Shooting ourselves in the foot

Biro Tatanegara (or the National Indoctrination Bureau) was established in 1974 during Tun Razak's tenure. But it took around ten years to evolve into the sinister operation that has been getting a load of negative publicity in recent days.

The fact that BTN is an adjunct of the Prime Minister's Department makes it a convenient mechanism for the systematic dissemination of the official doctrine throughout the rank and file of the civil and diplomatic services. BTN also ensures that the academic bureaucracy adheres to Umno's official doctrine of Ketuanan Melayu and loyalty to the government.

Some who have been processed through the BTN experience and survived with their minds intact and independent report that the BTN's agenda is insidiously racist and deliberately divisive. Unthinking conformity is what the Biro Tatanegara is really all about.

The desire to imprint the rulers' ideology on all subjects is a hallmark of every patriarchal society. After all, the words "pattern" and "paternal" share the same etymology, namely, issuing from the Pater or Father.

And isn't it true that every Father wants his children to be, above all, obedient? The Old Testament - specifically, Genesis - portrays disobedience as the Original Sin.

Fast-forward to the Digital Era where being at the cutting edge requires thinking out of the box, an adventurous and innovative spirit, and a willingness to break the rules.

Where do our BTN graduates stand in the 21st century world of instant communications and nanotech? You can invest billions in an artificial city called Cyberjaya - but, unless you import all the talent, you're not going to find many innovators emerging from local institutes of learning.


In the first place, genuflecting before your social superiors is hardly conducive to nurturing creative genius. Don't forget Tuan is a contraction of Tuhan - and a culture that compels an individual to submit to God will always extend that compulsion to submitting before God's representatives on Earth, namely the Monarchs.

Talented and inspired brainiacs like Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple Computers), Larry Page and Sergey Brin (founders of Google), and Mark Zuckerberg (originator of Facebook) aren't the type who can handle too much protocol - unless you're referring to computer protocols.

Indeed, a distinguishing feature of cybernetic wizards is their disdain for red-tape and formality. Imagine the fun the pioneers of IT had naming everything from scratch. How did they come up with "mouse" for the device with which you navigate the screen? Or a name like Yahoo! for an all-purpose portal?

Let's say you're the Sultan of Selangor and you're accustomed to being addressed formally as Duli Yang Maha Mulia Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah Al-Haj ibni Almarhum Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah Al-Haj.


So what happens when the Sultan becomes IT savvy and buys himself a Macbook? He's going to be using email and you can't possibly have such an unwieldy name in your email address. He could shorten it to sultan_idris@istana-selangor.my or perhaps even idris@istana-selangor.my - and in so doing he would be dispensing with cumbersome formality. In all probability, he would write in normal language when sending emails to his buddies, instead of adhering to traditional court language. Indeed, if he were to try his hand at internet chat, he'd probably want to conceal his royal status with a funky nick like "nicerichboy" or "hrh1."

This is what happens when human consciousness shifts from analog to digital mode. Traditionalists may scorn the way kids today have murdered language by coming up with SMS terms like :-) or LOL or 2moro or CU. But you have to admit there's a certain appeal in adopting newfangled computer symbols like @ or signing off with an ASCII heart, thus: <3 - and, as these new memes spread like some species of computer virus, the near-lightspeed movement of binary codes and pixels across the planet's fiber-optic highways swiftly creates a far more egalitarian social template than any theory of human evolution could ever have predicted.

That's why I always ROTFLMAO whenever I hear potato-headed politicians like the education and communications ministers urging Malaysians to be "more innovative" and to prepare themselves for the rapid shift to "a knowledge-based economy." You guys wouldn't recognize a creative genius even if one snuck up and poked you playfully in the butt.

I bet you didn't realize a lot of creative geniuses look just like that troublemaker Namewee @ Wee Meng Chee whose citizenship you once wanted to revoke because he "insulted" the national anthem (as though a song could possibly be offended by some 23-year-old rapper doing an off-the-wall cover version of it).

Well, if that's what you really want, you're really gonna regret it when you finally get it, Messrs Muhyiddin and Rais. Do you know why? Because no creative genius will give a fuck how much you paid for your silk ties nor will they be too impressed by all the guff that issues from your political mouths.

