English Portfolio Entry no. 6

By Clarence Fernandez and Hsu Chuang Khoo

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia celebrated the 50th anniversary of its independence on Friday with fireworks, flag-waving and a prayer for unity among its races and religions.

Malaysia's premier used his anniversary speech, made in the midnight hour of the nation's birth, to voice pride in the country's record of religious tolerance, but he and others hinted at recent undercurrents of social tension.

"We must take care of our unity and we must be ready to destroy any threat which may affect our unity," Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told tens of thousands of Malaysians who had turned out in the capital's main square to see the fireworks.

Malaysia is dominated politically by ethnic Malays, who are Muslims and see themselves as the natural rulers and indigenous race. But they make up only a slender majority -- ethnic Chinese and Indians account for almost 40 percent of the population.

The social melting pot, partly a legacy of colonial times when former ruler Britain imported Chinese and Indian labor to work mines and plantations, has left Malaysia with a major challenge to keep the peace between the races.

With conservative Islam on the rise in Malaysia, non-Muslims have begun to complain that their constitutional rights to freedom of worship and to secular government are being compromised.

The Malay deputy premier recently called Malaysia an Islamic state, angering non-Muslims. Increasingly, leaders of the multi-racial government are urging Malaysians to heed the lessons of 1969, when racial tensions burst into deadly riots.

"SIGNS OF POLARISATION"

On Friday morning, as flag-waving Malaysians again streamed into Merdeka (Freedom) Square for the main daytime celebrations, some Christian groups prayed for unity at churches nationwide.

"Today, after 50 years of nationhood, we realize that we cannot take unity-in-diversity for granted. What divides us has become more accentuated than what unites us," the Christian Federation of Malaysia said in a "national day message".

"Signs of polarization along ethnic and religious lines, along with all forms of chauvinism, racism and superiority are eroding our national unity."

But in Merdeka Square, as helicopters sprinkled the crowd with powder in the red, white, blue and yellow colors of the national flag, thoughts of religious and racial tension gave way to a party atmosphere.

Thousands of dancers, a choir of around 2,300 teachers and 1,000 drummers performed patriotic songs, watched by Abdullah, Malaysia's king and queen and dozens of foreign dignitaries, including the British queen's representative, Prince Andrew.

The leaders of six other Southeast Asian nations also gathered on the podium to watch the celebrations, which included a fly-past by Malaysia's new Russian-made fighter jets.

"I am happy to live in Malaysia. There is unity here," said Hew Kam Yean, 30, an ethnic Chinese insurance agent who came to the square with her 4-year-old son and her husband, who flew a small Malaysian flag from his baseball cap.

But 62-year-old ethnic Indian S.K. Lingam, a taxi driver, was in a more reflective mood and said that despite the show of unity, Malaysia's races had drifted apart in recent years.

"Two decades ago, when I used to be in the merchant navy, we used to gather together on weekends for BBQs and parties. It didn't matter what religion we were ... Over the last few years, people don't seem to get together on weekends too much."

Great Oxymorons—

1. Meritocratic UMNO

2. Fair Bumiputra

3. Malaysia, Truly Asia.

What a farce.

What a completely contrived, shallow, spurious, superficial and intelligence-insulting farce.

My dear Malaysia, if you were my fool I would have you whipped for growing old before your time. Because you should not dare to proclaim with so much pageantry that you are 50 years old without having first grown wise.

On August 30, as Chinese, Indian and Malay, as non-Muslim, non-Muslim, and Muslim, as non-Bumiputrist, non-Bumiputrist and Bumiputrist celebrated Malaysia’s 50^th anniversary in the ironically named Merdeka Square, Chinese who score 5 A’s in their examinations were being denied entrances into universities for lower-scoring Bumiputrists, a.k.a Malays. And Bumiputrists who were buying new housing were being given an exclusive 7% discount. And Debating Teams which did not have at least one Bumiputrist member were being denied participation in any competition. Bumiputrists and non-Bumiputrists will learn in different schools, eat separately, work separately, socialise separately and by constitutional law worship separately.

The racial rift in our most racially harmonious Malaysia is widening, thanks to the Bumiputra Laws, which constitutionally give Bumiputrists (Malays, which must also be defined as followers of Islam) all sorts of advantages over people of other races. Malays get privileged access of public-sector jobs, university places, stock-market flotations, and above all, government contracts.

