| Obama for Putrajaya |
| Azly Rahman http://azlyrahman- |
| "…Haji Ramli Street was a dirt lane where Obama used to while away the hours kicking a soccer ball. In the long rainy season, it turned to thick, mucky soup; Obama and his friends wore plastic bags over their shoes to walk though it," said Adi, who at 46 is the same age as Obama…. - reported by Paul Watson in The Baltimore Sun, March 16, 2007 A few more blocks down West 120th Amsterdam and Broadway, one sees a different reality of a Third World America. Barack represents the emergence of America the radical multicultural; a breakdown of grand narrative and hopefully a shift from America the warmonger to America the diplomat and peacemaker. A demise of the financial system that has propped up the Evil Empire in its crusade for global reach through gunboat diplomacy and democracy for the few. The American Century Project is cut short by 95 years. Well not necessarily a Columbia and Harvard graduate but someone with a good education and a good heart and a good set of analytical skills. In the Malaysia of John McCain, we will have a system of control akin to militarism, in which secret patronage politics, authoritarianism, and regimentation of a synthesis of Oriental Despotism and modern corporate crony capitalism reigns. In McCain's Malaysia, we have the institutionalisation of the war system, in which the regime is at war with its people and institutions and ideologues have been taken as prisoners of war. Especially in this difficult times of "transition" of power that is giving Malaysians a cruel choice of a hegemonic flow. |
Showing posts with label international affairs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label international affairs. Show all posts
Thursday, October 23, 2008
185] Obama for Putrajaya
"Neighborhood Muslims worshiped in a nearby house, which has since been replaced by a larger mosque. Sometimes, when the muezzin sounded the call to prayer, Lolo and Barry would walk to the makeshift mosque together.
Of course this is a silly proposition, unless Malaysia is USA's 52nd state! We would like to see Malaysia evolve into a country in which race nor religion matter in the appointment of prime ministers.
Barack is a phenomena America is coming to terms with. He is an embodiment of America the absurd – of a white America wishing to move away from "whiteness" and dropping the "knapsack of white privilege".
Hey, but what if Barack is a Muslim and proud of it - should Middle America freak out? Such is testament of how racialised this country is and how uncultured and ignorant Middle America can be. But that experience makes Barack Hussein Obama a deeply kaleidoscopic, hybridised, and cosmopolitan America citizen of the world, I presume.
America of the 'projects' against the backdrop of graffiti, ever-new dance forms, and gangsta rap, hip hop, and reggaeton
United States of America must now be called United Socialist America, with the disappearance of Wall Street and the nationalisation of the US "central" bank. 
Malaysia do not need a John McCain as prime minister. 
Sunday, September 17, 2006
88] Is the Pope parroting the American President?
Is The Pope parroting the American President?
ILLUMINATIONS
Azly Rahman.
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
--- Noam Chomsky, American linguist
Blessed are the peacemakers… (Matthew 5:9)
Propaganda at the highest level requires countless repetition of half-truths and deceits. The mind en masse need to be numbed using strategies like Pavlov’s classical conditioning or Malaysia’s Biro Tata Negara’s pogrom of mind bending, so that the target audience can continue to salivate for more twisted information to be mutated into “globalizing truth” that will universalize.
The Pope and the President of the United States were performing the act of making the global masses salivate. This is done perhaps not only to commemorate the 5th. Anniversary of the attack on The Word Trade Center, and to remind the world that the 21.st century will not only be a “Wolfowitz-ing” century for America but also a renewal of the “crusading past” that will be trajectoried in newer forms of symbolism.
Politics need symbolisms of half-truths and deceits, just like revolutions need their martyrs and nations need narrations.
How could this leader of billions of peaceful followers of the Prophet Isa Ala Hissalam (Jesus, peace be upon him) be wise enough to send a message of renewed hatred that was supposed to have been buried during the Renaissance period; a period in which Europe owed so much to the legacy of Prophet Muhammad (SAW/peace be upon him)?
Where was Europe during the Dark Ages? How does one explain the Inquisition; was it in the teachings of the Prophet Isa (peace be upon him) son of Mariam (peace be upon her) that “evil and inhuman” acts are to be performed by the Catholics onto the Protestants? Was it in the teachings of the great prophet from Nazareth that the practice of “indulgences” that corrupt the pre-Reformation churches of Europe are to be rationalized?
How could the Pope’s resolve and conviction be similar to that of the President of the United States whose intelligence, let alone wisdom, has been under scrutiny since the beginning of his campaign of destroying the Iraqi people for oil? Americans, especially those whose children were sent to the killing fields of black roses, cannot wait to elect a more intelligent president who not only can speak well but also can string logical sentences and reasonings together. Americans want their children home safely now and are fed up with this propaganda of the Bush regime’s theocratic state run by war-mongering neo-cons.
How could the Pope be unaware of his own intention of sending the message to those German professors when that message is also meant for Catholics the world over? What sort of wisdom and does he possess when the impact of the controversy over the sub-intelligent Danish cartoonist is still fresh in the mind of the Muslims?
The real terror network
Muslims are patiently sick and tired of the sophisticated linking of the word “terror” with the peacefulness that embodies the teaching of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH); teachings that did not bring anything new but renewed the peaceful messages of the prophets of Allah – Jesus, Moses, David, and Abraham included.
So, who is terrorizing who? What actually is --- the war on “terror”?
The war on terror should have been fought a long time ago against European powers itself – beginning from the Age of Exploration and Discovery to the Age of the American Empire.
It was the royally-sanctioned European members of the armada that rape, plunder, mutilate, and devastate the cultures of peoples they deem less noble than human beings; those “noble savages” and “little brown brothers”.
It was a systematic program of “mercantilist state-sponsored” terrorism that brought the Italian Christopher Columbus and daVerrazzano, the Spanish Juan Ponce deLeon, Hernando Cortes, and the Englishmen Francis Drake, Henry Hudson, and James Cook to the “new worlds” in order to find riches and enslave others in the process of building empires.
The massacre of tens of thousands of Arawak Indians in the “discovered” land called America was an act of terror in antiquity. So was the systematic elimination of the Indian population as a result of terrifying diseases brought by Europeans as well as by the extinction of the bisons.
That was the beginning of the real terror network. The Middle Passage was the epitome of the crime against Humanity committed by the “emerging states” of America, under the governing aegis of the Southern colonies of the early Thirteen American colonies.
Had the pope or the president of the United States read history of colonialism and the history of US interventions in the Third World, they would have found numerous incidences of “state-sponsored” terrorism as in the case of the fall of governments such as those in Indonesia, Kampuchea, Iran, Nicaragua, and Chile.
The real terror network of the new and globalizing world continues in the form of the structural, systematic, and subliminal violence installed and institutionalized out of the work of European, American, and east Asian transnational corporations that profit from the unequal exchanges in the global economy.
The real terror network lies in the proliferation of arms sales, the control over energy resources, the militarization of space, and the work of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The terrorized inhabitants of this earth are those who have become dispossessed, alienated, marginalized, victimized, and criminalized by the largest, stateless, borderless, and heartless corporations that work in syncrony with the military and cultural industrial complexes of the so-called “free world”; the free world that is shoving democracy down the throat of these impoverished nations so that both global and local elites can co-plunder the state economies.
The pope’s speech should have addressed the topic of the inquiry into the wealth of nations, instead of the speech to install postmodern hatred, geneaologied from a medieval passage on hate.
Violent language games
Muslims, at the eve of the 21st. century are being criminalized, victimized, incarcerated and decimated not only by the real terror networks of “state-sponsored terrorism” that bulldoze their homes, rape their women and children, kill their men, blow up their masjids, fragment their individual lives, steal their property, humiliate their prisoners, and leave their people to be systematically destroyed – all in the name of the war against terror.
This is a war that is so bankrupt of its ideology and so destructive in its intent and consequences that the greatest Empire that lives and breathes on it – the United States of America – has not only bankrupt itself but also leave its own people disillusioned, frustrated, fooled, and angry.
Is this the notion of “war on terror” that the Pope -- the most exalted figure of the representation of the teachings of the Islamic Prophet Isa (Jesus peace be upon him) -- is also carrying in his speeches, in order to remind the world that the Crusades must continue? The President of the United States, at the eve of the Second destruction of Baghdad (Desert Storm II) alluded to the Crusade in his rationale for his unilateral decision to quagmire into another Vietnam in the Arabian desert.
After almost 3000 deaths and almost 20,000 injured of the sons and daughter of Uncle Sam, after almost 50,000 Iraqi civilians dead and thousands maimed, and missing children of Iraq, and a war cost now amounting to $318.5 billions of American taxpayer dollars --- what has this American jihad achieve? Yes, that amounts to $318, 500, 000, 000.00 American taxpayers money.
The Pope did not make a mistake. Nor had his speechwriter erred in choosing the best passage to quote from a “dialogue” set in the Middle Ages; perhaps inspired by the Italian poet’s Dante Alighieri depiction of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and Saiddina Ali (Radhiallah huanhu) in his Divine Comedy.
