Blog Title: matchstick steps

toni kasim

i can't remember the first time i met you. it seems as though you have always been present, with a huge breathtaking hug and a smile that just knocks all doubts away. how can the world begin to spell the loss of you? i just saw a video in tribute to you. and you are there, speaking, your voice sounding just like how it always is, strong, questioning, challenging, always with a hint of a laugh underneath. i cannot remember the sound of your laughter, and that really hurts me.

do you know just how much you are loved? do you know how beautiful you are, in your presence, in your life, in everything that you do and touch and see? you are like the heart of a ripple, imperceptible and humble in your constant agitation of complacency. and we have not yet seen the end of those ripples you have caused. change upon change. awakening upon awakening. you inspire.

everytime i have the chance of having a conversation with you, i leave a fuller person. did you know you do that to people? you make me feel with earth under my feet, you make me think with the tireless spinning of webs inside my head, forming question marks that are sparked by fire, pushing me to act, however small my hands and feet, they can move and make and break and create. after each conversation, you make me believe that.

when i was drowning myself in a sea full of guilt and inadequacy, for not doing more, for not giving more, you were always so light and honest in your appreciation, all scales fall away and dissolve into resolve. it doesn't matter. what matters is everything that is, and everything that could possibly be. humility. you teach me humility.

and you have opened me to a kind of love i did not realise is possible. without lines, without trade, without spaces. you are so wise. you are so sharp. you dance in the waves of cheeky laughter. you are truly, someone the world was not prepared to deserve. and is not prepared to lose.

there is an absence that a century of grieving could not shadow the form of exactly how deep, how much we have lost. all i know is i miss you so much. an insensible craving that cannot begin to grasp the fact that you are gone. with love toni. you are a magical blessing.

an indescribable loss

tahlil for toni kasim tonight (wed) at 7pm, at mosque near subang old airport. mosque has no name but apparently you jjst do a 3 o'clock at the roundabout and you'll see it. should last from maghrib to isya'. it's not exactly a multi-faith ceremony but friends of all faiths are welcome to be in the mosque compound to remember her in everyone's unique way. do pass the message on.

signing a petition

the internet has turned me into a one-click activist. all i need is connectivity, a kind of name, an email address. i don't have to leave my room, i don't even have to get up from my chair, i don't have to experience or touch or smell. all i need to do is see through an interface, read and have a split second think. then insert my name and click.

today, i received an email that called for a petition to boycott an artist - Guillermo Vargas "Habacuc"- from representing his country at the Bienal Centroamericana Honduras 2008. I'm not sure what the event is, apart from being some kind of art exhibition.

he definitely caught a stray dog from the streets, leashed it with a rope inside a gallery in nicaragua last year as his art piece for an exhibition entitled 'Eres Lo Que Lees' - 'You Are What You Read'. The title is written on the wall with dog biscuits while the stray dog walks nearby, just out of reach, tied with a rope around his neck.

it caused outrage, understandably, and pictures were released and sent over the internet that showed the dog gradually starving to death. the gallery owner insists that the dog escaped and it was only tied for 3 hours during the exhibition, before which the artist fed the dog with food he brought himself. other petition sites pulled quotes from him here and there and concluded that he admitted to starve the dog to death.

whichever way the truth, there are currently more than 2 million signatures in support of the move to boycott this "animal-hating" artist.

on the flipside, the “One Million Signatures" campaign organised by Iranian women's rights activists since 2006, demanding for changes in laws that discriminate against women has to date only managed to get slightly more than 7 thousand signatures.

so let's see. artist drags stray dog to be exhibited as art, disputed intentions and conclusion of actual death, 2 million supporters. whole populations of women and men in a country facing clearly documented discrimination, violence and suppression, 7 thousand odd supporters.

so the one-click activist is not only lazy in terms of activism, but also lazy in terms of analysis.

give me some pictures, clear visuals of a starving dog, easy to understand terms, and i'll give you my name.

give me an actual complex reality of shit happening in the world, where i have to actually do some search because even information is clamped down, campaign sites filtered and blocked, people struggling to get some small measure of truth out in the open, i just can't be bothered.

too difficult. time is passing on too fast. hyperlinks are waiting, and only those dished out ready to be served with cute buttons and easy navigation.

give me a story, full of drama, heart-rending pictures, moral outrage and digestible ethics. i'll give you my name.

*click*

Racism in Malaysia

Every Malaysian is racist. Race is not a dirty language. Most Malaysians puzzle over the use of words like "ethnicity" or "origin" instead of the much richer and loaded language of race. Before any other form of self-identity, race comes first. then gender, or class, or sexuality, or brand affiliation, or anything else that needs to be named. Race as a marker is stitched so firmly into our psyche, our souls, our knowledge of the the self and our place in the universe, it's instinctive.

I learnt that I was one out of three chinese in my class when i was seven. Before that, I learnt that pig is dirty, just like Indians, except in a different way. I knew that there are differences in our way of life and theirs - theirs being a category that can always be interchanged as the familiar other. Racist jokes about politicians, nasi lemak, roti canai and chee cheong fun abound; lazy malays, money-faced chinese, stupid indians. And amidst the punch lines that carve our alienation from each other is the shadow of violence burning through the numbers, "May 13th 1969". Like the holy trinity, Malaysians are neatly cut up into a magical three that makes up the corners of a pyramid. With every other identity - Serani, Bengali, Orang Asli, Kadazan, Ang Mo, Indon and more - thrown into the darkness of corners, intermittently visible with a rare shift of light.

This morning, I chanced upon an abandoned Berita Harian at the next table during breakfast. Skimming through the headlines of Najib supporting Pak Lah and Hishamuddin abdicating his Pemuda UMNO leadership position, an advertisement caught my eye. Placed neatly across the bottom part of the front page, it enticed readers with a 70% discount on something. It took me awhile to figure out what the advert was about. Splashed in bold letters under the name of the company are the words, "100% dimiliki oleh bumiputera". Initially, I thought it was a property development project. The meta keywords "milik" and "bumiputera" immediately linked to make a cohesive picture of "satu lagi project bermutu oleh NEP".  Reading more closely, I realised that it was actually a sale of fabrics and cloth by a shop in Jalan Masjid India.