Keep the population dumb and conformist with your goddam BTN, if you wish to enjoy your VVIP status and your ridiculous robber baron perks. But don't you dare lament the fact that Malaysia has been left way behind every other country.

Up till now you've had it good siphoning off our collective wealth with all the natural resources the land has produced - and things got even sexier when oil was found off our coast. However, some say the oil reserves will be depleted within a few years - and then how are you going to maintain your extravagant lifestyle? Revert to piracy and slave-trading?

Wrong place, wrong time, wrong job?

Former Special Branch officer turned private investigator Balasubramaniam a/l Perumal was hired by Abdul Razak Baginda (special consultant to the Malaysian Ministry of Defence and a close friend of Najib Razak) to keep an eye on "that Mongolian Woman" Altantuya Shaariibuu who arrived in Kuala Lumpur the first week of October 2006 to meet Baginda and demand that he pay her USD500,000 for her role in the 2005 Scorpene submarine deal. Bala saw Altantuya being abducted from Razak Baginda's residence around 7:30PM on 19 October 2006 by three people, two of whom were personal bodyguards of Najib Razak. She was never again seen alive.

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT... OR TEN

One of the wonderful features of blogs and online news portals is that they offer a measure of interactivity. Readers are encouraged to put in their two bits worth by leaving comments. Some find it quite hard to resist while others simply can't make themselves do it - either because they're paranoid about leaving any traces in cyberspace by which the Special Branch or Interpol can track them down; or because they're the sort who have trouble pissing in a public urinal if there's a stranger standing right next to them.

Over the past three years I must have left a trail of comments in cyberspace even Mr Magoo can follow. I can pee just about anywhere, possibly even on stage with a spotlight shining on my willy. One of my unique talents, I guess. Anyway, I've collected several longish comments I've left in various places like a trail of dog piss - some fairly recent, some more than a year old - and I figure it would be fun to turn them into a blogpost, so here goes...

"1Malaysia is about fostering unity amongst Malaysians. What measures can be taken to foster greater unity?"

When the government is TOO BIG and the people are too small, you get a Humpty Dumpty situation - exactly like we do now. Why is the government TOO BIG? Simple. The people who form the government were mostly born into the ruling elite and groomed to take over the reins of power. Their ingrained attitudes, lifestyles, thought processes and behavioral patterns ARE the problem - nothing else! If they had the wisdom to step down from power and let others take over, there may be a ray of hope. But I doubt that anyone already rich and powerful would ever look in the mirror and admit: "Ah, I see... the problem is ME!"

Here's a small bit of wisdom I shall leave you with: TRUE COMMUNICATION IS ONLY EVER POSSIBLE AMONGST EQUALS. What does this mean? Where a feudal hierarchy continues to exist, those on the lower rungs of the power structure will never express their true feelings for fear of losing their jobs or even their heads. They will, instead, resort to subtle sabotage and apathetic performance, slowly but surely wearing down the machinery of governance until nothing works anymore.

ISLAMIC VALUES

If only espousing Islamic values would make us kinder, more honest, more compassionate, and a great deal wiser... but in Malaysia these so-called Islamic values appear to be totally degraded, warmed over dregs of the ugliest species of cruelty and tyranny inspired by the erotophobic and wrathful Old Testament God of Abraham. That might explain why our law enforcement agencies in particular seem to have become repositories of sadism, perversity and absolute inhumanity - earning the country a vile reputation for being an active participant in human trafficking and for being tragically benighted when it comes to treating refugees, cultural deviants and political dissidents with the love and respect due all living beings. As defenders and upholders of Islam, the monarchs must be held fully responsible for the grotesque distortions and hypocrisies surrounding their exploitative, feudalistic, self-serving and unenlightened interpretation of Islam.

ON THE INCURABLE DR MAHATHIR

There's a name for this narcissistic old man's problems. I think it's called hoof-in-mouth disease. But somehow the press insist on quoting him just to add more mental pollution to an already murky political atmosphere.

Can someone please embalm him immediately?

MORAL POLICE

Hard to believe, in the final phase of our journey through linear time, with a massive paradigm shift and mind-boggling quantum jump directly ahead of us... there are religiocentric humans of the Enlilite/Yahwehist lineage still obstinately pursuing their self-destructive, self-limiting goal of damming up all the ways vital energy (chi or prana) flows in the universe by subjecting every individual incarnate soul to all sorts of idiotic legislation. And they have the audacity to do so in the name of "stability" when what best serves us is DYNAMISM!