As in the infamous Danish cartoon episode, these statements made by the pope are produced and broadcast to further humiliate the already humiliated Muslims who wish to not be further aggravated -- until divine justice begets peace at the end of this ecclesiastical history plagued with conflicting notions of Good versus Evil.
How Must the Pope apologize?
Any religious leader must be elected from his/her good and wise breed of scholars who can think with the heart, mind, and spirit -- and not with the straightjacket of paranoia or the mask of deceit.
The pope’s apology is not enough. He must not parrot the message of the current American president.
Blessed are the peacemakers … those from all faiths and denominations.
ILLUMINATIONS
Azly Rahman.
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
--- Noam Chomsky, American linguist
Blessed are the peacemakers… (Matthew 5:9)
Propaganda at the highest level requires countless repetition of half-truths and deceits. The mind en masse need to be numbed using strategies like Pavlov’s classical conditioning or Malaysia’s Biro Tata Negara’s pogrom of mind bending, so that the target audience can continue to salivate for more twisted information to be mutated into “globalizing truth” that will universalize.
The Pope and the President of the United States were performing the act of making the global masses salivate. This is done perhaps not only to commemorate the 5th. Anniversary of the attack on The Word Trade Center, and to remind the world that the 21.st century will not only be a “Wolfowitz-ing” century for America but also a renewal of the “crusading past” that will be trajectoried in newer forms of symbolism.
Politics need symbolisms of half-truths and deceits, just like revolutions need their martyrs and nations need narrations.
How could this leader of billions of peaceful followers of the Prophet Isa Ala Hissalam (Jesus, peace be upon him) be wise enough to send a message of renewed hatred that was supposed to have been buried during the Renaissance period; a period in which Europe owed so much to the legacy of Prophet Muhammad (SAW/peace be upon him)?
Where was Europe during the Dark Ages? How does one explain the Inquisition; was it in the teachings of the Prophet Isa (peace be upon him) son of Mariam (peace be upon her) that “evil and inhuman” acts are to be performed by the Catholics onto the Protestants? Was it in the teachings of the great prophet from Nazareth that the practice of “indulgences” that corrupt the pre-Reformation churches of Europe are to be rationalized?
How could the Pope’s resolve and conviction be similar to that of the President of the United States whose intelligence, let alone wisdom, has been under scrutiny since the beginning of his campaign of destroying the Iraqi people for oil? Americans, especially those whose children were sent to the killing fields of black roses, cannot wait to elect a more intelligent president who not only can speak well but also can string logical sentences and reasonings together. Americans want their children home safely now and are fed up with this propaganda of the Bush regime’s theocratic state run by war-mongering neo-cons.
How could the Pope be unaware of his own intention of sending the message to those German professors when that message is also meant for Catholics the world over? What sort of wisdom and does he possess when the impact of the controversy over the sub-intelligent Danish cartoonist is still fresh in the mind of the Muslims?
The real terror network
Muslims are patiently sick and tired of the sophisticated linking of the word “terror” with the peacefulness that embodies the teaching of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH); teachings that did not bring anything new but renewed the peaceful messages of the prophets of Allah – Jesus, Moses, David, and Abraham included.
So, who is terrorizing who? What actually is --- the war on “terror”?
The war on terror should have been fought a long time ago against European powers itself – beginning from the Age of Exploration and Discovery to the Age of the American Empire.
It was the royally-sanctioned European members of the armada that rape, plunder, mutilate, and devastate the cultures of peoples they deem less noble than human beings; those “noble savages” and “little brown brothers”.
It was a systematic program of “mercantilist state-sponsored” terrorism that brought the Italian Christopher Columbus and daVerrazzano, the Spanish Juan Ponce deLeon, Hernando Cortes, and the Englishmen Francis Drake, Henry Hudson, and James Cook to the “new worlds” in order to find riches and enslave others in the process of building empires.
The massacre of tens of thousands of Arawak Indians in the “discovered” land called America was an act of terror in antiquity. So was the systematic elimination of the Indian population as a result of terrifying diseases brought by Europeans as well as by the extinction of the bisons.
That was the beginning of the real terror network. The Middle Passage was the epitome of the crime against Humanity committed by the “emerging states” of America, under the governing aegis of the Southern colonies of the early Thirteen American colonies.
Had the pope or the president of the United States read history of colonialism and the history of US interventions in the Third World, they would have found numerous incidences of “state-sponsored” terrorism as in the case of the fall of governments such as those in Indonesia, Kampuchea, Iran, Nicaragua, and Chile.
The real terror network of the new and globalizing world continues in the form of the structural, systematic, and subliminal violence installed and institutionalized out of the work of European, American, and east Asian transnational corporations that profit from the unequal exchanges in the global economy.
The real terror network lies in the proliferation of arms sales, the control over energy resources, the militarization of space, and the work of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The terrorized inhabitants of this earth are those who have become dispossessed, alienated, marginalized, victimized, and criminalized by the largest, stateless, borderless, and heartless corporations that work in syncrony with the military and cultural industrial complexes of the so-called “free world”; the free world that is shoving democracy down the throat of these impoverished nations so that both global and local elites can co-plunder the state economies.
The pope’s speech should have addressed the topic of the inquiry into the wealth of nations, instead of the speech to install postmodern hatred, geneaologied from a medieval passage on hate.
Violent language games
Muslims, at the eve of the 21st. century are being criminalized, victimized, incarcerated and decimated not only by the real terror networks of “state-sponsored terrorism” that bulldoze their homes, rape their women and children, kill their men, blow up their masjids, fragment their individual lives, steal their property, humiliate their prisoners, and leave their people to be systematically destroyed – all in the name of the war against terror.
This is a war that is so bankrupt of its ideology and so destructive in its intent and consequences that the greatest Empire that lives and breathes on it – the United States of America – has not only bankrupt itself but also leave its own people disillusioned, frustrated, fooled, and angry.
Is this the notion of “war on terror” that the Pope -- the most exalted figure of the representation of the teachings of the Islamic Prophet Isa (Jesus peace be upon him) -- is also carrying in his speeches, in order to remind the world that the Crusades must continue? The President of the United States, at the eve of the Second destruction of Baghdad (Desert Storm II) alluded to the Crusade in his rationale for his unilateral decision to quagmire into another Vietnam in the Arabian desert.
After almost 3000 deaths and almost 20,000 injured of the sons and daughter of Uncle Sam, after almost 50,000 Iraqi civilians dead and thousands maimed, and missing children of Iraq, and a war cost now amounting to $318.5 billions of American taxpayer dollars --- what has this American jihad achieve? Yes, that amounts to $318, 500, 000, 000.00 American taxpayers money.
The Pope did not make a mistake. Nor had his speechwriter erred in choosing the best passage to quote from a “dialogue” set in the Middle Ages; perhaps inspired by the Italian poet’s Dante Alighieri depiction of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and Saiddina Ali (Radhiallah huanhu) in his Divine Comedy.
As in the infamous Danish cartoon episode, these statements made by the pope are produced and broadcast to further humiliate the already humiliated Muslims who wish to not be further aggravated -- until divine justice begets peace at the end of this ecclesiastical history plagued with conflicting notions of Good versus Evil.
How Must the Pope apologize?
Any religious leader must be elected from his/her good and wise breed of scholars who can think with the heart, mind, and spirit -- and not with the straightjacket of paranoia or the mask of deceit.
The pope’s apology is not enough. He must not parrot the message of the current American president.
Blessed are the peacemakers … those from all faiths and denominations.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
83] A Sermon for my fellow Americans
A sermon for my fellow Americans
Azly Rahman
Aug 7, 06 7:17pm
As I write this my prayers for peace reads: 'O' Merciful Compassionate Lord of the Universe,
'Grant us the courage, knowledge, and wisdom to revolt against any government that does have any concern for the preservation of the sanctity of life in the entire scheme of obsession with war as a crime against Humanity. Grant us the courage to change any government that is corrupt, corrupting, and corruptible that cares only for the prosperity and serenity of their immediate families and the growth of dynasties.
'Grant the American people the strength, courage, wisdom to ignite and engineer another American Revolution so that the American Empire that produces the most corrupt military- industrial-complex can be dismantled and replaced with truly socialist government that will stop building bombs that blew up Baghdad and other nations in the Middle East, and start building a nation that feeds its growing urban and the world's poor.
'Grant Americans the courage to see how their nation is now a huge machine that no longer knows what Humanity means especially in the wake of the massacre of the Lebanese people and the displacement of a quarter million of innocent men, women, and children. Grant Americans help to put the greatest pressure on their government to stop the war between the Israelis and the Hizbollah, as efficient and decisive as how the American government dismantled the regime of its one-time ally Saddam Hussein.
'Grant Americans the ability to widen their eyes to see what America has done to nations such as Marcos' Philippines, Allende's Chile, Reza Pahlavi's Iran, and in Somalia, Vietnam, and many others throughout its history of manifest destiny and neo-colonialism - and now, how much aid is poured into Israel.