And the high-ups are willing to stand by these laws—by hook or by crook, it seems. In 2004, Dr. Shafie Salleh, the newly appointed Higher Education Minister, stated that he "will ensure the quota of Malay students' entry into universities is always higher". Draconian methods of suppressing dissent are starting to be hinted at. The veiled threat of violence was never clearer than at last years’ UMNO conference, when a delegate (no prizes for guessing whether or not he was Malay) talked about being ready to “bathe in blood” to defend Malay privileges, and the extremely pragmatic and civilized education minister brandished a traditional Malay dagger. Their justification for the Bumiputra Laws?

1. Malays are indigenous people.

Hmm. Excellent point, and no factual inaccuracy there either. I just have one tiny question: so what, my dear Malaysia, so what? No country in the globalized world can claim that citizens are only people who randomly happen to have been living on that particular piece of land. And by logical extension it makes no sense at all to give indigenous people privileges, since every citizen should be accorded equal rights—no, every citizen has equal rights, and the government cannot dole them out as and when it feels like it. It is any government’s obligation to acknowledge that people which it calls citizens should have equal rights. And with equal rights should come equal opportunities and treatment—which isn’t really being fulfilled in Malaysia, I suppose.

2. Bumiputra Laws must exist to fulfill Racial Harmony.

Yes, politicians do make bad jokes, but this must be the mother of them all. Because it is absurd and unjust to tell the children of families that have lived in Malaysia for generations that, in effect, that they are lucky no to be deported and will have to put up with second-class treatment for the rest of their lives, the people to whom Malaysia is feeding this know it very well. Give the Christians and the Buddhists and the Hindus a limited space for building the very places where they will worship and come to stand for what they believe in, and they make take it, but take away their education, and their money, and their chance for a better future, and the resentment is obviously there.

3. Oh, everyone is under the social contract, so shut up.

This justification does seem to make superficial sense, but there is something very inherently wrong about this. In a social contract, people give up some of their rights to gain citizenship on a particular country, and protection of their other rights. So Malaysia’s logic goes thus: Malays shall get the recognition that the country is basically theirs, while the Chinese and the Indians are granted citizenship at the cost of a life on a lower societal and economic stratum, which is their metaphorical payment. Once again there is one small problem: In the social contract, every member of the contract pays an equal price. Quite conspicuously this is not happening in Malaysia, where the Malays seem to gain from the Chinese and the Indians what the Chinese and the Indians are giving up! Apparently the Malay politicians know a lot about the social contract but very little about contract theory. Either that, or they selectively pick and choose which aspects of the social contract to conveniently ignore.

Even if any of the above reasons proved to be in the slightest justifiable, the Bumiputra Laws are detrimental to the state itself, which brings into light the question of how far the Malay politicians are going to go to ensure on arbitrary and unfair grounds that members of their own race always get the advantage, even if such opportunities are mostly wasted on the Malays. Badawi promised to end corruption—four years on, corruption, facilitated by the pro-Malay policies, is unchecked, a fact very politely underscored by the fact that the head of the Anti-Corruption Bureau was himself accepting bribes. The state continues to use draconian policies to silence and threaten critics. UMNO continues to portray itself to Malays as a defender of their privileges yet tries to convince everyone else that it is the guarantor of racial harmony. One commentator gently called it a “paradox”. Hypocrisy would be a better word.

Not to mention that the Bumiputra Laws have made the Bumiputrists hopelessly dependent on them. The percentage of Malay graduates who cannot speak English is increasing. Malay students, with Government-issued scholarships and study loans, tend to take up subjects like Syariah Law, Islamic History and other Islam-related subjects. Instead of choosing to learn English and taking up subjects that are of more secular tangible benefits. Some have gone to great lengths to further their studies in Middle Eastern countries, learning Arabic in the process. The results of this stunning lack of pragmatism is unfortunate - in June 2006, it was revealed that a batch of 169 students sent to the Al-Azhar University in Cairo had difficulties with the Arabic language, resulting in only 5 students making it through their course. The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, had strongly criticized this trend among Malay students to choose "simple subjects" which are worthless in the job market. This leads to Malaysia’s dismally low economic competitivity. It also goes without saying that investors have been scared away by radical quotas and protectionism.

I realize now that it is very easy for me to come across as anti-Malay, or anti-Islam, and for people to lambaste me as racist. I am not, but the facts lie in such a way that they cannot be stated plainly without the person who does so looking like he is bigoted—because the facts speak openly against the people who have put in place these laws.

I do not believe that the common Malay man in Malaysia is blind to this unfairness, and I believe that they know what is right. The people whom I condemn are those who cause the Bumiputra Laws to stay the way they are.

I wish that Malaysia would do something to make it less hard for me to try to convince people that Malays are not inherently bad people, and that Islam is a religion that does not promote violence or racial segregation.

