IF ONLY PIGS COULD FLY... (another timely repost)

And Jesus exorcised the demons from the possessed villagers of Gadara, and the demons sought refuge in the bodies of a herd of swine; whereupon the Master shouted a command and the swine flew off the top of a cliff, only to perish in the crashing waves below...

Of all the fears we are subject to as humans there is none greater than the fear of death, if only because it represents the Great Unknown. No amount of faith in the promise of an afterlife can assuage that fear in some folks.

Is it any wonder then that news of mysterious "killer diseases" invariably spreads faster than wildfire, triggering large-scale panic amongst people everywhere? And when this happens, almost everything else is temporarily forgotten. Reports of scandals in high office... war crime investigations... financial shenanigans of earthshaking magnitude... no longer hog the headlines when something as scary as swine flu or bird flu or SARS or mad cow disease gets introduced as a convenient distraction.

Well, folks, I don't believe in disease, having unsubscribed from the hypochondria channel decades ago. True, I can still experience the inconvenience of a bad case of the sniffles or a prolonged bout of coughing whenever my immune system is subject to emotional stress - but I've long decided that disease is a state of mind to begin with. It only becomes a physical condition when your emotional tone goes below zero for more than three days.

However, my attitude is entirely subjective and there's no way I can persuade anyone else to share my views on this. A couple of days ago, my friend Pat Goh alerted me to an interesting letter published in Malaysiakini by someone named Wong Ang Peng. I don't know who he is, but I salute his fighting spirit and would like to reproduce his message in abridged form (for the benefit of those who don't subscribe to Malaysiakini and therefore may have missed it).

Wong has, in my opinion, got the problem well sussed out - even if he erroneously pins the blame on the Americans. The benighted souls who engage in biowarfare and clandestine population culling projects know no ethnic or national allegiances. I suspect they aren't even fully human - and if they are, they must have been bodysnatched at some point and are now merely human agents (perhaps unwittingly) of an inhuman evil that seeks to perpetuate its stranglehold on human evolution and the destiny of the planet through the rule of fear.

LATEST FLU OUTBREAK AN AMERICAN PLOT
Wong Ang Peng | Apr 27, 09 4:24pm

I refer to the Malaysiakini report Global alarm as killer swine flu spreads.

Since the 70's and 80's, during the Cold War era, much emphasis was focused on developing weapons of mass destruction using biological agents. SIV-40 (Samien Immuno-Defficiency Virus 40) was created and introduced to chimpanzee and later passed on to Africans and homosexuals.

A strong stain of the dengue virus was created in the labs of the US Army and released in Latin America and Nicaragua in the 1980's. There are many other examples.

Every pre-winter season, there will be much hype through the mass media in the West to create fear in the masses that an impending fatal strain of flu equivalent to Great Flu Epidemic that killed millions in the West in the 1920's is imminent.

The effect of all this hype is long lines queuing for anti-flu vaccines. In the tropical regions, there is no such thing as a winter flu season. So, the avian flu was ingeniously created.

Generally, the people in China and Vietnam who died about four years ago were those who had been taking the avian flu vaccine shots.

The H5N1 hype a few years ago caused nations all over the world to stock up on the anti-bird flu Tamiflu vaccines. Malaysia spent about RM60 million. These vaccines usually have a shelf life of around five years. We have another year to go before the Tamiflu stockpile becomes useless.

And now it is reported that Tamiflu is effective for this new strain of swine flu. "A 'seed stock' genetically matched to the new swine flu virus has been created by the US Centers for Disease Control, said Dr Richard Besser, the agency's acting director."

If we apply logic to basic knowledge in biology and genetics, the horizontal transfer of genes can only happen when genes are artificially tampered with, i.e., through genetic engineering, or GMO (genetically modified organisms). In today's geopolitical-economic conflict, and the threatened beginning of the end of the US empire, it is not absurd to reason that covert activities are planned and executed to destabilize different parts of the world, in favour of and for prolonging the hegemony of the US empire.


Please Google for 'NSSM 200'. In the 70's there was a secret plan by the world elites, influenced by the people of the Rockefeller Foundation, to reduce the world's population from six billion to two billion. The Rockefeller people are in the Obama administration today. Many are members of the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

From past events and the hype over impending flu outbreaks, it is inevitable that this swine flu which originated in Mexico, will very soon reach the shores of South East Asia and other parts of the world.

There will be panic. There will be public clamouring, and even stampedes for anti-swine flu vaccines. Remember that Vitamin C is the best prevention for any natural or man-made flu outbreak. Sugar and junk food will aggravate any flu symptoms.


MY FRIEND SUZANNE WARD SENDS ANOTHER TIMELY MESSAGE FROM MATTHEW:

"Once again the dark streamers that are heavily influencing individuals in powerful positions have lashed out in what can be well-termed this energy's 'death rattle.' The newest strategy - the ordering of laboratory-designed, created and released swine flu virus - is, as before, abetted by the controlled media's part of the plan, to declare PANDEMIC!