'O Lord the Merciful and the Most Compassionate,
'Grant all nations of the world the sight to see the complexity of the dominance of the American influence the world over - of the businesses, the culture and the ideological systems that feed humanity with more and more greed in the name of free enterprise. An influence of the Neon Gods and the Gods of Material Beings that fail to see the spirituality of living things that is to be preserved and Life to be guarded.'
Elite social clubs
But prayer alone is not enough. We must understand how this empire lives and breathe. The world depends not on the United Nations nor the current regime of George W Bush but on American people who love peace and are able to see the relationship between war, poverty, militarism, even in front of American eyes at their doorsteps.
The United Nations is like the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and East Asia Economic Caucus (EAEC) - social clubs of the elites where people get together, play golf, read speeches to flatter each other and then agree to disagree while millions children either live on less then one American dollar per day or become refugees and sex slaves in a world of plenty.
President Dwight D Eisenhower coined the word 'military-industrial complex' to explain the nexus between corporations, government, and the production of arms by the defence contractors under the aegis of the US Defence Department (Pentagon). America has become such a force and is now a 'biological-powered complex hegemonic global policing institution' that feeds itsef like a machine rationalised by the doctrine of 'national security straightjacket'.
Americans themselves are getting tired of the current 'president that did not win, does not know much about world geography and peace, and does not have much intelligence in running the nation'. His strength lies in merely being aided by a stable of advisors who can nor longer think like peaceful human beings. Their minds have become as complex as a military-industrial complex itsef.
American college students are getting tired of the yearly increase in tuition fees that are not only putting them in more debt but for many of them also out of college; the bright youth of the American underclass who are losing the rat race. Americans are tired of paying for the war of the rich corporations that work in interlocking directorateship with the defence contractors and the producers of the latest weapons of mass destruction.
Americans are tired of having to work two to three jobs to make ends meet and to feed their insatiable urge to consume things that have no meaning in their lives - more TV channels, more cars, more telecommunication gadgets, and more and more of the less important things to live by.
Americans are beginning to see how weary their life has become as the economy continues to stress them by working longer hours and having less money to save thanks to the rising prices of goods, interest rates, and the shrinking of the dollar.
The Black, Hispanic, progressive white, Asian-American, and peace-loving religious-based caucuses in American politics must help sway the votes from 'red' to 'blue' and next to 'purple' and 'pink' to win an overwhelming majority so that the fundamental character of American politics can gradually change. The change the world needs to see is in a rubber stamp. Change in a Congress that has been heavily dominated, from time immemorial, by big businesses that keep the machinery of the military-industrial complex churning under a militaristic ideology par excellence; an ideology hidden from the eyes of the common American.
Americans must become the 'ugly American' willing to step out of the shackling, imaginary boundary of the Democrat-Republican and support parties aligned with radical and progressive peace movements ala this.
America, come home
America must come home for good from Iraq, and from all other nations that it is colonising in the guise of 'peace-keeping'; an oxymoron that really means 'war-mongering', a term used and abused since the days when General George Washington waged the Revolutionary war to bring peace and independence, replacing King George of Britain with the seed of tyranny of the new American majority that grew to become a the complex and hegemonising system of neo-colonialism.
The Cindy Sheehan phenomena continues to haunt American mothers who worry of the fate of their youngsters drawn from the poorest class and paid as happy, well-fed and leisure-minded video-game addicts. 'Soldiers of fortune' in a war that sees no end in sight, in a region hotter than Texas, California or Arizona in which the only permanent thing is continuing destruction.
But America is a paradox for there is an American ideal and there is an American ideology. There are the common American people and there is this uncommon secret government. There are this many notions of democracy and there is this one system of Republican-Democrat that draws inspiration from corporate greed and the building of weapons of mass destruction to be sold to other warring nations and to be used as part of the doctrine of the balance of terror.
It is the long process of the development of oligopoly capitalism that has lent itself well to the building of America as a huge transnational military-industrial complex on the one hand and the localising prison-industrial complex on the other; one that reportedly puts more than 80 percent of African American males behind bars. It is a continuation of the modern slave system America built out of its free-enterprise-cum-militarism ideology, an ideology it perpetually tries to spread the world over like the 1980s Coca Cola jingle 'I'd like to teach the world to sing ... in perfect harmony'.
Fellow peace-loving Americans, the world appeals to your consciences to turn our prayers into practical and peace-loving politics. The world is no longer safe for your brand of democracy. The word is sick and getting sicker - how much sicker can we get? Let us find its cure, together.
'O' Just Lord of the Universe and Lord of Humanity: Help us travel the path of Peace and Righteousness. Amen.'
Monday, February 20, 2006
Reader Response: The West is fine...
All is fair game in the West
Scott South
Feb 17, 06 1:54pm
Your columnist Azly Rahman is surprisingly shrill and illogical in his cartoon-related anger and plea for Malaysia to boycott Danish good - for up to five years! In the West, we do criticize various major religions and even their prophets - and sometimes severely. Freedom of speech, enshrined in the West, is there to protect unpopular ideas, not just popular ones. It is how we continually strive to improve our societies - by thinking and debating, not passively believing everything some cleric or prime minister says.
I have seen artwork that severely parodies Jesus Christ in the West, and bestselling books such as The Da Vinci Code are extremely critical of various Christian denominations. What makes Muslims think they have special privileges not to have their faith criticised in the West? It doesn't work that way. In the theocratic dictatorships of Muslim countries, yes, but not in the West.
Scott South
Feb 17, 06 1:54pm
Your columnist Azly Rahman is surprisingly shrill and illogical in his cartoon-related anger and plea for Malaysia to boycott Danish good - for up to five years! In the West, we do criticize various major religions and even their prophets - and sometimes severely. Freedom of speech, enshrined in the West, is there to protect unpopular ideas, not just popular ones. It is how we continually strive to improve our societies - by thinking and debating, not passively believing everything some cleric or prime minister says.
I have seen artwork that severely parodies Jesus Christ in the West, and bestselling books such as The Da Vinci Code are extremely critical of various Christian denominations. What makes Muslims think they have special privileges not to have their faith criticised in the West? It doesn't work that way. In the theocratic dictatorships of Muslim countries, yes, but not in the West.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
58] Should we boycott Danish goods?
Should we boycott Danish goods?
ILLUMINATIONS
By Azly Rahman
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom ofthought which they seldom use." - 19th-century Danish Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard
The Danish philosopher would have protested against the ignorance of those who “tested” the patience of the Muslims through such fatal act of blasphemy. Kiekargaard would have asked his fellow countrymen to be extra careful when making a leap of faith into free speech in toto.
The Danes are now caricaturizing itself into a nation of insensitive and ignorant isolated tribes who need to seriously encourage their children to study who Muhammad the prophet of Islam is – to stop the further rot of intellectualism of such magnitude.
The Danes have indeed showed how Europe continue to “underdevelop” its own thinking about religious tolerance and how poor their understanding of free speech and liberalism is.
In the name of free speech and the freedom to blasphemise and to anger others of different religious faith, the Danish government will not apologize.
We Malaysians on the other hand, are shaming ourselves and telling the world that there will be no major consequence for any nation that disrespected Muhammad, prophet of Islam. We have been bought over by the rhetoric of free speech, making us now a nation without a backbone and a nation with a wimpy voice in the global theatre of increasing globalization of blasphemy; in which even nations such as Denmark are testing the patience of the Muslims.
What brand of foreign policy are we practising? Who are we trying to please? What business do we have with them? http://www.malaysiakini.com/
link/eNrLKCkpsNLXLy8v1ytOTsxLSSzOTNRLzs/
VL8tMLfdLLS/WK8gosM8DMuIzU2yNDE3M1ZLzS/Pik/NTUm1TsgHrdBcR
What a shameful stand made by an equally shameful government that has shamed itself through all the inactions on matters that are corrupting and shameful.
Just a few decades ago, we “Bought British Last” supposedly in protest against British colonialism; colonialism that is engineered by “a private company” that is the East Indian Company. But just a few days ago we rationalized that the cartoons were produced by a private citizen and therefore does not reflect the sentiment of the Danes as a people. I will argue why this administration’s “no-boycott” attitude is base on truncated logic and faint-hearted patriotism.
We wish to be called a “moderate Islamic” nation but do not know what that means in this context of global humiliation that continue to equate Islam with terrorism. Humiliating Muhammad the prophet of Islam was the most fatal of all the humiliations. I do not think Europe will ever understood what Muhammad means to the Muslims.
As a citizen of Malaysia, I write to express my deepest regret on the decision of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s administration’s not to boycott Danish products. I call upon the government to revert the decision in the name of respect and utmost reverie for the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad (peace be upon him) -- prophet of peace, tolerance, justice, and social equality. After all, do we need to support the economy of a nation of those who will use the fruits of labor of free enterprise to perhaps propagate more and more ignorance about Islam?
Our revised position, I imagine, will be more honorable, should you call upon such boycott – even for a definite period of five years, minimum. http://www.danishexport.com/
"Understand who Muhammad is."
The prophet of Islam is not to be cartooned, caricaturized, and humiliated, like other prophets such as Abraham, David, Moses, and Jesus (peace be upon them). For Muslims, Muhammad is life and love of the Muslims that permeates Existence entire.