Until then though, MalaysiaAsia. will never be a true refection of Asia—I would very much rather call it a very bigoted and exclusively Malay sliver of a much larger Asia.

English Portfolio Entry no, 5

Pub Date: 25/07/2007 Pub: ST Page: H4
Headline: Speak Good English drive to rock to a youth beat
By: HO AI LI
Page Heading: HOME
Source: SPH

IT’S all about expressing yourself well – including how to “tell your girlfriend or mother that you love her” – says musician Jack Ho, 29, from Singapore band EIC. He is among the musicians – including band mate Rai, 29, and The UnXpected’s Shirlyn Tan, 31 – who have been roped in as “activists” for this year’s Speak Good English Movement. In an effort to get closer to youth, the campaign has made the Timbre Music Bistro – where local bands play – the official venue for its activities. Live band and drama performances and oratorical contests will be held at the popular Armenian Street hangout from 7 to 9pm every Wednesday for the next year.

The movement, in its seventh year now, will commence with the launch of two books next Tuesday. The first is a compilation of the “English As It Is Broken” columns in The Straits Times and in the paper’s Web portal Stomp. The second is a retailer’s guide to good English titled Speak Well, Sell Well. Chairman of the movement, Professor Koh Tai Ann, an English literature academic at Nanyang Technological University, said it is focusing its efforts on youth. She said: “It’s better to get people when they are young. The young will be the future teachers, future parents, future workers.”

She believes that speaking good English is not about the right accent or Singlish, but about pronunciation and being grammatically correct. Instead of making Singlish our national language, we can claim ownership to Singapore Standard English, she argued. There are varieties of Standard English in other countries spoken in a local accent, and containing accepted words for local concepts. “Where the British have mobiles and the Americans cells, Singaporeans have handphones,” she said. Prof Koh said that the movement’s progress is “very difficult to quantify” but “slowly accumulative”. She added: “If we keep it going we are bound to see results.”

Spik-oot Eenkrish

I am no pessimist, but to me the words “slowly accumulative” ring with the same relevance that the words “utterly futile” have.

The “Speak Good English” movement, after seven years, has faded into the background din of our everyday lives as yet another bit of Government-sponsored tinsel and thunder.

There are several reasons I believe that the movement, inclusive of this recent change, will fail.

Right from the very beginning of a Singaporean’s education, he or she is subjected to lots of badly pwonunced, grammatical wrong Eenkrish. My mother is the HOD of English at a primary school, and she (and I) can readily testify to the fact that many of the teachers of English at primary schools are hardly able to pronounce words correctly and with grammatical precision. I remember with much chagrin how my Primary 5 form teacher would always pronounce the word “film” as “filem”, its Malay equivalent, and how she staunchly ignored me when I tried to correct her. (When you are Primary 5, correcting your teacher’s pronunciation seems like a much more significant usurping of divine order than correcting certain discipline masters and science teachers in secondary school.)

So right from the very beginning, the students are led into the illusion that such English is the internationally accepted, correct form of standard English. Such influence even persists well into secondary school, (Ahem) where admittedly the standard of spoken English is still much higher.

Another reason I think the movement will fail is because it implicitly compels people to give up Singlish. MM Lee himself has also condemned the use of Singlish. I think an important clarification in my stand on this issue has to be made here.

I like Singlish.

In fact, I think that Singlish is one of the extremely few uniquely Singaporean aspects of our culture.

Yes, be shocked, stunned, horrified, call this blasphemy and banish me from Lit RA.

But I think there is nothing at all inherently wrong with Singlish. Language is for communication, and how correct a language is not something that can be measured on an absolute scale, as language is ultimately relative to its usage. What is wrong now may now be what is right tomorrow; after all, the mere fact that a word appears in a dictionary does not mean that any word not inside is necessarily wrong. This is precisely why the word “kiasu” in now in the Standard Oxford Dictionary. Does this mean that the word “kiasu” went through a miraculous change in status overnight? No. For all intents and purposes it is still used the same way—only that now our English teacher has no right to underline the word should it appear in a passage of text. And we still cannot imagine a Brit saying to another Brit with a Brit accent: “I never really liked him, he was always too miserly and kiasu for me.”

Because Singlish fulfills its purpose of communication in a Singaporean context very well, if not superbly so, I say: treasure it. When I looked through the Wikipedia article on Singlish, I felt a guilty sense of pride in Singlish and genuine interest the extremely complex phonetic dissection of Singlish, and the way it serves very interestingly as a cultural linguistic melting pot; an ethnolinguist’s dream. After all, what makes a Scottish Accent, a Texan Drawl, a French Slur “acceptable”, but not Singlish?

