Official Version vs Conspiracy Theory (reprise)

Stumbled on this earlier and found it amusing. I have a feeling it was posted by a cop, as cops these days just wanna be bloggers (and bloggers just wanna be cops). All "official versions" have one thing in common: they are targeted at some fictitious man-in-the-street whose IQ does not exceed 55. Consider the Official Version of the sensational Altantuya murder which says she was probably killed by two off-duty cops at the instigation of a well-connected defence consultant and businessman. Nobody else was involved. If you buy this story, congratulations - you have an IQ that doesn't exceed 55! Well, I don't know who wrote this piece as the author chooses to remain anonymous, but you can read the entire entry here.

9/11: THE MOST RIDICULOUS CONSPIRACY THEORY OF ALL TIME!

According to the ever truth-telling government of the US and the ever accurate US media, the 9/11 attacks were planned by a sickly man hiding in a cave who just so happened to be a "former" CIA employee. The attacks were then carried out by 19 Arab hijackers who, just by chance, lived next door to the Israeli Mossad and magically somehow at least 7 of them remained alive after crashing planes into buildings. This is, of course, because each of the living hijackers had eaten those little green 1-up mushrooms from the Super Mario brothers and upon their death they just came back to life on earth as extra men. Claiming that these men could not possibly have carried out the attacks just because a few of them are alive is absurd. The magical 1-up mushrooms explain everything perfectly.

Next, two concrete and steel buildings which had been hit by airplanes burned near the top for about an hour and then suddenly fell straight down in a matter of seconds. Now we all know that Bin Laden was using a powerful genie to pull this off. You know all those bearded guys in caves in Arabia land have magic lamps and genies. Even though normally fire only burns and cannot break the laws of physics by causing steel beams to be cut at 45-degree angles thereby totally obliterating skyscrapers that were hundreds of stories high in a matter of seconds. Most fires also do not burn hot enough to leave molten steel in the basements weeks after the event... but with a magic genie it can be done IF it happened to be one of the three wishes every genie grants anyone who rubs his lamp. For more information on how this works watch the animated movie "Aladdin." They have the same funny hats and everything, so it's quite obvious.

Now I know what you're thinking: the Genie says he cannot carry out a wish to kill anyone. BUT you see... Bin Laden found a loop-hole. He did not say, "Kill those people in WTC!" He said, "Explode the buildings and make them fall into their own footprints as if they were blown up by controlled demolitions." That way the genie did not actually kill anyone he just made some buildings disintegrate and it just so happened that the COLLAPSING BUILDINGS killed a few thousand people. It was from this loop-hole in the 'wish formula' that Bin Laden could achieve his diabolical plan using his self-reincarnating hijackers with magic mushrooms and super-fire that acts like bombs - including in a building that was not even hit by a plane!

One thing nutty conspiracy theorists always bring up is the fact that the BBC said Building 7 had fallen when it was still standing. So what? Everybody knows that London, England, is 5 hours ahead of New York! As the BBC studio is in London, it had already happened THERE. Sheesh! Do we have to explain EVERYTHING to these conspiracy nuts?


Now in the Pentagon attack they did not need super-fire because the building was already low to the ground so remote control software was not used. No, it was the mushroom-munching, self-regenerating pilots that went out of their way to create a trail of evidence pointing to themselves - including a bag with a list of their names written in a neat hand, a driver's license and even a fire-resistant passport.

Later, anthrax letters linking the attacks to Israel's genocidal attacks against an indigenous Palestinian population in an apartheid state practising legalized torture and open ethnic cleansing, appeared in the press from addresses only 7 miles from Urban Moving Systems - a fake moving company that had been in and out of the WTC towers three weeks prior to September 11th. Were they a front for the Mossad whose agents posed as art students? No way!

This in no way implicates Israel in the attacks. After all, we know the anthrax was stolen by a Zionist Jew former worker (fired for being racist) from a fort in Maryland who was caught on tape entering the lab where the anthrax was scientifically proven to have come from. The fabricated tape of dancing Palestinians and the content of the anthrax letters was pure coincidence. As were the drills of the exact same event as 911 being done the morning of 911 which in no way could act as a cover should things go sour. And the MSM running the unscreened bogus tapes about Palestine on the evening of 9/11 was nothing like their stupid reports on people wearing yellow stars in Iran or the Straits of Hormuz event. Oh wait. Yes it was. (P.S. RFK was also killed by a Palestinian and not the CIA; likewise his brother JFK was shot by a lone gunman with a magic bullet that could change direction in mid-air and even cause the president's brain to go "missing" the way Dov S. Zakheim "disappeared" 2.3 trillion dollars from the Pentagon's bank account. But it's not like Dov S. Zakheim was the investigator for the 1993 WTC attacks... ha ha ha... oh wait a miniute, yes he was!

Dov S. Zakheim, Bush-appointed Pentagon financial comptroller from 2001-2004 under whose watch USD2.3 trillion disappeared. Zakheim also heads a research corporation called SPC International which holds the patent for Raytheon's Global Hawk remote controlled flight system. In 1993 Zakheim's firm Tridata took over management of the WTC security system. Zakheim is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and worked on the Project for the New American Century which advocates the necessity for a Pearl Harbor-type "incident" to mobilize the country into war with its enemies, mostly Middle Eastern Muslim nations. Intriguing, eh?