He is the light of the world, of Humanity’s path of peace and prosperity whose life is a symbol of illuminations, inspiration, and the institutionalization of peace within oneself and in the here and now and in the hereafter. He is the Alpha and the Omega.
Why caricaturize this peaceful soul whose life is lived delivering others from the dungeons of oppression. Muhammad would even be gentle in his approach of advising Europe to stop legalizing prostitution or consuming alcohol conspicuously.
Free speech and freedom to humiliate the prophet of Islam does not apply in any epoch of the life of the Muslims. The world saw that since the furor began. Anger, as Europeans and Muslims would agree, is not to be about running amuck burning down embassies. Prophet Muhammad would be the first to defuse the anger.
But He will also call for a boycott of any nation that caricaturize any of the prophets of Allah of which Muhammad is their seal – any prophet including Jesus son of Mary. In short, Muhammad would not let Islam and its prophets – from Adam to Jesus – be humiliated. Muhammad has also taught Muslims that Jesus can never be the son of God. Eve the Danish philosopher Kiekergaard would say that man is man and God is God.
I do not think, as claimed by apologists of the Danish form of free speech, that the global anger of the Muslim is solely the result of the victory of the Hamas, the distraction “created by Syria over the Lebanon crisis”, or the rise of Iran as a voice of assertive Muslims. Such an argument missed the point of the ahistorical nature of Islamic history of iconoclasm.
The cartoons, even if it were to be printed a thousand copies by Johann Gutenberg and his moveable type would have also created an uproar in the Islamic world. Even it were to be “photocopied and distributed” in the 1970s using the emerging technologies of that era, the impact will be similar and quite independent from the political conflicts of the day.
"The real issue is of disrespect"
To Muslims, Prophet Muhammad is not only a “sacred” figure that is historical, ahistorical, and metaphysical but also a conceptual notion of life and the gift of life that permeates into the conscious and subconscious life of the Muslims. He is the symbol of “near-perfection” of Humanity that is constantly evolving and moving from one realm of Love and Peace to another.
Would Europe be able to understand how Muhammad is a concept of peace that lives in the lives of the Muslims becomes the inspiration, inscription, individualization, and institutionalization of those who took Islam in their Kiekergaardian leap of faith?
The masses and the elites, the less educated and the most learned will continue to protest accordingly in the case of the prophet being caricaturized. They protest nonetheless of the ignorance of what can and what cannot be represented in and as Muhammad.
Muhammad connotes “grace and gift to the world” for the Muslims. How might an “ummi” or an “illiterate” left a legacy of an empire of faith --- an empire that even taught Europe how to read, write, and think? How is this possible when the continent, Denmark and all was still in a state of delusion and delirium -- devoid of intellectual sight that will deliver it out of the Dark Ages into the Renaissance and next, the Enlightenment?
I call upon the boycott of Danish goods for a period of time and advocate for European children to learn more about Muhammad, the prophet of peace and love.
What is a nations’ economy such as Denmark’s worth as compared to such a humiliation of a most revered symbol of Humanity – of Muhammad (peace be upon him)?
ILLUMINATIONS
By Azly Rahman
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom ofthought which they seldom use." - 19th-century Danish Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard
The Danish philosopher would have protested against the ignorance of those who “tested” the patience of the Muslims through such fatal act of blasphemy. Kiekargaard would have asked his fellow countrymen to be extra careful when making a leap of faith into free speech in toto.
The Danes are now caricaturizing itself into a nation of insensitive and ignorant isolated tribes who need to seriously encourage their children to study who Muhammad the prophet of Islam is – to stop the further rot of intellectualism of such magnitude.
The Danes have indeed showed how Europe continue to “underdevelop” its own thinking about religious tolerance and how poor their understanding of free speech and liberalism is.
In the name of free speech and the freedom to blasphemise and to anger others of different religious faith, the Danish government will not apologize.
We Malaysians on the other hand, are shaming ourselves and telling the world that there will be no major consequence for any nation that disrespected Muhammad, prophet of Islam. We have been bought over by the rhetoric of free speech, making us now a nation without a backbone and a nation with a wimpy voice in the global theatre of increasing globalization of blasphemy; in which even nations such as Denmark are testing the patience of the Muslims.
What brand of foreign policy are we practising? Who are we trying to please? What business do we have with them? http://www.malaysiakini.com/
link/eNrLKCkpsNLXLy8v1ytOTsxLSSzOTNRLzs/
VL8tMLfdLLS/WK8gosM8DMuIzU2yNDE3M1ZLzS/Pik/NTUm1TsgHrdBcR
What a shameful stand made by an equally shameful government that has shamed itself through all the inactions on matters that are corrupting and shameful.
Just a few decades ago, we “Bought British Last” supposedly in protest against British colonialism; colonialism that is engineered by “a private company” that is the East Indian Company. But just a few days ago we rationalized that the cartoons were produced by a private citizen and therefore does not reflect the sentiment of the Danes as a people. I will argue why this administration’s “no-boycott” attitude is base on truncated logic and faint-hearted patriotism.
We wish to be called a “moderate Islamic” nation but do not know what that means in this context of global humiliation that continue to equate Islam with terrorism. Humiliating Muhammad the prophet of Islam was the most fatal of all the humiliations. I do not think Europe will ever understood what Muhammad means to the Muslims.
As a citizen of Malaysia, I write to express my deepest regret on the decision of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s administration’s not to boycott Danish products. I call upon the government to revert the decision in the name of respect and utmost reverie for the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad (peace be upon him) -- prophet of peace, tolerance, justice, and social equality. After all, do we need to support the economy of a nation of those who will use the fruits of labor of free enterprise to perhaps propagate more and more ignorance about Islam?
Our revised position, I imagine, will be more honorable, should you call upon such boycott – even for a definite period of five years, minimum. http://www.danishexport.com/
"Understand who Muhammad is."
The prophet of Islam is not to be cartooned, caricaturized, and humiliated, like other prophets such as Abraham, David, Moses, and Jesus (peace be upon them). For Muslims, Muhammad is life and love of the Muslims that permeates Existence entire.
He is the light of the world, of Humanity’s path of peace and prosperity whose life is a symbol of illuminations, inspiration, and the institutionalization of peace within oneself and in the here and now and in the hereafter. He is the Alpha and the Omega.
Why caricaturize this peaceful soul whose life is lived delivering others from the dungeons of oppression. Muhammad would even be gentle in his approach of advising Europe to stop legalizing prostitution or consuming alcohol conspicuously.
Free speech and freedom to humiliate the prophet of Islam does not apply in any epoch of the life of the Muslims. The world saw that since the furor began. Anger, as Europeans and Muslims would agree, is not to be about running amuck burning down embassies. Prophet Muhammad would be the first to defuse the anger.
But He will also call for a boycott of any nation that caricaturize any of the prophets of Allah of which Muhammad is their seal – any prophet including Jesus son of Mary. In short, Muhammad would not let Islam and its prophets – from Adam to Jesus – be humiliated. Muhammad has also taught Muslims that Jesus can never be the son of God. Eve the Danish philosopher Kiekergaard would say that man is man and God is God.
I do not think, as claimed by apologists of the Danish form of free speech, that the global anger of the Muslim is solely the result of the victory of the Hamas, the distraction “created by Syria over the Lebanon crisis”, or the rise of Iran as a voice of assertive Muslims. Such an argument missed the point of the ahistorical nature of Islamic history of iconoclasm.
The cartoons, even if it were to be printed a thousand copies by Johann Gutenberg and his moveable type would have also created an uproar in the Islamic world. Even it were to be “photocopied and distributed” in the 1970s using the emerging technologies of that era, the impact will be similar and quite independent from the political conflicts of the day.
"The real issue is of disrespect"
To Muslims, Prophet Muhammad is not only a “sacred” figure that is historical, ahistorical, and metaphysical but also a conceptual notion of life and the gift of life that permeates into the conscious and subconscious life of the Muslims. He is the symbol of “near-perfection” of Humanity that is constantly evolving and moving from one realm of Love and Peace to another.
Would Europe be able to understand how Muhammad is a concept of peace that lives in the lives of the Muslims becomes the inspiration, inscription, individualization, and institutionalization of those who took Islam in their Kiekergaardian leap of faith?
The masses and the elites, the less educated and the most learned will continue to protest accordingly in the case of the prophet being caricaturized. They protest nonetheless of the ignorance of what can and what cannot be represented in and as Muhammad.
Muhammad connotes “grace and gift to the world” for the Muslims. How might an “ummi” or an “illiterate” left a legacy of an empire of faith --- an empire that even taught Europe how to read, write, and think? How is this possible when the continent, Denmark and all was still in a state of delusion and delirium -- devoid of intellectual sight that will deliver it out of the Dark Ages into the Renaissance and next, the Enlightenment?
I call upon the boycott of Danish goods for a period of time and advocate for European children to learn more about Muhammad, the prophet of peace and love.