However, I believe that Singlish is not alone sufficient for the average Singaporean to build a good future for himself or herself. This is because even though we would not ask for a kopi teh in perfect Queen’s English, neither would we want to answer interview questions or discuss business contacts in speech peppered with lahs and lorhs and random speckles of meh? Hence I believe that the Singaporean must effectively learn two types of English—Singlish, and Standard English, and also master the art of code-switching. A tall order, but nonetheless one that I believe solves one of the most aching problems of the Speak Good English campaign; that of forcing a person to give up the means of communication he has lived and grown familiar with.

It is at this point that I realize how hard it is to put into words this factor is; it’s rather like your Chinese teacher forcing you to speak Chinese with a Chinese accent. (unlike English, Chinese is a pitch-based language, and the accent directly affects pronunciation the same way speaking Standard English would be different from speaking Singlish, so this should be analogous) There is a vague and unsettling sense of unfamiliarity and un-selfness about the whole affair. It is because of this that I believe that the Speak Good English movement should not be one that attempts to condemn Singlish at the same time. Let people first know that Singlish is not wrong; then let them know the multifarious added benefits of Standard English; then the problem will be solved.

And now that the youth are being looped into this campaign too, will things change? They, but not, in my opinion, to any significant extent. Why? Simply because any such move will be simply seen as contrived and artificial, the same way we see all the happily running and jumping construction workers in cheesy national day music videos. The Singaporean Government has severely underestimated the effect that culture can have on such movements. And for such a movement which has so severely estranged itself from the common coffeeshop Singaporean, attempts like these cannot have significant impact. To the normal coffeeshop Singaporean, Standard English has become the language of the bourgeoisie, of stiff-necked politicians who talk in terms they cannot understand and are discouraging the use of the very dialects that these people speak anyway. When they see such a move, they think: what are they doing to the youth now?

So my advice is this: don’t let the rift grow, don’t fight what little Singaporean culture we have. Stop hacking the ground out from under your feet, because when you sling mud you get your hands dirty.

English Portfolio Entry no. 4

'Reality' game sparks outrage

Pay me to take it down, says jobless youth behind game

Electric New Paper, Singapore

Give me US$3,000 and I'll throw in an apology.

That's the snide response of a jobless Sydney animator to the furore sparked by his online shooting game.

Australian-based Ryan Lambourn, 21, posted a game called V-Tech Rampage on his own website and a US gaming portal three days ago.

In it, the player manipulates a character carrying a handgun around a campus in search of people to shoot. It boasts 'three levels of stealth and murder'.

It makes clear references to the Virginia Tech killings and gunman Seung-Hui Cho, the student who shot to death 32 people on 16 Apr before turning the gun on himself.

It also makes reference to a violent play written by Cho, titled Richard McBeef, by berating players who fail to kill 'Emily' - the name of Cho's first victim - with 'Are you always full of s..., McBeef?'

The game has generated a furious debate online, with many contributors to forums and newsgroups demanding that it be removed.

FOR 'LAUGHS'

Mr Lambourn said no one had taken him up on his offer to pay him to take it down.

'That's exactly the point I was trying to prove,' Mr Lambourn told AAP.

'These people talk and talk and are angry and are telling me 'you have to take it down' and no one's even come near it because they would rather talk about it.'

The unemployed man said he created the game for 'laughs'.

He said he had previously composed music about Hurricane Katrina and the death of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin.

Despite his demands for money, MrLambourn vowed that he would not take down the game under any circumstances, even if he was asked to by the victims' families.

'Yeah it's staying up - freedom of speech, man,' he told the Daily Telegraph. 'Someone is offended by something all the time - it doesn't matter what it is.'

He then claimed the cash demand was 'just a joke'.

'People were angry, so me and my friends thought it would be funny,' he said.

He said he empathised with Cho, as he had also been bullied at high schools in the US.

Mr Lambourn was born in Australia but lived in the US for some years before returning to Australia when he was 14.

He told AFP that he had left school in secondary two after been bullied in schools in five US cities.

Since then, he says he has become a self-taught animator, but is supported by his mother, who still lives in the US.

Mr Daniele Ledonne, who created a similar online game after the massacre of 12 people by two students at Columbine High School in 1999 said he was 'torn' over whether to support MrLambourn, as he did not agree with his demands for cash.

At press time, the game remained online.

