Horrible End of Year...for the Palestinians

Hi folks, sorry I've been away from the blog for so long. I'll write about my holiday in Hanoi in another post. But meanwhile I have to say that few things could have made the end of the year as sad as the Israeli airstrikes in Gaza which thus far has killed more than 250 people.

We've seen the horrific photos of the carnage. But if we don't understand what is happening, here's an analysis by Phyllis Bennis, Director at the Institute of Policy Studies in Washington DC.

The Gaza Crisis: December 28, 2008

By Phyllis Bennis

Institute for Policy Studies

28 December 2008

The death toll in Gaza continues to rise. The carnage is everywhere – city streets, a mosque, hospitals, police stations, a jail, a university bus stop, a plastics factory, a television station. It seems impossible, unacceptable, to step back to analyze the situation while bodies remain buried under the rubble, while parents continue to search for their missing children, while doctors continue to labor to stitch burned and broken bodies back together without sufficient medicine or equipment. The hospitals are running short even of electricity—the Israeli blockade has denied them fuel to run the generators. It is an ironic twist on the legacy of Israel's involvement in an earlier massacre – in the Sabra and Shatila camps, in Lebanon back in 1982, it was the Israeli soldiers who lit the flairs, lighting the night sky so their Lebanese allies could continue to kill.

But if we are serious about ending this carnage, this time, we have no choice but to try to analyze, try to figure out what caused this most recent massacre, how to stop it, and then how to continue our work to end the occupation, end Israel's apartheid policies, and change U.S. policy to one of justice and equality for all.

*****

· The Israeli airstrikes represent serious violations of international law – including the Geneva Conventions and a range of international humanitarian law.

· The U.S. is complicit in the Israeli violations – directly and indirectly.

· The timing of the air strikes has far more to do with U.S. and Israeli politics than with protecting Israeli civilians.

· This serious escalation will push back any chance of serious negotiations between the parties that might have been part of the Obama administration's plans.

· There is much work to be done.

*****

Violations of International Law

The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip violate important tenants of international humanitarian law, including violations of the Geneva Conventions. The violations include both obligations of an Occupying Power to protect an Occupied Population, and the broader requirements of the laws of war that prohibit specific acts. The violations start with collective punishment – the entire 1.5 million people who live in the Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

Israel's claim that it is "responding to" or "retaliating for" Palestinian rocket attacks is spurious. The rocket fire as currently used is indeed illegal – Palestinians, like any people living under a hostile military occupation, have the right to resist, including the use of military force against the occupation. But that right does not include targeting civilians. The rockets used so far are unable to be aimed with any specificity, so they are in fact aimed at the civilians who live in the Israeli cities and towns, and so are illegal. The rocket fire against civilians should be ended – as many Palestinians believe, because it does not help end the occupation, but also because it is illegal under international law. However, that rocket fire, illegal or not, does not give Israel the right to punish the entire population for those actions. Such vengeance is the very essence of "collective punishment" and is therefore unequivocally prohibited by the Geneva conventions.

Another Israeli violation involves targeting civilians. This violation involves three aspects. First, Israel claims the airstrikes were targeted directly at "Hamas-controlled" security-related institutions. Since the majority Hamas party controls the government in Gaza, virtually all the police departments and other security-related sites were hit. Those police and security agencies are civilian targets – not military. They are run by the Hamas-led government in Gaza, an institution completely separate from Gaza's military wing that has carried out some (though by no means the majority) of the rocket attacks. Second, some of the attacks directly struck incontestably civilian targets: a plastics factory, a local television broadcasting center. And third, the incredibly crowded conditions in Gaza, one of the most densely populated sites in the world, mean that civilian casualties on a huge scale were an inevitable and predictable result. Such targeting of civilian areas is illegal.

The U.S. is also directly complicit in the violations of the Geneva Convention inherent in Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. Israel's actions – keeping Gazans locked in the Strip; closing the border crossings to almost all fuel, food, equipment and other basic humanitarian goods; preventing UN and other international human rights monitors and journalists from entering, and more – have all been backed and supported by the U.S. and others in the international community. The resulting humanitarian crisis – reaching catastrophic proportions even before the current air attacks – is partly the responsibility of the United States.

Still another violation involves the disproportionate nature of the military attack. The airstrikes have killed at least 270 people so far, injured more than 1,000, many of them seriously, and many remain buried under the rubble so the death toll will likely rise. This catastrophic impact was known and inevitable, and far outweighs any claim of self-defense or protection of Israeli civilians. (It should be noted that this escalation has not made Israelis safer; to the contrary, the one Israeli killed by a Palestinian rocket attack on Saturday after the Israeli assault began, was the first such casualty in more than a year.)

