MAHATHIR WAS 100% RIGHT. ALL YOU OTHER BASTARDS, THE ECONOMIST, WESTERN ECONOMISTS, THE IMF, WORLD BANK AND CABAL OF GORDON GEKKOS WERE WRONG! APOLOGISE NOW AND BEG FOR FORGIVENESS!!by keynes them all, donplaypuks® intrepid correspondent for world economic affairs
I was going to let it pass.
Right up to that millisecond after that master of convoluted incomprehensible English, Alan Greenscam, looked at the camera, blinked, and mumbled ‘I did not see it coming!’ I was stunned! For once, he was incomprehensibly, comprehensible!
It then struck me like a tsunami that all these bandicoots – Greenscam, Ben Bananacake, Paulsaulson in Wolf’s Clothings, Burning Bush, Goofy Blair, Warrenrabbit Phoebe (with apologies to ‘Friends’) Buffet, Gordonsgin Brown – and their counterparts in Europe, HK, China, India, Japan and Australia did not have a clue. For over 20 years they have been absolutely wrong. Do not forgive them Father for they ought to have known they were pathetically WRONG. They were GROSSLY overpaid not to have slept on their watch!!
Collectively they were responsible for perpetuating the greatest scam in the history of the World. Collectively they were GROSSLY NEGLIGENT and guilty of concocting America’s greatest export and business philosophy of the last 20 years, that:
‘Greed is Good, Unmitigated Greed, even better! And Unmitigated, Undiluted and Unvarnished Greed is BEST!! And if we can parcel it all and sucker it through WTO manipulation to the rest of the world, that is the icing on the cake. And if you can still keep your head and wits about you while others drop about you like bees in a smokehouse, why, my son, the scorched Earth is all yours, BUDDY!’
And they all bought it. Japan, because it is sorry for WWII, but ‘Roose face if aporogise.’ Germany because of WWI & WWII, but it is still not sorry for the Holocaust, ya wohl mein herr, Seig Heil! The Chinese because they secretly all want to be regarded as White Americans. The Indians because they all secretly want to follow China. The Honkies because they all have three jobs and secretly have no individual or collective conscience anymore. And the Singaporeans because they all secretly want to be White anyone. There, have I left out anyone in my racist tirade? Forgive me my anger because I failed to park a humongous financial loss on any bank or financial institution. I shall go to my grave with the regret of this oversight foremost on my mind.
From the South Sea Bubble episode of the 18th century, through the 1929 Wall St. Crash, October 1987 Black Monday, 1997 Asia Currency Crises, massive frauds at Barings Bank, Bank Bumi, Bank Nat Paris, Enron, Global Crossings, Tyco and especially the rape of America and UK by its CEO’s, major shareholders and top management, some facts are palpably clear. That the inalienable right to pursuit of happiness has been interpreted to mean the inalienable right to accumulate Midas and Croesus-like wealth at the expense of anybody, including one’s mother. And when in trouble, the rich and well-connected are entitled to en masse embrace ‘dole’ socialism, nay, communism, and call for the State to bail them out OR ELSE……!
Which means you, me, the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker are the one’s who will really have to cough up and forgo our measly budget LCC airlines propelled annual week’s holiday or our children’s overseas education savings, so that America can continue funding the search for WMD’s in Iran and Afghanistan.
All the Citibanks, Wachovias, Merril Lynchs, Morgan Stanleys, Goldman Sachs, Lehman’s et al have to bleat is that ‘This is Armageddon. We cannot let the banks sink (or else we will also sink)’ or ‘The CONTAGION will sink EVERYBODY’ for their buddies in the Treasury to echo the same words and swing into action with $700 billion of money that does not exist and will be created by the simple expediency of marshalling the printing presses into overtime.
Has anyone thought of the consequences of printing so much money which is not backed by real assets and wealth. Don’t worry about that buddy, let the Chinese and Indians figure that out for theirs is the future and the truly fucked shall inherit the barren Earth. Welcome to the virtual world of the Matrix where money can be created by hey presto and abracadabra.
