Christmas Greeting to All

Here's wishing all my friends a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Peace on earth and love to all Mankind.

Love at Christmas

Chistmas, although is the time to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, is also a season of LOVE and peace to all Mankind. Here are some candid responses given by some children, aged 4-8, of what they think LOVE means to them. Believe me, it will pull a string in your heart as you read on.

'Love is what makes you smile when you're tired.'
[Terri - age 4]

'Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK."
[Danny - age 7]

'Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more.
My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss."
[Emily - age 8]

'Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas and if you stop opening presents and listen."
[Bobby - age 7 (Wow!!)]

'If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate."'
[Nikka - age 6 (We need a few million more Nikkas on this planet)]

'Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday'.
[Noelle - age 7]

'Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.'
[Tommy - age 6]

'During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn't scared anymore.'
[Cindy - age 8]

'My mommy loves me more than anybody. You don't see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.'
[Clare - age 6]

'Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken."
[Elaine - age 5]

'Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford."
[Chris -age 7]

'Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day."
[Mary Ann - age 4]

'I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.'
[Lauren - age 4]

'When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.' [What imagination!}
[Karen - age 7]

'Love is when Mommy sees Daddy on the toilet and she doesn't think it's gross.'
[Mark - age 6]

'You really shouldn't say, 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.
[Jessica - age 8]

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And the final one -- Author and lecturer, Leo Buscaglia, once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child.

The winner was a four-year old child whose next door neighbour was an elderly man who had recently lost his wife.

Upon seeing the man cry, the little went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there.

When his mother asked what he had said to the neighbour, the little boy said, "Nothing, I just helped him cry.'
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I can't help but agree with what Elaine [age 5] said because my wife does exactly that at every meal time whenever chicken is being served. I am truly blessed.

What?? Santa Claus was an Indian??

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

This is what Art Harun thinks of Harry

Dear Mr Lee

I am Malaysian. And a very proud one at that.

While my former prime minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has apparently, and suddenly, agreed with you on what you had apparently said about Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and his alleged dalliance with an ass — “ass” here refers to the anatomy of a human being, not the animal, although sometimes in your country, that word could also refer to members of your government — I, on the other hand, could not give a rat’s ass to what you or any of your colleague say about my country or its people.

I will be blunt because I am not a politician. Nor am I a diplomat or a member of my country’s civil service. So, here goes. Neither you, nor any of your colleagues, have any moral standing, or any standing at all, to pass judgement about my country or my fellow Malaysians or any other country for that matter.

If what was reportedly said by you and your colleagues about my country and our leaders was in fact said by you and your colleagues, than I just have one word to say to you and your colleagues. Buzz off! (Well, they are two words actually, but I don’t give a hoot!)

I am not bothered by what you and your colleagues think about my country or my leaders simply because I have always known that you and your government have always suffered from chronic and almost incorrigible Napoleon Complex (to borrow a phrase from Mariah Carey’s song about someone who has a small appendage).

All those chatters over golf matches with Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, warm embrace between your son and prime minister Najib and nice tete-a-tete over some scones and tea between you and our prime minister’s wife are just for show. I have always, in my heart of hearts, doubted your country’s sincerity in almost whatever you do, whether on a private or even more so, governmental basis.

In short and plain language, I have never trusted you or your government. You and your government, to me, had pioneered and perfected a “cocktail diplomacy” that had, over the years, defined your external policies in South Asia.

To say that I have no respect for you or your government would be, Mr Lee, an understatement. I laugh at the nakedness of the cold and wrinkled anatomy of your cocktail diplomacy.

Unlike many of your citizens, I am not stupid to swallow hook line and sinker your heavily masked political assurances of neighbourly goodwill and co-operation. I don’t believe you or your government because I have always known — from your actions and deeds — your condescending and patronising views about everybody else in this world, save for probably, your masters, the United States of America and, probably too, Israel.