Key human rights officials, particular the UN's Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Professor Richard Falk, as well as Father Miguel d'Escoto, President of the General Assembly, have issued powerful statements identifying Israeli violations of international law as well as the UN's obligations to protect the Palestinian population. But so far there has been no operative response from the UN Security Council. The Council statement, issued 28 December, was completely insufficient, essentially equating the culpability of the Occupying Power and of the occupied population for the violence that has so devastated Gaza. And the statement makes no reference to violations of international law inherent in the Israeli assaults, or in the siege of Gaza that has so drastically punished the entire population. There is a clear need for the General Assembly to step in to reclaim the UN's role of protecting the world's people, certainly including the Palestinians, and not just responding to the demands of the world's powerful.

U.S. Complicity

The United States remains directly complicit in Israeli violations of both U.S. domestic and international law through its continual provision of military aid. The current round of airstrikes have been carried out largely with F-16 bombers and Apache attack helicopters, both provided to Israel through U.S. military aid grants of about $3 billion in U.S. taxpayer money sent to Israel every year. Between 2001 and 2006, Washington transferred to Israel more than $200 million worth of spare parts for its fleet of F-16's. Just last year, the U.S. signed a $1.3 billion contract with the Raytheon corporation to provide Israel with thousands of TOW, Hellfire, and "bunker buster" missiles. In short, Israel's lethal attack today on the Gaza Strip could not have happened without the active military support of the United States.

Israel's attack violated U.S. law – specifically the Arms Export Control Act, which prohibits U.S. arms from being used for any purpose beyond a very narrowly-defined set of circumstances: use inside a country's borders for self-defense purposes. The Gaza assault did not meet those criteria. Certainly targeting police stations (even Israel did not claim Gazan police forces were responsible for the rockets) and television broadcast centers do not qualify as self-defense. And because the U.S. government has confirmed it was fully aware of Israeli plans for the attack before it occurred, the U.S. remains complicit in the violations. Further, the well-known history of Israeli violations of international law (detailed above) means U.S. government officials were aware of those violations, provided the arms to Israel anyway, and therefore remain complicit in the Israeli crimes.

The U.S. is also indirectly complicit through its protection of Israel in the United Nations. Its actions, including the use and threat of use of the U.S. veto in the Security Council and the reliance on raw power to pressure diplomats and governments to soften their criticism of Israel, all serve to protect Israel and keep it from being held accountable by the international community.

Timing of Israel's Attack on Gaza

The Israeli decision to launch the attacks on Gaza was a political, not security, decision. Just a day or two before the airstrikes, it was Israel that rejected Hamas's diplomatic initiative aimed at extending the six-month-long ceasefire that had frayed but largely stayed together since June, and that expired 26 December. Hamas officials, working through Egyptian mediators, had urged Israel to lift the siege of Gaza as the basis for continuing an extended ceasefire. Israel, including Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni, of the "centrist" (in the Israeli context) Kadima Party, rejected the proposal. Livni, who went to Egypt but refused to seriously consider the Hamas offer, is running in a tight race for prime minister; her top opponent is the further-right Benyamin Netanyahu of the officially hawkish Likud party, who has campaigned against Livni and the Kadima government for their alleged "soft" approach to the Palestinians. With elections looming in February, no candidate can afford to appear anything but super-militaristic.

Further, it is certain that the Israeli government was eager to move militarily while Bush was still in office. The Washington Post quoted a Bush administration official saying that Israel struck in Gaza "because they want it to be over before the next administration comes in. They can't predict how the next administration will handle it. And this is not the way they want to start with the new administration." The Israeli officials may or may not be right about President Obama's likelihood of responding differently than Bush on this issue – but it does point to a clear obligation on those of us in this country who voted for Obama with hope, to do all that's necessary to press him to make good on the "change" he promised that gave rise to that hope.

Obama and Future Options

The escalation in Gaza will make it virtually impossible for any serious Israeli-Palestinian negotiations aimed at ending the occupation. It remains uncertain whether sponsorship of an immediate new round of bilateral negotiations was in fact on Barack Obama's initial post-inauguration agenda anyway. But the current crisis means that any negotiations, whether ostensibly Israeli-Palestinian alone or officially involving the U.S.-controlled so-called "Quartet," will be able to go beyond a return to the pre-airstrike crisis period. That earlier political crisis, still far from solved, was characterized by expanding settlements, the apartheid Wall and crippling checkpoints crippling movement, commerce, and ordinary life across the West Bank, and a virtually impenetrable siege of Gaza that even before the current military assault, had created a humanitarian catastrophe.

