It’s time for the 40- and 50-somethings to stick their necks out and take the lead.
COME Sunday, it will be the first day of the Lunar New Year and it will be the start of the Year of the Tiger according to the Chinese 12-animal zodiac. This also means that this is my year as my zodiac sign is that of the Tiger.
This also means that I am 48 years old as I have gone through this cycle four times and the next time the tiger year comes around, I will be 60.
Over the past year, I have been brooding and dreading the coming of 2010 as it can only mean that I am going past mid-life still stuck in a crisis and it is going downhill after that.
However, as the Lunar New Year draws nearer, I find the gloom lifting and the rush of a new vigour of energy – it is as if I have gotten a shot of artificial booster to overcome anything that may stand in my way.
Maybe, this burst of adrenaline has got something to do with the fact that it has been over 40 days since I last had a cigarette, but I would like to think that the pending arrival of the Golden Tiger is responsible for my enthusiasm.
Those of us born in the 1960s are the country’s pioneers and I make no apology for this sweeping statement. We were the first lot to go through the change from English schools to Sekolah Kebangsaan.
We were the first to memorise and sing all those patriotic songs like Tanah Melayu, Malaysia Berjaya, Putera-Puteri, Barisan Kita and Muhibbah. We sang those songs with fervour and gusto although most of us did not understand the full meaning of those songs.
We were all schoolchildren when the race riots of May 13, 1969, broke out. It was our loss of innocence; suddenly we referred to each other in ethnic terms – most of the time in the rudest possible way. Overnight, we were a multi-racial country when prior to that we were just Malaysians.
Did we, children of the 1960s, have a choice in any of these things? No, we did not. The policies that followed and came about after May 13, changed our lives. Everything we did and were done to us was supposedly based on these policies by the people entrusted to implement them.
Sadly, today many of us realise that the implementers somewhat lost the plot along the way and carried out their duties over-enthusiastically and, in some cases, not in the spirit in which the policies were drawn up.
When we were old enough to realise that many of us had suffered at the hands of these zealots, we were so brow beaten that we, then the youth of the 1970s, just meekly accepted our misfortunes and avoided any confrontation when seeking our rights.
Instead, our parents found alternative routes and pathways for us. It was the same, regardless of we being Malay, Chinese or Indian, because then we left things to our parents to decide not knowing that they too were also experiencing these things for the first time.
For the non-Malay parents, they just drew on what they thought their fathers and mothers would have done – they prepared many of us to feel as though we were not going to stay on in Malaysia forever – they prepared us to be migrants.
For the Malays, because of the distrust created by the actual May 13 event and the propaganda that followed, the parents prepared the children to live without their non-Malay neighbours.
It would be easy for us today, with the benefit of hindsight, to judge everyone then – although some of us still cannot see clearly and are blinded by self-interest.
Then came the 1980s – the boom time for the world, where getting rich was the name of the game. We, the baby boomers, were just too busy making money to care about where Malaysia was heading or that there was a parallel economy in the country then.
Malaysia was flying high then but when we came crashing back to earth in the late 1990s the so-called Malaysian Dream was shattered. We left it to the politicians to resolve the problems, but instead they brought all of us into deeper conflict.
A decade later the same characters continued to dominate our lives when they should have faded away like bad nightmares.
We, who were born in the 1960s, are now fathers and mothers of children in their teens and twenties – the ages where their futures and thoughts are shaped.
In many ways they are luckier than us. They are more enlightened, and they also have more enlightened parents. The children born in the 1990s know what they want, and they know how to get it.
Unlike our parents, we must now stand up for them to ensure that none of them are deprived of anything that is rightly theirs. In a world where a country of 27 million is considered a small one, we must ensure not a single child of the 1990s is deprived at all. We are rich enough – in wealth and knowledge – to support everyone.
The May 13 incident brought about the New Economic Policy to ensure the fair distribution of wealth. I believed the policy is now outdated. I think Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak agrees with me because he will soon unveil the New Economic Model (NEM).
But this time as parents – not as politicians or technocrats – we must watch over the NEM policies like hawks to ensure that these are implemented as the authors meant them to be. We must be brave enough to shout out if we find any weakness in the implementation, and ensure it is fixed immediately.
