mamakk!!!

via Asia Sentinel:

The Middle East’s iconic broadcaster begins airing news in a country that has tamed its own news media.

Given the docile nature of the local press, Malaysia seems a curious base for one of the world’s most aggressive and controversial news organizations. But now at least a handful of the country’s 23 million citizens can wake up to 24-hour-a-day English-language broadcasts from Kuala Lumpur by Al-Jazeera, the television channel whose facilities US President George W Bush once joked idly about bombing because of its supposedly anti-US bias in reporting on the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Although the Malaysian government says it is fully behind the network, authorities are cautiously limiting Al-Jazeera’s transmission to ASTRO All Asia Networks’ direct-to-home satellite television service, which covers just a sliver of the population. It is all well and good to praise the Muslim cause from afar but given Malaysia’s racial makeup and authoritarian government, Al-Jazeera’s penchant for hard reporting may not be to the liking of officials who could find the new channel an uncomfortable new resident in a media neighborhood that is virtually locked down by the ruling party. It seems doubtful that authoritarian rulers in Singapore, China and Brunei will allow in the channel.

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Michael Backman wrote:

Rafidah added to her remarks about my column that no Malaysian should say such things. It’s little wonder that she doesn’t welcome scrutiny from her own people. But then the idea that Malaysians cannot comment publicly about how their country is run but a non-Malaysian can, is disgraceful.

Perhaps Rafidah needs to be reminded who pays her salary.

[on issue of wastage in Malaysia]

Learning (in Malaysia) is largely by rote. In an email to me last week, one Malaysian recalled her schooling as being in a system “all about spoon-feeding, memory work and regurgitation. Students are not encouraged to think for themselves and they become adults who swallow everything they’re told.”

Even the existing system fails many. It has just emerged that in Sabah state, only 46 per cent of the students who had sat the UPSR — the exam that students sit before going to secondary school — had passed. One small school actually had a 100 per cent failure rate.

But does the Malaysian Government want creative, critical thinkers? Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi said to the ruling party’s recent general assembly Malaysia needed to make students creative. But that means they must be questioning and thus critical; what hope is there of that when one of Abdullah’s own ministers tells Malaysians that they cannot say the things that I can and hundreds of them write to me to complain because they don’t feel that they can complain to their own Government?

The previous article resonated with me, but not this one though…still there were some issues worth pointing out like corruption and education.

Link

More from other blogs:

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Sewjin wrote:

So yesterday we went to the TNB branch office at Johor Bahru to complain about our outrageous electricity bill for the past 2 months (RM240 a month).  We told the TNB guy that it could be our electricity meter problem. We surveyed the neighbourhood before and found out that our meter was still the old model. We suspect that the age could’ve screwed up the meter’s reading speed. The first thing the TNB guy did when we told him this was glare at us and fired, “Kamu ada kacau itu meter ka?!” (”Did you mess with the meter?!”)

I wanted so badly to grab every single object in his cubicle and shove them into his mouth. He proceeded to tell us about the penalties and fines and how they would watch over our names like hawks if we were caught tampering with their meter.

We are here to file a complain about YOUR meter and now you blatantly accuse US of tampering with it?! We are your customers for crying out loud, the least you can do is show us a bit respect! Then I stopped and took a breather. I looked around the office and started to smile. In fact while the TNB guy was pointing and threatening us, I actually laughed. Hey, you would too if you saw a Malaysian government servant living up to their ‘rude and impolite’ stereotype. It’s like watching a chinese man holding a calculator or a black man eating a piece of fried chicken.

Link

via Forbes:

KUALA LUMPUR (XFN-ASIA) - Malaysia will not sign trade pacts with any country, including the United states, if it involves sacrificing the interest of the majority ethnic Malays, Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz said.

‘Only the Malaysian government has the right to determine the policies, whether to accept or reject the proposals and this is the basis of any of our negotiations,’ she told delegates on the final day of the ruling United Malays National Organization’s (UMNO) gathering.

Link

[pic source]

via theStar:

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s first astronaut will do what no one in space has done before: play traditional Malay children’s games without gravity.

The astronaut - yet to be selected - will play “batu seremban,” or “five stones” and spin traditional Malay tops in space, Agriculture Ministry parliamentary secretary Rohani Abdul Karim told parliament on Wednesday.

Rohani, who was replying on behalf of the Science, Technology and Innovations Ministry, said the astronaut would also do batik painting and making teh tarik.

Link

Experiments to prove that activities that depend on gravity can be done in zero gravity?

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