DAP’s social democratic platform has historically found most support from Chinese Malaysians, so it too has an ethnically-defined constituency even though it also rejects ethnic politics. PKR, headed by former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, is the only truly pan-ethnic political party in Malaysia, drawing together reformist Malays, Chinese, Indians, and indigenous peoples of Borneo under a single anti-incumbent, reformist platform.

Regionalism

Malaysia’s geography leads to important regional dynamics that interact with ethnicity.Peninsular Malaysia is comprised of eleven states in addition to the federal territories of Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya. East Malaysia consists of the two much larger but less densely populated states of Sabah and Sarawak, and the federal territory of Labuan, all located on the north coast of the island of Borneo. This regional divide reflects the different ways in which British colonial rule arrived in what is today Malaysia, as the Kingdom of Sarawak (a British protectorate), the British North Borneo Company (Sabah), and a collection of Straits Settlements, Federated Malay States, and Unfederated Malay States in the peninsula.

Politics differs in important ways between the peninsula and East Malaysia. For example, the BN’s peninsular members include UMNO, MCA, and MIC; the smaller, multiethnic (but largely Chinese) Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia; and the tiny, multiethnic (but largely Indian) People’s Progressive Party. In East Malaysia, the BN’s members include the LDP, PBB, PBRS, PBS, PRS, SPDP, SUPP, and UPKO, in addition to UMNO (explanations for the abbreviations can be foundhere). For most of Malaysia’s independent history, the Malay peninsula has been the country’s political center, with East Malaysia relegated to a backwater or afterthought. This is particularly meaningful in light of recent elections, where East Malaysia has gone heavily for the BN.

Competitive Authoritarianism

Malaysia’s political system has been called many things: competitive authoritarianism, electoral authoritarian, soft authoritarianism, authoritarian populism, pseudo-democracy, and many others. Malaysia has always had a civilian government that holds regular elections and is bound by the rule of law, with the exception of two years of suspended parliamentary rule following post-election riots in 1969.
The issue is that the ruling coalition never loses power, and writes the laws itself. The ruling coalition has many tools at its disposal to protect its tenure. These include UMNO’s impressive patronage apparatus and deep organization and presence in the rural Malay heartland; complete control over conventional media sources; numerous laws that can be used to criminalize political speech, organization, criticism, and collective action and protest; and many others. On the ground observers of GE13 such as Edward Aspinall and Meredith Weiss have indicated that these elections were more or less free, but hardly fair.

In every election except for those in 1969, 2008, and now 2013, the ruling coalition gained a two-thirds majority in parliament. In the other three, the BN received only a simple majority. From the ruling coalition’s perspective, the benefit of a two-thirds majority is that it allows the government to amend the constitution at will, which it has done with some frequency. But a two-thirds majority also has an almost mystical quality in Malaysian politics, signifying the leader’s authority alongside the population’s consent. That the BN failed to regain its two-thirds majority in GE13 is viewed by some as an indictment of the current Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak.

Results: A Preview

In my next post, I will go into some detail about the ways in which GE13 reflects these three fundamental facts about Malaysian politics. As a preview of that discussion, the following maps show the results of GE13 at the parliamentary district level.

]]> GE 13 - 2013 pywong http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6792-GE13-Malaysian-Elections-Post-Election-Report Activism T-PAG: Be a smart voter http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6791-Activism-T-PAG-Be-a-smart-voter?goto=newpost Fri, 17 May 2013 15:32:02 GMT http://youtu.be/7ltQAP8A1Us *Be a smart voter. PRU 13. Malaysia 2013* Image: http://i1.ytimg.com/i/TZnBxzBVj6zSM6_RTdnbAQ/1.jpg?v=4fb33944 ...

Be a smart voter. PRU 13. Malaysia 2013


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10 minute Quick guide on how to vote in PRU13, Malaysia 2013. Overcoming voter problems. Avoiding potential loopholes.