As a humanities student I must confess that, if humans are supposed to posses a certain modicum of empathy, I find it very hard to believe that the creator of this game even deserves the title of human. The reason Lambourn can be so callous and utterly unfeeling about the victims and other members of Virginia Tech faculty, frankly, evades me. And his justifications only seem half-baked twisted arguments that serve only to degrade the value of human life.

The massacre was a hideous experience for the many people affected. The trauma and the horror of that experience is still fresh on their minds, even as they try to pick up the pieces and realign the psychological terror to realign their emotional syzygy. And we are only talking about the people who lived though the ordeal—what about the 33 members of students and faculty who died under the nozzle of Cho-Seung’s gun, some of whom gave up their lives the protect more people in the path of the rampage? Were these not people with feelings, aspirations, dreams? The brutal, merciless annihilation of such fellow human beings is a crime of indescribable proportions. We, those living, can only, and should, respect their memory. One would be inclined to think that any sane person would understand in at least some small way the suffering of these people, and not try to re-enact their suffering over and over again in something as casual as a mere game. One would be inclined to think that no person would even dare to insult and trivialize the lives of the people who died, making them seem useless flotsam and jetsam in an unfortunate accident. One would be inclined to think that no person would gain pleasure, save through pure sadism, through gunning down virtual people and hearing their screams, even as the virtual people are symbolically representative of the many affected people in the real world.

And what of Lambourn’s claims of “empathy” for Cho? I find it extremely hard to believe that a person who can ignore the feelings of hundreds of people and remain smug about it has so much empathy as to actually empathize with the perpetratopr of these crimes. I admit that I am not Lambourn, and am probably biased against Cho, finding it easier to relate to innocent victims more mentally smilar to me, but granted that Lambourn, due to his similar past experiences, may be able to empathize with Cho better than others, creating such a game is no way to express empathy. If Lambourn can truly understand Cho’s internal affliction, his anguish and suffering, then he should then be trying to help other people in this position, trying to make sure that no-one ends up at the same despairing ultimatum as Cho. Yet he creates a game that, contrarily, encourages other people subliminally to do the same. I think Lambourn should really learn how to express his emotions more appropriately and with more due sensitiviy.

What appalls me,though, is that Lambourn can actually dare to ask for money as a prerequisite for him to apologise. When people rightfully express outrage at what he has done, he not only ignores them at first but then shows the he has nothing but his own personal profit on his mind. And no true apology is one that is gained via payment--and no one is going to buy an apology which means nothing. What Lambourn is trying to prove is that no person is willing to satiate the selfish desires of a person who creates a game that mocks the very inherent dignity of people. Maybe Lambourn was doing it for mere "fun", but that would have been done in ignorance of the genuine feelings from others involved, something that I would never condone.

And now on to his primary justification for his actions: the Right to Freedom of Speech, probably the most oft-cited right of them all. What Lambourn does not understand, however, is that all rights stem from the concept of Human Dignity, the concept that every human has an inalienable, intrinsic value. It is because of this inherent value that Rights exist as a form of empowerment, realization, and the fulfillment of this potential. Human Dignity ultimately deserves protection above all other rights, because it is their source. And Lambourn, because he created this game that is inherently and necessarily degrading to the preciousness and value of human life, deserves, more than anything, to have his the Right to Freedom of Speech curbed to protect Human Dignity. Maybe Lambourn should take a step back and have a good look at what he is really doing before he tries to gain the moral ground.

(487 words)

footage of the game with Cho-Seung's favourite song playing in the background:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmOxRQkvaoo&NR=1

English Portfolio Entry no. 3

BBC, Scientologists battle on Web about documentary and shouting reporter

By ROBERT BARR

LONDON (AP) - The British Broadcasting Corp. and the Church of Scientology are both using the Internet to air a dispute in which a reporter shouts angrily at a church official while researching a documentary scheduled for broadcast Monday.

John Sweeney's outburst came as he was interviewing Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis, who had previously objected to Sweeney's use of the word "cult." Sweeney was captured by BBC's Panorama program and Scientology video cameras during a rant which continued for about 40 seconds.

"I look like an exploding tomato and shout like a jet engine and every time I see it, it makes me cringe," Sweeney said in a story posted on the BBC News Web site.

"I apologized almost immediately, Tommy carried on as if nothing had happened, but meanwhile Scientology had rushed off copies of me losing it (my temper) to my boss, my boss's boss and my boss's boss's boss, the director-general of the BBC," Sweeney said.

The Church of Scientology, whose members include Hollywood stars John Travolta and Tom Cruise, shadowed the Panorama team with its own camera crew.

A church spokesman denied that Sweeney apologized, and said the organization was putting its own documentary about the dispute on the Internet.