The Israelis caught dancing on the scene who had 5k stuffed in a sock and drove a van that got a hit from bomb-sniffing dogs, who just so happened to work for the Mossad (and were filming the entire event because their ESP powers had informed them something spectacular was about to happen) were then released by the FBI run by a dual citizen Zionist named Michael Chertoff whose cousin works for Popular Mechanics and was part of the 911 cover-up. But that is all just a big co-winky-dink. Happens all the time you know.

I often drive around downtown New York with a few grand stuffed in a sock in a vehicle with explosive residue and set up my camera to film terrorist attacks I have a hunch are about to happen; and then I dance like it's the greatest moment of my life. This is typical behavior, especially for people in covert intelligence agencies. Nothing fishy about that.

They are innocent. It was not the guys in New York filming the event and celebrating, who just happened to work for an intelligence agency known for false flags. It was the dancing children in Palestine who did the attack. I mean, which is more plausible? Come on. Israel can't do anything wrong plus "it was on Fox News." Plus all the evidence linking the Israelis to the attack is "classified." "Classified" is another powerful magic word. It means do whatever the hell you want and obstruct any attempt to investigate properly.

Later a pre-written 300-plus page bill was introduced by another Israeli dual citizen and got passed without even being read and then a new department called Homeland Security was created and the head honcho turned out to be the same guy who released the busted Mossad agents. Ha ha... pure synchronicity, you know.


Cheney, who ordered NORAD to stand down, was NOT rewarded by a 3000% increase in the value of Halliburton stock. His wife, the president of Lockheed, did not notice that Lockheed won the largest war contracts in the history of the world. Cheney was not paid off or rewarded in any way, because that would cause unnecessary suspicion. Oh, and there were also no 'put' options on that day or the week prior. And President Bush's brother, Marvin, was not the CEO of the insurance firm that sold a multi-billion-dollar policy to Larry Silverstein, who leased WTC a few months before September 11th. I mean, how would all that look?! Oh wait. If it is not on ABCNNBCBSFOX then it can't possibly exist. In the immortal words of New Age Guru Karl Rove: "We create our own reality."

[First posted 24 June 2008]

NO IMAGE EVER GOES TO WASTE... (expanded)

Nik Aziz loyalists watch in horror as Nasharudin Mat Isa 
returns after a night out with Najib.

Two who never found their way home from the PAS-UMNO unity talks.

The Erdogan Pussycat snug in the bosom of Sisters in Islam...

WARNING TO OWNERS OF CLAMSHELL CELLPHONES...
UNSUPERVISED USE CAN CAUSE IMPOTENCE!

Bottom-sniffers of the world, unite!

Another Kodiak moment.

Age-old question: is there humor in music?

In Michael Leunig We Trust...

Post begins with a pee.

How Vincent lost an ear.

Inspired Godzilla tat

Shooting ourselves in the foot (over and over again)...

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 Elon Musk, Brian Acton and Jan Koum (who developed PayPal and WhatsApp) 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 (best to leave out the interminable list of honorary titles).


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 Mail. Do you know why? Because no creative genius will give a fuck how much you paid for your designer silk batik 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?

[First published 28 November 2009, reposted 26 May 2012]

Flesh of the Ancestors (revisited)

On 17 March 2010, forty busloads of Orang Asli descended on Putrajaya to air their grievances directly to the prime minister. They were prevented by police from marching to the PM's office, but their strong showing and vigorous protest made the headlines in Malaysiakini. I am heartened to note that the worm has finally turned and that our indigenous tribes are no longer politically passive. As a tribute to their semangat (fighting spirit), I'm reposting this essay originally published here on 29 January 2007 and reposted 17 March 2010...


I can relate to the French painter Gauguin who took a libidinal shine to the native girls of Tahiti. There is something irresistible about bronze, rubbery, supple, brown skin - and the edenic innocence that flashes in their shy smiles. Pagan eyes that turn prudish at puberty, because their mothers keep yelling "Malu!" ("Shame!") when they skinny-dip with ripening bosoms and pubes. Contact with "civilization" taught them to feel ashamed of their own simplicity, made them into "primitives" living below the poverty line.

And yet, seeing a bunch of Orang Asli kids play like otters in the river is nothing less than a glimpse of paradise. You can't stay cynical or depressed in such an environment. The verdant landscape itself is balm for the eyes, as much as the sparkling waters are a treat for the senses.

The Orang Asli soul is bonded with the land, the living earth, nature itself. In mythic terms they regard their wild habitats as the petrified flesh of their ancestors.

Just as Native Americans once revered the buffalo as a benevolent manifestation of Wakan Tanka (Great Spirit), a parental sacrifice to feed the children, the Temuan view each species of flora and fauna as a gift from heaven, as food, medicine, friend, or shelter.

The younger ones have all but forgotten, born as they were into homes with TV sets bombarding all and sundry with images of a Brave New World, where ancient wisdom and traditional ways are dismissed as irrelevancies or mere superstition. But the older ones know there is no separation between the land and life itself.

