Some mothers do have ‘em…

 

Ever so often, we have news of children who die falling off into drains; drown with their siblings at some beaches in Port Dickson; die of serious burns while playing with matches without any adults around them; die of heatstroke after being left alone in a locked vehicle under the hot sun while their mother was doing some household shopping etc etc.

Some months ago I watched a father lamenting the fact that his children had drowned at a beach while he was praying. Yea, right. He had the clarity of mind to leave his kids unattended at a beach and went praying.

It is obvious that some of us are not fit to be parents. These people forget that children are not mere by-products of sex, legal or otherwise. With kids come the responsibility. And if we are not prepared to take the responsibility of being parents seriously, or at all, we’d better not be one. It is as simple as that.

In England for example, a day after any incident resulting in a calamity to children, the authority would come a-knocking on the parents’ door. Without question they would take away the remaining children until they are sure that the parents are fit to raise their remaining children.

Over here, I remember there were calls sometime ago for a negligent parent whose child died to be punished. But of course people in authorities as well as a section of the public could be heard saying why must we compound the agony of the parents who had just lost their kid. Well, how about the kid? He died, for God’s sake.

I know the action of the welfare authorities in England may sound harsh, inhumane and unkind. However, incidents involving parental negligence in our country have seen a steady rise.

Our lackadaisical attitude towards our children’s safety can be seen every day. Yesterday alone I saw a lady walking a good 5 metres away from her 4 or 5 year old boy. The boy was of course walking in the middle of the street. The mother just walked as if nothing was happening.

Nowadays it is also of course quite trendy for some of us to drive in continental vehicles with sunroof. And scenes like the one in the picture above are quite prevalent too nowadays. If I remember correctly, last year I saw a TV3 news about a girl who was allowed by her father to do like the child in the picture in a car which was driven along a busy road in KL. Her head was stuck when the sunroof closed by itself and could not be re-opened! It made the news on TV3!

Traffic safety is our responsibility. It is not enough for all of us to just hope that the PDRM and JPJ to reduce accidents etc. We must realise that the responsibility first of all is ours to ensure traffic safety. The PDRM and JPJ are just law enforcers. If we could not be bothered with even our own safety, can we expect the PDRM and JPJ to reduce accidents?

Most importantly. children are God’s gift to us. They rely on us for almost everything until the time comes for them to look after themselves.

Do we want to fail them?

Newspapers – your fate is in your own hands

“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” - Thomas Jefferson (letter to Edward Carrington, 1787)

When I was growing up in a small village in Kedah, only a handful of the villagers read newspapers. There wasn’t even a newspaper vendor in my village and that was probably because there was no market for newspapers then.

The villagers who wanted to buy newspapers had to place their order with a shopkeeper. The shopkeeper would then order them from a vendor in Alor Star. The vendor in Alor Star would then send them to the shopkeeper in my village by bus. Every day, the newspapers would arrive by about 1 or 2pm, courtesy of the friendly Bas MARA driver.

My father was one of those handful of villagers who actually ordered Utusan Melayu (that’s how and why I manage to read “jawi”) every day. On weekends, Mingguan Malaysia was added to the order.

When I grew up and was in the hostel, I read whatever newspapers available at the library. In the university, the Star was my staple diet. Truth be told, the Star actually helped me to improve my English while in the university.

I have however stopped reading printed newspapers about 10 years ago.

There are two basic reasons for that. Firstly, the advent of the internet means that I could have access to the news on the go, even from the BBC, Reuters, CNN and the likes. Secondly, I am afraid to say, rightly or wrongly, I have credibility issue with local newspapers.

Both the above reasons are intertwined. Prior to the internet age, newspapers were the main sources of news in printed form. Government programmes were publicised through the newspapers, radio and TV stations (RTM being the only stations available). Once in a blue moon, a Jabatan Penerangan truck with portable loud speakers, large movie screen and film projector would come to the village school to show a movie. In the middle of the show, there would be a short interval. During the interval, announcements would be made by the Jabatan’s officer about pending government programmes and the likes.

The people had no other means to access information. Unfortunately, newspapers, owing to the information monopoly which they then possessed, had to a large extent abused its power over information. If knowledge was power, then power over knowledge, especially a monopolised one, is debilitating.

Reports were often spun in order to suit whatever agenda, political or otherwise, which the newspapers serve. I remember one particular newspaper reporting that the 1^st Bersih rally had only attracted 6000 people. There was another newspaper which blanked out a political party’s emblem from a picture of an umbrella in a murder report. Recently, another newspaper blanked out Malaysia’s name from an international report which was not too flattering towards our country.

Before the advent of information technology, our newspapers did all these things with impunity. They seldom got caught. Even if they were, by the time they got caught, the particular issue would have gone stale and became irrelevant.

Enter the age of the internet. Information travels at the speed of light nowadays. And quite literally too. Information in analogue form is now instantly converted into digital form. These digital codes are then beamed all over the world through optic cables in the speed of light. Pictures of events are instantly posted on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs as well as internet news portals. Comments are made and published as and when the events take place. Articles are written and analysis made within minutes thereafter.

Newspapers editors should now realise that it is 2012 we are talking about. Any misreporting or “creative inputs” which negate the original news could be found out in an instant and corrected much to the embarrassment of the newspapers in question. They should now realise that information is not within their absolute purview and power anymore. The whole cyber world is now empowered. And they are so ever willing to share this new-found empowerment.