So why was it necessary to speak so directly to its potential market that their money will solely profit only bumiputeras? Berita Harian is a Malay-language newspaper. Their readership consists mainly of 20s to 40s, middle income Malays: 93% in 2007. We are freaking out silently at the moment. The recent elections results have thrown our pyramid into slight disarray. We're a little unsure what the masses want - as informed to us through a select and concentrated number of individuals easily identified through icons and colours.

Tony Pua, my crisp and newly elected Member of Parliament, scoffed at MCA when they tried to assure voters post their recent elections "defeat" that they will continue to protect Chinese rights. He said, "They just don't get it". DAP is all about "Malaysians first", the pyramid scheme just doesn't hold political resonance anymore. But then a few days later he sputtered at Pak Lah's statement about Chinese interests being in jeopardy if inadequate (race-based, read Chinese = MCA) representation is made in the Parliamentary Cabinet. So who is not getting what?

I think Malaysians are truly quite fed-up of being told that we can only have particular rights if we have particular kinds of race. The magic May 13th number is a little too far in time to properly evoke palpable terror. The terror of not being told the truth, of being somehow cheated of chances, of having narrow corridors to carefully sail speech bubbles - they are a lot more real somehow.

And it's also thanks to the development discourse that have been regurgitated to visceral levels to justify all kinds of wayang. Somehow, earning a living has become our primary inalienable equal right. Getting information and communicating it, scaffolded by our accidental and ignorant bliss of an unfettered internet access - also fueled by the language of economics - have become our collective seeds of desire. Race has become an irritating fence that we just want to dismantle.

We have all been struggling against our automatic racism. But we can't seem to let it go. Because it simply matters. It is the history and the land upon which we are now building our dreams of hope, freedom, justice, equality, etc. etc. etc. Before articulating any form of change, before cartographing our future, the raw materials we have for transformation is the bone black of our racist, nationalised beings.

So what should we do? What can someone like Tony Pua do? When he is also left with the Chinese-interest legacy of DAP. Now together with PAS and PKR attempting to shed their skins and slither anew from the ashes as Pakatan Rakyat, attempting to assuage real fears and tensions of racist Malaysians to similarly let go of this lucrative pyramid and form something new. Whichever angle you take, it still looks like a triangle albeit with a different constitution. Perhaps Hindraf will get fed up that cries of "Makkal Sakthi!" being drowned by cries of "Reformasi!" or "Allah huakhbar!" and form a separate party. Then we could have a trapezoid. Or perhaps in time, PSM will finally get registered and we could have a pentagon.

I want a multi-headed hydra or a border-ignorant paramecium. The sad fact is, we are constructed by identity-politics. We are raced, we are gendered, we are genitalised, we are monetised, we are limbed, limed and slimed with categories and cardboard boxes. We're just at this moment in time, trapped in the room of race, prying the door handle into the room of class or perhaps gender. Obfuscating our racism by substituting Indian/Malay/Chinese-rights with rights of poor people, rights of women, rights of people living in rural areas, in the rain forest, in the office, in cyberspace.

But some rooms are more fluid than others. It is so much harder to get rid of your skin than say, changing your home address, credit limit, religion or genitals. And maybe one day, when there are so many rooms that doors take up a lot more space than walls, they will cease to matter as much. We just need to be brave and lift our one foot firmly cemented in the race room and try something a little different. Exploration has to start somewhere, so it might as well start with a careless jump.

after an interview broadcast

"Closet Victim"

Nobody knows, somebody knows,
Sometimes it seems like everyone knows

My closet is made out of love
Twisted from inheritance of a see-saw -
I'm on the heavy end and you are light
If I walk away, you will fly in fear before you fall

My closet was made out of shame
Threaded from ideas of a price tag on my vagina
I'm on the cheap side and you are expensive
Even if I never chose the sale at all

My closet is being made out of words
Strung from ballooned buffoons blathering their might
I'm on the poster and you are eyes
When I start to speak -

Nobody knows, somebody knows,
Sometimes it seems like everyone knows

Then it happens

International Women's Day - Circle of stories

I just got my own handphone phone. It was quite an exciting period. Mobile phones weren't super cheap then, or subscription rates affordable. Pre-paid was only starting to be introduced. But I had a number to my name, and a device that meant anyone could get in touch with me, and me back, without having to go through 'gatekeepers'. I grew up in a pretty dense household. Grandparents, god parents, another aunt, 5 cousins, 1 brother, kids that my grandma and godma used to take care of for extra income, neighbours... there was always people around and simultaneous conversations making a kind of comforting background noise.

The only telephone in the house was next to the television, and the television was right next to the main door in the living room. There was almost zero-chance of having a private conversation.

So now, with my very own handphone, I could have a heart-to-heart with a friend even when I was having a pee. It felt really liberating. My own space carved through a rectangular, flip-cover, plastic black Ericsson.

I got an SMS one day. By a number I didn't recognise.

technorati tags: takebackthetech

restoring thunderbird mail

this is just so i wont forget, and in case there are some unfortunate souls like me.

had to reformat harddisk (win XP) and so lost all thunderbird profile. but my mail was intact in a separate drive (partitioned: all programmes in c, all mails somewhere else)

i did a backup with mozbackup but it didn't want to restore. said it wasn't a valid file. which drove me fucking bonkers.

tried to do all manner of things. eventually found this thread. even though it was for a mac, decided to give it a go.

installed thunderbird. recreated new accounts.

created a new profile & deleted existing profile (no risk since it's basically a fresh reinstall). copied all my mail folders and file into "Local Directories" folder in "Mail" in the drive where my mail is.

didn't work.

luckily, i found a super old profile (sometime middle 2007) and copied all the files into the new profile folder.

although some of my settings still worked, i.e. accounts and passwords are there, but still couldn't detect my mails.

checked local folder settings in account settings, and saw where my global inbox was located. moved all files and folders there, pasting/replacing over everything.

it works!

the moral of the lesson is, back up firefox and thunderbird profiles!