To destroy nature is to murder the Life Force that sustains all existence - and therefore it is viewed as the ultimate wrongdoing, akin to forgetting one's roots and turning one's back on all that is considered divine.

Well, that's a very general overview of the Temuan mythos, which applies to just about every indigenous culture you can name - at least the ones that haven't been completely assimilated and subsumed by industrial society. However, admiring their resilience of spirit, their innocence, and their wealth of hand-me-down knowledge is one thing. Living with them at close quarters is quite another. They can certainly drive an essentially middle-class, former urbanite like myself round the bend with exasperation.

There seems to be a testosterone-related problem with the males: as soon as they turn 18, a sullen surliness bordering on xenophobia grips them. The modest wages they earn cutting grass on road verges or gathering bamboo for the Chinese towkays are mostly spent getting totally pissed at the local bar; and then they fall off their motorbikes and the rest of their hard-earned pay goes into repairing them. If they happen to be married with kids, their wives quickly turn into nags - because it's not uncommon that their husbands will stagger home late at night stinking of cheap plonk, without any food for the family. Apparently, this happens wherever indigenous "dreamtime" cultures collide with industrial "machinetime" societies. Anthropologists generally agree that the trauma of "culture shock" so disorientates the tribal folk they become dispirited - and therefore attempt to regain their spirits by imbibing vast amounts of the bottled variety.


But as long as our tribal folk have the forest to return to, they have a chance of eventually regaining their psychic equilibrium. My chief contractor on the Bamboo Palace project, Yam Kokok, really enjoyed the process of gathering about 3,000 bertam leaves to weave into roofing material for Anoora's hut. First he built a cozy lean-to while his wife began lining bamboo tubes with fragrant leaves, before stuffing them with rice to boil on a woodfire. The widow Lumoh had packed some salted fish and bottles of clear spring water. They were all set for a long day's work, cutting the thorny bertam leaves and carefully weaving them into attap. Yam Kokok's grandson and nephews all came along to help and I could see that the six days they spent "camping out" in the forest reminded them of the good old days - even though every evening I'd pick them up in my van and chauffeur them back to the village and some home comforts.

The forest is the Orang Asli's briar patch; their racial memory of being sustained by Mother Nature goes back thousands of generations. Chop down the trees and replant the land with cash crops like rubber and oil palm - and the Orang Asli become rootless, disconnected from their own past, insecure about their future and therefore apathetic.

True, some of the younger generation have adapted quite well to video games and factory jobs; a handful of Semai and Semelai have even made it all the way through university, and have become academics and doctors.

A year ago or so I was contacted by three enterprising young Temuans with university degrees. They told me they had stumbled upon my website back in 2003, but waited till they were fluent in English to send me an email! One of them, Shahar Koyok, is a fine arts graduate who's beginning to make his mark in the local art scene; another, Mor Ajani, graduated in multimedia design and maintains a Temuan blog. What deeply gratified me was their passionate interest and pride in their own mythic roots.

It's easy to demonize the Jabatan Hal Ehwal Orang Asli (Aboriginal Affairs Department) but it's really just a case of horribly misaligned worldviews. JHEOA officers, mostly urbanized Malays, scorn their own humble ancestry and sincerely believe they can persuade the Orang Asli to join the mainstream Malay community. Their strategy is two-pronged: first, systematically convert the jungle into plantations, so the Orang Asli can't hide in the past; and then convert these diehard animists into pious little Muslims.

I've long advocated that the JHEOA (instituted in 1954 during the Emergency years) be dismantled, as it serves little real purpose today except to breed the most loathsome varieties of bureaucratic ineptitude and corruption.

Think about it: how would you like being treated as a minor all your life and have some government agency manage your affairs as if you were severely retarded? If everybody else who enjoys Malaysian citizenship is free to live without an official guardian, why must our first peoples endure such an ignominy?

The argument that Orang Asli need a "protector" because they are still largely illiterate and can't cope with the demands of the modern world is a totally spurious one. First of all, after more than fifty years under the JHEOA's thumb, the Orang Asli have gained little ground in mastering left-brained activities like learning to manipulate alphanumeric symbols. The question is: why not capitalize on their strengths instead?

Most Orang Asli are physically agile, imaginative, fun-loving, and possess incredible stamina: in areas like sports and the arts, they would certainly be champs. Well, some descendants of African slaves in America have made their mark as athletes, musicians, actors, and dancers: would you think of Charlie Mingus, Michael Jordan, B.B. King, Eddie Murphy, Tina Turner, Ludacris, or Will and Jada Pinkett Smith as handicapped or backward?

What keeps the Orang Asli insulated from the outside world is the Jabatan Orang Asli's feudal mentality. That and the noxious effects of a patriarchal bias the Orang Asli got infected with along the way. Traditionally, the menfolk have been the hunters and womenfolk, the gatherers and nurturers.

In Kampung Pertak, there are quite a few unmarried mothers - girls of 17 who got knocked up after some smooth-talking fellow handed them a Guinness at an all-night wedding party. With so many kids bawling and crawling around the house, 12-year-old girls are often forced to look after their younger siblings while both parents are out working. By the time they reach 15 or 16, many end up as mothers themselves, which gives them little time or opportunity to grow mentally. So we have generation after generation of Orang Asli kids raised by completely ignorant mothers with little on their minds apart from neighborhood gossip and a bleak view of marital life.