You think you are the best. When in fact you are nothing but an amalgamation of flesh and bones without any semblance of a soul. Your country is consumed by and obsessed with what your neighbours intend to do and the ways and means to defeat your perceived competitors — which, in most cases, only exist in your tiny little mind — and procure a perceived victory over them. In short, you and your colleagues suffer from multiple phobias over nothing.

You boast of economic success. May I ask, at what price? Your people have traded their souls, their freedom and liberty, their right to even think of what is right and what is wrong for just a slice of economic and material gains. How shallow can one be?

Your society is exactly what Herbert Macuse was describing in his “One Dimensional Man”, when he says, finally, under the condition of a mass society, shaped and moulded by the State:

“the multi-dimensional dynamic by which the individual attained and maintained his own balance between autonomy and heteronomy, freedom and repression, pleasure and pain, has given way to a one-dimensional static identification of the individual with the others and with the administered reality principle.”

That is what I think of you and your colleagues, Mr Lee.

You and your colleagues huddled together in cafes, holding whiskies and passed judgment on my country. My country is, apparently, “declining.” And the cause of that decline, apparently, is “incompetent politicians.”

Well, who exactly are you or your colleagues to pass judgment on us? Incompetence, you say?

You and your colleagues boasted that Orchard Road will never ever be flooded. Remember? And this was what happened.

What do you say about that? Competence? Go and fly a kite, Mr Lee.

And true to your government’s multi-phobic affliction, you even arrested, handcuffed and detained a reporter who was photographing the flood. Read about it here.

And what was your people’s explanation for that incident? Your Minister for Environment and Water Resources Yaacob Ibrahim had even copied and used the answer given by our former home minister in explaining why a journalist was arrested under our Internal Security Act a couple of years ago, in trying to explain that incident.

This was what he said (as reported here):

“From what we understand, the photographer was warned because of safety issues, not because of privacy issues.”

Yes, apparently, that guy was arrested, handcuffed and detained because of safety issue. Your minister can’t even be original in his reply! He has to copy what our minister said!

Incompetence you say? Go and stand in front of the mirror and look at yourself. You can’t even predict a flood in the middle of your commercial district!

And what about a certain guy by the name of Mas Selamat? Remember him? Yes. He escaped from your maximum security detention centre.

What do you call that? Excellence?

Who, dear Mr Lee, managed to track him and re-arrest him? Who was the kind soul who, in the spirit of good neighbourliness and goodwill, surrendered that guy back to you? Who else but your incompetent neighbour, eh?

Frankly, would you do the same for my country? Well, don’t answer. That is a rhetorical question. I know the answer already.

You have and know of no other way to deal with public grievances and opposition than to arrest them, harass them with defamation suits and utilise your executive might and power. Your country would think of nothing about utilising your pliant judiciary to mask your purely political actions against your opposition in order to lend a semblance of judicial justification for their extermination.

Democracy you say? I laugh and I laugh. And I laugh at you and your government’s shenanigans, Mr Lee. It is the idea that everybody is stupid that makes me laugh so hard. The stupidity of thinking that every other people could be hoodwinked makes me want to die laughing!

Under the guise of good governance and security, your government would go out of its way to silent critics. What did you do to a web site called Temasek Review, Mr Lee?

You cringed at the thought of intellectual discourse in cyber space. Because really, you are not equipped to deal with it. That is because your society has been shaped and moulded to comply and follow, and not to question and demand. So, Temasek Review had to be stopped.

Because of that your agency, Temasek Holdings, claimed that it had the intellectual property right to the name of Temasek Review. How very convenient? And Temasek Holdings then, apparently, sold the right to use that name to an unknown party for S$1.00.

Sorry, but I have to laugh again. Hahahahahahahha... you think the people are as stupid as your government? You have always had the ability to mask your political moves with commercial dress ups. And that move was so you, so Singapore, Mr Lee.

Speaking of Temasek Holdings, what were they doing in Indonesia so much so they were found liable for breaching anti-monopoly laws there?

What do you call that?