* how to manage profiles

Mak Bedah - Elections

somehow, since i turned 21, i haven't been in the country for any of the general elections. first was undergrad, then postgrad, and missed all the exciting stuff that was reformasi, pak lah mari, etc. now, finding myself happily in the country, registered and all ready to be whipped up into a frenzy of flags and flatulence.

signed up with Women's Candidacy Initiative - a bunch of energetic women and men who was supporting Toni Kasim as an independent candidate. for as long as i've known her, she has never ceased to amaze with her sharp take on injustice, sense of humour, boisterous commitment, breadth of activism and amazing humility. she's just super cool. i'd vote her in as prime minister any day.

but she's really quite ill now, and we're all biting our nails in worry. as a result, she's no longer running as a candidate. we're still trying to push for the WCI 10 point manifesto in the elections though.

missing an enigmatic leader, we decided to engage through the witty and larger-than-life persona who is Mak Bedah.

enjoy! :)

banner your blog!

right click, save as and blog it!

original url at: http://www.wci2.org/images/banners/wci_blog_final.gif. just add this code to your site:

<img src="http://www.wci2.org/images/banners/wci_blog_final.gif" alt="women's candidacy initiative - show your support!>

Volunteer for Women's Candidacy Initiative!

News just in: Parliament has been dissolved today. Elections is not only looming, it's breathing down our faces! Support WCI and spread the news far and wide. It's time to try and make at least a dent of difference to how politics look in this country.

---------

The Women's Candidacy Initiative (WCI) is pleased to announce the candidacy of Zaitun (Toni) Mohamed Kasim for the upcoming 12th General Elections.

WCI
WCI is a collaboration of women and men who believe that the political participation of women at every level of decision-making is vital to advancing and upholding the rights of women and to better represent their concerns.  This will be the second time that WCI will field a candidate in the election. WCI made history during the 10th General Elections when it fielded Toni Kasim to run on a women's human rights platform in the Selayang parliamentary seat against the incumbent, Chan Kong Choy (BN). WCI polled 43% (26,144) of the vote in the constituency, slashing the winning margin for the incumbent from 38,627 in the 1995 general election to 8,835.
 
WCI's Candidate - Toni Kasim
Our candidate, Toni Kasim is no stranger to the women's movement and the larger human rights movement. She has worked tirelessly for the last 15 years in Malaysia, on a wide range of human rights and women's rights issue. She has been involved in various civil society organizations and movements to work on issues such as sexual harassment, domestic violence, poverty, HIV/AIDS, women's access to leadership and the impact of religious fundamentalisms on people's lives. Her work is based on the fundamental belief that women and men, and people of all races and religions should be equal before the law.

WCI - What we believe in
WCI believes that no one should be discriminated against because of their gender, religious beliefs, ethnicity or nationality - every person has the right to equal access to health, education and employment, the freedom of belief and practices according to the Constitution. We have the right to safe and affordable living conditions where we can live without fear or injustice or discrimination.

We also assert that politics belongs to all and that for a democracy to be truly representative, it must have the participation of civil society - ordinary men and women who make up this country, regardless of whether they choose to join a political party or not. WCI gave expression to this ideal in the 1999 general elections and this year, with bigger support and commitment, we are pleased to come together once again in the second phase of WCI to participate in the coming elections.

We believe in the growing importance of civil society participation in the elections process. However, trying to bring this ideal to fruition has not been easy. The voice of civil society has largely been drowned by politicians who have ruled over us for 50 years. Systems and structures have been put in place to make it very difficult for the diverse Malaysian voices to be heard. These include gerrymandering and increasing the deposits for candidates who wish to run in the elections.

With the limited resources available to independent candidates and an election system that is less than free and fair, there are numerous barriers for effective participation in the elections. For women, these barriers are even more pronounced. But this year, we are experiencing a thrilling second phase of our growth, and we are excited to be planning the campaign for an independent woman candidate once again, to make sure that women's issues are highlighted and do not fall off the agenda.
 
In spite of an election system that presents numerous challenges to our candidacy, we are committed to run a campaign that is clean, fair and ethical:
•    As an independent women's candidacy our campaign will not be based on monetized politics, because we want to be accountable to the people, not to businesses.
•    As believers and defenders of universal human rights, we will ensure that issues of public importance are tackled critically and with humanity.
•    As supporters of women's equal access to leadership, we will ensure that women's voices are heard and heeded.
•    We will also ensure that our campaign does not waste resources unnecessarily.

How you can be a part of the WCI campaign
We would also like to use this opportunity to invite other Malaysians who believe in democracy, justice and equality to lend your support to WCI this coming election. Because we are an initiative driven by ordinary people who believe in fairness and equality, we need all the help we can get. There are many ways in which you can help. You can contribute by donating in cash or in kind, or you can volunteer your time and energy to help us put this campaign together, or you can simply spread the word and help us make some noise.
 
Finally, you can contribute by not voting inequality, but by voting for EQUALITY!
 
Toni Kasim was the right candidate for WCI in 1999, and she is the right candidate this time around. It is therefore with great pleasure that we hereby officially launch the 2nd phase of the Women's Candidacy Initiative, and our candidate for the upcoming 12th General Elections.

End discrimination, Vote Equality.

To know more about how you can contribute or volunteer, please call WCI at 017-302 7030.

WCI is conducting a volunteers workshop. Please register by calling WCI at 017-302 7030.

