Possibly the best cartoon of the decade...

I personally would suggest government. 

They never go to jail.

[forwarded by Vijayadas Menon]

Umno's Mat Rempit Regime Must Go!

I was outraged by Darlene Bridget Luis's account of her nightmare experience with Mat Rempit as reported by Malaysiakini. It would appear that the PDRM are ever ready to intimidate, harass and arrest Abolish-ISA vigilers and young cyclists riding for justice - but when it comes to investigating serious crimes, they are worst than useless. Such appalling incompetence reflects extremely badly on Police Inspector General Tan Sri Musa Hassan (promoted by Mahathir for his complicity in the conspiracy to fix Anwar in 1998). Under Musa Hassan's watch, the PDRM has degenerated into a gang of uniformed thugs little better than their Mat Rempit cousins. The police no longer seem to serve the public interest - only their criminal bosses in Umno. Abdullah Ahmad Badawi abysmally failed in his avowed mission to reform the PDRM when he backed down from implementing the recommendations of the 2003 Royal Commission on the Police Force. Now the only way we can clean up the PDRM is to get rid of Umno/BN - the party of overaged Mat Rempit.

Darlene Bridget Luis recounts her ordeal at the hands of Mat Rempit



Two days after Deepavali, Darlene Bridget Luis returned from Singapore to spend some quality time with her family after being away for almost a month.

But the holiday turned into a nightmare the night she drove back home alone along the elevated highway of Jalan Ampang after attending a dinner.

The 25-year-old corporate manager was assaulted by Mat Rempits and sustained severe head and facial injuries and a broken leg. She also lost all her belongings.

Producer/Editor: Indrani Kopal
Camera: Shukri Mohamad

Khairy Jamaluddin, are the Mat Rempit still on your payroll?

[First posted 6 January 2009]

What brand of smartphones and tablets is ideal for UMNO BARU members?

UMNO (1946~1988) ... UMNO BARU (1988~?)

UMNO BARU president elected by 191 corrupt division chiefs

UMNO BARU vice-president in charge of homo affairs

Suck my keris!

UMNO BARU faithful ever ready to lie for their party

UMNO BARU thug threatening innocent bystanders with his shoe

UMNO BARU in the digital age, preparing for the Great War in Cyberspace

Who says the mentally and morally retarded can't use smartphones?

[First published 25 April 2012]

If We Let Najib Get Away With Murder... (a 3-year-old prophecy comes true!)

This is approximately how things are going to look

THAT'S RIGHT, FOLKS... PRETTY GODDAM UGLY!!!

Not only is Najib trying to murder participatory democracy in its crib, he has just stabbed all our hopes for peaceful change of government in the heart!

Like his father Tun Abdul Razak, this man is prepared to leave a legacy of bloodshed & violence just to cling to power. His father escaped public calumny simply because people didn't have access to the truth back in 1969 & so they believed the MSM spin that May 13 was all about race.

Well, folks, it's NEVER about race or religion. It's ALWAYS about unmitigated greed, powerlust, self-aggrandizement & refusing to be held accountable for crimes committed while in public office!


[First published 4 February 2009]

A BRIEF MESSAGE FOR BERSIH 3.0 FROM AMBIGA

Thank you so much, dear Ambiga and every brave soul behind the Bersih Movement. Never before in the history of our nation have so many been touched and inspired by what a small handful of determined individuals can achieve when they join minds, hearts, bodies and souls together to demand the elections be fair and clean - and we now know beyond any doubt that Barisan Nasional has been rigging the polls for many, many years just to stay in power and continue robbing us of our past, present and future - and all our rights as free citizens, especially the right to peacefully assemble in public spaces and voice our grievances or jubilation.

It's utterly incomprehensible that anybody in their right mind can be against Bersih 3.0's simple demand that the top echelon of the Election Commission step down immediately in view of their abysmal failure to perform their duties honorably and honestly. But, in a rogue regime where the incorrigibly corrupt, deceitful and hypocritical are allowed to rise to the highest ranks of government - where even an individual under suspicion of cold-blooded murder can be muscled into the top job - it would be naive to believe that the incumbent party is in any manner capable of reforming itself, no matter how much it spends on useless and extravagant public relations exercises.