Mike Rinder, a Los Angeles-based spokesman for the Church of Scientology, said he had taken the documentary to the BBC.

"Not one of them would look. The arrogance that has been displayed in this is a little beyond comprehension," he said.

The first clip on the Scientologists' documentary shows Sweeney describing the BBC as sometimes "hideously hidebound" and hampered by bureaucracy. "There are people there who claim salaries who frankly are morons," he says.

Excerpts of the Scientologists' documentary have been posted on YouTube, apparently taken from one of the 100,000 DVDs of its program that the church distributed, Rinder said.

Another clip on YouTube, from the same documentary, shows Sweeney at a movie premiere shouting at Travolta, "Are you a member of a sinister brainwashing cult?"

The BBC offered links to its footage and its own news report on its Web site.

Panorama's editor, Sandy Smith, said Monday he was "disappointed" by Sweeney's outburst but added that the Church of Scientology has "no way of dealing with any kind of criticism at all."

Rinder said it was not the first time that the church had made its own recordings of reporters doing stories about it.

Sweeney refused an invitation to visit the church's headquarters in Florida, Rinder said.

"When we found that he was refusing to literally come inside the building, it was at that point that we went, 'OK we better document this,"' Rinder said.

Sweeney said his outburst came while he was touring a Scientology exhibition in Los Angeles, "Psychiatry: Industry of Death." The exhibit included a mock-up of a Nazi torture chamber, he said, adding that he lost it in the "Mind Control" section of the exhibition.

"I have been shouted at, spied on, had my hotel invaded at midnight, denounced as a 'bigot' by star Scientologists, brainwashed - that is how it felt to me - in a mock-up of a Nazi-style torture chamber and chased round the streets of Los Angeles by sinister strangers."

Rinder said the material in the exhibition came from psychiatric archives. "It's all documentary and its all on video, that's why we did it," he said.

Before reading the article below, PLEASE watch the videos below. They really help in a better understanding of the situation.

Scientologists’ audio manipulated video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxqR5NPhtLI&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J8-Zfzd55E&mode=related&search= documentary, pt 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0UZ7xeni28&mode=related&search= documentary, pt 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPnoqGHhmWc&mode=related&search= doc pt 3 (this one has the original footage)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39mRWMR142U&mode=related&search= doc pt 4

It is usually assumed, nowadays, that making extremely loud and dissonant noises with one’s voice as an expression of a particularly heightened rage is a trait displayed only by women. (Yes, feminists, another noble cause for you to fight for!) It would also be considered very surprising to see a man dressed in tie and jacket screaming like a banshee in a public place.

It is also surprising that a religion which dictates with no basis whatsoever that an alien ruler of the "Galactic Confederacy" called Xenu, 75 million years ago, brought billions of people to Earth in Douglas DC-8 airliners (NO joke here, please), stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs, causing their souls to cluster together and stick to the bodies of the living, causing all sorts of physical ailments, can exist in a world where I am seriously inclined to think most humans posses lumps of fat in their heads called brains. (Welcome and that was your crash course into Scientology, the 100000-member religion of Tom Cruise and John Travolta, founded by the science fiction writer Ron Hubbard. Don’t laugh. They’ll sue you like the PAP. )

It is then that I find this article about a male BBC reporter screaming at a highly-ranked scientologist so disturbingly interesting. (for a sudden realization that I lack a better phrase.) Humorous innuendos aside—yes, I admit that I find scientology, frankly, a religion lost in the stone age. Yet, even as I express my personal disbelief in this private medium of a blog, I think there is fundamentally wrong about a BBC reporter losing his cool at a member of a different religion so drastically in the course of his work—a supposedly objective and unbiased profession, I might add.

I believe that both parties involved in this dispute have proven to be equally at fault—the reporter, for losing his temper, and the Scientologists, for their extremely disgraceful reaction, as well as the precedents that they set for this scene to occur.

The Humanist would condemn Sweeney for his disrespect for other’s religions, (read: pseudoreligion, cult, classified in Germany alongside Islamic Extremism and Organized Crime as a National Threat) and, indeed, my stance must share several similarities with the humanist. Every human being has a connate, inalienable value, and hence his personal beliefs, which on a philosophical level (sorry for sounding so arsty-fartsy here, but I think that ultimately what has to be said has to be said) he cooses in order to infuse his life with a higher meaning, have to be respected as a tenet of his person. To mock or show disregard for a person’s religion, then, would amount to a slur of the person’s personal choice as to how he defines his life—a decision that, I personally believe, can be attained logically, but is also very much a personal, one. I am not saying here that one cannot express disagreement with another's religion—it is just that I believe that this must be done with respect and understanding for the other party involved. And quite certainly Sweeney’s corybantic reaction does not fulfill this criterion.