All this would change if teenaged dating was accepted as something perfectly natural. When I first asked my mother-in-law if I could take Anoora down to town and buy her a meal, I was told we would have to be engaged before she would allow it. In other words, the relationship between men and women is always a sexual one; post-pubescent boys and girls simply cannot be friends and go out together. They end up getting married very young, prompted by hormonal surges, and never really have the chance to interact with a variety of friends, of different ages and genders, and therefore lack the means of acquiring communication skills and a broader perspective on things.

Most families in the past slept together in one large room with no partitions - or only very thin ones, at best. Obviously, sex was something carried out under cover of darkness, furtively, quietly (so as not to wake the kids), almost involuntarily - and never became an artform, or developed any degree of kinkiness, as it has in the cities.

I witnessed what happened when a young friend of mixed parentage from the big city started dating a village beauty from Pertak. On their very first secret rendezvous, she had asked if he was going to marry her (that's what he reported). Soon, the whole village was bristling with resentment at the urban Romeo. Even little children, no more than 8 or 9 years old, would taunt him as he drove past; the men in the village became more and more hostile, sabotaging his vehicle wherever he parked it, glaring at him with hands on their parangs. Posses of grandmothers and babes-in-arm would confront him at his rented lodgings in the village, demanding to know where he was hiding the girl. They gave him no peace until he buckled under the pressure and married the girl in a tribal ceremony.

Now the girl in question has had several lovers, and at 18 gave birth unexpectedly to a baby girl while trying to move her bowels, thinking it was one huge stomach upset she was experiencing. As to be expected, she's a lot more savvy and sophisticated than the other girls in the village. She could certainly learn to cope with life in the city, and has actually expressed a desire to someday get a job in KL.

Now, is there any correlation between an active sex life and intellectual curiosity? Remember that biblical myth about the forbidden fruit? Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll (or hip-hop or techno-rave, if you prefer) are definitely evolutionary triggers - that's why the patriarchy everywhere is so determined to outlaw them. What would happen to the Orang Asli if their youth got into sex, drugs and rock'n'roll in a big way?

Soon, they'd become pretty much the same as you and me, don't you think? And maybe that will prompt cityfolks to adopt more of the Orang Asli lifestyle - to reconnect with the earth, with Mother Nature, fresh air and sunshine. Sort of a cultural exchange: they become more experienced like us, and we become more innocent like them. Perhaps that's how things will ultimately balance out, and paradise will be regained on earth.

------
Recommended reading:

Proposed Orang Asli land policy: Planned poverty? [Aliran]

[First posted 24 May 2014]

Flesh of the Ancestors (reprise)

Halus in 1999 (photo: Colin Nicholas)

I can relate to the French painter Gauguin who took a libidinal shine to the native girls of Tahiti. There is something irresistible about bronze, rubbery, supple, brown skin - and the edenic innocence that flashes in their shy smiles. Pagan eyes that turn prudish at puberty, because their mothers keep yelling "Malu!" ("Shame!") when they skinny-dip with ripening bosoms and pubes. Contact with "civilization" taught them to feel ashamed of their own simplicity, made them into "primitives" living below the poverty line. 

And yet, seeing a bunch of Orang Asli kids play like otters in the river is nothing less than a glimpse of paradise. You can't stay cynical or depressed in such an environment. The verdant landscape itself is balm for the eyes, as much as the sparkling waters are a treat for the senses. The Orang Asli soul is bonded with the land, the living earth, nature itself. 

In mythic terms they regard their wild habitats as the petrified flesh of their ancestors. Just as Native Americans once revered the buffalo as a benevolent manifestation of Wakan Tanka (Great Spirit), a parental sacrifice to feed the children, the Temuan view each species of flora and fauna as a gift from heaven, as food, medicine, friend, or shelter. 

The younger ones have all but forgotten, born as they were into homes with TV sets bombarding all and sundry with images of a Brave New World, where ancient wisdom and traditional ways are dismissed as irrelevancies or mere superstition. 

But the older ones know there is no separation between the land and life itself. To destroy nature is to murder the Life Force that sustains all existence - and therefore it is viewed as the ultimate wrongdoing, akin to forgetting one's roots and turning one's back on all that is considered divine. 

Well, that's a very general overview of the Temuan mythos, which applies to just about every indigenous culture you can name - at least the ones that haven't been completely assimilated and subsumed by industrial society. However, admiring their resilience of spirit, their innocence, and their wealth of hand-me-down knowledge is one thing. Living with them at close quarters is quite another. They can certainly drive an essentially middle-class, former urbanite like myself round the bend with exasperation. 

There seems to be a testosterone-related problem with the males: as soon as they turn 18, a sullen surliness bordering on xenophobia grips them. The modest wages they earn cutting grass on road verges or gathering bamboo for the Chinese towkays are mostly spent getting totally pissed at the local bar; and then they fall off their motorbikes and the rest of their hard-earned pay goes into repairing them. If they happen to be married with kids, their wives quickly turn into nags - because it's not uncommon that their husbands will stagger home late at night stinking of cheap plonk, without any food for the family. 