It is puzzling to us that these dark ones did not learn from their abject failures with SARS and then the avian flu, both of which were widely publicized with the same global pandemic prognosis; eventually the publicity was forced to cease because those diseases caused a few deaths, then totally fizzled out.

This swine flu situation will have the same result. The technology of our family in other star nations has neutralized the vaccine that is intended to spread this disease, just as they did to prevent the spreading of SARS and avian flu.


"This new diabolical plan has been done without the US government leader's knowledge, unlike the previous two pandemic attempts, which were fabricated with the approval of the highest members [of the Bush] administration. Think about the timing of this latest disease publicity. In addition to authorizing the creation of a virus and its intended worldwide fear, the darkly-inclined individuals’ aim is to distract the attention of the populace from their growing demands for peaceful negotiations; indicting responsible ones in the US government who authorized torture; the truth about the perpetrators of 9/11; what caused the collapse of the global economy; the decades of government cover-up about the presence of extraterrestrials; who operates the illegal drug industry; the real purpose of chemtrails and weather control; the aims of the worldwide Zionist movement; and the ‘black ops’ behind terrorism around your world.

“It is not enough to create a distraction for only the people of the United States simply because this is the country where much of the corruption and deception originated and where now investigations are running deep. No, it must be a global effort because individuals with dark intentions, who live around the world, are panicking as they see other governments’ citizens joining the clamor for truth, for peace, for renewable energy sources, for improved health care and education, for just laws and rightful recognition of women’s equality.

All of those are anathema to dark individuals as those conditions are the opposite of all dark goals. But just as the collapse of the global economy is exposing the truth about who has been manipulating it, so will this swine flu plan expose other evils perpetrated by the same dark ones within the Illuminati or under their control. Welcome this evidence of progress in ‘bringing to light’ the truth and the fast-withering tendrils of dark energy around your planet!”

There are firm indications that the public-at-large is increasingly skeptical about the motives of individuals at highest levels of medicine and pharmaceutical corporations: There is this sudden outbreak of yet another kind of flu and “accidentally” there is live virus in the vaccines? Yes, there is some fear as well, but not nearly in the proportion the Illuminati intended and expected. Quite the opposite - this is a setback of major proportion for them!

People's reactions show their expanding consciousness, and this is likely to cause widespread outrage that will not be confined to the deliberate attempt to infect millions and cause global panic. Light efforts are underway in numerous other areas too that will remove the long-time heavy hand of dark control in your world. Holding steady your light and being patient a bit longer for dynamic developments will be abundantly rewarded!

LOVE and PEACE
Suzanne Ward 

[First posted 29 April 2009]

A WHODUNIT WITH HEART, MIND AND SOUL (repost)

Coming up with a good opening line is every author’s challenge – especially so if one happens to be debuting as a crime novelist. For his maiden attempt at producing fast-paced pulp fiction with pith, Alois Leinweber settled on this one: 

“The woman sat down close to him, close enough for him to feel her warmth through his trousers.”

It worked for me as I found myself turning all 252 pages of Jasmine for the Dead with eagerness and ease. Set in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, the book starts off as a classic whodunit, with an honest cop as the main protagonist and much of the action revolving around the discovery of a naked white body by the steps of the national monument – dead, of course, skull bashed in with a hard object and a bullet wound in the neck.

Turns out the murder victim is an Englishman named James Hollander, freelance journalist and former British soldier posted in Malaya. Apparently he has been shot with an army issue pistol from the early post-war era.

Chief Inspector Chee Keong is the sort of detective who rarely gets in the news – simply because he takes his job seriously and enjoys it. Assisted by his trusty sidekick Haris Askandar, Inspector Chee Keong is modeled after famous fictional sleuths like Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot – a cop with razor-sharp intelligence and a bloodhound nose who somehow manages to remain likeable and human despite his less-than-pleasant job.

The English translation of his book was launched at Bukit Kiara Equestrian and Country Club on 11 May 2014

Leinweber takes pains to develop the Chief Inspector as his central figure, so that within a couple of chapters he serves as the reader’s alter ego even as he pulls together the various plot strands. Apart from his detective work, Chee Keong has a personal life. He jogs, he has a wide circle of friends, he’s well read, likes his food, enjoys travel, and he has an alluring Malay girlfriend named Sharifah. The author uses the romance between Inspector Chee Keong and Sharifah to shed some light on problems confronting interracial couples, and I don’t doubt that some of it is autobiographical.

Investigating the murder of James Hollander leads the dedicated sleuth down many intriguing paths across a broad span of time and space. We learn that the murdered Englishman is linked with the 1948 Batang Kali massacre – another ugly blot in the history of British colonialism wherein 24 unarmed Chinese villagers were brutally executed as a warning to others against collaborating with Communist insurgents. Relatives of those killed in Batang Kali have waited 66 years for the British government to apologize and compensate them – but in vain. Was James Hollander a member of the Scots Guards platoon responsible for this bloodbath? Why had he been visiting Batang Kali and seeking out surviving relatives of those shot in cold blood?