And yet, I feel that we must understand that Sweeney was dealing with a person who believed in a religion that must have looked nothing short of preposterous to him, was being very stubborm about pressing a point, and who belonged to a organization whose members had been harassing and trailing him for a very long time, not to mention having a notoriously Western-Jihadist like history. Under such circumstances, I think that is it all too easy for a person to lose his fragile hold on his temper, and that even if we do not forgive Sweeney, we must at least empathize with him.

This does not in any way imply that the scientologists are not to blame for anything at all. They were certainly people who did NOT empathize with Sweeney in any way—in fact, they went on a personal revengeful putsch against the BBC and Sweeney, going so far as to tamper with the video they released by making Sweeney’s shouts impossibly loud, and even distribute 100000 copies of this video to various scientologists. Steps to reconciliation? If anything, they are flagitiously seeking to widen what was a mere misunderstanding to something far worse out of nothing but spite. And who says reciprocity is justice? In many cases reciprocity serves as a convenient excuse for a malevolent counterblow to satisfy one’s vindictive, almost sadistic pleasure at seeing what was done to you being inflicted back upon the person who did it to you. Justice? Hardly.

As Ravi Zacharias, a logician and Christian Apologist once said: “The worst part about slinging mud at others is that you get your hands dirty in the process.”

Now that this fight starts to take on a distinctly puerile but malevolent form on the internet, I think that it is time to call a halt to this ultimately petty squabble of two parties trying desperately to protect two immensely fragile egos. Sure, a reporter lost his cool and shouted, but please do not forget that whatever someone’s profession, one must judge someone both according to the ideals of the profession, and according to his human connate propensity to let his emotions override good judgment. Get over it, both of you.

Mistakes are mistakes, nothing more. Do not make them worse by deliberately using them as stumbling blocks to halt progress simply for the sake of satisfying your own desires. If everyone in the world refused to settle disputes but rather pursue their own personal “morally right, only-according-to-justice” tirades, this world would not be worth living in.

My message to the two parties is this: Get over it, and stop trying to make yourself appear more stupidly stubborn than the other. Forgive, and please do try, like civilized people, to forget.

(500 words)

excellent readings on scientology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_and_the_legal_system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freakout

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White ----this operation was the largest largest program of domestic espionage in U.S. history. The Church of Scientology merely said that its members were convicted of stealing "photocopy paper"

Eng portfolio entry no. 2

Original Article: As Harvard goes

March 5 2007, from the Time print edition.

This article basically reports changes to Harvard’s curriculum and briefly discusses their effect.

What is the purpose of education? The traditionalist will promptly respond that its aims to maximise the potential of every student. However, there is another oft-hidden angle of the purpose of education—to endow every student with the skills he/she needs to survive in the real world, as well as to better the world around them.

It is because of this that America’s most famous university will be establishing eight primary subject areas that all students will have to take, encompassing subjects like anthropology and social relations; Ethical Reasoning; and sociology and economics.

A very interesting side to this approach is, I believe, the element of active learning, where the information is not merely absorbed by the student from an inert, uninteractive medium like the book, but where the student is encouraged to experience what he/she has learnt in motion in the real world. There are a few differences between the results of learning from a textbook and learning actively. But the primary reason is this—when an event or a concept is compressed into words, these is only so much that can be put across, and it is very easy for there to be misunderstanding of information, for information to be irrevocably lost. To see the concept in action, however, is something very different, as then the concept is seen in its actual entirety—it is not sieved through another medium where chance of error surfaces, when the dangerous possibility of the information becoming meretricious brummagem hangs precariously on the writers' aptitude in elucidation. Also, it is important to note that visual and kinesthetic impact play a large role in the long-term internalization of the information.

Also, I think that this approach to learning ensures better understanding of what is learned by introducing application to the real world, which leads to a better and more in-depth perception of a particular concept. It is utterly useless for a person to have memorized an entire textbook but lack the ability to effectively use the information gathered from the textbook to solve problems in the real world—that approach renders the studying of the sciences null and void, as it they loses their relevance to the real world. Learning for learning’s sake is useless, as knowing does not truly matter, but how that information is applied greatly does. Just as one does not become a marathon runner from reading about the Boston Marathon, so one does not become a good problem solver by listening to lectures. That is why hands-on work is needed; it pre-empts real-life problems, and ensures that the student, when he exits college and faces the wider world, does not do so with nothing but knowledge of what should happen but not what to do to ensure that it does.