So, here’s my dime’s worth of advice of how to put the World’s Financial System in order.
1. Ban all Speculative Trading in Oil, Commodities and Currencies and their Futures. Only producers and exporters of goods, services and commodities shall be allowed to forward sell to genuine buyers who will take physical delivery.
Thus a day trader sitting in a coconut shell in Langkawi will not be able to speculate in soya beans futures while hedging potential losses by a $:Yen interest-rate swap derivative secured by AIG insurance quoted on the Humbug Index which in turn is tied to the toxic sub-prime mortgage 2000% per annum ROI (whatever that means) and guaranteed by Developmentnomore Offshore Bank of Panama, which all vanished in a puff of smoke in September 2008!!
Remember, currency is not a commodity to be traded as recently demonstrated by Zimbabwe and its trillion $ note!
2. Ban all naked and other short selling on any Stock Exchange. The underlying principle shall be that one must have paid in money for shares or commodities etc and owned them legally before one call sell. Lending of share scripts should be totally banned.
3. Ban all contra share trading. The stock markets are meant for long-term investors. Those interested in making quick gains can buy lottery tickets, head for the casinos, bet on the EPL or whatever one fancies. Thus you have to pay for and own a share before you can sell it, period. Sure, the share market will be boring. But, boring and steady growth are infinitely better than bankruptcy, suicide and 300,000 Icelanders waking up one morning and suddenly finding themselves jobless while the Irish and British simultaneously wake up and find they have been sodomised from afar by Icelanders!
4. Proposals for all new financial instruments shall be reviewed by a specialist independent think-tank co-opted into the relevant Securities Exchanges. If it looks like or smells like a junk bond or artificial derivative, it shall not see the light of day. 50% of any such approved instrument shall be subscribed for in cash and held until redemption without further disposal or packaging (toxic masking and tarting up) by the lead underwriter, merchant and other banks involved.
The acid test for the approval of such a financial instrument shall be whether your granny or Aunty May or Petunia is able to understand what it is, how it works and what its downside risks are.
5. Share, Property & Investment Margin Financing should at all times be restricted to equity:debt of 2:1 i.e. for every $1 of cash you have, the bank will lend you no more than 50 cents. Banks shall also not extend further margin should the market value of investments appreciate since we must adhere to the principle that investment is for the long-term and not allow for the double-whammy casino mentality to get even a toe-hold.
6. All professionals who support a prospectus for sale of shares, securities, investments etc must be made financially liable for any opinion they express in support of such sales, secured by an appropriate deposit in cash, irrevocable bank guarantee or LC.
7. No lending shall be approved by any bank or financial institution unless a thorough independent credit check and rating has been carried out by the lender who shall be liable for any negligence. Lenders shall establishing the maximum any individual or company can borrow on a global basis by setting up a linked Credit Rating Agency. This will go a long way towards preventing companies like GE hocking all their cashflow and being unable to pay staff salaries and basic overheads when pork futures go belly-up in Beijing.
8. Appointment of internal and external auditors and independent directors of public and listed companies shall fall under the purview of a Govt-established body. If the Boards, Chairmen and CEO’s do not co-operate, the Govt shall be empowered to sack them and close the company down.
Self regulation is a joke and has long been a ticket for conscienceless ‘captains of industry’ to write their own paycheck at the expense of minority shareholders and the Govt. Similarly, the functioning of the regulatory bodies for Accountants, Lawyers & Solicitors, Doctors etc shall all be taken out of the hands of accountants, lawyers and doctors and be placed in the hands of the Government. That’s what Governing means, not outsourcing the security of chicken farms to the foxes!
9. The huge hundred million $ bonuses and stock-option payouts to CEO’s and top Management shall first be paid into a Govt Trust Fund and be released to the beneficiaries only after a period of 3 years following their departure provided no frauds or financial collapse occurs which can be traced to their tenure in office. If a relevant fraud occurs after the money has been released, investors shall be entitled to go after the personal assets of these CEO’s even if they have been transferred to their spouses, children, trust fund etc.