 ]]> Activism: T-PAG pywong http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6791-Activism-T-PAG-Be-a-smart-voter IT: Weebly Website Creating http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6790-IT-Weebly-Website-Creating?goto=newpost Fri, 17 May 2013 15:01:30 GMT http://www.weebly.com/#features Millions have started a site on WeeblyWe help you every step of the way. http://www.weebly.com/#features

Millions have started a site on Weebly

We help you every step of the way.

]]> pywong http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6790-IT-Weebly-Website-Creating GE13: List of electoral districts - Wikipedia http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6789-GE13-List-of-electoral-districts-Wikipedia?goto=newpost Fri, 17 May 2013 14:59:46 GMT http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Malaysian_electoral_districts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...oral_districts ]]> GE 13 - 2013 pywong http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6789-GE13-List-of-electoral-districts-Wikipedia Media Leaks - Deepthroat Wannabes - what you must do http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6788-Media-Leaks-Deepthroat-Wannabes-what-you-must-do?goto=newpost Fri, 17 May 2013 14:58:24 GMT * source: http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/05/listen-up-future-deep-throats-this-is-how-to-leak-to-the-press-today/ -- start -- Hear Ye,...
  • source:
    http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/05...e-press-today/


    -- start --

    Hear Ye, Future Deep Throats: This Is How to Leak to the Press

    - BY NICHOLAS WEAVER
    - 05.14.13
    - 6:01 PM

    <http://www.wired.com/opinion/wp-cont...1d2d2098_b.jpg>

    The parking garage where Bob Woodward met Mark Felt (Deep Throat). *photo: martin_kalfatovic<http://www.flickr.com/photos/traveli...an/8478042655/>/Flickr*

    We now live in a world where public servants informing the public about government behavior or wrongdoing must practice the tradecraft<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradecraft> of drug dealers and spies. Otherwise, these informants could get caught in the web of administrations that view George Orwell’s *1984* as an operations manual.

    With the recent revelation<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...phone-records/> that the Department of Justice under the Obama administration secretly obtained phone records for Associated Press journalists — and previous subpoenas<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2004Sep9.html> by the Bush administration targeting<http://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law...rds-subpoenaed> the *Washington Post* and *New York Times* — it is clear that whether Democrat or Republican, we now live in a surveillance dystopia beyond Orwell’s Big Brother vision. Even privately collected data isn’t<http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/03...-cispa-fix-it/> immune, and some highly sensitive data is particularly vulnerable thanks to theThird Party Doctrine<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...Party_Doctrine>
    .

    So how can one safely leak information to the press?

    Well, it’s hard. Even the head of the CIA can’t email<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...data-petraeus/> his mistress without being identified by the FBI. With a simple subpoena or warrant, the FBI can obtain historical calling information (and with cellphones, location history); email messages (and records revealing the pattern of where and when the target accessed these accounts); internet activity; and much more<http://www.propublica.org/special/no...r-digital-data>
    .

    Since even separate, innocuous contacts between a reporter and source may be sufficient for the FBI to establish a relationship in its investigations — and who knows what kind of leak triggers a crackdown — here’s my guide for potential leakers.

    Leaking by Email

    The CIA supposedly already provided<http://rt.com/news/fsb-detain-cia-agent-253/> a guide to secure email, which the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) translated back to English — convenient, given the situation we now find ourselves in.

    Nicholas Weaver

    Nicholas Weaver is a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley and U.C. San Diego (though this opinion is his own). He focuses on network security as well as network intrusion detection, defenses for DNS resolvers, and tools for detecting ISP-introduced manipulations of a user’s network connection. Weaver received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley.

    <http://www.wired.com/opinion>

    Get a dedicated computer or tablet: the cheapest Windows laptop will do. And pay cash, as our normal laptops have a host of automatic synchronization and similar services. Our personal web browsers also contain all sorts of location-identifying cookies. Even if you’re logged in to but don’t actually visit Facebook’s home page, a subpoena to Facebook can still reveal where you connect and what pages you visit — every “Like” button reports to Facebook that you are visiting that particular page, at a particular time, from a particular IP address.