WCI Volunteers Workshop
Date: 16th February 2008
Time: 2:00pm - 4:00pm
Venue : Pusat Janadaya (Empower), 13 Lorong 4/48E, Seksyen 4, 46050, Petaling Jaya, Selangor

For more information, log on to www.wci2.org

story of a mermaid

once there was a bunch of people scared of a lot of things. they could perceive that their bodies were soft, that it breaks, splits apart, and unknown liquids flow out of them. they were aware that their bodies were in fact, full of fissures. holes, where some things enter, and some things depart.

it did not matter before, when drawing lines were a little less important. and where morphing and moving were part of life. but when it became more urgent to stay in one place and make that work, lines began to take root. they began to have names, rituals, ceremonies, heroes, lores and processes. they became so fat that it was possible to have pockets of anarchy, sarcasm and despair pock-marked within them.

these people lived in such a time. a time of lines, and deferrence to difference. the hallowing of stories and tales was an important way to preserve the sanctity of lines, and contain the messiness that lines create.

the mermaid is one such story. she swims in acknowledgment of untamed female sexuality. her voice - the capacity to legible communication - is woven with seduction at its core, with power to destroy the communal respect for lines. her naked breasts glisten with wanton disregard for the convention of undergarments and metal corsets entombed by lace and needles. she thrives in a mysterious world, unknown to man and his land. the fantastic and phantasmagoric.

and appears when men are most vulnerable, most out of his safe and comfortable universe, where he consciously sail to seek the edges of lines currently known.

but the most fearful of what is female, the biggest monster to the impermeability of lines, is her vagina. it is constantly reproducing mysteries; wetness, blood, womb, human, decay, life, orgasms. in logic as yet unchoked by machinations.

so these people masked it in the form of a fish. instead of legs, she has a fish tail. she cannot walk, or gape her legs and visually demonstrate her puissance. there are some fears so large that you cannot give them a name, or a description. because even to utter would be to empower further.

the mermaid is a nod, begrudging, fearful and in awe, to a might that flows around life as they currently knew it. and how she transforms in time, is how the servants of lines learn how to tame her.


---
do you remember how it feels like
to lose concentration
in a phone conversation
that stretched so long
about nothing and everything?

such careless intimacy
is a great privilege.
---

flower in the pocket

watched flower in the pocket by liew seng tat last week. mainly because i caught one of his shorts a couple of years ago and was blown away by his weird sense of narrative and perspective. can't remember what the short film was called, but it featured a grandmother's fantasy and active desire with an old love - a young boy (starring seng tat himself) wearing a communist beret. they pranced around - she in her existing embodiment as a coquettish old woman, and he as a nubile smiling young man - and then have sex together. he goes down on her with a pure and satisfied smile. lovely! a very wonderful story that is at the same time humourous, light and moving.

so i was all ready for another brilliant film, and flower in the pocket didn't disappoint. the story centres around two young boys and their father. it's quite a simple tale, but as with his previous short, it's really the relationship between the different characters that drew me in.

the first half of the movie slowly unwraps the things that these two boys do - at school, not completing their homework, playing around drains, forming new friendships by bullying and being bullied, tasting food, shitting, cleaning, sleeping - all the minute mundanity of life coloured through intimacy. it's full of tangible silences that sutures the whole story together. each character is rich and complex without falling into a stereo/archetype, and are revealed through interactions with the spaces they inhabit, the relationship they are de/constructing with each other, needs and desires, and best of all, minimal drama.

the younger boy - mah li ohm - speaks no malay, and a know-it-all classmate, maria, translates every single sentence that their bahasa malaysia teacher utters perfectly to him. even then, miscommunication happens, as he tried to tell a story about "keluarga saya" from his drawing of himself and his brother, mah li ahh. maria thought it's her name, and asked why his drawing of a boy has a girl's name? the intricate and chaotic linguistic landscape of the country is presented through such small moments - which was quite refreshing for me after two marathon days of cinta and mukhsin - which brings up sepet and gubra. they were all good cinematic stories about malaysian life, love, cultural and raced heterogeneity, but got a little predictably soapy after awhile. i loved sepet when it first came out. it presented outright the kind of differentiating assumptions we carry and enact through everyday life - mixing of chinese music with arabic calligraphy, scholarships given on race-based NEP quotas, the destabilisation of borders through peranakan identities etc. but when orked came out again in mukhsin, and the romantic, nostalgic and rose-tinted treatment given to play, poverty and conflict, i got a little weary of festive-seasoned advertisement moments.

or maybe it's because the protagonists had different ethnicities. i could relate a little more to a poor chinese family from somewhere near jinjang than i could to a middlish-class malay family from an unnamed but beautiful kampung. even though i have encountered both, i experienced them from a different positionality in raced identity. either way, it's really good to have more diverse takes to a complex reality.

so anyway, back to flower in the pocket. they were befriended by a tomboy malay girl, ayu, who gave them "glamour" names so she could more easily pronounce them - azman abdullah and azmi abdullah. and the beauty of priorities in childhood is presented by a simple "boleh" - quick assent for the convenience of knowing. ayu called herself atan and claimed the male identity to be able to play with them easier, but shed this simply when she brought li ohm and li ahh back to her place for lunch one day. when the two boys found a stray puppy, she cycled home and put on a helmet and gloves to be able to continue playing with them and the haram puppy. there is no hysteria, high-tension, drama or sudden change in background music. it's just a mellowed, routine negotiation of identity in constant flux and reenactment. very wonderfully done.

the father is a man withdrawn from life and his children, presumably because his wife left them (he tore her picture and tried to swallow it at the later part of the film), and works with mannequins together with a malay man, mamat, who has a strong physical and emotional bond with his wife. the tale evolves to his gradual awakening of his children's existence and his subtle and awkward demonstration of love and care to living things surrounding him.

the second half of the movie, when the story centred more around the father than the children, got a little too silent at parts. the small moments that reveal a lot more than is narrated gulfed question marks that weren't too titillating. maybe it's because i know the actor - james lee - who played the father. so i couldn't suspend my disbelief as well. or maybe it's because his character was focussed on interactions with inanimate objects, spaces and stillness. not sure, but it can't be easy to sustain and fold a story well without resorting to tried-and-tested techniques of contradictions, subtlety and drama.

either way, i'm going to try and get a copy of this film on DVD. it's something that makes me feel all wobbly and smile when thinking of film-making in this country, and the tentative steps we're taking to capture slivers of our life in this time. right down to the blurring out of the puppy when azan was sounding the background, and the bleeping off of "melayu" when li ohm asked to tear a page off his exercise book to wipe his bum after he had a poo :) hopefully, they'll do something about the uneven sound throughout the film before releasing it on DVD.

gush over!