So much for this suffocating plastic bag called "society." I opt for true community, spontaneously born of natural communion between souls.

ANWAR vs NAJIB

Don't fall for the MSM spin that simplifies everything to a boxing match between two heavyweights. Lean back and see the big picture. Learn from the cogent metaphors mythology offers. Have you read Tolkien or seen Lord of the Rings? The all-pervasive psychic poison of Sauron, the corruption and zombification of the Nine Kings who turn into the Nine Ringwraiths (Nazgul), the fall of Saruman... all these characters live amongst us - and within us - even if they wear sarongs and songkoks or custom-tailored suits and Italian shoes.

How do we define EVIL? That which thwarts your soul evolution and harvests your energy to serve ignoble and demeaning purposes. Use this yardstick and you will never again be misled by professional misleaders spouting platitudes and lying from every orifice. Stand firm for freedom, justice and spontaneous joy!

HARAPAN BARU

So long as BN continues to hold the national pursestrings and control the machinery of federal government, participatory democracy will remain a pipe dream. Whenever the BN regime cites "national security reasons" what they mean is "Barisan Nasional security." They cannot to afford to lose their stranglehold on the mass media, the judiciary and the police. Without these powerful tools of oppression, the majority of BN leaders will be hawking unsold indelible ink at the pasar malam.

I want Anwar Ibrahim and Pakatan Rakyat to take over as soon as humanly possible. Anwar and most of the new leaders in Pakatan Rakyat have been on the receiving end of injustice, abuse of the law, and negative media coverage by the BN-controlled channels. The first thing they must attend to - even more important than reducing fuel and food prices - is the abolition of all the archaic, authoritarian laws (ISA, OSA, PPPA, UUCA, and so on) that have effectively suppressed the voices of honest critics and created a climate of fear.

We do not want our children to grow up as zombies, interested in nothing but brainless consumption of disposable diversions. We don't want them to fear the public servants whose salaries we pay and whose ill-gotten gains have been acquired at our expense. We the people must solemnly vow to embody the ideals we wish to see in the words, deeds, and thoughts of our elected leaders. We must become the positive change we long to see!

WHY ANWAR IBRAHIM PROVOKES IRRATIONAL HATRED

Strange how some people - even well-educated and apparently intelligent ones, and I’m sad to say I have several close friends who fall in this category - have an irrational hatred for Anwar Ibrahim.

Some are secular, westernized Malays who would rather deal with the greedy, corrupt liars and hypocrites who populate the BN than with a leader who is actually clean-living and left-leaning. Others insist Anwar is a closet racist and opportunist who will woo anybody to get where he wants. Now that’s patently unfair a criticism; one might as well condemn all living things for their hardwired survival instincts. After all, every one of us can be accused of exactly the same ability to manipulate and mold reality so that it serves and supports us. It's how we do it - whether by inspiring love or instilling fear - that makes all the difference.

What I strongly believe is that most of these Anwar-haters are people who were once idealists, but became pragmatists in their adulthood. They conformed to the Status Quo and reaped personal benefits (contracts, positions, titles) by toeing the Umno/BN line. So when they see Anwar at 61 still holding on to the principles of his crusading youth, still gung-ho about REFORM, it makes them uncomfortable about their own Faustian pact with the powers-that-be.

They have what used to be a typically Australian complex: if a local boy returns to his hometown after accomplishing great deeds abroad, the yokels shun him as being “too big for his boots.” These people live such humdrum, mediocre lives - with so many compromises - they simply can’t bear to see a REAL HERO get his just desserts. Like what happened to Jesus 2,000 years ago, they will attempt to arrest and crucify the bugger… and, maybe 300 years later, proclaim him a saint or a god when he’s long gone and no further threat to their vested interests.

BADAWI'S ABYSMAL FAILURE

How banal and dreary to read about Badawi "lashing out" at the new DAP government during his visit to Penang. No manners, no code of ethics, no fresh ideas. Just recycling the same old robotic hogwash, the same old braindead Umno rhetoric. Still wagging finger and tongue at phantoms in his own cobwebby mind. Would he were capable of showing signs of intelligence and responsiveness to rapidly changing circumstances by saying something simple and sincere like: "Let's move on from the elections and forge new levels of Federal-State cooperation to the benefit of the whole country. In the end, no matter what our political leanings and perceived differences, let us never forget we are first and foremost Malaysians."