Apparently, this happens wherever indigenous "dreamtime" cultures collide with industrial "machinetime" societies. Anthropologists generally agree that the trauma of "culture shock" so disorientates the tribal folk they become dispirited - and therefore attempt to regain their spirits by imbibing vast amounts of the bottled variety. But as long as our tribal folk have the forest to return to, they have a chance of eventually regaining their psychic equilibrium. My chief contractor on the Bamboo Palace project, Yam Kokok, really enjoyed the process of gathering about 3,000 bertam leaves to weave into roofing material for Anoora's hut. First he built a cozy lean-to while his wife began lining bamboo tubes with fragrant leaves, before stuffing them with rice to boil on a woodfire. The widow Lumoh had packed some salted fish and bottles of clear spring water. They were all set for a long day's work, cutting the thorny bertam leaves and carefully weaving them into attap. 

Yam Kokok's grandson and nephews all came along to help and I could see that the six days they spent "camping out" in the forest reminded them of the good old days - even though every evening I'd pick them up in my van and chauffeur them back to the village and some home comforts. The forest is the Orang Asli's briar patch; their racial memory of being sustained by Mother Nature goes back thousands of generations. Chop down the trees and replant the land with cash crops like rubber and oil palm - and the Orang Asli become rootless, disconnected from their own past, insecure about their future and therefore apathetic. 

True, some of the younger generation have adapted quite well to video games and factory jobs; a handful of Semai and Semelai have even made it all the way through university, and have become academics and doctors (though I know of no such examples from the Temuan tribe). It's easy to demonize the Jabatan Orang Asli (Aboriginal Affairs Department or JAKOA) but it's really just a case of horribly misaligned worldviews. JAKOA officers, mostly urbanized Malays, scorn their own humble ancestry and sincerely believe they can persuade the Orang Asli to join the mainstream Malay community. 

Their strategy is two-pronged: first, systematically convert the jungle into plantations, so the Orang Asli can't hide in the past; and then convert these diehard animists into pious little Muslims. I've long advocated that JAKOA (instituted in 1954 during the Emergency years) be dismantled, as it serves little real purpose today except to breed the most loathsome varieties of bureaucratic ineptitude and corruption. 

Think about it: how would you like being treated as a minor all your life and have some government agency manage your affairs as if you were severely retarded? If everybody else who enjoys Malaysian citizenship is free to live without an official guardian, why must our first peoples endure such an ignominy? The argument that Orang Asli need a "protector" because they are still largely illiterate and can't cope with the demands of the modern world is a totally spurious one. 

First of all, after more than fifty years under the JAKOA's thumb, the Orang Asli have gained little ground in mastering left-brained activities like learning to manipulate alphanumeric symbols. The question is: why not capitalize on their strengths instead? Most Orang Asli are physically agile, imaginative, fun-loving, and possess incredible stamina: in areas like sports and the arts, they would certainly be champs. Well, some descendants of African slaves in America have made their mark as athletes, musicians, actors, and dancers: would you think of Charlie Mingus, Michael Jordan, B.B. King, Eddie Murphy, Tina Turner, Ludacris, or Will and Jada Pinkett Smith as handicapped or backward?

What keeps the Orang Asli insulated from the outside world is the Jabatan Orang Asli's feudal mentality. That and the noxious effects of a patriarchal bias the Orang Asli got infected with along the way. Traditionally, the menfolk have been the hunters and womenfolk, the gatherers and nurturers. In Kampung Pertak, there are quite a few unmarried mothers - girls of 17 who got knocked up after some smooth-talking fellow handed them a Guinness at an all-night wedding party. With so many kids bawling and crawling around the house, 12-year-old girls are often forced to look after their younger siblings while both parents are out working. By the time they reach 15 or 16, many end up as mothers themselves, which gives them little time or opportunity to grow mentally. 

So we have generation after generation of Orang Asli kids raised by completely ignorant mothers with little on their minds apart from neighborhood gossip and a bleak view of marital life. All this would change if teenaged dating was accepted as something perfectly natural. When I first asked my mother-in-law if I could take Anoora down to town and buy her a meal, I was told we would have to be engaged before she would allow it. 

In other words, the relationship between men and women is always a sexual one; post-pubescent boys and girls simply cannot be friends and go out together. They end up getting married very young, prompted by hormonal surges, and never really have the chance to interact with a variety of friends, of different ages and genders, and therefore lack the means of acquiring communication skills and a broader perspective on things.

Most families in the past slept together in one large room with no partitions - or only very thin ones, at best. Obviously, sex was something carried out under cover of darkness, furtively, quietly (so as not to wake the kids), almost involuntarily - and never became an artform, or developed any degree of kinkiness, as it has in the cities. 

I witnessed what happened when a young friend of mixed parentage from the big city started dating a village beauty from Pertak. On their very first secret rendezvous, she had asked if he was going to marry her (that's what he reported). Soon, the whole village was bristling with resentment at the urban Romeo. Even little children, no more than 8 or 9 years old, would taunt him as he drove past; the men in the village became more and more hostile, sabotaging his vehicle wherever he parked it, glaring at him with hands on their parangs. Posses of grandmothers and babes-in-arm would confront him at his rented lodgings in the village, demanding to know where he was hiding the girl. 