The only thing that is believe is very wrong with this system is the fact that it excludes history. Given that fact that this system places a lot of emphasis on logic and philosophy, it is paradoxical why history should be excluded, as many of the logical premises which lead to leader’s wise decisions in response to current situations really stem from observations of what happened in a similar framework in the past.

Despite this system's shortcomings, which, I acknowledge, are present in all education systems, the system soon to be employed in Harvard promises much, because when all is said and done, everything boils down to one deceptively (and, very sadly, often-ignored)simple principle that nonetheless has profound resonances within the arena of education--that science, as much as literature and every other subject worth teaching and learning, should be used--for humanity.

499 words.

Eng portfolio entry no. 1

Original Article: North Korea Takes the Bait.

February 26th 2007, from the Time print edition.

The U.S--surprisingly-- reaches an agreement with North Korea regarding its nuclear program. The article discusses the effectiveness of the agreement.

When two infinitely stubborn countries come to loggerheads around the diplomatic table, you usually get an ugly, brutal mess which, more often than not, sullenly fizzles down into a very uncomfortable equilibrium—of sorts. It comes as a surprise, then, America and North Korea have managed to reach a “breakthrough” agreement. The terms of the agreement are simple, but revealing—simply put, North Korea has agreed to shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, its main source of fissile material for nuclear weapons, for 50, 000 tons of fuel oil from the U.S., China, Russia, and South Korea.

This agreement, however, has been lambasted by critics, who point out that the agreement, ominously, does not make even attempt a nebulous mention of Pyongyang’s currently existing nuclear stockpile—and issue so overwhelmingly huge that it could not have possibly have been an accident. If it is deliberate, then, the implications--and their ramifications thereof--are, to say the very least, unsettling. If the U.S. had been unable to convince Pyongyang to give up its current stockpile of nuclear weapons, this is indicative that North Korea is simply unwilling to give up existing capabilities, no matter the number of diplomatic goodies offered—Kim thinks having a few nuclear weapons in his pocket will serve as a kind of failsafe to deter military aggression from nasty Western imperialists. This seems to show that the U.S. is setting a very negative precedent, conceding to, on an idealogical plane, and almost recklessly rewarding a rogue nation. This would unequivocally serve to delegitimize the already weak Bush Administration--ultimately only helping only to further ramify a multifarious problem that very certainly (and even the Bush Administration wholeheartedly agrees on that)needs no further complication.

Clintonites would also gladly point out that the agreement is a mere facsimile of the Agreed Framework signed by Washington and Pyongyang in 1994. (It called for North Korea to halt nuclear weapons development in return for two light-water nuclear-power plants, which are difficult to use to generate fissile material for bombs. The Clinton presidency ended before the plan could come to fruition—which Pyongyang sees as evidence of Washington’s bad faith.)

I acknowledge that these critiques are valid and can be legitimately supported but for one missing factor: these viewpoints do not take into slightest account the possibility of alternative plans--or rather, the severe lack thereof. I am certainly no political analyst and my views may be somewhat skewed due to what may be a certain simplism of perspective, but from what little I know of enormously Daedalian and often bizarre process that we humans like to simply (and very deceptively) term politics, I believe I can say this with assurance: before a process can be reversed, it must first be halted, and that is why the production of fissile material must first be stopped before the U.S. can actually get down to making North Korea give up its existing stockpile. There is, quite simply put, no other choice. The so called “conceding” of the U.S. is not so much a sign of weakness as much as a sign of good prioritizing by the U.S. government, as well as evidence of adaptability—the seeming lack of which has previously cost the Bush Administration dearly. Also, if the diplomatic relations between Washington and Pyongyang are placed in the framework of a historical context, all too often the friction between the two is cause by their obstinacy when it comes to making compromises. Even if this move by the U.S. can be proven to be a compromise, this shows the acknowledgment of the U.S government that difficult compromises have to be made—certainly a step to set the stage for realizing discussions about normalizing relations between two once-implacable enemies.

Even if I can agree that the Agreement just made by Bush is merely a continuation of the Agreed Framework, I do not think this suffices as a criticism-- what wrong is there is the continuation of a good policy? There is, however, as I see it, a crucial difference between the Clinton and the Bush agreement: simply put, the one by Bush is more effective. The Agreed Framework was bilateral, while the Bush agreement effectively isolates North Korea from all of its allies—including its closest benefactor, China, which was infuriated by the North’s testing of nuclear weapons—making sure that Pyongyang will not start playing its games anytime soon.

500 words.