With each new twist in the post-electoral plot, with each inane and all-too-predictable utterance, Badawi is sending out an unmistakeable signal that his political worldview is dead and done for, beyond hope of redemption or resurrection.

Nevertheless, I thank Badawi for having played his role in the drama. For all his grandiloquent mediocrity, he at least created a little more space for dissent. He allowed Anwar Ibrahim his freedom and was generally so unintimidating (unlike his predecessor) that during the four years of his first term as PM, we saw more and more Malaysians emboldened and empowered.

ON MEDIA OBJECTIVITY

“Objectivity” doesn’t really exist except as an excuse for not accepting full responsibility for one’s perceptions, opinions, and beliefs. For too many generations we have been left-brained biased - exalting rational thought above irrational feelings. But in nature, what we call ”irrational feelings” are actually our instincts, our gut responses that operate from cellular wisdom. A society trapped in its mind and disconnected from its heart (where instincts are experienced as emotions) is already on its way to becoming mechanical and robotic. This may suit the control freak and wannabe dictator within us - but it’s deleterious to our psycho-spiritual well-being. Being desensitized to our instinctual responses is akin to filtering out 99% of sensory and extra sensory data and making “logical” decisions based on only 1%.

This explains how so many can be tricked into believing in and voting for a clone like George W. Bush, for example, who emanates almost zero empathy and is, therefore, only fractionally human. It’s alarming when people are no longer able to detect energy fields - or have been trained to distrust extrasensory insights picked up by intuition. Otherwise they would automatically recoil from repugnant political entities spouting lifeless cliches and lying through every orifice. They never would have been fooled by the puppet show and 99% of the politicians currently in power would be selling insurance or involved in MLM schemes.

SAIFUL & SODOMY II

Study Saiful Bukhari's face. There's something there that reminds me of Khairy Jamaluddin. Shrinks today will label it "bi-polar disorder." In the good old days it was known as "schizophrenia." That's right, it's the proverbial Jekyll-Hyde complex - or Smeagol-Gollum syndrome if you prefer your metaphors up-to-date. What I see looking at Saiful's face is a kid who hasn't made up his mind whether to be "good" or "bad." There's a certain boyish charm and innocence there, a useful survival skill, and he seems very keen on being accepted and loved by his peers (read Saiful's blog comments on Riwayat Hayat in response to suggestions that he's a "musang berbulu ayam").

He volunteers his services to the PKR campaign. However, he also likes being photographed with Umno bigwigs and by now everybody has seen Saiful posing beside Najib's special agent Khairil Anas Jusoh (himself rumored to be gay) at the DPM's office. So if that resignation email is from Saiful (and I don't see who else might have written it for him, though he may have been instructed to tender his resignation before incriminating Anwar), it reveals a young man torn between loyalties and, ultimately, feeling himself unworthy to continue serving as Anwar's special assistant (perhaps because he found himself actually liking and admiring his boss), he does an amok on himself, going for the notoriety he knows will be his lot (in the same way a weak character like Mark David Chapman would choose to assassinate John Lennon, the man he admires, since he can never aspire to match his hero's accomplishments).

And what about KJ? When I met him back in 1999 he was working at NTV7 as a talkshow host and news producer. He was bright and smug and actually very polite but I could sense the young man's burning desire to make his mark, to really make it big. I think we did exchange a few pleasantries before we parted and my parting words to the young KJ may have been: "You have a lot going for you, but keep a tight rein on that ego!" He was certainly nothing like the KJ I saw on Malaysiakini.tv rabble-rousing for Umno at the Ijok by-election. Humans are not one-dimensional and to expect them to be is to dehumanize them. Life, like politics, is rarely a black-and-white affair. Even Lady Macbeth has a story to tell and, although one is wise to avoid marrying anyone like her, one ought to grant her her humanity - on condition she doesn’t ascend to the throne, of course!