We, the children of the 1960s, owe it to our forefathers to make sure the NEM works and ensure that their descendants will thrive in their homeland. No one should be made unwelcome. No Malaysian should be referred to as an immigrant anymore nor should any Malaysian feel threatened by another.
If we get it right, there is more than enough in Malaysia for everybody.
This is the year of the Golden Tiger and it is time for Malaysia and its people to roar.
Source: The Star Friday 12, 2010
> Deputy Executive editor Wong Sai Wan is going to miss his son when he leaves for Melbourne next week but prays that he will have a great Malaysia to come back to.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Clouded leopard: First film of new Asia big cat species
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Earth News
The Sundaland clouded leopard, a recently described new species of big cat, has been caught on camera.
The Sundaland clouded leopard, only discovered to be a distinct species three years ago, is one of the least known and elusive of all cat species.
Two more rare cats, the flat-headed cat and bay cat, were also photographed.
 |  Clouded leopards are one of the most elusive cats. They are very hardly ever encountered  Andreas Wilting Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research |
"Clouded leopards are one of the most elusive cats. They are very hardly ever encountered and almost no detailed study about their ecology has been conducted," says Mr Andreas Wilting of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany.
Mr Wilting is leader of a project that evaluates how changes to the forest in the Malaysian part of Borneo impact carnivores living there.
As part of that project, the team places a network of camera traps in the forest, that automatically photograph passing animals.
The team, which includes the Malaysian field scientist Azlan Mohamed, also conducts regular surveys at night, by shining a spotlight from the back of a vehicle driven around the Dermakot Forest Reserve in Sabah.
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"For the first eleven months we had not encountered a single clouded leopard during these night surveys," says Mr Wilting.
"So every one of our team was very surprised when this clouded leopard was encountered.
"Even more surprising was that this individual was not scared by the light or the noises of the truck.
"For over five minutes this clouded leopard was just roaming around the car, which compared to the encounters with the other animals is very strange, as most species are scared and run away after we have spotted them."
Film exists of a Sundaland clouded leopard held in an enclosure.
| RARE CATS: FIND OUT MORE |
Until 2007, all clouded leopards living in Asia were thought to belong to a single species.
However, genetic studies revealed that there are actually two quite distinct clouded leopard species.
As well as the better known clouded leopard living on the Asian mainland (Neofelis nebulosa), scientists determined that a separate clouded leopard species lives on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra.
The two species are thought to have diverged over one million years ago.
This leopard is now known as the Sunda or Sundaland clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi), though it was previously and erroneously called the Bornean clouded leopard.
Since 2008, it has been listed as vulnerable by the IUCN.
The clouded leopard, the largest predator on Borneo, appears to live at very low densities within the reserve, as it has only rarely been photographed by the researchers or camera traps.
During the surveys, the research team also discovered a juvenile samba deer (Cervus unicolor) which had been killed by a clouded leopard.
The scientists suspect a large male clouded leopard made the kill, and had removed part of the front right leg.
Despite being a commercial forest that is sustainably logged for wood, the Dermakot Forest Reserve in Sabah, which is an area of approximately 550km square kilometres, holds all five wild Bornean cat species.
Making its mark (Footage courtesy of A Wilting/A Mohamed/Cat News)
One video shows a wild leopard cat scent-marking its territory.
This smaller species is more common in the area, and has been filmed before.
"But due to its mainly nocturnal behaviour, specific behaviours like the scent marking are rarely documented on camera," says Mr Wilting.
More thrilling are the pictures taken of the other cats: the flat-headed cat (Prionailurus planiceps), bay cat (Catopuma badia) and marbled cat (Pardofelis marmorata).
 A marbled cat caught by a camera trap |
"The bay cat was special, as there has never been a confirmed record of this species in our study site.
"Therefore I really did not expect to get a photo of this species and I was amazed when I saw this picture."
Since 1928, there had been no confirmed record of this cat, before it was rediscovered in 1992 in Sarawak.
It is currently considered to be one of the world's least known cat species, and is listed as endangered.
"In addition our record is the most northern record of this species, which is endemic to Borneo."
Specialised climber
"Also the records of the flat-headed cat are very special as well, because just a few camera-trapping pictures of this species exist," explains Mr Wilting.