10. The bare minimum punishment for financial misdemeanours, frauds and wanton mismanagement shall be whipping and three years hard labour in prison with no remission or plea bargaining. For the more serious offences, whipping, caning, amputation, beheading and all other forms of capital punishment shall also be mandatory. Way to go Iran and China! By this reckoning, we should be offering high mass for members of the Fed Reserve, Greenscam, the Secretary of the Treasury and their counterparts in UK and Europe while many shall line the streets and cheer.
11. The issue of credit cards shall be governed on the same principle as bank lending, on a global credit rating for each individual. Credit cards may not offer cash advance facility, which invariably results in those with low credit rating using it as an unsecured overdraft. Credit card issuing companies will suffer low growth? I reckon lower default rates will balance things out.
12. Lastly, and this has nothing to do directly with the financial system. But all the additional money that people will have saved by not being able to gamble on the Casino Stock Exchanges in the World, shall be used to repair Global Warming and to assemble the largest Army in Human History to invade the Dutch, Japanese, Russian, Norwegian, Thai, Chinese, Indian and other environment terrorists and poachers who cull baby seals, sharks, dolphins and whales or hunt tigers, elephants, lions, zebras, pangolins and bears (for their paws only) for profit.
Those captured shall be forced to work without pay in the Accounts Department of Lehman Brothers. Merril Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs to total up the daily payables and receivables manually, i.e. without the aid of a calculator or computer, several times a day!
How to make this financially viable, you ask? Go figure it out BANANACAKE DUMMY! That’s why you were overpaid $1 million before.
No doubt these measures will perhaps throw a million or so people out of their jobs in the financial sector, Worldwide. But such a catharsis is necessary in the short-term for the long-term orderly and systematic economic growth of individual countries and the World.
I worry deeply when many today plunge for a degree in business studies and a career in the financial sector, equating it with a licence to accumulate wealth at any and all costs.
The moral dimension of ill-begotten gains seems to be neither a consideration nor an obstacle to the accumulation of wealth.
And why would it, with the stellar example demonstrated Worldwide by our so called Guardians and Financial Experts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Bubbles?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_market_crash_in_1987
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_financial_crisis
http://malayscandals.blogspot.com/2007/08/scandal.html
donplaypuks® with the economy, man!!
15 comments:
Hi DPP,
Seriously, I nominate this to be your BEST post so far!!!! Everything in a nutshell with lots of dynamite punch. As for the satire, par excellence as usual; together with the perspective plus the satirical thrust = magnificent. Thanks! Keep writing brudder and as always...please do not let us wait so long lah....
cheers
Mahathir was 100% wrong. Mahathir was able to get away with what he did in 1998 because he had oil which enabled him to get a steady supply of US dollars to defend his currency peg. What he did was a no brainer. The effect of his peg was to condemn Malaysia to an economic system dependent on a cheap currency to keep its exports rolling. At the same time he subsidized fuel and food with the petroleum US dollars to keep inflation low even though the costof food and fuel had risen drastically due to the riggit peg at RM3.80 to the USD compared to RM2.50 before the financial storm.
Eventually it was the fuel subsidy which did the BN in. Mahathir's economic cloak work briefly until the Chinese starting sucking in FDI's in a way never before seen in human history due to their incredibly low labour cost.
Unable to confront China on labour cost the government had to keep subsidizing electricity and fuel in Malaysia in order to compete against the Chinese. Now any economist will tell you that subsidies are in the long haul non-sustainable. This is especially true for a small net oil exporter like Malaysia. Malaysia's days as a low cost producer came to an end. At the same time we were faced with rising imported inflation because of the great demand for good and services arising from the Chinese economic miracle.
Why did Mahathir maintain the currency peg in view of the rising cost of imported goods? The currency peg by 1999 was outliving its usefulness but yet it was maintained. The reason was obviously political though that is another story. Inflation by 1999 was alredy biting into the pockets of ordinary Malaysians. In the 1999general election the opposition had one of its best showing mostly due to economic hardship. Anwar was just a sideshow. Badawi inherited this non-sustainable system from Mahathir. His promise of a fairer economic deal for all was the main reason for the near extinction of the opposition in the 2004 elections. The Badawi administration should be credited for the liberalisation of the ringgit peg. Many do not understand the importance of this liberalisation. Suffice to say, it gave the central bank of Malaysia another tool to fight inflation.