On 9 July 2011, the Specter of May 13 was slain by the collective will of at least 50,000 who defied the police lockdown of Kuala Lumpur and took to the streets. Never again will anyone fear the possibility of racial riots. If anyone stirs up the shit, it will be none other than the uniformed or plainclothes hooligan auxiliaries of Umno, MIC or MCA.

28 April 2012 is the final showdown between the disintegrating Barisan Najis and the People of Malaysia. Whether or not you are able to be physically present at any of the 72 rallies worldwide, please help by visualizing Malaysia as a free nation where social justice, truth, compassion and wisdom have triumphed over atavistic tribalism, ego insecurity, moral depravity and insufferable hypocrisy.

The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen ~ George Monbiot

Illustration by Daniel Pudle

The very rich are often described as wealth creators. But they have preyed on the earth's natural wealth and their workers' labour and creativity, impoverishing both people and planet. 

Now they have almost bankrupted us. The wealth creators of neoliberal mythology are some of the most effective wealth destroyers the world has ever seen.

Until recently, we were mesmerised by the bosses' self-attribution. Their acolytes, in academia, the media, thinktanks and government, created an extensive infrastructure of junk economics and flattery to justify their seizure of other people's wealth. So immersed in this nonsense did we become that we seldom challenged its veracity.

This is now changing. On Sunday evening I witnessed a remarkable thing: a debate on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral between Stuart Fraser, chairman of the Corporation of the City of London, another official from the corporation, the turbulent priest Father William Taylor, John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network and the people of Occupy London. It had something of the flavour of the Putney debates of 1647. For the first time in decades – and all credit to the corporation officials for turning up – financial power was obliged to answer directly to the people.

It felt like history being made. The undeserving rich are now in the frame, and the rest of us want our money back.

[Read the whole illuminating essay here!]

Call me PR-ejudiced

PKR hosted a very well-attended public forum Saturday, July 18th, on the Perak powergrab, PKFZ fiasco, and BN's insidious machinations against us, the public. It was oddly appropriate that the Disneylandish Sunway Resort Hotel was picked as the venue for this pivotal event, which marked a powerful resurgence of the Reformasi spirit Anwar Ibrahim introduced to Malaysia in September 1998. That word spells death to the way Umno has been operating.

Jeffery Cheah's Sunway Hotel & Spa Complex and its kitschy theme park atmosphere perfectly symbolizes the nouveau-riche vulgarity and bad taste of the Mahathir era when Malaysia's middle class suddenly expanded by leaps and bounds. "Progress and development" became a national obsession - and also a cynical excuse for riding roughshod over environmental concerns and issues of social justice, as Mahathir Mohamad impatiently and imperiously goaded the nation towards a spurious notion of cosmetic modernity codenamed Vision 2020.

Along with a burgeoning bourgeoisie arose a new breed of Malaysian citizenry, plugged into digital tech, savvy about global events, and articulate enough to express its frustration with an Umno/BN regime bogged down by its own feudalistic mindset. A popular backlash against Mahathirism was one of the sociopolitical spinoffs of rapid modernization Mahathir did not foresee.

Anwar Ibrahim - the man who in 1998 dared to publicly stand up against Mahathir Mohamad 's despotic management style (and barely lived to tell the tale) - was the star attraction at the forum and he arrived to a standing ovation amidst a grand fanfare, accompanied by former MCA vice-president Chua Jui Meng, his wife Honey Hum, and two MCA veterans (one a retired senator, the other a former MP). A few days earlier rumors that Chua Jui Meng was about to defect and join PKR had spread throughout the blogosphere and were picked up by the mainstream media.

The forum opened with a hard-hitting, eloquent and heartfelt speech by PKR politiburo member and information chief for Selangor, Dr Tan Yee Kew, who pressed home the point that Umno/BN had disqualified itself as the government of the day because it had grown too "arrogant, corrupt and violent." Later, PKR vice-president Sivarasa Rasiah added two more adjectives to Dr Tan's description of the Barisan Nasional - devious and manipulative.

PKR treasurer William Leong presented a brief update on the colossal Port Klang Free Zone scandal which could ultimately cost the rakyat RM12.5 billion. It is abundantly clear that gross abuse of power, barefaced greed and opportunism on the part of MCA and Umno politicians and their political appointees were behind this monumental scam. And yet, the infamous Malaysian Anti-Corruption Agency has been outstandingly inert in its ongoing investigation into one of the most disgraceful and outrageous examples of catastrophic mismanagement in Malaysian history, involving two former transport ministers and a current cabinet minister.