"The flat-headed cat is a highly specialised cat, restricted to lowland forests and wetlands, those areas which have the highest destruction rates in Asia.
 A flat-headed cat walks on by |
"The marbled cat is presumably mainly arboreal and therefore it is much harder to get this species photographed with the ground-based cameras."
The marbled cat looks much like a miniature clouded leopard, with a cloud-like spot pattern and long tail.
"We have encountered this species twice during our night surveys in Deramakot and once we even observed it climbing headfirst down the tree-trunk.
"These cats have really amazing climbing skills."
Mr Wilting says that finding all five Bornean cat species in one area suggests that Dermakot Forest Reserve is home to a particularly high diversity of animals, especially as Borneo is one of the biodiversity hotspots of the world.
It also suggests that even commercially used forests, as long as they are managed sustainably, may harbour threatened cat species and therefore contribute to their conservation, he says.
The true colour of politics is grey
Malaysians must learn to notice the difference between political posturing and real championing of the people’s interests.
A LEARNED and articulate friend who’s a veteran in the legal fraternity did not contain his disgust towards the mainstream media during our last lunch meet.
Clearly distracted from the sumptuous spread on his banana leaf, he let it all fly, accusing newspapers of breaching new levels of banality and unfairness.
It was obvious that much of his tirade had something to do with reports on the ongoing Anwar Ibrahim Sodomy II trial and coverage of stories about problems faced by PKR and DAP.
In a gist, his point was: There are so many things going wrong with the country – economic numbers are bad, FDIs are down and peoples’ problems are mounting, etc. – but the media are only focuses on making the Opposition look bad.
Never mind the fact that the topic of discussion during our previous lunch date was what made the headlines then: racist remarks by a former aide to the Prime Minister who has since resigned.
Of course, this comes from yet another of my friends who no longer reads the newspapers but “just skims through them” for the sake of knowing what it is being published.
Like him, many say that they now get all their reliable information on the Internet.
But not this well-travelled and learned friend of mine, though. He confesses to being not Net-savvy and admits to relying on what his friends read and tell him.
As such, he has full faith in highly reputable publications like The Washington Post, which ran a very presumptuous opinion piece titled Why the prosecution of Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim matters to the West.
He also rates another report about an Australian MP condemning the political persecution of PKR’s de facto leader.
Yes, this group of knowledgeable folk share their photocopied clippings to reaffirm what they already know, and verily and firmly believe.
Much to the amusement of our two other regular lunch partners – a retired film maker and a fellow journalist, my banter with my learned friend ended on the usual amicable note by both agreeing to disagree.
The only question that comes to this friend and several others who always seem to get angrier each time we meet, has always been this: When it comes to politics, why do so many academically brilliant and highly rated professionals choose to only see things in black and white?
Surely, they must know that it is mostly grey out there.
And that’s the reality for politics everywhere in the world, not just in this small and insignificant country of 27 million people.
Yes, we could have been a greater and much more respected nation by now, 53 years after independence, if our politicians in power had ensured that the country’s fundamental systems of justice and good governance remained strong, and had done more to unite rather than disunite our diverse ethnic groups.
Let’s be honest about the ills faced by the country. Are they really new problems and issues, much as many of us would like to trace them to the sacking of one man who was one step away from absolute power?
There are none so blind than they who will not see. If we care to look, the root causes of our problems can be traced back almost three decades.
Ironically, personalities who were creators of the problems or used the corrupt systems to their utmost benefits at the expense of the country are still around portraying themselves as saviours.
Racism? Religious extremism? Failed educational policies? Take your pick.
Those among us, who have always seen ruthless politicians for what they are know whom to point our fingers at.
It is tragic that Malaysians are increasingly being divided by political partisanship. On almost every issue we are being forced to take sides and choose which one to defend.
At the core of most issues, the two sides are not really different, but the players are letting us believe that we are looking at night and day. Are we really all that naive?
American writer Mary Beth Rogers said only two kinds of people can afford the luxury of acting on principle – those with absolute power and those with none and no desire to get any.
As she put it, everyone else who wants to be effective in politics “has to learn to be ‘unprincipled’ enough to compromise in order to see their principles succeed”.