But the subsidy ghost could not be put to rest. By 2003 inflation for Malaysians was beginning to hurt financially. But what could Badawi do? Nothing. The subsidy system which Mahathir had invented to keep the Malays happy and UMNO in power was not enough to keep inflation at bay. At the same time UMNO and its BN clowns were still enjoying the good life. Many Malaysians felt that the economic system had failed them. In other words the subsidy system invented by Mahathir had failed. The 2004 election turned out to be a political tsunami for BN. Why didn’t Badawi institute any reform to
revamp the subsidy system? He could not simply because the subsidy system is part of the real social contract between Malaysians and their leaders. Simply put Malaysians will close their eyes to any wrong doings of their leaders so long as their leaders make sure they have an easy life even though we all know that we are the ones who actually pay for the subsidies
Mahathir was 100& wrong and so were Malaysians.
Dear Anonymous
Thank you for a well written and reasoned argument.
Perhaps I did not make it clear what I think Mahathir was 100% right about.
When your house is on fire you do not stand about and wonder why your neighbour's house is safe. You take whatever short-term measure is demanded to douse the flames.
Thus M was absolutely right that State intervention was the only solution for M'sia in 1997. And that banks, financila institutions and major listed corporations and state-owned entities had to be saved/rescued/bailed out/whatever to prevent Armageddon.
The prooof of the puddding? It worked! Sure, The IMF would have loved to use M'sia as a test case for its doctrinaire policies.But, do you see them advising Paulson or Banacake to let market forces work their way through Wall St? No sirree! Such wonder cure-all snakeoil medicine is only reserved for 3rd world and developing nations!!
I myself am a severe critic of M and hold him responsible for all the corruption, racism and polarisatiin we see in M'sia today.
But in 1997, no one had a better solution and I have no doubt M saved us.
dpp
Hi MSW
Have been on & off under the weather for the lats month. Don't know why, maybe it's the high pollen count which has exacerbated sinus and hayfever.
If you have any inroads with Bananacake of Paulson, please fwd my suggestions to them.
But, I seriously believe that all Stock Echanges today are little more than Casinos manipulated by the rich, powerful and well-connected. It's time to rein in the GREED!!
dpp
Here, i would like to highlight an article by Mr. Brandan Kuppusamy, a journalist who choose to see and pen down Fair comments on 'both sides'. The electorate believe they woke up to a new Malaysia on March 8 minus race, religion and discrimination and therefore it comes as a shock that the very same people who had preached “common human” values have fallen back on old habits. Those who support Hindraf, Pakatan Rakyat, Raja Petra are misguided morons.
Dear Punithan
Make no mistake. I am a PKR, RPK and Hindraf supporter and I think Hindraf played a big role in the GE 20008 rout of BN.
I am only giving credit where credit is due to Dr.M for his correct decision during the 1997 Asia Currency Crisis. But in almost every other respect, I hold Dr.M responsible for most of the nation's ills !!
I really enjoyed your article and will be promoting your blog among my gfriends whose minds are just on the lightweight stuff like linedancing, etc.
So do we go back to the good old days where we barter goods/services and used real money now? angela ooi
Hi anonymous
Thanks for d support. if you blog as well please let me know the url.
My argument is that the casino mentality has seized the world and it is a bad and evil trend, especially for those looking at a meaningful career.
No, we don't go back to bartering. Hardwork, innovation, honesty and prudence will bring enduring success. Shortcuts rarely work for the masses. We should invest a % of savings and not place it all behind 1 roll of the dice.
What is perhaps really disconcerting is that the 'EXPERTS' themselves are clueless as to the causes and effects of these global recessions.
USA sponsored Rabid Capitalism is at a cross-road and needs to be ravamped so that people invest for the long-term in an orderly, transparent and accountable market. The current system benefits the manipulative crooks, thieves, rich, powerful and well-connected.