They gave him no peace until he buckled under the pressure and married the girl in a tribal ceremony. Now the girl in question has had several lovers, and at 18 gave birth unexpectedly to a baby girl while trying to move her bowels, thinking it was one huge stomach upset she was experiencing. As to be expected, she's a lot more savvy and sophisticated than the other girls in the village. She could certainly learn to cope with life in the city, and has actually expressed a desire to someday get a job in KL. 

Now, is there any correlation between an active sex life and intellectual curiosity? Remember that biblical myth about the forbidden fruit? Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll (or hip-hop or techno-rave, if you prefer) are definitely evolutionary triggers - that's why the patriarchy everywhere is so determined to outlaw them. What would happen to the Orang Asli if their youth got into sex, drugs and rock'n'roll in a big way? 

Soon, they'd become pretty much the same as you and me, don't you think? And maybe that will prompt cityfolks to adopt more of the Orang Asli lifestyle - to reconnect with the earth, with Mother Nature, fresh air and sunshine. Sort of a cultural exchange: they become more experienced like us, and we become more innocent like them. Perhaps that's how things will ultimately balance out, and paradise will be regained on earth. 

NEWSFLASH: Tanah Tujuh: Close Encounters with the Temuan Mythos will be launched by Silverfish Books during the Kuala Lumpur International Literary Festival, 28-30 March 2007!

[First posted 29 January 2007]

MORE THAN A MERE FESTIVAL (repost)

Opening Ceremony and Welcome Party, 12 July 2007

RAINFOREST WORLD MUSIC FESTIVAL (13-15 JULY 2007): the 10th edition of Sarawak’s best and biggest gawai*

It gets harder and harder to review Sarawak’s Rainforest World Music Festival without sounding like someone who’s had a lobotomy and can’t stop grinning like an imbecile. Especially when this was the great 10th anniversary reunion we’d been anticipating since the end of last year’s bash.

So I’ll start from the bottom of the scale of joy with the unmistakable pong of dogshit as I checked into my room at the Santubong Resort, which houses the performers and media guests every year. Then I noticed the dogs and their handlers stationed around Cell Blocks 8 and 9 (which accentuated the penitentiary architecture of this remotely-located 3-star hotel all the more). I found out later the dogs were part of a bomb-sniffing team imported from the Philippines for the occasion. The Sarawak Tourism Board was taking no chances. A 55-man security team from Miri was on hand to scan festival-goers at the entrance with metal detectors. Sign of the paranoid times…

But the moment the music begins the untameable magic of Santubong kicks in… and petty discomforts like the clammy heat and long queues for the shuttles fade from memory. How many sweet and sweaty bodies were counted on Saturday night alone, grooving to the music? 9,000…11,000? I don’t know, but from where I stood near the stage it was certainly the hugest crowd I’ve seen since the festival’s quiet start in 1998.


On the bill were 19 of the hottest acts drawn from the previous nine years: Black Umfolosi, the ever-popular gumboot-dancing a capella group from Zimbabwe made their third appearance – and, once again, had the crowd waving their hands and singing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” in perfect unison. Gets a tad tiresome for the jaded ones like me – but it’s soulful stuff, I admit.

Black Umfolosi strut their stuff on the first night of the festival

Also on their third round were Shooglenifty – the Edinburgh-based “acidcroft” band that’s been cranking out their own brand of funky Celtic fusion since 1990 and has acquired a laid-back sophistication along with an iconic mystique. Core members Angus Grant (fiddle), Garry Finlayson (banjo), Malcolm Crosbie (guitar), and James MacIntosh (drums) were a joy to behold in action; Luke Plumb, their 28-year-old mandolin player from Tasmania, combined teen appeal with prodigious technique, and new bassist Quee MacArthur was rock solid (though I found myself missing their former bassist Conrad Ivitsky’s syncopative agility).

Shooglenifty rides again at the Rainforest World Music Festival!

The third band to have played three times at the RWMF was Inka Marka – a South American group based in Melbourne. As usual, their mellifluous voices blended with panpipes, charango, and flute to conjure the uplifting poignancy of the Andes.

The Tuvan throat-singers of Huun Huur Tu teamed up once again with Russian techno-trance band Malerija to effect a molecular shift amongst the tranced-out crowd. The first time they performed in 2003 there was a full moon which magnified the general euphoria.

From Madagascar we had Tarika Be, featuring the alluring sisters Hanitra (pronounced “Anch”) and Noro, with an instrumentalist named Njaka in tow, whose sensitivity as a musician was remarkable for one so young.

Hanitra’s songs of freedom, courage, and nonconformity – and her irresistibly sexy stage image – were in stark contrast to her demure and prayerful solo performance on the small stage, accompanied only by the delicate lyricism of Njaka’s valihy (a bamboo zither originally from Borneo, which has strong genetic and cultural links to Madagascar).

Throughout the three days the general atmosphere was one of jubilation and joy. There was one outbreak of drunken aggro, promptly managed by the security crew, but the greatest annoyance by far were several loudmouthed sons-of-lumberjacks who insisted on jabbering inanely near the stage during quiet moments. However, even the intrusive foreground noise (compounded by the moans and sighs of tabla-player Siar Hachimi’s all-girls fan club) couldn’t deter Ensemble Kaboul from delivering a superb and heartfelt performance.