A REGIME GONE MAD

Some long-dead Greek pederast once said: "Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." Ever since the macabre tale of a murdered Mongolian woman being blown to bits with C4 exploded in the international media, every move those BN/Umno sleazebags have made has been counterproductive and countersurvival. The gods are merciful in that they first drive insane those marked for doom. So be not surprised at the erratic behavior of the BN/Umno goondus - they are non compos mentis! You have to be a fucking lunatic to believe you can get away with stealing so much of the Rakyat's wealth over so many decades and that the Rakyat will never awaken from their zombie trance or break the evil pukau* wrought by the MSM!

____

*pukau - primitive but powerful Indonesian magic that puts you in a state of deep sleep or paralysis while your house is being burgled.

NAMEWEE, DEDICATE A VIDEO TO TM!

Investors put off by Malaysia’s high-cost, low-speed broadband

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 26 — Consumers in Malaysia pay some of the highest prices for broadband in the region, one major reason being the monopoly which state-owned Telekom Malaysia (TM) holds on submarine cable landing rights, a senior executive at a multinational company has asserted.

There is no shortage of gateway service providers seeking landing rights because of the pent-up demand for quality bandwidth, but the government must deregulate or liberalise gateways in order to improve competitiveness by providing larger broadband at lower costs, said Ryaz Patel, Intel Electronics country manager for Malaysia and Brunei.

Patel’s comments that the lacklustre quality and high cost of broadband is hurting the country’s knowledge aspirations come on the heels of warnings by Australian businesses that slow Internet speeds were putting them off investing in Malaysia.

Malaysia Australia Business Council vice-chairman Michael Halpin said large technical documents from Australia had difficulty getting sent over because of the poor quality broadband.

“Australian and American investors see this as a nuisance and an impediment to them to do business successfully here,” he said.


In a press briefing on Intel’s roadmap for 2010, Patel observed Malaysian consumers pay significantly more for broadband, but even to buy broadband wholesale as a service provider was ‘“frighteningly expensive” compared to its neighbours.

His comparison of regional costs showed Malaysian broadband offers some of the lowest speeds in the region, but at the highest costs.

[Excerpted from Business Times Singapore. Read the whole damning report here.]

And when you're done with TM, Namewee, let's go for BN!

Why I should be Minister of Phynance

"It is the artist/scientist/architect who is the mover of history. Under our present nation-state system, the artist/scientist/architect is enslaved in a world where the politicians are entropically concerned with their own fragmented power and wealth. The visionary is unemployed and finds it difficult to fit into the rigid educational system that is becoming more financially exclusive each semester." ~ Libby Hubbard, paraphrasing Buckminster Fuller

"We find all the no-life-support-wealth-producing people going to their jobs in their cars or buses, spending trillions of dollars' worth of petroleum daily to get to their no-wealth-producing jobs. It doesn't take a computer to tell you that it will save both Universe and humanity trillions of dollars a day to pay them handsomely to stay at home." ~ Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path (1981)

First of all, I readily admit that I know next to nothing about money. The word “economics” leaves me cold. The concept of busyness (as in business) makes me yawn.

Second of all, if you look at the self-appointed phynancial wizards who have each claimed to be some sort of “foremost authority” in his field (and it’s still pretty much a male precinct; can’t think of any female economic advisors offhand) it’s obvious they have completely screwed up at every turn.

If these economic experts were worth their own weight in salt, would there be so many starving children in some countries – and so many obese ones in others?

Doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to figure out that these “economic strategists” are essentially a bunch of conmen who serve the narrow interests of a tiny elite cabal and not humanity as a whole.

The deep background to this out-of-whack state of affairs makes a fascinating study but I won’t delve into it here. Those interested are encouraged to do a bit of Googling on the Anunnaki colonization of Planet Earth and how they manufactured a slavish subspecies (Homo sapiens sapiens aka the Adama) to perform menial tasks - and inadvertently got genetically entangled with Adamic humanity’s evolution towards autonomy and spiritual consciousness.

Coming back to my appointment as Minister of Phynance, here are some good reasons why I feel I’m the best person for the job.

For a start, I’ve become expert at minimizing overheads. I quit my last full-time job on April 1st, 1977, and have managed to live modestly but comfortably since. In those 32 years I’ve acquired intimate knowledge of the true value of everything.

