Friday, 29 December 2023

The Green Party?

“For a vegetarian, you seem to have a lot of demands,” I told myself. 

I am obviously out of sync with what being vegetarian means these days. At an age when everyone demands rights, I guess it is the same for vegetarians (and vegans, too). Rightly so too. Everyone deserves their place in the sun or rather on Earth, the rich, the economically challenged, the disabled bodies and pretty much everyone else. 

From the things that I understood in my impressionable age, by sticking around erudite adults, I assumed that one needs to control his primal desires to be a better soul. By suppressing innate desires to attack, devour and consume fellow members of the animal kingdom, it is believed people would pick up more brownie karmic points in the repeating cycles of rebirth. Hurting the sentiments of their own kind with their uppity attitude does not count. 


Of course, some have turned green for health reasons. Perhaps they had a pressing need to care for the environment or just ethical judgment of killing a fellow being with no religious undertones. 


My impression of how a vegetarian conducts himself is perhaps moulded by looking at a vegetarian friend, GR, a Brahmin and a vegetarian from birth. Whilst caught in the annual floods in Kelantan on our tour duty, we were left with just rice to eat. There were no vegetables to harvest, no dry land for hens to lay eggs and, of course, no fishing due to the monsoon. Chickens were off the menu. They had probably drowned or could not be transported from the barns. 

So my Brahmin friend ended up sustaining life with just rice and soya sauce. It went on for one week till normalcy prevailed. The rest of us had sardines, anchovies or fermented shrimp paste (belacan).

After laying down the ground rules of who can consume what and the differentiation between vegans, ovo-vegans and lacto-vegetarians, the fight is not quite over. You forgot Jains, who avoid tubers and roots. Then you have the nuevo-riche with gluten-free, lactose-free, sugar-free necessity. Eggs of free-ranging chicken are a no-no for some ovo-vegetarians, as their eggs could have been fertilized; hence, they are technically live animals. 


Vegans have claimed that a plant-only diet offers a multitude of health benefits, is better for the environment, and is the only ethical choice. While some of them respect the dietary choices of others, some of them proselytize with religious-like fervor and are working to get their diet adopted by all of humanity.

What started as a personal wish to control animalistic behaviours in us as we are what we eat and a wish to protect the environment has morphed into something laughable sometimes. It has become a fashion statement, an elitist snobbish gesture. Bending backwards to be nice to animals, they have no qualms about abusing fellow human to meet their dietary need. They also selectively choose to close an eye upon the cruelty done to dairy cows and the indiscriminate culling of male calves. 


At the end of the day, it is economics, stupid!




Wednesday, 27 December 2023

In God's hands?

Bad Surgeon: Love Under the Knife (2023)
Documentary

Perhaps the media is the one that needs to take the blame. It may be people's fascination with the high life and their gullibility. Or the society's rules on the confidentiality of information or the restriction. Some have perfected the art of staying in the limelight to awe others with their stories so tall that they cannot be refuted. These do not make sense, but watching Dr Paolo Macchiarini's shenanigans, they would. 

Dr Macchiarini is an Italian maverick surgeon employed at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, between 2010 and 2013. With a long, impressive CV, including a stint as a visiting Professor at University College London and multiple revolutionary discoveries in regenerative medicine in Russia, he hit the headlines performing groundbreaking trachea replacement surgery using a plastic mould and stem cell technology. 

At the height of his success, he meets journalist Benita Alexander. She is swept off her feet, love blossoms and wedding bells will soon be rung. Everything is going well except for his frequent absence. After all, he is a globetrotting star surgeon flying from country to country, performing avant-garde top-notch operations. On top of that, world leaders like the Clintons, Obama and the Pope have Macchiarini on their speed dial. He is their personal physician.

The wedding is planned to happen at the Vatican itself, officiated by, of all people, the Pope himself. Yes, the Pope also does weddings.

One by one, news of botched surgeries comes to the open. His credentials turned out to be fraud. His colleagues at Karolinka start an investigation. An investigative journalist is roped in. Somehow, because the World Wide Web is in its infancy, the information from one part of the world either does not reach or is falsified when it hits the outside world until ... 

Benito Alexander, the journalist scheduled to marry Macchiarini, catches him having a wife and children. She exposes him in an article in Vanity Fair. Thus came the surgeon's downfall. One by one, Sweden charges him in court. He is presently serving jail in Sweden. Macchirianno used Benito's position as a journalist to springboard his own publicity. 

It is funny that at the dawn of the birth of information technology, we were promised knowledge accessible to all. People would be more empowered to make informed decisions after accessing all sides of the multifaceted monster called truth. Surprise, surprise. Humans can still hoodwink the system and abuse the system to fulfil nefarious personal interests. 