Rally for Teoh Beng Hock at Kelana Jaya Stadium, 9 July 2009 (Malaysiakini)

Sivarasa Rasiah's insider's overview of Umno's sodomy conspiracy against Anwar was riveting, to say the least. The entire scenario is best described as tragicomic: tragic in view of the depths to which some have sunk to neutralize the serious political threat Anwar poses to their traditional hegemony; comic in that these malicious and vile personalities have so little going for them they have to sink even deeper into the quicksand of absolute despicability by hurling badly aimed (and mostly imaginary) loose sphincters at Anwar Ibrahim.

Chua Jui Meng's defection from the MCA and his decision to join PKR is certainly a shot in the arm for Pakatan Rakyat. Of all the MCA cabinet ministers, Chua's track record is relatively unblemished and he is widely admired for his articulateness, his intelligence, and his debonair personality.

Indeed, looking at Anwar and Chua sitting next to each other on stage, I was struck by the fact that they not only bear a physical resemblance but might well be, as Chua himself declared in his speech, "kindred spirits." Chua admitted that in all his years as an MCA member he had never felt so welcome or enjoyed such resounding applause from the floor.

One of the two MCA veterans who arrived with Chua, retired senator David Yeoh, went up to the podium and declared that at the ripe old age of 72, his decision to quit MCA's monoethnic politics and lend the full weight of his long experience to PKR's multiracial political platform has made him feel like a 27-year-old.

It's inevitable that these MCA veterans' well-timed defections will trigger a steady migration of Chinese voters into the ranks of PKR and greatly reinforce the party's claim to being the first truly multiracial, multicultural political party. Chua disclosed that having been an MCA stalwart for so many decades it wasn't at all easy for him to change horses in midstream. In fact he had been wavering till a few days ago... when news of Teoh Beng Hock's shocking and totally unwarranted death while undergoing MACC interrogation made him realize his options were clear and simple: go down with Umno/BN's rapidly sinking ship or help build a new Pakatan Rakyat vessel with a fresh vision of justice and freedom, an honorable and seasoned captain at the helm, and a far more competent crew.

Chua Jui Meng's dramatic entry into PKR occurs a little more than a month after Zaid Ibrahim announced his induction into the top echelons of PKR. These are politicians who bring their vast experience and sound reputations into PKR at a time when party supremo Anwar Ibrahim is faced with having to go through the same nightmare sodomy trial twice - both times engineered by the same malevolent forces of violent resistance to genuine reform.

All I can say is this: each and every one of the speakers at the PKR forum inspired and uplifted the audience with their passion, their lucid sense of human decency, and their dedication to democratic ideals. Indeed, so engaging and lively was the entire forum that I sat right through the proceedings from start to finish without even once being tempted to walk out for a pee or nicotine break. I can't imagine this extraordinary level of excitement or passion at any Umno/BN event.

Anwar himself was in top form and held the crowd mesmerized for nearly 30 minutes. The spontaneous outpouring of admiration, respect and love for this charismatic orator was a palpable sensation. As a motivational speaker driven by a lifelong missionary zeal on behalf of social justice and comprehensive political reform, nobody in Malaysia can touch Anwar Ibrahim.

There is no other prime ministerial candidate in sight at this juncture more deserving and more qualified than Anwar Ibrahim to lead Malaysia out of the moral quagmire that has retarded our mental and spiritual evolution for decades.

Yes, Malaysia, it's time for REFORM-AS-1 all the way!

If We Let Najib Get Away With Murder...

This is approximately how things are going to look

THAT'S RIGHT, FOLKS... PRETTY GODDAM UGLY!!!

Not only is Najib trying to murder participatory democracy in its crib, he has just stabbed all our hopes for peaceful change of government in the heart!

Like his father Tun Abdul Razak, this man is prepared to leave a legacy of bloodshed & violence just to cling to power. His father escaped public calumny simply because people didn't have access to the truth back in 1969 & so they believed the MSM spin that May 13 was all about race.

Well, folks, it's NEVER about race or religion. It's ALWAYS about unmitigated greed, powerlust, self-aggrandizement & refusing to be held accountable for crimes committed while in public office!