If you‘ve been trekking up and down several hills through the forest for four hours, you most certainly will appreciate what shelter means: to arrive finally at a cosy lodge with facilities for boiling water and making tea, and to be able to put your weary feet up and sip sweet black tea and listen to the jungle – that’s certainly an enriching experience. Moments like these, what’s a cup of tea worth to you? Or a warm bed to lie in? How about the company and conversation of a few good friends?

In the real world – and I don’t mean the dog-eat-dog “real world” cynically alluded to by moneyed folk and crime syndicates – where nature reigns supreme, our understanding of what constitutes wealth becomes grounded in tangible experience. For instance, if you find yourself lost in the desert and you’ve been trudging in circles up and down sand dunes under a blazing sun for hours on end, which would you rather stumble upon – a well containing potable water or a bag stuffed with currency notes or even uncut diamonds?


Our sense of values has become distorted over many generations with the introduction of money as a symbol of wealth. To a hungry man, a bunch of bananas and a pitcher of cool, sweet water are worth infinitely more than a gleaming new Porsche or a platinum credit card with unlimited access.

As Minister of Phynance I would shut down the stock exchange and turn it into a budget hostel for young travelers. It’s totally absurd that people think it’s okay to make money with money. It’s not okay, folks – because money isn’t real!

It’s just a puerile game wherein folks with surplus cash are lured into investing it in big corporations, thereby giving them sufficient financial clout to wreak total havoc with their endless expansion schemes. Giant corporations are an unhealthy phenomenon as they tend to grow and grow like a cancer, devouring everything of genuine value – especially natural ecosystems - in their path.

What do people with surplus cash do with the stuff then? Well, they can donate it to a community trust fund managed by a panel of respected citizens and this trust fund will supersede the parasitic insurance companies and the Employees Provident Fund. Anyone who requires financial support and funding for adventurous and worthwhile projects may apply for a grant from this fund. If they accrue a financial surplus from any of these projects, they are expected to donate it to the fund so others can benefit from it.

What constitutes a financial surplus? If we calculate the cost of supporting an adult human for a single day and multiply the amount by ten to make sure that his or her quality of life is at least ten times better than basic – anything above that amount would be considered as surplus.


For example, I estimate that an adult human can manage comfortably on a budget of RM50 or €10 a day. Ten times that is RM500 or €100. So in a month of 30 days an adult human would be more than comfortably supported on a income of RM15,000 or €3,000. If he or she lives frugally, at least half the monthly income can be saved in an interest-free account. This way, those who tend to be spendthrift will end up with hardly any surplus; whilst the thrifty ones will have plenty of surplus to donate to the community trust fund.

Those who donate their surplus to the community trust fund will acquire the status of community elders and therefore share the responsibility of governing their communities. By living well within their means and managing to accumulate a monthly or annual surplus, they would have demonstrated their maturity, inner discipline and freedom from self-indulgent habits and addictions.


Essentially, this will help resolve destabilizing imbalances resulting from generations of financial mismanagement at the hands of those who tend to be most extravagant and undisciplined in their misuse of energy. To be sure, they won’t be overjoyed about this – since this class of humans has traditionally set themselves up as the ruling elite by dint of the fact that they were descended from the Anunnaki creator gods – or were able to become leaders of armed gangs that routinely plundered the land, terrorized the populace, and proclaimed themselves overlords.


And where will the guaranteed income come from? It will accrue from harvesting free energy and effectively converting and rechanneling it for specific tasks. Back in the early 1970s, whole systems thinker Buckminster Fuller calculated that if we could efficiently tap the daily universal income of raw energy from our nearest star, Sol or Ra, and convert it to its monetary equivalent in US dollars – we would receive sufficient energy from the Sun alone to pay every living human on Spaceship Earth a daily wage of approximately USD400,000.


Now that is way beyond my recommended basic daily wage of RM500 or €100. Buckminster Fuller was merely stating a point in very broad terms. It’s unlikely that we could harvest 100% of the daily energy income we receive from the Sun. 60-70% would already be more than sufficient to provide a daily energy income to each human worth approximately USD280,000. And since each human will be guaranteed only RM500 (approximately USD142) per day, it means that at least USD279,858 per human would accrue to the planetary energy pool for infrastructural design, development and maintenance.