Khaled Arman, master of the rebab (which he plays like a sitar) engages with Siar Hachimi on tabla

Mas Y Mas captured in action on 13/07/07 by Antares

Arguably the biggest hit this year were Mas Y Mas – an entire Latin Afro-Cuban orchestra compressed into an ebullient trio from Nottingham, U.K. Featuring a spritely Wayne D. Evans on a hundred-year-old doublebass, Richard Kensington on percussion, and the incredibly talented Rikki Thomas-Martinez on guitar and lead vocals, Mas Y Mas (which means “more and more”) are indeed well-named. Every time they played - on stage or at their Latin Rhythms workshop - people kept demanding more and more of their infectious music and wit. Mas Y Mas first played at the RWMF in 2004 and instantly fell in love with Malaysia. Certainly it’s been a love reciprocated.

The Doghouse Skiffle Group from Hull went down pretty well too, considering the trio specializes in tongue-in-cheek cowboy tunes. Keith Cheesman held it together with his chunky rhythm guitar, Alan Harman did smirking chimp impersonations while thumping his one-string tea-chest bass, and Garry Pullen mesmerized the crowd with Hopalong Cassidy poses, Texan boots, and whimsical kazoo and washboard solos. Their audacious cover of the Beatles’ A Day in the Life (introduced as “an old English folksong”) qualifies them as past masters of their craft.

At their first appearance two years ago the Foghorn Stringband from Oregon got the crowd square-dancing under the stars. As traditional American country bands go, Foghorn plays as tight as it gets – but after three numbers their songs start sounding pretty much the same. From Peninsular Malaysia we had the Aseana Percussion Unit which features gifted homegrown percussionists like Kamrul Bahri Hussin and Kirubakaran. The group’s colourful exuberance and its muhibbah repertoire of crowd-pleasing numbers carried it through – but they were conspicuously lacking in emotional depth and musical substance.

Khac Chi, a versatile, Vancouver-based husband-and-wife act from Vietnam, are in a class of their own in terms of sheer musical skill and entertainment value. They travel with a portable museum of traditional and homemade instruments – mostly bamboo, with a few constructed by Chi himself from rubber honkers.

Bich and Chi have perfected a workshop routine with high amusement and amazement quotients

Also from Vancouver was the venerable multi-instrumentalist Randy Raine-Reusch (who proposed the idea of the RWMF ten years ago and served as festival director for the first few years). Randy’s presence as “proud daddy” added to the celebratory atmosphere - while his astonishing prowess on an exotic array of ethnic instruments was an education in itself. His inspired but all-too-brief performance - brilliantly backed by Johari Morshidi and Ainal Johari on percussion - encapsulated the essence of what “world music” is all about.

Randy Raine-Reusch & Tabuh Pak Ainal improvise on dulcimer, djembe and Malay drums

Sarawak was represented by sape virtuoso Jerry Kamit; a dynamic father-and-son percussion act called Tabuh Pak Ainal (named after Johari Morshidi’s precocious 16-year-old son Ainal, who began performing at 7); and the 30-member Kelapang Kelabit Bamboo Band (whose early set I unfortunately missed).

Mah Meri ceremonies and rituals are a rare and spectacular visual feast

However, I was very glad I caught the Mah Meri of Carey Island in action. Theirs was a visually spectacular act, rarely seen outside the confines of tribal tradition, and I was impressed by how impeccably they presented themselves before such a huge crowd of strangers. Another great opening act I witnessed was the item by Anak Adi’ Rurum – a beautiful bunch of Kelabit youngsters under the tutelage of Nikki Lugun whose sincerity and passion to preserve a fading culture brought an unexpected tear to the eye.

Tammorra, a rousing Sicilian group with impressive vocal power and musicality, was a very welcome rerun. As was Shannon from Poland – a big hit in 2005 with their virile Celtic folkrock sound. However, this time around, the band had evolved in a different direction with a major change of personnel: Marcin Drabik had joined them on electric violin with a flamboyance reminiscent of Jean-Luc Ponty on steroids, and band leader Marcin Ruminski’s delectable fiancée Maria Namyslowska was featured on keyboards and vocals, contributing not only a feminine element but also fresh musical ideas. Not everybody was pleased with the new Shannon sound – but I found it ecstatic, triumphal, adventurous, and even more danceable.

As is often the case, the real finale happened spontaneously after the festival – when Enrique Sanchez (Inka Marka) and Rikki Thomas-Martinez (Mas Y Mas) began singing romantic Latin duets at the poolside and Garry Finlayson (Shooglenifty) whipped out his banjo and proceeded to play some exquisitely epiphanic riffs. Soon the Foghorn fellows began insinuating their prudish 4/4 beats into the mix - but just as I was on the verge of wandering off to bed, a few members of Black Umfolosi jumped in with their Zulu chants and transformed the cowpokes into true-blue world musicians. I finally dragged myself from that festive scene with the trill of magpies serenading the dawn.