The dead journalist, we learn, was previously married to a German named Petra Schmidt, senior executive in a Frankfurt-based pharmaceutical firm with a few skeletons in its closet involving contaminated medicines (which they were foisting off in Southeast Asia through their Bangkok office). Although long estranged from one another Petra and James had yet to formalize their divorce.

True to his calling as an investigative journalist, Hollander had been digging into this scandal and had uncovered enough documentary evidence to do an exposé that would have devastating consequences on the pharmaceutical firm. Instead of admitting to unethical practices, the company had invested in a high-powered public relations agency based in Kuala Lumpur to do some damage control.

Funnyman Harith Iskander jokes with Alois Leinweber

Inspector Chee Keong also learns that the dead man had had a keen interest in Malaysia’s notorious human trafficking syndicates. Hollander had apparently taken it upon himself to establish a special fund to help stranded foreign workers, lured over to Malaysia by unscrupulous recruiting agents, who then confiscated their passports and forced them into slave labor. Realizing that negative publicity alone wouldn’t solve the problem because of entrenched corruption within the Malaysian bureaucracy, James Hollander had begun extorting “donations” from agencies recruiting foreign labor, which he then channeled into his fund.

To further complicate the plot, James Hollander shared an apartment with his gay lover, a German expatriate named Hubert Gehrcke, who seemed troubled about his partner’s promiscuous tendencies.

With so many different leads to work with, Inspector Chee Keong is hard pressed to find out which one to follow. On top of all this, he has to deal with a less than supportive Chief of Police, his immediate boss, the crusty Datuk Nazim Ahmad (whose personal secretary, Azleena, happens to have a soft spot for Inspector Chee Keong, thereby easing the tension a little).

Another Datuk enters the thickening plot, Azmi Hamid, director-general of the Immigration Department. Suspicion surrounds this suave character who openly admits to the detectives that he was once a partner in a foreign worker recruitment agency. Datuk Azmi solemnly warns Chee Keong and Haris that there are moles in the Police Force they must flush out.

With Dr Hans Volker Wolf (former director of Goethe-Institut, Kuala Lumpur)

What Leinweber has achieved with Jasmine for the Dead is nothing less than a craftsmanlike tour de force. It’s not easy to keep so many balls in the air with a plot so rich in false trails and red herrings. For a first novel, he has succeeded admirably in serving up as a main dish a mature and intelligent crime thriller in the classic whodunit format – with lots of titillating side dishes thrown in.

In the process Leinweber manages to address a plethora of political issues that constitute the shadow side of Malaysia’s sunny disposition – the smiling face she presents to the casual tourist. Particularly poignant are his revelations on exactly how human trafficking works in Malaysia. The nightmare zone he leads his reader through is stark and vivid. Indeed, it was what triggered my decision to review Jasmine for the Dead – just to get the message out to more people who need to know what’s going on.

The author himself is certainly no casual tourist, having lived several decades in Malaysia with his German-educated Malaysian wife. I was introduced to him many years ago as someone with wide ranging interests and skills. Apart from being (yes, you guessed it) a freelance journalist, Alois Leinweber also teaches German, literature, and music in an international school. He has also written travel books and produced a 30-minute documentary (Rebel Dancer, 2003) on legendary classical Indian dancer and choreographer Ramli Ibrahim. Apart from that, he’s a passionate accordionist and aficionado of the arts.

I assume he can also cook, as he pays loving attention to what his characters consume at every meal, making his whodunit work overtime as a culinary guide to Malaysia. It was a distinct pleasure to see my own country through his eyes and I heartily applaud Alois Leinweber for doing a thoroughly magnificent job of capturing the subtle flavors and nuances that make Malaysia so unique.

A bit of chamber music for the book launch

If I wished to nitpick, I might pounce on the fact that I found the ending a bit of an emotional letdown. As Malaysians we have become almost paralyzed by our inability to vote out the corrupt regime that has bled the national coffers for almost 44 years – or since the introduction in 1970 of a barely concealed apartheid system that has effectively promoted mediocrity to the very top, forcing a massive brain drain of talent and oppressing those who opt to stay).

It has reached the point where we feel deeply disappointed whenever the big fish get away with murder – as they invariably do, and continue to do so, even in works of fiction.

And this may sound petty but as a lifelong smoker, I couldn’t help feeling slightly affronted by his constant harping on people’s tobacco habits. But apart from that, Leinweber’s preliminary venture into pithy pulp fiction gave me so much pleasure, I am already looking forward to seeing Inspector Chee Keong and his assistant Haris Askandar in their next detective adventure.

Who knows, somebody might even have the good sense to buy the movie rights to this stimulating sizzler.

Jasmine for the Dead was originally written in German and published as Jasmin für einen Toten. The English translation was published under the Aletheia imprint in May 2014 and is distributed by Gerakbudaya.

[First posted 7 July 2014]