The bloodbath and carnage we have witnessed in recent months is the result of what I believe is an in-built self-correcting mechanism in the Universe that will sooner or later bring about the downfall of any evil scheme!!
dpp
Hi DPP,
I think you are right here, to give credit where credit is due. But for M, we would've been in dire straits. As it is, he 'saved' us.
But he has a lot to answer for - you are right again there.
But wouldn't it be nice if someone in govt now would do something to show that they realise that we are in imminent danger again? All I see is a lot of posturing - and that scares me big-time!
Pat
Dr M made the correct short term decision in blocking off all avenues to restrict the trading of the RM, while instituting drastic changes to the financial system in Malaysia. The long term effect is that it has caused all the markets of developing economies to be viewed as even higher risk asset classes than before.
And this has a debilitating effect on FDI as well as stock market investments not just in Malaysia but almost the rest of Asia.
So yes, Dr M has a lot to answer for but love him or hate him, he definitely had a leader profile. I used to think that he had a balanced scorecard but his rantings post-retirement have moved his scores to the negative. I think it was better for him just to keep mum in his nice house in Country Heights.
On another note, yes, the stock markets are a casino. Check out Porsche who made a killing in their shareholdings of VW, which at one stage last week, was the most valuable listed company in the world, albeit for a day.
Hi Pat & Purple Haze
Ultimately, I just wanted to take a poke at the hypocrisy of USA, IMF and the West who are dishing out the same croney bail-out and rescue plans Dr M employed in 1997.
I am not against Govt bail-ours per se provided it is orderly, fair and not discriminatory and the crooks like Goldman Sachs, Lehman Bros, Morgan Stanly, Merrril Lynch, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are brought to book
Those in Govt here will not do aything new because for that you need real brains which understands the capital markets and are willing to rein in the COLLECTIVE GREED.
I just read that Bank Negara spent US12 bilion (RN42 billion) propping the ringgit against the US$ last month. How come no one here picked this up?
Poor education standards, corruption , racism, croneyism, Malay Jingoism, a doctrinaire approach to economics have all contributed to M'sia's poor performance.
The time for change has come and that can only happen when the BN and its component parties are booted out lock, stock and barrel.
dpp
GREETINGS,
A GOOD ATTEMPT OF IMPERSONATION INDEED.....
I AM AMUSED TO SEE HOW SOME WILLING TO GO AS LOW AS THIS TO PROVE SOMETHING...
AFTER 8 MONTHS OF BLOGGING, BY THIS ATTEMPTS I SEE THAT I AM DOING SOMETHING RIGHT.....
P/S: TO THOSE WHO HAVE NO IDEA OF WHAT I AM TALKING...
MY REAL BLOG ADD IS http://indiansmalaysia.blogspot.com
NOT
http://indiansmalaya.blogspot.com ( as used by the commentator above)
About 20 years ago when Francis Fukuyama wrote about the rise and dominance of American-style liberal ideology, he was partially correct in his proposition that global politics will see the rise of the American Empire and the break up of the Soviet Union.
I recall this theme eulogised by the German rock group Scorpions in their song 'Winds of Change'. Fukuyama, then an analyst with Washington-based neo-conservative think-tank Rand Corporation, became an American idol in political science, thanks to Time magazine and the American corporate media sympathetic to the cause/civilising mission of the American Empire.
Partly incorrect and one not so visionary of an analysis however, was his prediction that the world will not see any more ‘struggles via revolutions’ as the thesis-antithesis or the dialectical-materialism of international relations will see the triumph of the 'forces of democracy’. What eventually happened was not the end of history but the beginning of another form of history, one analysed by a prominent political scientist Benjamin Barber as ‘Jihad versus McWorld’.
The world is seeing the growth of anti-globalisation forces as a threat to the empire. A ‘Balkan-isation’ of international relations was in progress instead of Fukuyama’s prediction of the total hegemony of the American Empire. Small states continue to revolt against the McDonald-isation of American ideology and the inscription of its totalitarianism onto the landscape of the modern world, giving rise to the idea of the continuation of dialectical and historical patterns and not ones that signified the end of all histories.