CIJ-Freedom of Expression: 2007 a year of persecutions

Great overview on the state of media this year by CIJ:

---

Freedom of Expression: 2007 a year of persecutions
By the Centre for Independent Journalism
16 December 2007

Overall, the state of freedom of expression in 2007 marks a further
deterioration compared to 2006. While 2006 was highlighted by the
suspension of newspapers due to the Muhammad caricature, the closure
of public discussion on race and religion initiated by the Article 11
coalition, and the censorship on books and film, 2007 was the year of
persecution and clampdown on people who use alternative platforms for
expression, such as bloggers and street assemblies, and increasing
media interference to tighten the flow of information.

These three trends are distinct in 2007. Editorial interference by the
government were prevalent throughout the year, while harassment of
bloggers increased both in frequency and severity during the second
half of the year. The last two months of 2007 witnessed a surge of
crackdown on public assemblies, culminating in the invocation of the
Internal Security Act (ISA) against five leaders of the Hindus Rights
Action Force (HINDRAF)

Interference in media reporting by official directives, warnings,
"advice" and harassment continued to be one the biggest trends in
Malaysia. The principal givers of directives were the Ministry of
Internal Security, headed by the Prime Minister himself and the
Ministry of Information, headed by Minister Zainuddin Maidin. However,
the year also saw a number of other state actors exerting control over
media content. They ranged from the police and the Law Minister, Nazri
Aziz who tried to bar media coverage on crime, to the Chairman of the
Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, Halim Shafie who
ordered broadcasters against giving airtime for speeches by the
opposition political parties. This was however reversed by the
Minister of Energy, Water and Communication, Lim Keng Yaik.

The "no coverage" orders by the Internal Security Ministry and
Information Ministry to the media were prompted by various issues of
the day, ranging from what was being discussed in the political blogs
to the assemblies by BERSIH (a coalition of political parties and
non-governmental groups on free and fair elections) and HINDRAF. The
bans were sometimes selective. For example, the media was barred from
reporting responses and outcry over the Deputy Prime Minister's
proclamation that Malaysia is an Islamic state despite its secular
constitution. In a letter, it was stated that only the views of the
Prime Minister and his deputy on this issue should prevail in the
print media. This was at the expense of other Barisan Nasional
component parties, which also felt strongly against the DPM's
statement. In the HINDRAF issue, statements by UMNO leaders continued
to receive coverage despite an order by the authorities to play the
issue down. This demonstrates that the level of dominance over the
media is certainly not uniform across the ruling parties. In the
meantime, the Information Ministry has been vocal in attacking bolder
or independent media, despite it having no power to censure the media.
The Minister has twice attacked theSun, an English daily known for
pushing the boundaries. It also attacked international new agency, Al
Jazeera for its live report on police violence during the BERSIH rally.

Editorial interference is also part of the underlying factor for the
general practices of self-censorship among editors. It should be noted
that the list of interference is not exhaustive as there could be many
unreported cases especially the more subtle ones. This could be the
reason for the termination of columnists Amir Muhammad and Zainah
Anwar in the pro-government New Straits Times. The former is an
independent filmmaker while the latter is a women rights activist.
Self-censorship also leads to unethical reporting when certain stories
were slanted heavily towards the government. One example of such bias
is the reporting of public rallies by BERSIH in Batu Burok, Terengganu
and Kuala Lumpur and the one organised by HINDRAF, also in the city.
HINDRAF and BERSIH were subject to severe criticism for using violent
ways, while the reports were silent on the violence by the police and
security forces. Casualties from the civilians' side were severely
underreported. In another case, the media remained silent on RSF Press
Freedom Index, which showed a huge drop in Malaysia's ranking. The
only reports were of the dismissal of the ranking, accusing it of
being a western agenda. Interestingly, state-run Radio 24 (a newly
launched 24-hours news stations) ran an interview with the Centre for
Independent Journalism Executive Director and National Union of
Journalists President, while all private-owned newspapers steered away
from the issue.

The second trend is the intimidation, which shifted from rhetoric in
2006 to actual persecution against bloggers who write about social and
political issues. Two such bloggers were slapped with defamation suits
(Jeff Ooi and Ahiruddin Atan, aka Rocky Bru) by New Straits Times and
its top officials; one (Nathaniel Tan) was detained for four days
because of a link posted by an anonymous commentator; another (Raja
Petra Kamarudin) and his wife, not a blogger, were grilled by the
police after UMNO, the largest ruling party lodged a report under the
Sedition Act; and another (Tian Chua) was questioned under the
Communications and Multimedia Act for posting a photo-montage. Two
other bloggers received threats, one a member of the government
backbenchers club, (Ruhanie Ahmad) and a California-based Malaysian
(M.Bakri Musa). These bloggers were targeted amidst developments that
were threatening the government. Jeff Ooi and Ahiruddin Attan were
sued amidst the feud between Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and
former PM Mahathir Mohammad. Actions against Raja Petra and Nathaniel
came at the time of a rift between the Deputy Minister of Internal
Security and the police force, as allegation of serious corruption in
the police force was gaining momentum. Tian Chua was questioned during
the trial of the murder of Altantuya Sharibuu, a Mongolian. His
photo-montage suggested a link between the Deputy Prime Minister, his
aide Abdul Razak and Altantuya herself, who was purportedly murdered
by Abdul Razak. It is clear from the actions that they were intended
to silence the bloggers from discussing those issues.