What is a nations’ economy such as Denmark’s worth as compared to such a humiliation of a most revered symbol of Humanity – of Muhammad (peace be upon him)?
Friday, March 18, 2005
9] Destroy the Box!
Destroy the Box!
Previously I wrote on the continuing special friendship between Anwar Ibrahim, The Pentagon specifically, and the American Imperial Power in general. I suggested that we need to understand the consequences of this pattern of alliance.
Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, a huge success in the United States, attempts to deconstruct perception management by exposing the supposed alliance between The Bush dynasty, Dick Cheney and Halliburton http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=15, The Bin Laden family, and the Pentagon that led to the quagmire in American and world politics.
Only by looking at events from a political-economic perspective and by understanding the notion of “perception-management” can we discern the complexities of these potentially dangerous liaisons. By “perception management”, I mean the ability of one to use print, broadcast, and digital media to enhance one’s disposition in the eyes of the public. Public perception can be crafted, and manipulated, including via the use of “pulp fiction” endorsing who would be the next dictator, president, or prime minister.
We might, engage in many years of living dangerously if we do not know how to deconstruct the innerworkings of perception management and read these signs of our times. [See my second column on “reading the book of signs]
When Corporate Capitalism gains Weight
It is said that capitalism, when it no longer can carry its own internal weight, creates wars that blind us of internal issues and manages perception by displaying anger towards external others.
National anger can be translated into international conflicts, masking the issue that is based on the political economy of control over strategic resources.
To appease the masses that are angry over the issues that govern their daily existence, governments may consciously or uncontrollably divert the national attention into somewhat nationalistic expression directed at some “foreign power”.
For instance, during the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution of 1789, France went to war with Marie Antoinette’s Prussia in order to save the enfant republic from its new internal contradictions.
World history has taught us that perhaps nations can only “co-exist peacefully” between thirty to forty years. That duration would give enough time for tribes, peoples, warring parties to come together. This will then give time for ruling parties, autocrats, despotic rulers, military regimes, military-in-civilian-clothes regimes”, or “emperor-without-clothes” to siphon the wealth of people they govern in the name of “national development”, “modernization”, and “progress” that are calculated using the indicators of the Word Bank and the International Monetary Fund combined.
The near collapse of the American economy, under the name The Great Depression, during the Roosevelt Era brought the nation into World War I. Remilitarization of Germany was amongst the causes of World War II which created jobs for America.
The Cold War and the accumulation of over 50,000 (nuclear) weapons of mass destruction between the American and the Soviet Empire fuel the engines of the war machinery and help The Pentagon create jobs too. The United States, as of January 2003 is reported to have more than 7,000 nuclear weapons http://www.sipri.org/contents/expcon/worldnuclearforces.html/view?searchterm=US%20Nuclear%20weapons.
The War on Terrorism created war-time industries such as the production of uniformed human killing-machines, un-uniformed suicide bombers, and bullet proof Humvees http://www.army.mil/fact_files_site/hmmwv/ coming out of Florida automobile plants.
Conflicts are a good way to create the need for weapons and design the necessity for military build-ups. Regions become earmarked for the testing of new weapons of mass destruction.
Regions rich in oil become very popular spots for the control over “black gold”, devastating the peoples, enriching despots, arms dealers, multinational oil companies, and of course neo-colonialist powers that is architectured after the design of what Eisenhower call “the military –industrial complex”. War is good business for corporation of war-time industries http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11257
The explosive history of the Middle East, with Iraq as the world’s second largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria and now the Nusantara – all these point to the strategic issues in contemporary geopolitics.
Who knows -- the present dispute in Sulawesi might have been created by those who own the means of “conflict-production”, in order to legitimize the installation of foreign military bases under the pretext of both, war on terrorism and over Petronas-Shell oil.
If we do not wish to arrive at this historical juncture, we need to be vigilant about alliances such as that started in the Anwar-Wolfowitz-Pentagon dialogue.
The political-economy of oil and the deadly regional and global conflicts it has wrought upon nations is certainly not new.
The logic is this: The military-industrial complex, an alliance of corporations, the government, and the military, such as The American Corporation-State Department-Pentagon alliance, needs oil to fuel the armed forces. No other state ideological apparatus or “modern estates” uses oil as hideously as the military.
The armed forces is needed to protect the interests of multinational corporations worldwide, and the multinational corporations need global markets to make their parent-governments richer and their CEOs richest in the world, They need to force nations to open up their markets so that these global giants can force-feed the natives with things they do not necessarily need.
If possible, they need to seduce nations, rape them of their resources, and leave them by the roadside of human progress hunger-stricken, povertied, diseased, and humiliated.
If possible, the multinational corporations will make a few natives billionaires, whilst the rest of the population is left gasping for clean air.
Some nations like Malaysia seek advice from these major Fortune 500 companies to even help it develop its “corridors”, as in the case of The invention of the Multimedia Super Corridor whose International Advisory Panel [http://www.msc.com.my/msc/iap.asp] are Malaysia’s “digital mahagurus” flown in yearly to help advice Malaysia on what digital divide and a “digital discourse on inequality” may look like.
Hence, we have amongst others, CEOs of Microsoft and Netscape and the president of the Motion Picture Association of America helping the nation digitize itself and teaching the natives how to live a “better life on the computer and movie screen”.
Keen students of international relations that look at current events from a “realpolitik-al” point of view, or from the point of view of what Hans Morgenthau or any “developmentalist political theorists” call politics amongst nations, would call it “border disputes”.
But let us leave the outdated-ness of realpolitik and political realism based on some Machievellian and Bismarkian frame of analysis and put on a new lens of political-economy and semiotics, or “political-semiotics” as I would call it, to analyze the increasingly tense situation and consequently offer a proposal for the Malaysian and Indonesian peacemakers.
The Rich gets Richer, The Poor goes to War
Reading the reports on Shell http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=238, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=3508 I am worried of our national involvement through strategic alliances with this corporate giant.
The Malaysian oil company Petronas, according to the story is in alliance with a major international company, Shell Corporation; like Anwar Ibrahim is in alliance with a major figure in international pro-war policy-making, Paul Wolfowitz a friend of President-deposed Soeharto http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=7876. It is a natural alliance based on what American and British management gurus would call “smart partnership” or “corporate synergy” or a “win-win situation”.
But do we need to give anymore money to the global rich? To create more fortune for companies of Fortune 500?
Or do we need to pull together to help the destitute and poverty-stricken amongst us Asians.
Does Shell Oil need more money than the Indonesians, especially those in Banda Acheh?
Shell is an extremely rich and powerful company. It can even be more powerful than sovereign nation-states. http://www.corporatewatch.org/publications/shell.html. It has also been associated with human rights abuses through its collaboration with despotic regimes such as in General Sani Abaca’s Nigeria. http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/ken/murder.html
Could the concession be designed in such a way that only the poor will benefit?
All the talk about helping Banda Acheh become another “Putrajaya” (if that is what it actually need,) can be realized if negotiations can point to this peaceful conflict resolution.
Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality no more?
What might become of the Zone of Peace Freedom and Neutrality with the resurfacing of border claims, the increasing gap between the rich and poor, the pattern of long-rule of despotic rulers, the emergence of political dynasties patterned after the synthesis of kinship and corporate-crony-capitalism that has no regard for social justice and moralistic principals of Southeast Asian statecraft?
My fear is that should there be an escalation of conflict arising from the border dispute over the control of oil in Sulawesi, the zone will be a fertile area for military alliances with nations that have interest in the ASEAN region.
If despotic rulers of Malaysia and Indonesia in the past can showcase “democracy” by building towering military forces and twin towers and in the process create more wealth for the already towering few, we can now switch modes of capitalist accumulation and expansion before we collapse on our own weight.
Build schools for the Nusantara
A test of humanitarianism lies in the way we plan for the reconstruction of Banda Acheh [provide link to Steven Gan’s editorial on the pledge to help Acheh], especially in the field much needed” education. Thousands of teachers have perished, thousands of students have died, and hundreds of learning centers are gone.
What then must we do?
If there is genuine effort to solve one of the regional problems of humanity of the beginning of this century, it is the effort to channel our energy to help Indonesia rebuild the once great city-state of Acheh; a city-state that produced numerous philosopher-statesmen who has contributed a great deal to the foundations of Malay political philosophy, before that philosophy was overshadowed by Wahabbism and Khomeini-ism.
Let us no longer think of making the rich of this region richer and instead transform this border issue into a cumulative program that is foundationed upon moral justice to help the millions of Indonesians who lost their homes and will need decades to reclaim human dignity.
It will take a decade to rebuild Banda Acheh and also to build decent housing and provide educational needs for Malaysians of all races; Malaysians who are “poor and unknown” who belong to the “other end” of the Fortune 500 companies.
The idea of a Royal Dutch Shell as one of the possible root causes of the Sulawesi conflict brings back painful memories of the enslavement of the peoples of Java Islands by the Dutch East India Company; a servitude of 400 years only to be continued with another 30 by the General Soeharto, the ancient Javanese “Yudistira-reincarnate” who brought “peace, justice, and harmony” through the barrel of the gun.
