A dream. A non-committed mission.

It is incredible how there are so many passionate Malaysian bloggers, and Malaysians particularly love political blogs. Malay Mail gave this a due recognition

With the cornucopia of blogs around enough to fuel our reading souls continuous needs , why the need of another grain to populate insignificantly the already abundant sand on the beach? We have otai experts in political analysis, they project strong influence and command faithful followings through powerful writings confronting issues with point of views sometimes more worthy to listen to than most of those of the politicians we hear on the mainstream channels.

This blog is not here to further crowd the popular political blog space. This blog was created with an intention in mind to develop values on the majority subset of the Malaysian society. I have no interest to debate whether Anwar did it with Saiful or not, or whether KJ would make a good Pemuda (although this fellow does not impress me and triggers an inexplicable nausea in my throat). Campaigning is not the objective. But positive criticism is. There could also be instances of criticism on personalities deemed detrimental to the good of the nation.

Most of us hope to live to see the utopia of a great Malaysia. Vision 2020 once enshrined the objectives to achieve this on all fronts. It would be the beginning of an era where racial friction need not exist as the balance in economic distribution among diverse ethnics has been achieved, civilization maturity particular to our multi-racial ambiance has been established, and excellence in knowledge is on track.

The journey towards a developed Malaysia was smooth sailing until the brief economic downturn that has sidetracked our growth figures from its annual targets. But we pulled ourselves through without compromising our national assets and economical sovereignty with greedy outsider capitalists. Life for Malaysians was rosy again until the premiership changed in 2003.

Malaysia gradually became socio-politically fragile despite the branding that the 5th PM had wanted to promote himself as the being PM for all Malaysians. The misuse of the country’s resources was too evident that it was easily used against the administration by the opposition to drag the government which had ruled the country for more than 50 years down to its feet and this has unleashed all ugly sides of a multi-ethnic society. The BN government lost for the first time its two third majority in the parliament, and for the first time the opposition had never felt as strong on the political scene. The weak government has let loose antagonizing sentiments, on one side proclaiming freedom and equal rights, and on the other, historical rights and superiority protections.

analysis on the state of world demography.

I have first read the below article somewhere in 2006, which was sent to me via group e-mail by a silent critical thinker SASSIAN colleague, the type who could contribute much to the nation by blogging or writing killer articles but chose to be vocal in coffee sessions instead (unless he is not telling me about it and hides behind a well known surrogate).

The article was written by Dr. Farrukh Saleem, an Islamabad-based freelance columnist. It has also been recently re-produced by another Malaysian blogger here. (It is interesting to note that this non-Muslim Malaysian blogger finds interest in discussions regarding the dilemma of the Muslim world. It may reflect the invisible bonding that has actually developed within many citizens in denial of this country. We can hate each other or hold each other’s hands. It is up to us whether to take it constructively or vice versa.)

I implore my primarily targeted audience for this segment, to read this article until the end. Once you finish reading it, sit back and allow yourself to engage sincerely with your conscious. I believe if you manage to get here, you would most probably belong to the intelligent middle-class and upper layer who have already indulge in a decent professional or political life. Take a minute to look at your sleeping children and ponder in what kind of environment will they be when they reach your age in 20 years time. Imagine an alternate universe where the horrible genocide in Gaza takes place on this land once known as Tanah Melayu, where the majority Malays, weakened by their past political leaders who preferred bickering over power and ideology, by their lag in education and economy, get trampled helplessly as they see their land being taken inch by inch by the mightier forces. God won’t help us if we wouldn’t put an effort to help ourselves. Encourage your children and reachable young relatives from your rural hometown to embrace the love for knowledge. We need doctors, capable engineers and researchers. We don’t need hundreds of singing and dancing artists. The long queue of hopeful youths at the AF audition shows that something is wrong with our upbringing environment.

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Why are Jews so powerful?

There are only 14 million Jews in the world; seven million in the Americas, five million in Asia, two million in Europe and 100,000 in Africa . For every single Jew in the world there are 100 Muslims. Yet, Jews are more than a hundred times more powerful than all the Muslims put together. Ever wondered why? Jesus of Nazareth was Jewish. Albert Einstein, the most influential scientist of all time and TIME magazine’s ‘Person of the Century’, was a Jew. Sigmund Freud — id, ego, and superego — the father of psychoanalysis Was a Jew. So were Karl Marx, Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman. Here are a few other Jews whose intellectual output has Enriched the whole humanity:

Benjamin Rubin gave humanity the vaccinating needle.

Jonas Salk developed the first polio vaccine.

Alert Sabin developed the improved live polio vaccine.

Gertrude Elion gave us a leukaemia fighting drug.

Baruch Blumberg developed the vaccination for Hepatitis B.

Paul Ehrlich discovered a treatment for syphilis (a sexually transmitted disease).

Elie Metchnikoff won a Nobel Prize in infectious diseases.

Bernard Katz won a Nobel Prize in neuromuscular transmission.

Andrew Schally won a Nobel in endocrinology (disorders of the endocrine system; diabetes, hyperthyroidism) Aaron Beck founded Cognitive Therapy (psychotherapy to treat mental disorders, depression and phobias).

Gregory Pincus developed the first oral contraceptive pill.

George Wald won a Nobel for furthering our understanding of the human eye. Stanley Cohen won a Nobel in embryology (study of embryos and their development).

Willem Kolff came up with the kidney dialysis machine.

Over the past 105 years, 14 million Jews have won 15-dozen Nobel Prizes while only three Nobel Prizes have been won by 1.4 billion Muslims (other than Peace Prizes). Why are Jews so powerful?

ignite.

welcome.

if you stumbled upon here for no reason, this is just a test page. But i am leaving it as it is. I think this will be the only fun page you will ever get to see on this blog. For serious stuff, please explore my other articles that follow.

testing inserting pictures:

This was my guitar. I used to write personal, non-communicated songs (a.k.a syok sendiri) during my bewildered youth to express perceptions on the world developed from my oscillating emotions. In the end, i managed to produce a scrapbook containing word rhymes correlated with alphabets indicating acoustic guitar riffs.

Now that I know I am destined to be a corporate knowledge worker, I’ll store those creative notes in my attic. But ever since I got submerged into reading diverse opinions of local bloggers written with bombastic vocab (i must admit i had to look up a few in my dictionary when reading comments by certain obscure personalities like ‘the Apocryphalist’), I discovered the same sensation that triggered when I first plucked my guitar guru’s guitar.

So here is the avenue where i can channel again the energy from my reflections and allow it to dissipate for a good cause. The law of physics states that there should be a cause to all effects, and so does this blog. Please read my motivations in my upcoming article: a dream, a non-committal mission.

- River