Another related case is of a Malaysian student in Taiwan, Wee Meng
Chee, who was under fire for his music video on YouTube, of the
national anthem with rap lyrics, mainly about his feelings concerning
corruption, discrimination and race relations. The government
threatened action under the Sedition Act and the National Anthem Act.
The police however conceded that it was unable to charge Wee for
posting the video abroad. Wee was subsequently compelled to issue an
apology. This incident also brought the issue of ethical reporting to
attention as the story first appeared, in the language of
condemnation, in Harian Metro, a tabloid under the government-link
media conglomerate Media Prima.

The momentum of crackdown on public assemblies gathered since the
rally organized by BERSIH, the coalition for clean and fair election,
at Batu Burok. Live bullets were shot at the crowd resulting in the
injury of two. It is unprecedented in terms of police violence in
controlling the crowd. At the BERSIH and HINDARF rallies, police
instituted elaborate measures to break them by mounting roadblocks,
stopping buses, cars and arresting passengers, firing chemical laced
water and tear gas at the crowd, and arresting participants. In the
BERSIH-organised rally in Kuala Lumpur on 10 November, 34 people were
known to be arrested, while 136 people were arrested during the
HINDRAF rally on 25 November. HINDRAF leader P Uthayakumar, his
brother P. Waythamoorthy and V. Ganabatirau, were arrested under the
Sedition Act two days before the rally. Two more assemblies were held
after that - the lawyers' walk on Human Rights Day and a gathering of
people to support the submission of a memorandum to Members of
Parliament organised by BERSIH. In a new trend, police obtained
restraining orders against participants to the HINDRAF rally and the
Parliament group. These gatherings resulted in six lawyers arrested in
the Human Rights Day celebrations and 26 members of the BERSIH who
tried to go to Parliament to submit a memorandum to protest the
constitutional amendment on the tenure of the Chairman of Election
Commission. Police also started hunting down leaders and re-arresting
participants of the assemblies. Tian Chua from Parti Keadilan Rakyat
(PKR) and Mohamad Sabu from PAS, both part of BERSIH, were arrested on
9 December. Three days earlier, 31 people from the HINDRAF rally were
re-arrested and charged fro attempted murder and attending an illegal
assembly. Uthayakumar himself were arrested, released and re-arrested
on 11 December under the Sedition Act. He and four others were
eventually detained under the Internal Security Act on 13 December.

Another worrying trend that has surfaced is the attacks on journalists
and photographers by state actors or those with suspected links with
state actors. Four such cases were reported in the media. The more
serious is a journalist from the Malaysia Nanban, a Tamil language
daily, who was assaulted by unknown assailants. He has come out of a
coma and has vowed to continue his writings, some of which are
critical of the administration and the leading Indian political party,
the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC). His colleague in the northern
territory has also lodged a police report after receiving a death
threat from an unknown person. He was warned to stop writing about the
problem of the Tamil schools or faced the same consequences as his
colleague in coma.

Underlying these problems are the growing concentration of media
ownership, where in this year alone, four Chinese-language dailies –
Sin Chew Daily, Guang Ming Daily, China Press and Nanyang Siang Pau –
were consolidated under one company owned by a timber tycoon, Tiong
Hiew King, known for his close relations with the ruling party.
Ownership of the private media by big corporate companies, and with
close ties to the government, have further impacted on the diversity
and plurality of information in an already controlled environment.

The real danger of little freedom of expression is the risk of
increasing polarization along ethnicities among Malaysians. The gap is
also poised to widen between those who subscribe mostly to the
mainstream media, which often misinform according to the interest of
the powers-that be, and those who access wider source of information
from the internet and foreign media. On the clampdown of assemblies,
those who read mainstream media are only presented with the picture of
harmony under siege and the provocation of one race against the
others. It seriously calls into question the government's wisdom that
freedom of expression must play second to racial harmony. The opposite
proves to be true. Any widening of misunderstanding among races is
traceable to the limitation on freedom of expression, which prevents
issues to be solved.

In this regard, the Centre for Independent Journalism continued to
call for the abolition of repressive laws, the setting up of a
Parliamentary Select Committee on Media Reforms, and for greater
public scrutiny of and engagement with the media.

Prepared by CIJ Advocacy Officer, Yip Wai Fong.

For more information, please call CIJ at 03-40230772 or email waifong
[at} cijmalaysia [dot] org.

How I spent my time at GK3

day 1 - share a number

Just tried clicking on the map. Hopefully it works!

technorati tags: takebackthetech

ka-BLOG!

and it begins...!

the sun has risen, my tongue is burnt,
i can smell yesterday's sweat trying to squirm
into tomorrow.

16 days of manic blogging!

***************************
ka-BLOG! TAKE BACK THE TECH!
www.takebackthetech.net
25 Nov to 10 Dec
***************************

ka-BLOG! Calling all bloggers to contaminate the blogosphere with activism on VAW for 16 days.

ka-BLOG is a 16-day blog fest for the Take Back the Tech Campaign. It is open to anyone and everyone - girls, boys, everyone beyond and more -- who want to share their thoughts on violence against women, and how online communications can exacerbate or help eliminate VAW.

---------------------------
What is the campaign about?
---------------------------
Take Back The Tech is simply a call for every person– women and men, who uses information & communication technologies, e.g. mobile phone, internet, radio etc., to use them for activism against VAW (violence against women). Unequal power relations lie at the heart of VAW, and this is apparent from the streets to online spaces. So we are saying technology should be used for equality, not to perpetuate violence.

---------------
How to ka-BLOG?
---------------

1. *commit*: commit yourself to 16 days of blogging about violence against women and technology.

2. *email*: email jac AT apcwomen DOT org, with your blog address & name/handle/nick
OR register yourself at the campaign website: http://www.takebackthetech.net/user/register
If possible, before 25 November. If you don't have a blog yet, this will be a great place to start! Email us, and we'll send you links on how to start your own blog :)

2. *identify*: make it known by putting a takebackthetech icon on your blog — create your own or grab a few icons from our Campaign Tools and Materials.