Lets us not only “step out of the box” but destroy it.
If policy-makers are in a box marked “Military-Industrial-Complex”, let us create “Cooperative Circles of Regional Social Justice” that will utilize our newly-found natural resources to help the “poor and the hungry teeming masses” in the Nusantara.
In fact, in addition to the reconstruction of Banda Acheh mentioned earlier, the effort of educational help must be extended to all poor areas in Malaysia and Indonesia with the money from oil be used to help children irregardless of race, creed, religion, and ethnicity. They must be educated for peace and social justice that will benefit the greatest number of people.
Our commitment to the Universal Declarations of Human Rights demands us to think for the poor and not be bought over by the rich.
We must step out of the box or the box will suffocate us.
Make peace now -- before we have Pentagon bases named after Royal Dutch/Shell or Exxon, as in Iraq! http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=6128
Intellectuals of Nusantara, let us together craft our own history!
Previously I wrote on the continuing special friendship between Anwar Ibrahim, The Pentagon specifically, and the American Imperial Power in general. I suggested that we need to understand the consequences of this pattern of alliance.
Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, a huge success in the United States, attempts to deconstruct perception management by exposing the supposed alliance between The Bush dynasty, Dick Cheney and Halliburton http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?list=type&type=15, The Bin Laden family, and the Pentagon that led to the quagmire in American and world politics.
Only by looking at events from a political-economic perspective and by understanding the notion of “perception-management” can we discern the complexities of these potentially dangerous liaisons. By “perception management”, I mean the ability of one to use print, broadcast, and digital media to enhance one’s disposition in the eyes of the public. Public perception can be crafted, and manipulated, including via the use of “pulp fiction” endorsing who would be the next dictator, president, or prime minister.
We might, engage in many years of living dangerously if we do not know how to deconstruct the innerworkings of perception management and read these signs of our times. [See my second column on “reading the book of signs]
When Corporate Capitalism gains Weight
It is said that capitalism, when it no longer can carry its own internal weight, creates wars that blind us of internal issues and manages perception by displaying anger towards external others.
National anger can be translated into international conflicts, masking the issue that is based on the political economy of control over strategic resources.
To appease the masses that are angry over the issues that govern their daily existence, governments may consciously or uncontrollably divert the national attention into somewhat nationalistic expression directed at some “foreign power”.
For instance, during the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution of 1789, France went to war with Marie Antoinette’s Prussia in order to save the enfant republic from its new internal contradictions.
World history has taught us that perhaps nations can only “co-exist peacefully” between thirty to forty years. That duration would give enough time for tribes, peoples, warring parties to come together. This will then give time for ruling parties, autocrats, despotic rulers, military regimes, military-in-civilian-clothes regimes”, or “emperor-without-clothes” to siphon the wealth of people they govern in the name of “national development”, “modernization”, and “progress” that are calculated using the indicators of the Word Bank and the International Monetary Fund combined.
The near collapse of the American economy, under the name The Great Depression, during the Roosevelt Era brought the nation into World War I. Remilitarization of Germany was amongst the causes of World War II which created jobs for America.
The Cold War and the accumulation of over 50,000 (nuclear) weapons of mass destruction between the American and the Soviet Empire fuel the engines of the war machinery and help The Pentagon create jobs too. The United States, as of January 2003 is reported to have more than 7,000 nuclear weapons http://www.sipri.org/contents/expcon/worldnuclearforces.html/view?searchterm=US%20Nuclear%20weapons.
The War on Terrorism created war-time industries such as the production of uniformed human killing-machines, un-uniformed suicide bombers, and bullet proof Humvees http://www.army.mil/fact_files_site/hmmwv/ coming out of Florida automobile plants.
Conflicts are a good way to create the need for weapons and design the necessity for military build-ups. Regions become earmarked for the testing of new weapons of mass destruction.
Regions rich in oil become very popular spots for the control over “black gold”, devastating the peoples, enriching despots, arms dealers, multinational oil companies, and of course neo-colonialist powers that is architectured after the design of what Eisenhower call “the military –industrial complex”. War is good business for corporation of war-time industries http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11257
The explosive history of the Middle East, with Iraq as the world’s second largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria and now the Nusantara – all these point to the strategic issues in contemporary geopolitics.
Who knows -- the present dispute in Sulawesi might have been created by those who own the means of “conflict-production”, in order to legitimize the installation of foreign military bases under the pretext of both, war on terrorism and over Petronas-Shell oil.
If we do not wish to arrive at this historical juncture, we need to be vigilant about alliances such as that started in the Anwar-Wolfowitz-Pentagon dialogue.
The political-economy of oil and the deadly regional and global conflicts it has wrought upon nations is certainly not new.
The logic is this: The military-industrial complex, an alliance of corporations, the government, and the military, such as The American Corporation-State Department-Pentagon alliance, needs oil to fuel the armed forces. No other state ideological apparatus or “modern estates” uses oil as hideously as the military.
The armed forces is needed to protect the interests of multinational corporations worldwide, and the multinational corporations need global markets to make their parent-governments richer and their CEOs richest in the world, They need to force nations to open up their markets so that these global giants can force-feed the natives with things they do not necessarily need.
If possible, they need to seduce nations, rape them of their resources, and leave them by the roadside of human progress hunger-stricken, povertied, diseased, and humiliated.
If possible, the multinational corporations will make a few natives billionaires, whilst the rest of the population is left gasping for clean air.
Some nations like Malaysia seek advice from these major Fortune 500 companies to even help it develop its “corridors”, as in the case of The invention of the Multimedia Super Corridor whose International Advisory Panel [http://www.msc.com.my/msc/iap.asp] are Malaysia’s “digital mahagurus” flown in yearly to help advice Malaysia on what digital divide and a “digital discourse on inequality” may look like.
Hence, we have amongst others, CEOs of Microsoft and Netscape and the president of the Motion Picture Association of America helping the nation digitize itself and teaching the natives how to live a “better life on the computer and movie screen”.
Keen students of international relations that look at current events from a “realpolitik-al” point of view, or from the point of view of what Hans Morgenthau or any “developmentalist political theorists” call politics amongst nations, would call it “border disputes”.
But let us leave the outdated-ness of realpolitik and political realism based on some Machievellian and Bismarkian frame of analysis and put on a new lens of political-economy and semiotics, or “political-semiotics” as I would call it, to analyze the increasingly tense situation and consequently offer a proposal for the Malaysian and Indonesian peacemakers.
The Rich gets Richer, The Poor goes to War
Reading the reports on Shell http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=238, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=3508 I am worried of our national involvement through strategic alliances with this corporate giant.
The Malaysian oil company Petronas, according to the story is in alliance with a major international company, Shell Corporation; like Anwar Ibrahim is in alliance with a major figure in international pro-war policy-making, Paul Wolfowitz a friend of President-deposed Soeharto http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=7876. It is a natural alliance based on what American and British management gurus would call “smart partnership” or “corporate synergy” or a “win-win situation”.
But do we need to give anymore money to the global rich? To create more fortune for companies of Fortune 500?
Or do we need to pull together to help the destitute and poverty-stricken amongst us Asians.
Does Shell Oil need more money than the Indonesians, especially those in Banda Acheh?
Shell is an extremely rich and powerful company. It can even be more powerful than sovereign nation-states. http://www.corporatewatch.org/publications/shell.html. It has also been associated with human rights abuses through its collaboration with despotic regimes such as in General Sani Abaca’s Nigeria. http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/ken/murder.html
Could the concession be designed in such a way that only the poor will benefit?
All the talk about helping Banda Acheh become another “Putrajaya” (if that is what it actually need,) can be realized if negotiations can point to this peaceful conflict resolution.
Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality no more?
What might become of the Zone of Peace Freedom and Neutrality with the resurfacing of border claims, the increasing gap between the rich and poor, the pattern of long-rule of despotic rulers, the emergence of political dynasties patterned after the synthesis of kinship and corporate-crony-capitalism that has no regard for social justice and moralistic principals of Southeast Asian statecraft?
My fear is that should there be an escalation of conflict arising from the border dispute over the control of oil in Sulawesi, the zone will be a fertile area for military alliances with nations that have interest in the ASEAN region.
If despotic rulers of Malaysia and Indonesia in the past can showcase “democracy” by building towering military forces and twin towers and in the process create more wealth for the already towering few, we can now switch modes of capitalist accumulation and expansion before we collapse on our own weight.
Build schools for the Nusantara
A test of humanitarianism lies in the way we plan for the reconstruction of Banda Acheh [provide link to Steven Gan’s editorial on the pledge to help Acheh], especially in the field much needed” education. Thousands of teachers have perished, thousands of students have died, and hundreds of learning centers are gone.
What then must we do?
If there is genuine effort to solve one of the regional problems of humanity of the beginning of this century, it is the effort to channel our energy to help Indonesia rebuild the once great city-state of Acheh; a city-state that produced numerous philosopher-statesmen who has contributed a great deal to the foundations of Malay political philosophy, before that philosophy was overshadowed by Wahabbism and Khomeini-ism.