The truth is, Mr Lee, you, your colleagues, your government and your country are not perfect. Nobody is.

So please. Take your smug pimply face away and mind your own business.

Malaysia can survive without you. Can you survive without Malaysia? —

This time, Guan Eng is the star of the show

The initial signs were inauspicious.

Despite the patient and persistent prompting of the emcee, the crowd took its time to file into the spacious Millennium Hall to fill rows and rows of neatly arranged seats.

It looked like the second annual convention of the Pakatan Rakyat in Kepala Batas today was not going to match in enthusiasm and brio the first edition which premiered exactly a year ago at the Shah Alam town hall.

Then, the keenness of large contingents of PKR, PAS and DAP faithful that showed up and early too, was plainly evident, if only to assure themselves that the Common Policy Framework that was to be endorsed at the inaugural convention was not a figment of their imagination.

Students of politics as the art of the possible could be expected to believe that the secularity of the DAP could blend with the theocratic inclinations of PAS - with Anwar Ibrahim's PKR prompting the fusion – to issue a common agenda.

But ordinary folk are not students of the conjuring arts, which explained the awed enthusiasm of the crowd last year at Shah Alam: they wanted to see in the flesh what their imaginations could only perceive - and dimly at that.

In the event, in Shah Alam last year, they were buoyed by what they witnessed, and came away believing that coalition politics not only makes for strange bedfellows, but can generate affection between partners over time, especially if the time was spent enduring adversary-imposed trials.

A tumultuous year on, after the departure of five MPs from PKR, the exit of a principal architect of the CPF (Zaid Ibrahim), and the relentless attacks of Umno-BN, the shock troops of DAP, PKR and PAS appear a little worn from the troubles they have endured, but a lot more astute.

The way they quickly filled up the Millennium Hall the minute the arrival of coalition grandees was announced by the emcee suggested that they were people who can react expeditiously to the main fare, even if they are a little casual with the entrees.

Penang CM pumps up the adrenalin

However, there was this difference: last year the main fare was Anwar Ibrahim. This time it was Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng.

As the putative host of the convention, he spoke first. His content and the reception it received showed what a difference a year makes for the Pakatan.

If, in the past, they were overly dependent on Anwar for the rhetorical fireworks, they are now less so. Guan Eng can pump up the adrenalin with panache.

Guan Eng's speech today was a nice blend of invective, aimed at Umno-BN, and inspirational returning of Pakatan's rallying principles of justice and equality for all, and its agenda of race-blind poverty alleviation.

Whereas last year, Guan Eng had resorted a little too much to Islamic tropes that went on to draw fire from exclusivist Umno, this time the chief minister restrained himself to choice bits, like 'amar maaruf nahi mungkar' (enjoin the good and prohibit the bad), that have now passed into the common coin of public discourse.

Whereas last year, he had declaimed in Mandarin a good length of time, this time he did not say a word in the language, leaving no room for national language chauvinists to target him.

He trumpeted the frugal virtues of his administration, acclaimed by no less than the auditor-general and Transparency International, and held that a vote for Pakatan was a vote for the material betterment of the person at the bottom of Malaysian life's totem pole.

A social democracy in which Malaysia's underclass would be rewarded for their labour and talent was what the DAP secretary-general said was in prospect if at the fast approaching 13th general election, the vote goes the way of Pakatan.

Anwar stays on the sidelines

When PKR president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail rose to espouse the virtues of 'Ketuanan Rakyat' ('People's sovereignty), and PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang sang the praises of the universalism of Islamic ideals, it appeared all three leaders were vocalising complementary notes from a symphony of hopeful dreams and mutual trust.

The man - Anwar Ibrahim - who set all these notes playing in the breast of Pakatan did not speak at the convention's overture today, perhaps wanting to show the audience that the coalition would not be bereft if, because of Sodomy II, he is temporarily displaced.

If nothing else, today's gathering subliminally signaled that Pakatan is no longer the lengthened shadow of one man.


[Source: Mkini]