3. *post*: post one thing a day from 25 nov to 10 dec on this issue

4. tag it: add the "takebackthetech" tag your posts; just cut & paste the following code to to the bottom of each post:

<!-- technorati tags begin --><p style="font-size: 10px; text-align: right;">technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/takebackthetech" rel="tag directory">takebackthetech</a></p><!-- technorati tags end -->

5. link back: send in your bloglinks and and we'll rss your posts to the campaign website throughout the 16 days

6. expand: widen the campaign to your readers by linking your blog to the campaign site.

-----------------------
What to ka-BLOG! About?
-----------------------

Anything as long as it's about violence against women and gender relations,and their connection to technology. We've come up with some questions for exploration because we know can be difficult and exhausting to think of things to write about for 16 days! If you have any ideas, share it with us through email, or blog about it. We'll find your post and add it to the list on the campaign website.

1. Do role playing games or communities promote sexual violence?
2. Are webcam girls victims or sexually empowered?
3. Is online harassment really harmful?
4. How can right to privacy coexist with right to expression?
5. Is sex online ‘real’ or just harmless ‘fantasy’?
6. What does it mean to take back the tech when 5 billion people in the world have no internet access?
7. The State can’t even get serious about domestic violence, how is it possible for something like cyberstalking to be a public safety issue?
8. The internet is for… (porn?)
9. Should internet service providers like Yahoo! have a right to my data since they’re free?
10. Is internet censorship the only way to deal with violent or sexually degrading content?
 
But also, feel free to skip any of these and blog about anything that's on your mind :) It does not matter if the blog entries come in the form of jokes, limmericks, poetry, short stories, blurbs, graphics, pictures, articles, creative narratives.

We welcome bloggers in different languages!

So ka-BLOG! with us!

For more information on ka-BLOG!, go http://www.takebackthetech.net, or email jac AT apcwomen DOT org

[FYI. In Filipino slang, "ka-BLOG" would mean someone you blog with.]

technorati tags: takebackthetech

testing only...

...

one death among many. a husband was a casualty of someone else's war when he was doing his job, driving another man to work. 1723 people with webbed connections of blood and time died because of a cyclone. and the usual suspects of death from armed conflict, economic neglect and invisible diseases.

life goes on.

loss

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

-- Elizabeth Bishop

free burma - blogger solidarity action in support of citizen uprising in burma

some posts said to put the image instead of blogging. some posts said to make a post about burma. either way, there will be a splash of red across the blogosphere.

free burma - i guess arundhati roy might say: free for whom, against whom, by whom?  US' response is typically economic sanctions. if it doesn't work, maybe they'll find some weapons of mass justification.

malaysia? 

free burma

Petition to the Agong on Judiciary Issue

spreading the word:

-------

The Petition to His Majesty The Yang DiPertuan Agung
September 30th, 2007

Have you signed on to the petition to His Majesty the Yang DiPertuan Agung to ask for the establishment of a Royal Commission to look into and stop the rot in the judiciary and to return the judiciary back to the rakyat?

Have not read the petition?

To read the draft petition in English, please click HERE.

The actual petition, complete with the language of protocol, is now reproduced below.

To sign up in support of this petition, please send your name and i.c. number to :

savethejudiciary@gmail.com

rust

my brains have rusted. just checked out the process of rust. it's full of shorthand formulas to make life simple. hum. it's late and my eyes are tired. my fingers have stopped dancing across the keyboard. they're kinda fumbling instead. fumbling for the right sequence of alphabets to string together an emotion, or a moment, or simply, a thought. nothing comes to mind.

iron yields to change too well. it embraces in return every other than embraces it, and in that gesture, becomes something altogether different. it ceases to become iron. i was going to say strong. but it turns out that iron is a soft metal. it's alloys that are strong. in chemistry, we accept that combining different yet similar things will produce something strong enough to hold an elephant march across water (but then again, so would wood). in marriage, we panic over the slightest difference in the hue of belief systems.

the outcome of rust is tagged as corrosion. corrode is such a damaging word. it brings to mind gaps and holes with uncertain and greedy edges. jagged to remind of ruptures. it makes me think of old people. old people are corroded from time. time is filled with air, water, and soil. the sweat of others. the frowns of others. the expletives and genitalia of others.

i am being corroded. i've lost the ability to use words like 'hyphenated beings' with ease. everytime i think of difference i imagine a group hug. i've been corroded to vanilla. soft, twisty, vanilla ice cream in a cone, so exquisitely popularised by mcdonalds.

and i missed another demonstration this morning.

pontianak & protest

found quite an interesting resource on pontianak on the web. seems like i have been confusing pontianak with langsuir with penanggalan -- mainly because of the stupid hantu exhibition i went to at the Sarawak museum, or maybe my bad recollection of what i read there.

so for clarification, these are the differance (according to derrida, this means both to differ and to defer, meaning negation of the self in 2 ways, temporally and phenomenologically; or in less desperate language, to say that "i" is both not you or now. meaning what? i have no idea. and this is only at page 5 of the non-preface. maybe the whole book is about non-being. if i am defined through a series of what i am not, then i can only be a puffy potential, malleable and fantastic. bla bla bla):

* pontianak, also known as puntianak or kuntilanak or matianak. is a female apparition, observed through her long hair and white dress (what kind? baju kurung? though think they have existed way before baju kurung was popularised in the region. pontianaks were recorded since at least the 17th century; and when baju kurung replaced the sarong or if it ever did, i can only guess.)

she is also notable for her shriek. if everyone in the vicinity can hear a pontianak shrieking in the dead of the night, and you're the only person who can't, it means the pontianak is near you. she is probably calling out in search of her child.

a pontianak is a woman who died in childbirth and her spirit cannot rest because of this. if you are caught -- or increasingly so, seduced -- by a pontianak, she will drink your blood till you die. i think neck is the location of choice.