So What do We Do?

The immediate answer is everything: write letters to Congressmembers and the State Department, demonstrate at the White House and the Israeli Embassy, write letters to the editor and op-eds for every news outlet we can find, call radio talk shows, protest the U.S. representatives at the UN and their protection of Israeli crimes. We need to engage with the Obama transition process and plan now for how we will keep the pressure on to really change U.S. policy in the Middle East. We should all join the global movement of outrage and solidarity with Gaza. There are a host of on-line petitions already – we should sign them all. The U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation is compiling action calls on our website – www.endtheoccupation.org. We have to do all of that.

But then. We can't stop with emergency mobilizations. We still have to build our movement for BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions, to build a global campaign of non-violent economic pressure to force Israel to comply with international law. We have to challenge U.S. military aid that scaffolds Israel's military aggression, and U.S. political and diplomatic support that prevents the UN and the international community from holding Israel accountable for its violations. We have to do serious education and advocacy work, learning from other movements that have come before about being brave enough to call something what it is: Israeli policies are apartheid policies, and must be challenged on that basis.

We have a lot of work to do.

____________________________________

Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. Her books include Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer in FAQ format which many will find useful for education work in this urgent period. (www.interlinkbooks.com)

Thanks to Josh Ruebner of the U.S. Campaign for some of the background on U.S. military aid.

Phyllis Bennis

Director, New Internationalism Project

Institute for Policy Studies

1112 16th Street NW #600

Washington DC 20036

tel: (1-202) 234-9382 ex 206

fax: (1-202) 387-7915

www.ips-dc.org

(Check out Phyllis Bennis' newest 2008 books, hot off the press --

Ending the Iraq War: A Primer and Understanding the US-Iran Crisis: A Primer

both from Interlink Publishing (www.interlinkbooks.com).)


And the amazing President of the UN General Assembly, Father Miguel D'Escoto, issued this statement:

Statement by the President of the General Assembly, Miguel D´Escoto on the Crisis in Gaza

Saturday 27 December

The behavior by Israel in bombarding Gaza is simply the commission of wanton aggression by a very powerful state against a territory that illegally occupies.
Time has come to take firm action if the United Nations does not want to be rightly accused of complicity by omission.

The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war.

Those violations include:

Collective punishment – the entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

Targeting civilians – the airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.

Disproportionate military response – the airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza’s elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.

I remind all member states of the United Nations that the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international humanitarian law – regardless of what country may be responsible for those violations. I call on all Member States, as well as officials and every relevant organ of the United Nations system, to move expeditiously not only to condemn Israel’s serious violations, but to develop new approaches to providing real protection for the Palestinian people.



Meantime, we need to pray for the safety of the Palestinians in Gaza and that the airstrikes will end immediately. Or else, it won't be much of a 2009 for them...or for the rest of the world, for that matter.

Holiday Greetings...and a Gift Suggestion

Hi folks, I am off on a much-needed break from today for about a week. Am not bringing my laptop along so unless I figure out a way to post from my Blackberry, I won't be doing a travelogue til I get back.

Where am I going? To a country not too far from here which I haven't been back to since 1993. It's an up-and-coming economy which has been attracting foreign direct investments away from us. See if you can guess which one it is.

Meanwhile if you don't know what to get family, friends and foes for Christmas, here's a suggestion:


Yup folks, my book is finally out! I thought it would be really a bit outdated by now but with the recent furore over the proposed privatisation of IJN, it suddenly seems pertinent again. My new book is about the fifty days my Dad spent in IJN last year but also about blogging and its relationship with the public vis-a-vis the mainstream media, amongst other things. You may have already read all those posts but the book contains some additional commentary, an epilogue and a prologue so there's still plenty that's new.

The one thing the publishers, ZI Publishing, and I decided to - sadly - leave out were all the comments in response to my posts during that period. There were simply too many and it was too difficult to get permission from everyone to publish them. But a book is not a blog so I don't think it takes much too away from it to not have the comments in.

Anyway 50 Days should be out in the bookstores by this weekend. We are planning a launch some time in January and in February I will be signing books every weekend at different bookstores in the Klang Valley. Will let you know what the exact schedule is when we have it. Would be great to meet some of you face-to-face then.

Lastly, let me wish all my Christian readers a Very Merry Christmas, and to everyone else, Happy Holidays! I will be back by the end of the year so will wait til then to wish you all a happy 2009!

Peace to everyone!

Why Mandatory Premarital HIV Testing is NOT the way to go

The announcement by DPM yesterday is not something new. Mandatory premarital HIV testing was first started in Johor in November 2001. It should be noted that this was a policy of the Jabatan Agama Islam Johor (JAIJ) which makes it the first time that a religious department has made health policy, thus far the purview of the Federal Ministry of Health (which up to yesterday did NOT support mandatory premarital HIV testing, at least officially).

