This is a P&C message leaked public by printer's devil to my *Y&A political-inclined.
Y&A refers to that category of Homo sapiens aged 12 and above with a critical mind and excludes those who are so lazy to execise their unique mental faculty by spouting inanities and profanities not welcomed hear.
I especially dedicate this missive to johnleemk who has been a shadow chasing Desi on getting Insights into what options Malaysians have for building a Bangsa Malaysia via political means, which means a necessary look at the Oppossition alternatives to the failed BN incumbent.
Today I lend one INSIGHT -- you take my word for IT I ain't as young as this 16-year-old going-17 but I think we mutually can trade barbs with articulate can-do or candour spirit as in the same wavelength as one former PM blogged about here yesterdie.
Dear John and Readers of similar bent who won't feel insulted if I also regard as mentee-sometimes Mentor to Desi -- yes, I continue to learn with ex-PM like humility or I'd be damned!
The ollowing news item chiefly refers, our earlier discourses also implicit~~
From The Star,
Wednesday January 10, 2007
DAP rep quits party citing lack of support
By AUDREY EDWARD
SEREMBAN: Bahau state assemblyman Lim Fui Ming has quit the DAP.
Lim, who was Negri Sembilan DAP vice-chairman, said one reason for his decision was because he felt party members had isolated him since he join the DAP in 1988 after leaving the MCA.
He said he would not resign from his state assembly seat and would continue to serve the people until the next general election.
He did not say whether he would be joining any other political party.
Lim, 61, said he had thought of leaving politics since 2001, and that he contested the last general election because no one from the DAP wanted to stand for the seat.
Lobak state assemblyman Loke Siew Fook, who is the only other DAP assemblyman in the state, said Lim’s resignation would not affect the party in Negri Sembilan.
“We are adopting a wait-and-see attitude. I only heard about this from the media. I was told that he sent a resignation letter to Dr Chen Man Hin (the party’s life advisor),” he added.
When asked about Lim’s claim that he was not getting support from party members, Loke said no politician received 100% support.
Lim’s wife, who only wanted to be known as Madam Thang, said she did not know anything about her husband quitting the DAP.
“I have been trying to contact him because a lot of people have come to look for him,” she said.
“He went straight to Bahau this morning and I do not know anything. I, myself am looking for him and he has turned off his mobile phone.”
DESI: I remember I "reprised" a former piece (by YOU, John ...) where you articulated well the inherent weaknesses of the DAP and how it has not progressed much as a potential political alternative to the BN components. Among the chief faults is the lack of a visionary leader among its top ranks; instead there has been a long trail of party stalwarts jumping ship. Just name a few here: Goh Hock Guan, Fan Yew Teng, Sim Kwang Yang ~~ You know some of the reasons why -- among them is the fractious infighting where the winner stays and keeps all, and all potential opponents within the party had to leave, either to fade into oblivion, or become writHers!:(
The worst dish being cooked is exactly enacted as what the Opposition has been accusing the BN and its component parties of being guilty of -- entrenching CRONYISM and NEPOTISM and CREATING DYNASTIC FIEFDOMS.
What Saudra Lim Fui Ming did not disclose but I can make an educated guess: The failure of the NS DAP State Chief to lead with INCLUSIONARY POLITICS. In fact, I suspect this antagonist of honing his skill at "excluding those who are a potential rival to his leadership", hence practising "Exclusionary Politics" which Lim diplomatically cited as "lack of support".
If you read in between the lines, it's that the chief surrounds himself with croy yes-men (did somebody yell BODEK? Or did I hear "Ball-carriers"? Or Sycophants?
To be ctd.....
Desi is only of half a mind to a swift conclusion and ask that you buy me or johnleemk a cuppa or two of piping hot tehtarik either in Furong of PJ to hear the "intimate" details as such revelations may not be good for the Opposition cause, which I have spent much time and energies promoting.
Suffice to say that many DAP politicians, especially elected representatives, have/had the "same mindset" of their MIC or MCA counterparts. They often succumb to that "price on their head" offered by their political camp, yes, in the steal of the night.
Otherwise, how do you account for Kuppusamy, Tiger Lee and Khoo Seng Hock (all from NS which is my State, hence I can state with confidence I'm not wrong on facts) deserting DAP before end of term as State assemblymen. The latter two switched to MCA even as they were serving as elected SA on the rocket symbol.
One guy owed a fellow BN component member a huge sum of money after losing a defamation suit; but with A little Help from 'MCA' friends, the problem was overcome in doubly quick time and he soon drives around in anew Mercedes Benz.
Lo and Behold, DAP angels ride back from the sunset into main street...
But some Tan Sri Lee LT, who my dear ER and generous horst @allofhelen.blogspot.com gives lots of leeway but not Desi, tops the league of angels. He wears an uncountable number of hats as social activist.
But what was the price for abandoning ship at the most critical and crucial moment in Malaysian electoral history when an Alternative front aligned with Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah stood the best chance of toppling the BN incumbent?