in some stories, pontianaks have a hole in their nape which is their only point of weakness. it's covered by their long hair (which came first? the hair or the hole? hmm... :|). if you can stuff the hole with a nail, she'll remain as the gorgeous apparition that first ensnared you. but if it ever comes out... die la. in earlier stories, she flies around in the shape of a bird and kills an expectant mother and her child by driving her long claws into the belly. the motivation is generally cited as jealousy.

so while before, she kills women and their unborn baby (motivation = self & maternal desire), she now she kills perverse men who allow themselves to be seduced by women sitting alone in remote place (motivation =  punishment of the other's/male desire). maybe this is also why some origin stories are blurred, with the pontianak becoming a pontianak from rape & murder, or suicide after being impregnated after rape.

a pontianak is usually caught by being secured in a see-through glass bottle. she's sometimes said to like hanging out under banana trees.

a sultan, Syarif Abdurrahman Al-Qadri, was so disturbed by a pontianak in the 17th century that he eventually named a land after this apparition in west Kalimantan of indonesia.
to chase the pontianak away, a canon was shot, and where it landed, was the heart of this new settlement, Pontianak.

there's also a a town called Pontian in Johor. but i have no idea if it has any relation with the hantu pontianak.

* langsuir, also known as langsuyar. female, and can appear either also as a beautiful girl|woman or as an owl with the face of a cat. the same dude who wrote the resource hypothesised that owl-sightings are mistaken as pontianak-sightings, but maybe it's just a case of mistaken langsuir sightings?

a woman becomes a langsuir if she and her child dies within the 40 days of her confinement period. sometimes, it is said that her dead child becomes a pontianak. sometimes, it is said that a mother was so shocked to find out that her dead child has become a pontianak, she clapped her hands and flew to a tree, becoming a langsuir. origin stories are sometimes quite circular and self-referential.

the features of both are very similar actually, and can be quite confusing. both have the unearthly shrieks, are often cited as beautiful women, have holes at the back of their necks and similar long black hair, kills by sucking their victim's blood, and have to do with thwarted journeys into motherhood. sometimes it is said that langsuir looks like owls, sometimes it is said that pontianak looks like owls. not sure which is which.

langsuirs hangs out on trees and they can fly. to prevent deceased mothers from turning into langsuirs or their dead child from becoming a pontianak, glass beads are put in the mouth to disable the shrieking, hen's eggs are placed under the armpits to prevent the flapping of arms for flying, and needles are placed at the palms of her hands so that "she may not open or clench them to assist her flight" (1951, The Malay Magician, Richard Windstedt).

both pontianaks and langsuirs have the status of jins. i am not sure if this is because the citations come from a charm that borrows from Islamic texts/culture, or if pontianaks existed after the 14th century after the influential golden age of Islam in the region's history. either way, it's linked to both Malay and Muslim systems of belief.

oh, and apparently, langsuirs like to eat fish, and if they are hanging about in a tree near you, you just have to get naked and they'll fly away.

*penanggalan, also known as hantu tengelong. she is female. in some stories, instead of a victim of tragic circumstances, she becomes a penanggalan through the practice of black magic. these magicians have mastered (mistressed?) the arts so well that they can separate their heads from their bodies.

in other stories, she is a normal woman who was seated in a large wooden tub (used to hold nipah vinegar) while performing a religious penance when a man suddenly surprised her by asking what she's doing. she jumped up and her head literally popped out of her body. the shrieking head flew to a nearby tree.

the detached head with trailing entrails (but i don't understand why the entrails start from the neck instead of the lower part of the torso) continues flying about at night especially to houses of expectant mothers, waiting to feed upon their blood. penanggalan also likes the blood of babies and young children.

their entrails are also their only point of weakness, as it can get caught on tree branches and thorns. the practice is to either plant trees or place thorns around the house to prevent them from getting in. the entrails also need to be soaked in vinegar and its discharge (or drops of blood depending on which story) is poisonous and can cause kudis as well as thorny weeds to grow. kinda a flaw since thorny weeds are the kinda things which can trap it.

anyway, there are much less lore about the penanggalan than the pontianak. probably because not so many movies are made about it. but maybe also because part of the origin stories of the penanggalan contains some element of agency and deliberate intent as opposed to the pontianak. but also maybe because a ghost with no tits in its strategy is less sexy.

so here we have it. the pontianak, langsuir and penanggalan. repeated symbols of long black hair, shrieking voices, birth, blood, dead babies. mixed in with a little seduction and tales of monstrous sexuality.

a fair bit more to deconstruct, but too penat. so later la.

----

protest against dodgy judicial appointments

first there was knowledge, then there was assumptions, then suddenly... you tube! check out the video clip yourself.

march & handover of memorandum on impartiality of judicial appointments, organised by the Malaysian Bar Council:

wed, 26 sep 2007
11am from the steps of the Palace of Justice to the Prime Minister's office
hop on the bus at the bar council at 9am

shit & silence

trying to shit out an article for the sun, and it's been constipation time (actually, i have been constipated. and mugs of peppermint tea only gives me insomnia instead of the blessed runs that i've been longing for). but anyway. yea, trying to write.

i have made a conscious thought of making full use of what little space i have to 'speak' to more than my ever dissolving cluster of 'people i know'. but every month when it's deadline time, i just get constipated. everything that comes out sound insipid or didactic. and who wants to be lectured by yet another smart ass punk who has eaten less carbs than salt?

so here i am. trying to massage some of the words out in small squeezes. coherent sentences that say something. anything. make some kind of gesture towards a meaningful freedom of expression - no matter how negotiated.

i don't want to be constantly self-reflexive, borderlining on navel gazing come every second week of the month. i don't want to be wearing magnifying glasses peering for holes and incessantly pointing a huge red finger at every gap i see. i don't have solutions, so i can't offer that either. i don't know much, so i can't offer new information.

in short, i don't have much to say. 

50:44 - merdeka again la

landscaping sexuality in 50 years. should be interesting... :)