"End of Mahathirism?"
Here at home - are we witnessing the end of ‘Mahathirism’? I see a parallel to this syntagmatic idea in the current happening in Malaysian history. The recent case of ex-deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim's demand for compensation of RM100 million from the former premier, now ‘citizen Mahathir’, represents the symbolic end of Mahathirism's dominance and the beginning of the ‘rupture’ in Malaysian politics. We are witnessing the end of an epoch and the beginning of deconstructionism.
The letter of demand to the ruler of 22 years is a symbol of the strong winds of change that continue to be fuelled by the advent of Internet technology, the widening of democratic spaces, and the growing threat to the dominance of Pax Barisan-Nasionalisma.
I see the metaphor of ‘tearing down the wall’ in Malaysian political ideological scenario and see the image of Mahathir as metaphor of ‘the last man’ and the end of ‘history as we have learned to be shaped by’. One speaks of ‘isms’ as process-oriented ideological march founded upon the hegemony of an idea whose time was made to come. I see it as a ‘monad’ or a ‘moment in history’ or as Antonio Gramsci would say, a ‘historical block’ that has come about as a consequence of a crystallisation and sub-crystallisation of an idea promoted as ‘intellectual and moral leadership’.
Because Mahathir articulated well his interpretation of the Malay Dilemma and because the Malays in general see it as a document that analysed the past, present, and future of the Malays, the writer of the banned book subsequently gained ascendancy as prime minister. Dilema Melayu/The Malay Dilemma, as scrutinised by the anthropologist Dr Syed Husin Ali for example, was flawed in its analysis of Malay socio-culture and ‘genetic-based’ argument on the inferiority of the Malays.
It became popular because Malay politicians did not read enough to critique the presentation of the dilemma and that the time was ripe to counter any effort to establish a multi-cultural political front to divert the nation off the entrapment of race-based politics. Like Reaganism, Thatcherism, and other forms of ‘isms’ associated with the primacy of corporate-capital nexused in a post-Fordist form of corporate-industrial-political-intellectual complex, Mahathirism is an ideology.
While many may disagree with the ‘personification’ of a neo-colonialist agenda in that term ‘Mahathirism’, and in fact one that might further glorify the person, I see it necessary to continue to have it ‘named’ so that one may deconstruct and rename it.
"Total power"
Mahathirism, is a symbol of the dominance of one person whose political life- history revolves around the maintaining of, acquiring, sustaining, consolidating, and homogenising total power through a clever crafting of a succession of hegemonic formations. It rests on the philosophy of ‘we versus them’ and the dichotomisation of political forces and on the practices of a more sophisticated version of the colonialist divide, conquer, and rule strategy.
These Machiavellian-formulations rest upon a more advanced system for capitalist formation fondly called ‘the Asian-style democracy’. It is understandable then that the current administration called the nation to embrace the concept of Ying Yang in a nation that dances the hip hop and the elected representatives doing the be bop while the teenagers are going back to doing the rock and roll.
Mahathirism is a moment in history that benefitted from the pre-War on Terrorism period of global economic boom, pre-9/11 historicity, and one that helped fuel the economy through borrowed monies and borrowed paradigms of economic development, and one that gave a blank cheque till the year 2020 (Wawasan 2020) to the ruling party.
Mahathirism, psycho-socially is a paradigm that recast the great thinker Prof Syed Hussein Alatas' thesis of the image of indolence, dullness, and laziness amongst the natives. This time, the ‘ills’ are remedied by the imposition of Japanese work ethics, productivity, non-unionisation laws, and other structures of control imposed to turn the Malaysian labour into better human-machines. This in turn will help the national engine of growth run well, so that foreign owners, in collaboration with the new ‘glocal capitalists’, may exploit it more efficiently.
In the now world-renowned political-anthropological study of ‘the lazy natives’, the colonialists painted the image of indolence amongst the Malays, Indonesians and the Filipinos. In today's analysis, the image of the native is the industrial and modern agricultural worker transformed into lazy thinkers and happy consumers through the structurations of the hypermodern capitalist system.