Some of us would have read by now how Kodak had filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 of the American bankruptcy laws recently. This is a company which had almost monopolised the photography industry. It has more than a thousand patents on digital photography technology. However, unfortunately, it failed to adapt to modern technologies, a number of which it even owns. It is now paying the price.

Newspapers, I am afraid, could suffer the same fate if they fail to adapt to this new-age world of information freedom. They would lose credibility and readership.

“All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarise that society. We can brutalise it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level,” says William Bernbach, (of DDB Needham Worldwide), in 1989. That is true. Newspapers have its function. They can shape the society, vulgarise it, brutalise it or enlighten and lift it to a higher plane.

The question is, what would our local newspapers want to do?

Gong Xi Fa Cai

 

To all my Chinese friends, here’s to wishing you Happy New Year. May the dragon bring all of us happiness, good health, prosperity and lots of Bruce Lee’s fists and kicks in all our pursuit. Enjoy but be safe!

Totalitarian/absolutist economy

The establishment, nourishment, protection and subsequent embellishment by any government of entities (corporate or otherwise) with monopolistic businesses and/or preferential treatment signal the rise of what I would term as totalitarian economy.

A totalitarian economy operates and behaves in manners not unlike a totalitarian or absolutist State. By its very nature, it feeds off compulsion and force, disallows and even destroys competition and gives no option nor choice to the consumers. It is beyond scrutiny as it is not answerable to any entity, let alone the very consumers which it aims to supply.

As  a result of the totalitarian and absolutist approach, this economy owes little, if at all, affinity to the concepts of fairness and justness.

It is like a black hole. It swallows everything which is in its way. It then grows bigger. And bigger.

The only difference is that, unlike the real black holes, a totalitarian economy  only grows bigger within the confines of the parameters defined by its own creators. Throw this economy into an unchartered territory, the real capitalist would just laugh its head off. With a mere snap of the capitalist’s finger, this totalitarian economy would be history.

That is not surprising. As a result of the constant nourishment, protection and forced embellishment of this economics absolutism/totalitarianism, such economy knows not how to compete. Its supernova-like explosive birth and subsequent growth deprives it of the ability to learn and to grow organically. This totally underdeveloped creature – underdeveloped in the sense that it is bereft of the elements which would ensure its vibrancy and survival in unchartered territories – has no defence mechanism nor the ability to adapt to changes within its surrounding, preferring to coil within the comfort of its mother’s lap.

A totalitarian/absolutist state compels its citizenry to submission by usages of physical force. It gives no option. Submit or be subjugated. Or even be incarcerated. And sometimes even killed.

A totalitarian/absolutist economy is not much less forceful or vicious. It gives consumers no choice nor option. You buy our cars. If not you have to pay substantially more for cars which are not ours. You use our supply. At our rates. If not, you would not have any other supply at all. Period.

Like a totalitarian state, totalitarian economy ensures great pains will befall its citizenry for any non-compliance or non-submission.

In this neo-totalitarianism, the consumers have no choice but to submit. If you do not buy our cars, you would  be financially incarcerated by the finance companies for the duration of the hire-purchase agreements which you enter into to purchase other cars. You would be subjected to financial tortures inflicted upon yourself in the form of duties and taxes.

A totalitarian/absolutist state would not care a hoot about her people’s welfare. It exists for one purpose, namely, to ensure its own survival and continuity, at any price. It does not care about the price to be paid because really, the price is not paid by itself but by the people it subjugates.

The same with a totalitarian/absolutist economy. It really does not care about the welfare of the consumers. Thus the power window will break down in 2 weeks. The service centres should be called torture centres. These so called “service centres” is an insult to the word “service”. They are manned by inefficient, arrogant, un-smiling and sometimes even rude robots in human skins and hair. Ask them a question, these creatures would frown. Ask another and they would sulk. Ask a third one and they spit in your drinks.

And it will continue to churn out mediocre after mediocre products based on “joint-collaborations”. Which is just another way to describe the proverbial (a new-age proverb) “cut and paste” job. It cuts out the original maker’s  emblem and paste its own emblem, for example.

A totalitarian state is beyond criticism. Because really, it does not care much about what people say about it. It doesn’t care because it controls the machinations of the state. It wields untold powers.

The same goes with a totalitarian economy. Thus a monopoly business can make hundreds of millions of losses and be compensated by its benevolent benefactors. It will then seek to make profits not by ensuring efficiency and addressing weaknesses but by increasing the price of its product, the supply of which it monopolises.

A totalitarian/absolutist economy grows up like a spoilt brat. It gets what it wants. Always. And when it doesn’t, it sulks and throws temper tantrums. The constant nourishment and absolute pampering takes away from it the ability to adapt to changes; to compete on a level playing field and to position itself in a strategic defence line if ever it is attacked by outside forces.

In addition, a totalitarian/absolutist economy is always told by its benefactors that it is the most beautiful; the best and the greatest. It thus grows with this “superiority complex”, believing itself to be among the giants. When exposed to  - or even the threat of exposing it to -competition, it wilts like a virgin nymph high on Ecstasy at the feet of a sweet talker. 

If and when all the ladders and props are taken away, a totalitarian economy would fall like a house of cards.