Let us no longer think of making the rich of this region richer and instead transform this border issue into a cumulative program that is foundationed upon moral justice to help the millions of Indonesians who lost their homes and will need decades to reclaim human dignity.
It will take a decade to rebuild Banda Acheh and also to build decent housing and provide educational needs for Malaysians of all races; Malaysians who are “poor and unknown” who belong to the “other end” of the Fortune 500 companies.
The idea of a Royal Dutch Shell as one of the possible root causes of the Sulawesi conflict brings back painful memories of the enslavement of the peoples of Java Islands by the Dutch East India Company; a servitude of 400 years only to be continued with another 30 by the General Soeharto, the ancient Javanese “Yudistira-reincarnate” who brought “peace, justice, and harmony” through the barrel of the gun.
Lets us not only “step out of the box” but destroy it.
If policy-makers are in a box marked “Military-Industrial-Complex”, let us create “Cooperative Circles of Regional Social Justice” that will utilize our newly-found natural resources to help the “poor and the hungry teeming masses” in the Nusantara.
In fact, in addition to the reconstruction of Banda Acheh mentioned earlier, the effort of educational help must be extended to all poor areas in Malaysia and Indonesia with the money from oil be used to help children irregardless of race, creed, religion, and ethnicity. They must be educated for peace and social justice that will benefit the greatest number of people.
Our commitment to the Universal Declarations of Human Rights demands us to think for the poor and not be bought over by the rich.
We must step out of the box or the box will suffocate us.
Make peace now -- before we have Pentagon bases named after Royal Dutch/Shell or Exxon, as in Iraq! http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=6128
Intellectuals of Nusantara, let us together craft our own history!
Sunday, March 06, 2005
8] Anwar and the American Empire
Anwar and the American Empire
In my dissertation entitled, “Thesis on Cyberjaya: Hegemony and Utopianism in a Southeast Asian State”, I proposed that we ought to look at how we are conditioned not only by the signs and symbols produced by those who own the means of economic and intellectual production, but also on what is inscribed onto our landscape.
The interplay between technology and culture produces the definition of how we exist and shapes our consciousness. We are, essentially, “inscribed beings”; tattooed by the scripts that have evolved historical-materialistically. The “scripts” help define policies, create institutions, and maintain hegemony. The phenomena create the spaces of power between the Existential Self and the Cyberneticism of this Modern World.
I find that this is also a useful perspective to look at how British imperialism created communal politics, how the Iranian Revolution of 1979 helped inscribe its ideology onto Malaysia, how Wahhabism influenced the Malaysian Islamic party, how Marxist-Maoist-Leninist ideology inspired the Malaysian Communist party, and in fact, even how the Zouk Disco in Kuala Lumpur and Hip Hop Culture get inscribed and installed in Malaysia.
We become creatures of the creation of these ideologies. Our consciousness becomes colonized by these “truth-forces”. Our thinking becomes tattooed by these transcultural thought-systems.
In my dissertation, I also explored the geneaology of ideas and how they flow transculturally; the spread of ideologies from the Center to the Periphery nations. I believe that the installation of ideas is determined by the attractiveness of the ideas as well as, by how they are marketed successfully or forced to be accepted militarily.
Ideas need not necessarily be produced as ideology from only political parties, powerful global corporations, or spiritual frameworks of thinking, or any form of group-collaborations. Ideas can come from an individual.
From Individuals to Ideology
Hence we see in the history of the world, the impact of individuals in crafting the geneaology of ideas and because of the popularity of the ideas, these ideas take the form of “isms”. We therefore read ideologies and “truth-forces” in the form of Marxism, Buddhism, Reaganism, Thatcherism, and Ghandi-ism, for instance. Depending on which point of view one is coming from, these “ism” may carry positive or negative connotations.
Let me analyze a case in point.
Recently, Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia met with Paul Wolfowitz, one of the producers of “The Project of the New American Century”. The producers of this doctrine, besides Paul Wolfowitz, are the current Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, the current governor of Florida and brother of President George Bush, Jeb Bush, and the current Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.
Keen researchers in international politics will trace the idea of this “new American century” amongst others, from the above document produced before September 11, 2001 which originated from what was then popularly known as “The Wolfowitz Doctrine,” [See Project for The New American Century, at http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm]
The synopsis of the project states:
“The Project for the New American Century is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle; and that too few political leaders today are making the case for global leadership.” —William Kristol, Project Chairman
How does the above synopsis translate into the notion of the transcultural flow of “inscription-installation-institution”?
The doctrine in the form of “statements of principles” constitutes “inscriptions”, the setting up of “democratic institutions” onto Afghanistan, Iraq, and perhaps Iran and North Korea next, constitutes “installations”. The maintaining of governing bodies in these “peripheries and hinterlands” of the Center-Empire, constitutes the establishment of “institutions”.
The New American Century Project has clear objectives to make the American Empire flourish: that its “truth-force” must also be built via military-force. Paul Wolfowitz authored a document on the need to have a more “effective” policy on Iraq when he was the Dean of the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. In 1998, he testified in Congress on the United States’ policy towards Iraq. [see: http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqsep1898.htm]
Deconstructing Empire
Hence, if we subscribe to the idea that the 21st century is the century of the American Empire and that to achieve this, nations of this world would see the ascendancy of militarism as a “truth-force”, we must ask where this idea comes from.
And then, we should ask: How should Malaysians read why Anwar Ibrahim met Paul Wolfowitz? Should Anwar manage to wrestle power and win, one day, how might his relationship with The Pentagon impact our nation?
This also leads me to the question: How do we study complex societies and inquire into the meaning of the global Empire-building?
What perspective might we need to study nations that emerge not only out of colonialism, but also continue to develop out of the ruins of modernity and trajectoried into the age of hyper-consumption?
In the column, “How we get indoctrinated,” I wrote of the nature of “truth-force” that dominates our existence as well as our practice as cultural beings. If, following Hans-Georg Gadamer’ proposition that truth is derived from the method of acquiring the truth, and if following Noam Chomsky that the structure of our reality is dependent upon inventions of reality by the media, we ought to also inquire upon the nature of knowledge itself.
We need to explore the phenomena of colonialism, dependency, and imperialism as what can be called a “structuring experience” in world history and politics. The theme of inquiry, or the object of our study, as committed intellectuals is to read, discuss, and reflect upon the fundamental nature of these concepts and how they shape our understanding of international affairs: from the colonization strategies of the traditional rulers to the nature of hegemony in international affairs.
We need to explore how ideologies are inscribed and installed onto the landscape of humanity and how they become ideological state apparatuses, institutions, and tools of imperialism.
Becoming a postmodern social scientist
Intellectuals, we need to unite and use critical sensibility to help our society understand the predicaments it is in.
Let us begin to acquire an understanding of the phenomena from the point of view of a social scientist generally, and a “postmodern flaneur”, specifically. While the former requires us to ground our understanding from the perspective of a scientist, the latter invites us to see things from kaleidoscopic, and constructivist points of view.
We ought to engage in critical reflection to understand what the Italian thinker, Antonio Gramsci calls the hegemonic forces of the modern world and to look at this world of international affairs and the march of historical progress, from the point of view of what the Russian thinker, Mikhail Bakhtin calls “carnival”.
Our practice ought to be transdisciplinary; we will need to look at the philosophical, political, and psychological dimensions of the phenomena of the changes Malaysia is going through. We ought to rigorously read Albert Memmi, Jean Paul Sartre, and Frantz Fanon, Pierre Bourdieu, and the work of nationalists such as Sukarno, Julius Nyerere, and Ho Chi Minh, of the “formerly-Third World”.
Our readings, as postmodern and committed intellectuals must help us reflect on these multidisciplinary considerations.
Let us begin at the level of perspectives and theories, from World Systems Theory to Complexity Theory and proceed to the analyses of cases and specific practices of colonialism, imperialism, and dependency and conclude with a larger picture of the phenomena of “empire”. We can then move on to analyzing how individuals in societies can also become objects to be manipulated by others in power.
As intellectuals in hypermodernizing society, we need to acquire the skills of analyzing the genealogy of concepts, their evolution, transmutation, and finally, the manner they take shape—all these within the context of the interplay between technology and culture that helps build systems of control and historical progress.
These are the skills critical to our understanding of the world we live in specifically and to that of becoming a social scientist and a postmodern flaneur.
The study of colonialism, imperialism, and dependency requires us to “step outside of the field”, adopt a “metaphysical view of human affairs” and perhaps, as the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre said, to be an “existentialist” and objectify reality, so that we may hopefully be able to subjectify it and act upon it.
We can begin our inquiry with a historical perspective of the phenomena (i. e. the what and when of colonialism, imperialism, and dependency) and progress to the historical-material perspective (the interplay between technology, culture and consciousness).
Guided by inquiry themes, we may engage in constant critical discussions and reflections and acquire a taste for phenomenologically systematic analysis of the key concepts of colonialism, imperialism, and dependency.
Is this the road to the new Asian Renaissance?
Is this the nature of the new Asian Renaissance?