EPILOGUE

The Sarawak Tourism Board has done such a great job with the Rainforest World Music Festival it has now become a famous fruit-bearing tree whose seeds are being planted in other gardens. Indeed, Penang just hosted its first world music festival from July 20-22 with RWMF artistic director Yeoh Jun Lin leading the team. And rightly so, for Ms Yeoh herself was originally a product of Penang.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE SARAWAK TOURISM BOARD
VIDEO CLIPS © ANTARES/MAGICK RIVER

[More video clips will be added as I finish editing and compressing. Bookmark this blogpost and return over the next few days for more great moments from RWMF 2007!]

*This review first published @ kakiseni.com

First posted 26 July 2007, reposted 11 October 2020

EARTH PRAYER (revisited)

This prayer was channeled 28 October 2003 specifically for the Harmonic Concordance of 8-9 November 2003...

Great Mother Earth... Gracious Embodiment of Gaia:
I embrace your beauty and bounty with all my heart!
With profound gratitude and sublime joy,
I sing your praises with every breath -
You are the Divine Matrix of Life,
The Sacred Being that knows no death!
You are beyond struggle and strife,
The promise of Paradise regained;
Vision of glory, power, and love reclaimed!


Great Mother Earth... Gracious Embodiment of Gaia:
Your blessings are infinite and rainbow-hued!
For our sake you have known pain and sorrow -
You have been pillaged, plundered and raped -
But the sins of yesterday will not stain tomorrow!
Your children are all awakening now to truth:
We solemnly vow to honor you
And your many-splendored biosphere,
As we plant on your lips true love's first kiss.

Gaia by Sabrine Moles

Great Mother Earth... Gracious Embodiment of Gaia:
O Sleeping Beauty... Awake and Ascend
In peace, harmony, and perfection!
Peace, Harmony, and Perfection!
Peace, Harmony, and Perfection!

Great Mother Earth... you are our Home!
Great Mother Earth... we have Come Home!
Great Mother Earth... My Beloved Home...
Om Sweet Home
Om Sweet Home
Hommmmmmmmme
Is where the Heart is!
Hommmmmmmmme
Is where the Heart is!
And so it is.
So it is.

28 October 2003






[First posted 2 December 2010. Reposted 29 August 2014, 24 May 2015 & 

24 March 2020]

From Dragon Slayer to Dragon Rider ~ The Spiral of Conscious Evolution

Midgard Serpent by Alicia Smith

Mystics (and more often these days scientists too) speak of the planet as a living, breathing organism - a macro form of ourselves, actually. Gaia-Sophia, Pachamama, Lady Melina, Mother Earth are some of the names we call her. Just like us her body is a complex nexus of electrical circuitry and magnetic fields. Mountainous areas have long been regarded as sacred, with many serving as geodetic chakras where leylines or dragon paths converge.

Mount Meru as the electromagnetic axis of the world

During the last evolutionary cycle, Mount Meru (located in the Transhimalayan mountain range formed when tectonic plates collided) marked the spiritual axis of the planet. It was said to be where the head of the World Snake (or the Midgard Serpent of Nordic mythology) was located.

Then some 60 years ago (shortly before China invaded Tibet) the World Snake began to migrate, making its way slowly towards the Andes where its head now rests. The World Snake symbolizes the planetary kundalini or activated energy field; and all along its body you will find power spots and sacred sites. Often the serpent's body also marks the meeting of tectonic plates.

Earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis and flashfloods are signs of the World Snake moving. When it moves volcanoes erupt, the ground shakes, and our daily routines are enormously disrupted (and, yes, death may be considered an abrupt termination of our everyday reality). Sometimes entire cities and continents are destroyed. And we are reminded to take heed of the fact that our physical existence is precarious and never totally predictable. Indeed, we build our towns and cities on the back of a sleeping giant whose slumber can last decades, centuries, millennia... lulling us into the complacency of busyness-as-usual.

In the past humans have sought to slay the dragon in a quest to obtain fame and fortune (for where dragons sleep it is believed great treasure can be found). The dragon or World Snake represents the elemental, primordial reality from which all life as we know it emerged. We cannot kill it without ultimately killing ourselves.

When we awaken to the cellular knowing that the planet (and ultimately the galaxy and the whole universe) is an extension of our physical and metaphysical selves, and that life itself is fractal and holographic in nature, we will spontaneously become empathetic and compassionate and begin to resonate and consciously navigate with elegance and gracefulness, with masterful restraint and gentle wisdom.

Lord Vishnu relishing his own Dream of the Universe

We will opt to learn how to ride the dragon, rather than foolishly attempt to kill it. We will get good at surfing the electromagnetic waves. And we can begin to do so by becoming conscious, individually and as a species, of the cosmic context of our being; by paying constant attention to the bigger picture and looking up every now and then from our rice bowl (or plate of quinoa) and remembering we are indeed unique parts of a magnificent Wholeness, born from the active imagination of Vishnu, the Dreaming God.

Many of us will revel in the Cosmic Dream, losing ourselves time and again in the illusion of separation, entranced by the shadow-play of Maya. And some of us will identify with the Dreamer instead of the Dream, the Eternal rather than the Ephemeral. So that when the Dream is over, we can yawn and rub our eyes and put the kettle on and enjoy a hearty breakfast before imagining another universe.

Antares
26 April 2015

SONG OF THE DRAGON

[Originally posted 10 January 2017, reposted 6 August 2019]