Information platforms further help these people to peddle fake news and whitewash things. Bragging and broadcasting tall stories have become much easier. 



Monday, 25 December 2023

Apartheid in pipeline?

Pendatang (Malaysian Cantonese, Malay, Newcomer; 2023)
Director: Ken-Kin Ng

In the old days, most houses will have a single bathroom. Two, if you are in the upper middle class. Bedrooms were hardly to go by, usually reserved for the female members of the family for modesty. The males would usually rough it out wherever there was space. This was especially so when relatives visited the household. Everywhere they lay their pillow, it was a sleeping place. 


Fast forward to 1990 and beyond. Even siblings find it difficult to share living space. They talk about wanting personal space and wanting privacy. The concept of her sharing and accommodation for a fellow roommate or a sibling has suddenly become an alien concept. Hell hath no fury for a person whose personal toiletry or cosmetics are used without consent. 


Outside the confines of the home, we were a tolerant lot. We did not tolerate but instead accepted each other with each other's idiosyncratic ways of eating or worshipping. There was no concept of one ethnicity dominating one area over another. No doubt there were majorities, but each just accepted the other. Nobody claims an area to be theirs, even if there were the majority. 


We had Indians in Kampong Melayu, Malays in New Villages, Chinese in rubber estates, etc. In the 1980s, we saw townships with a particular ethnic flavour. Shah Alam and later Putrajaya claim to be Malay-centric and refuse to exhibit 'features' or engage in businesses that go against the grain of Islam. The local councils barred the sale of alcoholic beverages and the opening of pubs and nightclubs. Slowly, everybody developed a 'holier than thou' attitude of themselves. 


Now, in 2023, even illegal immigrants who had somehow stayed undetected below the radar for years have risen to the occasion. The Rohingyas, Myanmarese, and Bangladeshis have all claimed their pieces of the pie. After congregating at certain localities around the country and developing them by their standard through business and occupation, they claim legitimate ownership of those places. 


Naturally, the self-proclaimed princes of the soil would not take any of these. Their leaders, whose mental capacity never grew after the 1960s, used racist and religious catchphrases to bulldoze their agenda through small-minded straw man arguments. The trouble is the people who matter most opt for peace rather than combat bigotry at its core. The future looks bleak. 


This film imagines a dystopian Malaysia where an enactment is passed to ensure races are kept separated. It becomes a crime to interact with or harbour a person of a different ethnicity. The race felt that that would preserve the sanctity of the race, but it was a bitter pill they had to swallow. To ensure conformity to the rule of law, there is a group of ragtag vigilantes. 


A Chinese family moves on into a traditional Malay house. Unbeknownst to them, a young Malay girl is spotted hiding in the ceiling and scavenging their food. 


After some initial trepidation, the family decides to care for her, much to the wrath of the junta, which came for a home inspection. Next to follow is a series of escapes from this hell hole to a neighbouring country. 


Something obvious amongst the high-level officials and mega businessmen is that the segregation law does not apply to them. A Chinese factory owner is married to a Malay girl, and a Malay politician is seen making business deals with the Chinese. 

The take-home here really is that each race needs the other, and they have no ill feelings towards the other. In their lust to stick on to power and usurp money, the politicians and leaders create a non-existent bogeyman to create fear, divide and rule. It worked for the British then and will work for present-day East India Company 2.0, run by the country's own son of the soil.

The Klang Valley and the nationalities who claim stake.




Saturday, 23 December 2023

Guilty by default?

Emergency (2022)
Director: Carey William

Sikhism is professed by 25 to 30 million worldwide and is the fifth-largest religion in the world. Even though Sikhs constitute only 1.72% of India's population and 1.02% of the world's population, they are instantaneously recognised, not only by their unique appearance but also by their industriousness and successes. In India and the rest of the world, wherever they migrate, their proportion of poverty, as compared to other groups, remains the lowest. Outside Punjab, some minorities still excel without political assistance. Reaching foreign shores as economic migrants, they generally prosper and outperform other immigrants. They blend well into society and have the tongue to learn to speak the local lingo swiftly. Pretty soon, they will be sitting in professional bodies.

The Sikhs are often seen by community leaders as a shining example of how societies should progress. Someone toyed with the idea that lack of political representation and state assistance are the very things that help them propel forward.

Hence, in Malaysia, the recently perceived 'lack of Indian representation' in the Malaysian Cabinet is a non-issue. There is no need to depend on handouts from the top. The community itself should pull itself with its own bootstrap. As the Senior Economist Thomas Sowell advised, when people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems discriminatory. He also concluded that affirmative is ineffective. He likened it to a wrong medical diagnosis and prescription. His research had repeatedly shown that blacks in America were better off in many social parameters before the Civil Rights Law was passed in the USA. As he is often quoted to have said, "When people are poor, they want communism or socialism, but when they are rich, they think capitalism is best!"