    Leave your cellphone, your normal computer, and your metro card (like SmarTrip) at home: anything that speaks over a wireless link must stay behind. Then go to a coffee shop that has open Wi-Fi, and once there open a new Gmail account that you will only use to contact the press and only from the dedicated computer. When registering, use no personal information that can identify you or your new account: no phone numbers, no names.

    Don’t forget: if you get anything at the cafe, or take public transit,*pay cash*. Be prepared to walk a bit, too; you can’t stay close to home for this.

    Of course, the job still isn’t finished. When you are done you must clear the browser’s cookies and turn off the Wi-Fi before turning off the computer and removing the battery. The dedicated computer should never be used on the network except when checking your press-contact account and only from open Wi-Fi connections away from home and work.

    Leaking Over the Phone

    Again, start by leaving all electronic devices at home. Go to a small liquor store in a low-income neighborhood, and buy a pre-paid cellphone (TracPhone or similar) with cash. Make sure it has enough airtime to not expire for a few months — T-mobile prepaid is particularly good since the pay-as-you-go plan doesn’t expire for a full year if you buy $100 of airtime.

    By the way, I would personally look for a store with security cameras that look old — a continuous tape or similar setup — since once the FBI has the number, the next step is to contact the store that sold the phone. Alternatively, you can get someone else to walk into the store and buy it for you.

    You now own your very own “burner” phone — remember *The Wire*? – and this phone must remain off with the battery removed at all times. Because every active cellphone is effectively a continuous GPS, monitoring your location and feeding the information to the phone company which retains this information for weeks, months, even years. Just a warrant-step away.

    Now, to use the phone … Once again, go to a different location *without* carrying your normal devices, turn on the phone, check your voicemail, make your call, turn it off again, and pull out the battery. Your phone calls are now (hopefully) anonymous so that when the FBI leak-hunt starts, there is no trail for them to follow.

    Of course, the burner laptop or phone could still identify you if it’s ever found, as they both contain network identifiers built into the hardware. So if you ever need to abandon your device, first wipe the device back to its factory fresh configuration using any “secure erase” options available, then take a hammer and break the device. Put it in some other piece of trash (like an empty McDonald’s sack), go for another stroll, and drop in a public trashcan.

    Such extreme measures are a modern necessity.

    But if the feds are already following you, you’re caught anyway, so it doesn’t matter if they catch you taking out the trash instead of finding something when they search your home.

    ***

    All of this may seem like a script for a fictional T.V. show. But it’s the situation we’re in if you want to share information you have the right to — such extreme measures are a modern necessity.

    Does whoever leaked the Justice Department’s memo justifying drone strikes on Americans need to fear<http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirh...he-drone-memo/> prosecution?

    Should someone even at a seemingly innocuous agency like the FDA need the above precautions<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/us...e-critics.html> before talking to the press or Congress? Yet with prosecution’s like Thomas Drake<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Andrews_Drake>’s — triggered by his revealing *unclassified* information about NSA mismanagement — its now become clear that simply leaking embarrassing information carries substantial risk.

    Any future Deep Throat needs to follow these sorts of procedures if he or she wishes to talk to the press … though just imagine if Mark Felt had to do all of the above when leaking to Woodward and Bernstein.

    *UPDATED May 15: *There’s another option I didn’t originally mention here —
    *leaking over mail*. Investigative journalist Julia Angwin of the *Wall Street Journal* points out<https://twitter.com/NCWeaver/status/334666637259186176> that physical mail, dropped in a random post-box with a bogus return address, is perhaps the best way for anonymous one-way communication. Though the U.S. Postal Service will record address information when asked<http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/39/233.3> by law enforcement, it doesn’t (at least currently) record this information on all mail. There’s no history. And even if there were, it can only be traced to the processing post office. So perhaps the best use of mail is simply to send the reporter a burner phone pre-programmed to only call *your* burner.

    -- end --
    Syawal
]]> Media pywong http://www.tindakmalaysia.com/showthread.php/6788-Media-Leaks-Deepthroat-Wannabes-what-you-must-do