A slew of appointments to the boards of directorships at public listed companies soon followed. Ah, NATIONAL SERVICE too, what a patriot! As Chair he says he should not "resign" (Citizen S Nadeswaran has called on him to resign over the NS transportation fiasco; Desi seconded!) but that the Director-General of the associated ministry should. One enjoys immunity because he has the right ....s (it's a five-letter word because I wouldn't want sisdar Helen to blush. Even my own face may turn lobster red...after some may even label Desi a commie:(
7 comments:
hi DESI, long time no write.
this is actually NOT RELATED to this post, but about plagiarism. thought u might b interested to read it n keep at the back of your mind next time the debate comes on again.
my point:
imagine if Oasis or Quentin Tarantino would have to make an 'acknowledgement' note somewhere in their works EVERYTIME they borrowed/stole someone else's style.
it would b very impractical, n therefore i think it shouldn't b a requirement that u must acknowledge your inspirations.
T. S. Eliot didn’t do it. so, it shouldn't b wrong for other writers not to do it.
(no intention of engaging in a debate here, just to let u have the article n tell u my humble view.)
ciao.
------------------------------
January 10, 2007
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1055-2538011,00.html
Beg, steal or borrow — but can you do it better?
Michael Gove
It’s a pity that T. S. Eliot didn’t live to hear the new top 40 on Sunday evening. Or watch Kill Bill on BBC One, later the same night. While it’s hard to imagine the American émigré, ardent royalist, High Tory, Anglo-Catholic critic and poet who passed away 40 years ago thrilling to Eric Prydz’s remix of the Pink Floyd classic Another Brick in the Wall, or luxuriating in the epic flow of blood unleashed by Uma Thurman’s samurai swordplay, he would have appreciated what they were up to.
Eliot, as a biography by Craig Raine out this month reminds us, was, in poetic terms, a creator of mosaics as much as a painter of new canvases. Much of his poetry, including his masterpiece The Waste Land, involved the rearrangement of existing material, the weaving of echoes and influences, to create something new out of something borrowed.
And that, in their very different ways, was what Eric Prydz and Quentin Tarantino did. For both of their works rely on reworking other artists’ originality — Prydz manifestly stands on the shoulders of Roger Waters, while Tarantino’s film borrows massively from the library of several Japanese directors.
Eliot, in his own fashion, acknowledged the debt that his poetry owed to others. In his essay on the English dramatist Philip Massinger Eliot argued: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” And even that acknowledgement was itself a piece of literary larceny. As Raine points out, Eliot lifted the thought from an essay by George Saintsbury on Laurence Sterne, where Saintsbury had written: “When a man of genius steals, he always makes the thefts his own.”
And yet, despite the sanction of Eliot and Saintsbury, the accusation that an artist has plundered his ideas from others still carries a toxic charge. In his novel Atonement, Ian McEwan made extensive use of the writer Lucilla Andrews’s memoirs of wartime nursing. When the scale of his debt was made public late last year, he was accused of outright plagiarism. Although a number of distinguished writers rode to McEwan’s defence, the allegation still hung in the air, with the suggestion lingering that somehow McEwan had been guilty of a sin against the Spirit of Art.
But as just one evening’s immersion in the BBC’s output demonstrates, modern culture is a carnival of creative borrowing. It’s not just Eric Prydz — much of contemporary dance music relies on sampling not just chords and riffs but huge chunks of other artists’ back catalogues. Even when the borrowing is less transparent, the debt can still be audible. The echoes of the Beatles are apparent in the work of Oasis, and the influence of the Kinks on Blur is equally notable.
In cinema, there are few directors who reference other works quite as devotedly as Tarantino, but as the recent releases of films as diverse as Starsky & Hutch and Poseidon show, our Quentin is not the only Hollywood figure quarrying the Seventies for inspiration.
So why, when there is so much creative plundering going on, does the allegation of plagiarism still have the capacity to taint an artist? Perhaps because our aesthetic antennae twitch with irritation when the only flash of inspiration in a work comes from another’s hand. What should matter is not how much is borrowed, but how much is added.
The problem with Kill Bill is not that Tarantino obviously enjoys Japanese cinema, but that all he produces is a pallid, shlocky Hollywood version of the genre, a vulgar pastiche. Claiming originality for Kill Bill, next to the films from which it borrows, is like lauding Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas as a worthy successor to the Colosseum.
The superiority of Blur over Oasis, a superiority underlined by Damon Albarn’s continuing creativity, while the Gallagher brothers rest on their royalties, lay in Blur’s subtle capturing of the inspiration of past bands, in contrast to Oasis’s cruder appropriation of pubby nostalgia.
In that context we can see that, even if Ian McEwan did lift whole chunks from Lucilla Andrews’s memoirs, this borrowing was then embedded in a wholly original, and wholly impressive, new novel. In a similar way, even though The Waste Land is pregnant with the echoes of other writers, no art before achieved an effect quite like it.