All that is fine at a macro level, but day-to-day human interaction does not work that way at the ground level. Power dynamics and racial stereotyping are a mainstay. The presence of little Napoleons and power brokers is everywhere. The decree from the top gets lost in translation, purposefully or like the game of 'Chinese whispers'. 

A wise man's comment on affirmative action | When People Get Used 
to Preferential Treatment, 
Equal Treatment Seems 
like Discrimination; Thomas Sowell | image tagged in politics,thomas sowell,affirmative action,quote,equal rights,discrimination | made w/ Imgflip meme maker
If George Floyd has taught us anything, dealing with the enforcement unit is more complex. Split decisions made in an encounter are anything but easy. The police see the other as a potential criminal who would harm him or escape. If he made a wrong call, he would be negligent or, worse, lose his life. 

The person on the end of the police baton would be apprehensive that he would be pigeonholed based on his ethnicity or appearance. In his mind, he is assumed to be guilty by default. Any wrong move, and he is a cadaver.

These thoughts go through the minds of three friends who aspire to go places as they almost complete college. The three friends, two blacks (Kumle and Sean) and a Hispanic (Carlos) find an apparently stoned white teenager in their home. Like black South Africans in the apartheid era, they panicked. They decide to take the kid to the hospital in their SUV. Kumle, the studious one, has his life all mapped out. He is going to Princeton come fall. Sean has had a previous bad encounter with the cops, and Carlos has consumed intoxicants and is flying high like a kite.

While cruising en route to the hospital, they encounter a police roadblock. Suddenly, it dawned upon them how they might look to the cops- three coloured people kidnapping a drugged white teenager! Then begins the cascade of confusion as they avoid police custody, escape the victim's sister and friends, but most of all, not in any way jeopardise their future. The last thing they want is to be just another statistic in the ever-expanding number of victims of police brutality. 

This film is supposed to be a comedy, but the subject matter deems anything but funny!


Thursday, 21 December 2023

Time to ponder!

Kahlil Gibran's Little Book of Secrets, 2019
Kahlil Gibran, Neil Douglas-Klotz (Editor)

(first published 1932)



That is it. There is no secret. Like every seed we sprout, each extracting our own energies, in different shapes, forms and sizes, build our leaves and flowers, but have to face the sun to get our nourishments. We may take different routes like that, but lest we forget, all roads lead to Rome.

Secrets? There are none. The answers are all within us. The problem is that the more answers we seek, the more questions pop up.

Khalil Gibran, a Lebanese Christian from the Eastern Christian Church, landed in the USA after spending a fair amount of formative years in Lebanon. Exposed to either side of the hemisphere, his outlook on life is quite profound. Here is an example of his thoughts and invitation to think.

A clergyman who preaches the dangers of sin and the need to follow the spiritual path meets a dying man during his travels. He was about to help him but was warned by the man about saving him. For he was Satan. Nursing him back to health would mean saving Satan. On the other hand, what work is there for the preacher if Satan stops his evil? The preacher would be out of a job. What evangelism is there any more? There is no Satan to spew his venom. In a way, both depend on each other to prosper. Without sin, there is no need for salvation. Without the poor, there is no one for the rich to flaunt. Without the slave staying dumb, the master cannot continue squeezing the noose on the poor.

Another point to ponder...

"Maybe a funeral among human beings is a wedding feast among the angels." Whilst man mourns the loss of one of his kind, the angels have a new member. Akin to the birth, the ushers smile when the entree (baby) cries. At death, the exiting member is happily relieved of his worldly pain, but the mourners wail in pain, unable to bear the separation.




N.B.
Kahlil Gibran (Arabic: جبران خليل جبران ) was a Lebanese-American artist, poet, and writer.
Born in the town of Bsharri in modern-day Lebanon (then part of Ottoman Mount Lebanon), as a young man, he emigrated with his family to the United States, where he studied art and began his literary career. In the Arab world, Gibran is regarded as a literary and political rebel. His romantic style was at the heart of a renaissance in modern Arabic literature, especially prose poetry, breaking away from the classical school. In Lebanon, he is still celebrated as a literary hero.
He is chiefly known in the English-speaking world for his 1923 book The Prophet, an early example of inspirational fiction, including a series of philosophical essays written in poetic English prose. The book sold well despite a cool critical reception, gaining popularity in the 1930s and again, especially in the 1960s counterculture.
Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu.


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