That’s the reality of politics and it’s being played out before our eyes. There are no heroes and villains. They can be decent or vile as they come, and we must be able to accept them for what they are.
Politics, after all, is all about power plans and an extended exercise in ego. As long as there are followers, there will be leaders.
Ultimately, all Malaysians, especially the learned among us, need to do is to observe and notice the difference between political posturing and real championing of the people’s interests.
So, when the time comes, just vote wisely. There is no need to continuously rave and rant.
> Associate Editor M. Veera Pandiyan likes this observation of George Orwell: All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.
A LEARNED and articulate friend who’s a veteran in the legal fraternity did not contain his disgust towards the mainstream media during our last lunch meet.
Clearly distracted from the sumptuous spread on his banana leaf, he let it all fly, accusing newspapers of breaching new levels of banality and unfairness.
It was obvious that much of his tirade had something to do with reports on the ongoing Anwar Ibrahim Sodomy II trial and coverage of stories about problems faced by PKR and DAP.
In a gist, his point was: There are so many things going wrong with the country – economic numbers are bad, FDIs are down and peoples’ problems are mounting, etc. – but the media are only focuses on making the Opposition look bad.
Never mind the fact that the topic of discussion during our previous lunch date was what made the headlines then: racist remarks by a former aide to the Prime Minister who has since resigned.
Of course, this comes from yet another of my friends who no longer reads the newspapers but “just skims through them” for the sake of knowing what it is being published.
Like him, many say that they now get all their reliable information on the Internet.
But not this well-travelled and learned friend of mine, though. He confesses to being not Net-savvy and admits to relying on what his friends read and tell him.
As such, he has full faith in highly reputable publications like The Washington Post, which ran a very presumptuous opinion piece titled Why the prosecution of Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim matters to the West.
He also rates another report about an Australian MP condemning the political persecution of PKR’s de facto leader.
Yes, this group of knowledgeable folk share their photocopied clippings to reaffirm what they already know, and verily and firmly believe.
Much to the amusement of our two other regular lunch partners – a retired film maker and a fellow journalist, my banter with my learned friend ended on the usual amicable note by both agreeing to disagree.
The only question that comes to this friend and several others who always seem to get angrier each time we meet, has always been this: When it comes to politics, why do so many academically brilliant and highly rated professionals choose to only see things in black and white?
Surely, they must know that it is mostly grey out there.
And that’s the reality for politics everywhere in the world, not just in this small and insignificant country of 27 million people.
Yes, we could have been a greater and much more respected nation by now, 53 years after independence, if our politicians in power had ensured that the country’s fundamental systems of justice and good governance remained strong, and had done more to unite rather than disunite our diverse ethnic groups.
Let’s be honest about the ills faced by the country. Are they really new problems and issues, much as many of us would like to trace them to the sacking of one man who was one step away from absolute power?
There are none so blind than they who will not see. If we care to look, the root causes of our problems can be traced back almost three decades.
Ironically, personalities who were creators of the problems or used the corrupt systems to their utmost benefits at the expense of the country are still around portraying themselves as saviours.
Racism? Religious extremism? Failed educational policies? Take your pick.
Those among us, who have always seen ruthless politicians for what they are know whom to point our fingers at.
It is tragic that Malaysians are increasingly being divided by political partisanship. On almost every issue we are being forced to take sides and choose which one to defend.
At the core of most issues, the two sides are not really different, but the players are letting us believe that we are looking at night and day. Are we really all that naive?
American writer Mary Beth Rogers said only two kinds of people can afford the luxury of acting on principle – those with absolute power and those with none and no desire to get any.
As she put it, everyone else who wants to be effective in politics “has to learn to be ‘unprincipled’ enough to compromise in order to see their principles succeed”.
That’s the reality of politics and it’s being played out before our eyes. There are no heroes and villains. They can be decent or vile as they come, and we must be able to accept them for what they are.
Politics, after all, is all about power plans and an extended exercise in ego. As long as there are followers, there will be leaders.
Ultimately, all Malaysians, especially the learned among us, need to do is to observe and notice the difference between political posturing and real championing of the people’s interests.
So, when the time comes, just vote wisely. There is no need to continuously rave and rant.
> Associate Editor M. Veera Pandiyan likes this observation of George Orwell: All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.
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