In effect, after deducting the basic daily cost of maintaining each adult human, there would still be an enormous amount held in reserve for large-scale operations like the building and maintenance of transport systems, ecosystem rehabilitation projects, educational networks and a state-of-the-art planetary communications grid.


Notice that I have omitted any mention of defence systems or military forces. We really don’t need these archaic institutions anymore. If we haven’t matured enough as a species to resolve our conceptual differences through philosophical engagement, interpersonal interaction and conflict resolution, then Homo sapiens sapiens truly deserves to become extinct. And the rest of the universe won’t shed a single tear to be rid of such a virulent and warlike lifeform.

In order to make such a planetary scale transformation possible, it would of course be much easier if there existed an enlightened planetary administrative body modeled after the United Nations – but minus the political bullying that currently makes the UN a mere symbolic gesture rather than an authoritative unifying and coordinating force.

Many of us are disturbed by talk of a New World Order or One World Government and rightly so – because the ones pushing this nefarious agenda are merely perpetuating the ancient caste system wherein the most aggressive egos form themselves into an overpowering elite cabal and systematically exploit and enslave the rest of humanity.

What I’m discussing here is the cosmically kosher counterforce to the Illuminati’s One World Order agenda. In effect, the most aggressive and immature egos will no longer be allowed to plunder the Earth for their own aggrandizement and the enslavement of the ignorant masses.

Instead, because of their lack of self-control, they will be allowed to do what they wish within the generous means granted them – but will have no say in the management of their communities, since that responsibility will be assigned only to those who have developed sufficient inner discipline and wisdom to accumulate a surplus and donate it to the community trust fund.

Give this some serious thought and if you still think I don’t deserve to be appointed Minister of Phynance, I shall be forced to use the pschittapump on you.

-------
Literary footnote: The spelling of “finance” as “phynance” and the introduction of the pschittapump were inspired by the pataphsyical works of Alfred Jarry (1873-1907), originator of the infamous Ubu plays.

APPENDIX: Notes by Libby Hubbard

Wealth is defined by Buckminster Fuller as the "technological ability to protect, nurture, support, and accommodate all growth needs of life." The computer will show us that at least 70% of jobs in Western private-enterprise countries are work that creates no life support, therefore no real wealth. Examples of these jobs are: "inspectors of inspectors, reunderwriters of insurance reinsurers, Obnoxico promoters, spies and counterspies, military personnel, gunmakers, etc." It is more economical to pay these people to stay at home and not drive their cars to work since it cost "nature well over a million dollars to produce each gallon of petroleum."

The Sun does not make us pay for the energy the Earth imports. It wants to us succeed in the cosmic scheme by using what Fuller calls "cosmic costing accounts." Cosmic accounting can never go bankrupt, since the sun is always shining, accept when humans make the mistake of withdrawing our critical "capital" assets as we are doing presently with fossil fuels. So one can see how we are living in a bankrupt state of affairs, wasting our fossil fuels and burning fusion and fission nuclear energy which Fuller says is "burning our terrestrial production equipment," when we should be living syntropically by the sunlight being imported to Earth.

When we begin living in a syntropic way on a "cosmic-energy wealth income" by wind, wave, and solar power, big businesses will see no way for putting a meter on these forms of energy to run their bureaucracies and war machines. National governments and big business continue to use up "nature's energy savings account," that is, fossil fuels and by atomic energy which is what Fuller calls "Spaceship Earth's physical hull," even though scientists can find no solution to the problem of nuclear waste. (Fuller thinks we should rocket the waste back into the sun). But because of our intuitive wisdom strongly forming an anti-nuclear energy movement, the energy owners have turned back to the coal and shale mines to convert them into meterable and pipeable liquid fuels. Fuller writes: "This selfishly exploitable energy fuel strategy will inexorably destroy the atmosphere's capability of supporting biological life on planet Earth."

Anwar Ibrahim on the Spirit of Liberty

Anwar: We need substantive change

Terence Netto
November 22, 2009
1:25pm


Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim told a Pakatan Rakyat seminar yesterday on the two-party system that Malaysia must move from the forms of representation to the substance of democratic experience to give validity to the nation's founding constitution.

Speaking to several score leaders from PKR, PAS and DAP, the component parties of Pakatan, at the seminar in Kuala Lumpur organised to infuse them with a sense of mission, Anwar held that the country's democratic beginnings were not sustained because of servile subscription to certain shibboleths.