In Mahathirism, technology shapes consciousness and changes the social relations of production, transforming landscapes of nature into huge real estate projects such as the Multimedia Super Corridor - changing the way we live, transport/teleport ourselves, and the pattern of consumption and leisure. Those who own the means of importing technology from abroad, with paid advice from International Advisory Panels, own the means of transforming consciousness and hence will define the existence of the natives, through the hyper-modern Asiatic mode of production. I think of Frank Sinatra's ‘My Way’ as a symbol of the theme song of this historical block and quite incidentally a favourite song of many of the cabinet ministers and chief ministers.
Mahathir the author of Mahathirism, through his authorship, created autocratic systems that automate the minds of the natives so that they may become automatons in a system that continue to this day to embrace and celebrate authoritarianism, Asian style. There are many other areas of Mahathirism that I think can be of research interest to Malaysian scholars, especially to those from the Institut Pemikiran Tun Mahathir, Universiti Utara Malaysia itself.
But I suggest these scholars equip themselves with the tools of critical cultural analyses, critical ethnography, radical anthropology, or reflective sociology in order to produce commendable work on Mahathirism - to understand what makes Malaysians afraid to think and speak up and how they have become, as Herbert Marcuse calls, ‘one-dimensional’ beings.
"Tearing down Mahathirism"
Spaces of dialogue are being created, a symbol of the tearing down the walls of Mahathirism. The deafening call for an inquiry into the award of Approved Permits, the setting up of the Malaysian Institute of Integrity, the repeated calls to provide the academic community with signs and symbols of academic freedom, the boycott of campus elections, and the growing demand of the economically marginalised to be attended to - all these represent the possible end of Malaysian history as we know it.
‘The centre cannot hold’ goes the cliche for post-modernism borrowed from the words of WB Yeats, one apt to be applied to this Fukuyama proposition in Malaysian politics. Speaking of the incapacitation of our thinking and reflecting capacity, I am reminded of the lyrics of Pink Floyd's ‘Brick in the Wall’ which goes, ‘all and all we're just another brick in the wall..’ as we look at the condition of human existence in the world of the global production system.
Mahathirism represents that world - of silencing the masses so that they may work and produce with unquestioning devotion/bakthi and dharma to the new colonial masters of Japan, the United States and Europe. The slogans Kerja Sebagai Ibadat, Kepimpinan Melalui Teladan, Bersih, Cekap, Amanah and IT untuk Anda represent the slogans for the monad/Gramscian historical block/Asian Despotism that characterised the socio-political milieu of the Mahathir era. This is the sangsara of the philosophy of economic development based on the pursuit of artha (harta= material wealth). The system creates the Duryodhanas (durjanas=corporate pirates and raiders) of the global capitalist system that become 'glocalised" in the neatly explained language of Friedmanian economics.
As a keen student/observer of totalitarianism and hegemonic systems created by human beings, I am interested in analysing how these struggles for a cosmopolitan, cosmotheandric, and ‘conscientisation’-ised pattern of struggle continue. I am reminded by the theme of an essay ‘Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism’ by American literary theorist Frederic Jameson as I write about the ruptures, the waning of affect, the sense of fragmentation, and the clichés and subalternisation of the Grand narratives in Malaysian politics in general, and in the deconstructionism of Mahathirism in particular.
Will it take RM100 million to tear down the wall? Or a second 'mental revolution' to debunk and revise Sanusi Junid's thesis in Revolusi Mental, produced in the late 1970s.
I suggest Malaysian social scientists interested in deconstructionist theories to study these developments - so that we may construct newer theories of hegemony and totalitarianism, inspired by and in honor of the work of Syed Hussein Alatas. Let us explore what the new myth of the lazy natives mean through our analysis of ‘the end of Malaysian history and the last man’.
Is this the real Kali, that one that Firaun scurrilously referred to as 'half Indian and half Taliban'?
dpp
Don't think it is the real deal but whatever it is .... too much to read for my ageing eyes !!!
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