Which is why I’d urge anyone tiring of the creative cannibalism that characterises modern popular culture to turn to Eliot — to appreciate how a real genius uses the work of others. Eliot respected the tradition he worked in so much that he took the greatest care to fashion something even better from it. It was a desire to honour the past, not exploit it, to tend the graves of dead artists, not rob them, that inspired Eliot.
The heart of his success as an artistic innovator, therefore, rested on that temperamental conservatism that made him, in his personal life, a Royalist, an Anglican and Tory. I wonder if that’s a lesson Eric Prydz, Quentin Tarantino, or even Liam Gallagher, are yet ready to learn . . .
The repeated trials are very trying
Channel 4’s offshoot, More4, or as I’ve learnt to call it Michael Moore4, is trumpeting next week’s drama The Trial of Tony Blair at every available opportunity. The production, which is sold as a “satire”, rests on the premise that the Prime Minister, at some future point, might find himself arraigned before some international body for the “crime of aggression” he committed in invading Iraq.
The appetite for putting Mr Blair in the dock for having the temerity to remove a dictator still seems inexhaustible. Previous generations would be mystified. From our bombardment of the Danish fleet in 1806 to Churchill’s sinking of the French Navy at Mers el-Kebir in 1940, British Prime Ministers have been more than ready to take pre-emptive action to avert potential threats.
But rather than reflect on that lesson, those who shape our culture would rather vilify politicians who are prepared to take risks for our freedoms. And hours are devoted to discussing the rights and wrongs of Saddam Hussein’s death, while scarcely a moment is found to honour the memory of all those he slaughtered before he was toppled. It’s an attitude that is beyond satire.
Razor question
Many thanks to all those readers who suggested that the answer to my razor problems (having to replace not only the blades but the holder every few months to keep up with the manufacturer’s innovations) is to opt for an electric, rather than a wet, shave. But that kind suggestion begs another question. Which is more environmentally costly? Generating a mini-mountain of razor waste or using electricity to power my daily shave? No wonder David Bellamy and Bill Oddie have beards.
Michael Gove is Conservative MP for Surrey Heath
juslo:
I understand the need to live up to thy name -- just lyng LO! Behold2? -- jest like Erratic me sometimes.
From thee, an off topic on literary detours is okay.
Wishing a belated greAting for a RPOgressive nu'e year tothee.
I'd appreciate you drop Desi a msg @chongyl2000@yahoo.com for a potential "literary" engagement at an MSM, tks in advance you would "F" me. ~~ Always the knotty wan:)
We know money growth on the "right" side. ;)
The best political hopping show we ever watch is the Sabah PBS in the 90's. It is not easy to find people that will keep the course, know WHAT they want in Day 1. Most politicians lost their way over money and power.
No many leader in the history are able to do it. And those who success, possess some magical CHARM power over others. But such charming power is found on many tyrant. E.g Mao, Hitler, Stalin,etc. So there is always "hope" for a great parties with elites that practice the democracy without power craze in mind.
But one question is raised, "Are you asking TOO MUCH and IMPRACTICAL in current climates?".
Let me borrow the word from the religious teaching,"Those who Sow the poison seed will get poison weeds". Here come another question,"HAVE YOU DONE YOUR PART?".
When the people say the "opposition fail them", it also mean that the people "fail the opposition".
The question of choosing between "Devil and the deep blue sea" is non-existence for FIRST WORLD PEOPLE. They can straight away make the decision : ROTATE between Devil and the deep blue sea. On the way, they force devil to compete with Deep blue sea to win the votes, thus create/apply refreshing ideas/policies that will benefit the people.
While in Malaysia case, the people mind are static, they keep choosing the devil for conveniences. So all political parties take it for granted, and lazy to reengineer themselves.
So here is my conclusion : If you want a good opposition, just vote and give them enough power to PUSH/PRESSURE the re-engineer process for both government and opposition.
Only people with 3rd world mentality will ask "perfect solution/alternative" to "Devil and the deep blue sea".
Since you specially requested it, desi, here's the link to my original piece on the DAP. I haven't been in the creative mood lately to focus on the DAP, but I've been writing about the opposition in general on my site.
Desi, u r not too far off the mark about the DAP state chief being partly responsible for what happened to Mr Lim. No one likes being treated like a pariah, something that has consistently plague the politics of DAP. Only those with steely resolve can withstand the pressure to stand firm on their principles. Teng is a good example. DAP need a major overhaul to prevent selfish motives from destroying the party.
johnleemk:
thanks that cometh with a goblet of Furong's bestA tehtarik! Quickly before Anak Merdeka goeth to santch IT awe away!:)
AM:
Pls don't behave like DAP taiko and bully Y&A johnleemk.
I giveth thee that Platinum goblet.
Cometh quickily before bigBRO Howsy (where is that bugger, still mimified in gay Paree?) and Mave grabbeth IT away!:(
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