One was that its racial diversity was potentially explosive and the other was that the need for rapid economic progress was touted as incompatible with democracy.

pic courtesy of penangtalk.com

"Our diverse ethnic make-up, rather than an asset, was treated as a powder keg that could be ignited by the slightest spark," he said.

He said this manipulated fear of the country's social fragility was compounded by the perception that "economic development was not compatible with the freedoms that have been established in other democratic nations."

He said delusive beliefs led politicians to give free rein to "greed and avarice and not what Vaclav Havel (right) described as a heightened responsibility for the moral state of society."

Havel was the Czech playwright who figured prominently in his country's break with its communist past in 1989 and became president shortly afterwards, a modern epitome of Plato's ideal of the 'philosopher-king' that held philosophers as best equipped to rule a country because of their passion for truth and justice.

Of course, these notions are scoffed at by the hardnosed, realist school of leaders who think of politics as offering success only to those skilled at deploying the wiles of a fox and the strength of a lion.

That period is over

Anwar said the period was over when the notion held sway that Asians had a cultural predisposition to such values as social order, deferred gratification, and respect for hierarchy, in preference to the cacophony of democratic dissent.

He said this was the pet theory of a cadre of Asian authoritarians whose influence had waned. In any case their theory has been deflated by Asian intellectuals like Nobel laureate Amartya Sen (left) who has cogently argued that there was nothing intrinsically Asian about a preference for social conformity over democratic individualism.

Sen posited the contrary view that freedom and democracy are vital factors in wealth creation and social advancement in Asian societies.

Once again Anwar aired his opinion that while the Western world had established strong institutions of democracy, they held no monopoly on its underlying principles.

He reiterated that the theories of liberal democracy's progenitor John Locke were adumbrated by the principles laid down in Prophet Muhammad's Last Sermon, to wit, the sanctity of contracts and property rights, racial equality and women's rights.

These principles were upheld as the higher objectives of Islamic Law by the Andalusian legal scholar, al-Shatibi, in his treatise, maqasid al-Sharia, which sanctify the preservation of religion, life, family and wealth.

Anwar again claimed that the philosophic antecedents of the Enlightenment principles of Locke and Montesquieu that seeded the flowering of democratic government in the West could be found in the the Last sermon and the maqasid al-Sharia.

He said there was a discontinuity between Malaysia's beginnings as a constitutional democracy and its subsequent experience as a nation as its rulers deviated from the original spirit of the Constitution.

"The upshot is that Malaysia's experience as a pseudo democracy has been an utter disaster. A nation blessed with vast wealth and a people with the ability to learn and excel have been left in the lurch by decades of failed policies. Hope in a brighter future has been snuffed out by the blunt instrument of state power and the cancer of corruption," claimed Anwar.

Pakatan has a special responsibility

He said the impetus given to the two-party system by the results of the general elections of March 8, 2008, would be lost if the main values of the democratic societies are not fortified. These were liberty, social pluralism and political constitutionalism.

"The intent of these values and the institutions that mediate the relationship between the citizen and the government is to guard against the exercise of tyranny," he said.

Anwar said an independent and free judiciary, a free press and a legislature that applied moral precepts to its output, are vital to the mediation of the relationship between government and the citizen.

He proposed the concept of democracy articulated by the political scientist Ian Shapiro - that it is "an ideology of opposition as much as it is one of government" - as an animating principle for the two-party system.

"Yet we would be in a state of self-deception, however, if we pinned the hopes for healthy democracies on just one of its attributes," said Anwar.

He said free and fair elections in which all parties are allowed to compete on a level playing field and unobstructed governance by those elected by voters were the other attributes of a vibrant two-party system.

Anwar said all these features were envisaged by the country's founding constitution but the sum of subsequent deviations – 700 amendments to be sure – eventuated in the contorted construct Malaysians are faced with today.

He said the Pakatan coalition had a special responsibility to nurture the new consciousness that has emerged in Malaysian society after March 8, 2008, to "retrieve, revive and reinvigorate the spirit of liberty, individualism, humanism and tolerance" that was the underlying spirit of the founding constitution.

[Read the complete transcript of Anwar's excellent speech here.]

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THE STORY SO FAR...

Media conference on 3 July 2008