Given proper tools, committed Malaysian intellectuals may be able to understand how ideological alliances work in national and international affairs.
Given the proper tools, we may learn to become more efficient educators who can read the sign of our times.
We may observe how inscriptions become installations and then become ideologies and next become means of “better” control of the minds, spirits and souls of our generation and the generation of our children, grandchildren, and beyond.
We will not want Malaysia to continue to be colonized under whatever government that is going to make our lives “better”.
I think Anwar Ibrahim will have to explain to his supporters particularly, and to the Malaysian intellectuals in general, the intended message of his meeting at The Pentagon.
In decades to come will we have foreign military bases, like Subik Bay and Clark in the Philippines, that will change the social relations of production and hideously disfigure local cultures?
Is this going to be the “grand finale” of the Asian Renaissance?
High-flying political friendships can result in a sovereign nation’s journey into a long and treacherous road toward the abyss of Empire.
In my dissertation entitled, “Thesis on Cyberjaya: Hegemony and Utopianism in a Southeast Asian State”, I proposed that we ought to look at how we are conditioned not only by the signs and symbols produced by those who own the means of economic and intellectual production, but also on what is inscribed onto our landscape.
The interplay between technology and culture produces the definition of how we exist and shapes our consciousness. We are, essentially, “inscribed beings”; tattooed by the scripts that have evolved historical-materialistically. The “scripts” help define policies, create institutions, and maintain hegemony. The phenomena create the spaces of power between the Existential Self and the Cyberneticism of this Modern World.
I find that this is also a useful perspective to look at how British imperialism created communal politics, how the Iranian Revolution of 1979 helped inscribe its ideology onto Malaysia, how Wahhabism influenced the Malaysian Islamic party, how Marxist-Maoist-Leninist ideology inspired the Malaysian Communist party, and in fact, even how the Zouk Disco in Kuala Lumpur and Hip Hop Culture get inscribed and installed in Malaysia.
We become creatures of the creation of these ideologies. Our consciousness becomes colonized by these “truth-forces”. Our thinking becomes tattooed by these transcultural thought-systems.
In my dissertation, I also explored the geneaology of ideas and how they flow transculturally; the spread of ideologies from the Center to the Periphery nations. I believe that the installation of ideas is determined by the attractiveness of the ideas as well as, by how they are marketed successfully or forced to be accepted militarily.
Ideas need not necessarily be produced as ideology from only political parties, powerful global corporations, or spiritual frameworks of thinking, or any form of group-collaborations. Ideas can come from an individual.
From Individuals to Ideology
Hence we see in the history of the world, the impact of individuals in crafting the geneaology of ideas and because of the popularity of the ideas, these ideas take the form of “isms”. We therefore read ideologies and “truth-forces” in the form of Marxism, Buddhism, Reaganism, Thatcherism, and Ghandi-ism, for instance. Depending on which point of view one is coming from, these “ism” may carry positive or negative connotations.
Let me analyze a case in point.
Recently, Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia met with Paul Wolfowitz, one of the producers of “The Project of the New American Century”. The producers of this doctrine, besides Paul Wolfowitz, are the current Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, the current governor of Florida and brother of President George Bush, Jeb Bush, and the current Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.
Keen researchers in international politics will trace the idea of this “new American century” amongst others, from the above document produced before September 11, 2001 which originated from what was then popularly known as “The Wolfowitz Doctrine,” [See Project for The New American Century, at http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm]
The synopsis of the project states:
“The Project for the New American Century is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle; and that too few political leaders today are making the case for global leadership.” —William Kristol, Project Chairman
How does the above synopsis translate into the notion of the transcultural flow of “inscription-installation-institution”?
The doctrine in the form of “statements of principles” constitutes “inscriptions”, the setting up of “democratic institutions” onto Afghanistan, Iraq, and perhaps Iran and North Korea next, constitutes “installations”. The maintaining of governing bodies in these “peripheries and hinterlands” of the Center-Empire, constitutes the establishment of “institutions”.
The New American Century Project has clear objectives to make the American Empire flourish: that its “truth-force” must also be built via military-force. Paul Wolfowitz authored a document on the need to have a more “effective” policy on Iraq when he was the Dean of the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. In 1998, he testified in Congress on the United States’ policy towards Iraq. [see: http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqsep1898.htm]
Deconstructing Empire
Hence, if we subscribe to the idea that the 21st century is the century of the American Empire and that to achieve this, nations of this world would see the ascendancy of militarism as a “truth-force”, we must ask where this idea comes from.
And then, we should ask: How should Malaysians read why Anwar Ibrahim met Paul Wolfowitz? Should Anwar manage to wrestle power and win, one day, how might his relationship with The Pentagon impact our nation?
This also leads me to the question: How do we study complex societies and inquire into the meaning of the global Empire-building?
What perspective might we need to study nations that emerge not only out of colonialism, but also continue to develop out of the ruins of modernity and trajectoried into the age of hyper-consumption?
In the column, “How we get indoctrinated,” I wrote of the nature of “truth-force” that dominates our existence as well as our practice as cultural beings. If, following Hans-Georg Gadamer’ proposition that truth is derived from the method of acquiring the truth, and if following Noam Chomsky that the structure of our reality is dependent upon inventions of reality by the media, we ought to also inquire upon the nature of knowledge itself.
We need to explore the phenomena of colonialism, dependency, and imperialism as what can be called a “structuring experience” in world history and politics. The theme of inquiry, or the object of our study, as committed intellectuals is to read, discuss, and reflect upon the fundamental nature of these concepts and how they shape our understanding of international affairs: from the colonization strategies of the traditional rulers to the nature of hegemony in international affairs.
We need to explore how ideologies are inscribed and installed onto the landscape of humanity and how they become ideological state apparatuses, institutions, and tools of imperialism.
Becoming a postmodern social scientist
Intellectuals, we need to unite and use critical sensibility to help our society understand the predicaments it is in.
Let us begin to acquire an understanding of the phenomena from the point of view of a social scientist generally, and a “postmodern flaneur”, specifically. While the former requires us to ground our understanding from the perspective of a scientist, the latter invites us to see things from kaleidoscopic, and constructivist points of view.
We ought to engage in critical reflection to understand what the Italian thinker, Antonio Gramsci calls the hegemonic forces of the modern world and to look at this world of international affairs and the march of historical progress, from the point of view of what the Russian thinker, Mikhail Bakhtin calls “carnival”.
Our practice ought to be transdisciplinary; we will need to look at the philosophical, political, and psychological dimensions of the phenomena of the changes Malaysia is going through. We ought to rigorously read Albert Memmi, Jean Paul Sartre, and Frantz Fanon, Pierre Bourdieu, and the work of nationalists such as Sukarno, Julius Nyerere, and Ho Chi Minh, of the “formerly-Third World”.
Our readings, as postmodern and committed intellectuals must help us reflect on these multidisciplinary considerations.
Let us begin at the level of perspectives and theories, from World Systems Theory to Complexity Theory and proceed to the analyses of cases and specific practices of colonialism, imperialism, and dependency and conclude with a larger picture of the phenomena of “empire”. We can then move on to analyzing how individuals in societies can also become objects to be manipulated by others in power.
As intellectuals in hypermodernizing society, we need to acquire the skills of analyzing the genealogy of concepts, their evolution, transmutation, and finally, the manner they take shape—all these within the context of the interplay between technology and culture that helps build systems of control and historical progress.
These are the skills critical to our understanding of the world we live in specifically and to that of becoming a social scientist and a postmodern flaneur.
The study of colonialism, imperialism, and dependency requires us to “step outside of the field”, adopt a “metaphysical view of human affairs” and perhaps, as the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre said, to be an “existentialist” and objectify reality, so that we may hopefully be able to subjectify it and act upon it.
We can begin our inquiry with a historical perspective of the phenomena (i. e. the what and when of colonialism, imperialism, and dependency) and progress to the historical-material perspective (the interplay between technology, culture and consciousness).
Guided by inquiry themes, we may engage in constant critical discussions and reflections and acquire a taste for phenomenologically systematic analysis of the key concepts of colonialism, imperialism, and dependency.
Is this the road to the new Asian Renaissance?
Is this the nature of the new Asian Renaissance?
Given proper tools, committed Malaysian intellectuals may be able to understand how ideological alliances work in national and international affairs.
Given the proper tools, we may learn to become more efficient educators who can read the sign of our times.
We may observe how inscriptions become installations and then become ideologies and next become means of “better” control of the minds, spirits and souls of our generation and the generation of our children, grandchildren, and beyond.
We will not want Malaysia to continue to be colonized under whatever government that is going to make our lives “better”.
I think Anwar Ibrahim will have to explain to his supporters particularly, and to the Malaysian intellectuals in general, the intended message of his meeting at The Pentagon.
In decades to come will we have foreign military bases, like Subik Bay and Clark in the Philippines, that will change the social relations of production and hideously disfigure local cultures?
Is this going to be the “grand finale” of the Asian Renaissance?
High-flying political friendships can result in a sovereign nation’s journey into a long and treacherous road toward the abyss of Empire.
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