After which, state by state, religious departments have taken it up so that now we have a situation where almost every state now has mandatory testing.

Interestingly enough, we have absolutely no data on the efficacy of this policy which ostensibly is to prevent women from getting infected. The MoH is unable to give us statistics on how many people were diagnosed HIV+ through this programme because, they said, all state results are integrated into one report and they are unable to segregate how many were diagnosed through the premarital testing and how many through other avenues ( testing of drug users in Pusat Serenti and prisons,STD clinics,blood donations etc) . So basically we have a policy for which there can be NO monitoring and evaluation. Isn't that a great way to spend taxpayers' money?

The HIV prevalence rate in Malaysia is currently less than 1%. Prevalence rate refers to the % of people infected among total population. Now if we test couples intending marriage, we are testing the general population ( as opposed to at-risk or vulnerable populations such as drug users, sex workers, fishermen etc). Therefore we can expect that the results of positive diagnoses would be also less than 1%. Does it make sense to spend all that money on testing equipment and human resources to get such a low return?

Let me state that I am not against testing if it is voluntary. I think it is good and healthy for a couple intending marriage to talk frankly to each other about what risks they may have taken and to allay any doubts and fears by going for testing. It may interest you to know that the small anonymous voluntary testing programme that the MoH did run had a better take-up and higher positive diagnoses rate than the mandatory testing programme. That's because people who feel they have been exposed are voluntarily taking the test themselves, and the anonymity gives them comfort that they won't have to reveal themselves until they decide to.

In terms of preventing infection to women, this is not only a particularly lazy way of doing things but also paternalistic and patriarchal. It is based on the assumption that infection only occurs from men to women and therefore women should be protected from these bad men.

Well, guess what? In the very first cohort of people tested in Johor, they found women already HIV+!!! So you don't need to get married to become infected.

What anecdotal reports we have also suggest these people were not given adequate counselling. All the HIV+ people diagnosed were allowed to get married if they wanted. Most of them did, because to not do so would risk broadcasting to their entire community that they were possibly HIV+. However these marriages did not last long. What's more some of the couples refused to even live together, from which you can surmise that they did not have basic info regarding how HIV can or cannot be transmitted. And certainly were not told about condoms.

More importantly is this: testing only tells you what anyone's status is at that point in time and no more. Without pre- and post-test counselling as well as sustained public education about HIV, there is no guarantee that anyone would remain HIV-free throughout their lives. And as long as women are unable to refuse sex with their husbands even when they suspect their husbands may be HIV+, they will be unable to protect themselves from infection. If anything, mandatory testing gives a false sense of security to these couples. (In KL, there have been 60-year old married women diagnosed HIV+.)

Last year I presented a paper on a cohort of 300+ HIV+ widows in Kota Bharu at the 8th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific in Colombo, Sri Lanka. All of them became infected through their husbands and all were left with children and no means of support. Many of them knew that their husbands were drug users when they got married but did not know that this put them at risk of HIV infection. They only found out their own status when their husbands were diagnosed, very often very late.

You have to wonder why these women married men they knew to be drug users. Some only realised how bad it was after they got married. Not all the men were HIV+ yet when they got married but eventually became so after a few years, probably after graduating from smoking to injecting. In many cases, it is only their younger children who are HIV+ which suggests that infection occurred later in marriage. While I do not recommend it either, it would seem that a premarital drug test would give you a better indication of who is likely to become HIV+ in the future than an HIV test.

Is the answer then to keep testing people throughout their marriage? Obviously not. We need public education about HIV and we need to empower women and uphold their rights. We have far too many cases of women being told that they have to have sex with their husbands because it is their duty even when they suspect or know their husbands are HIV+.

And of course we should talk about condoms. In a study of HIV-discordant couples ( ie one partner HIV+, one not) at KLH a few years ago, it was found that despite counselling, Muslim couples still did not use condoms, thus putting the negative partner at risk (usually the wife). Although the study did not ask why, we can surmise that it is because Muslims believe that condoms are haram. Our ulama, unlike in Indonesia, have not unequivocally said that condoms are ok within marriage.

For international policy on HIV testing, read this.

Now, here's a question: if couples run away to get married in southern Thailand, will they be subjected to HIV testing after they get back? But then they are already married, which means transmission of HIV can already have occurred. How do you then protect the women?

Leave IJN alone!

I am rather distressed to hear that the National Heart Institute (IJN) may be sold off to a public company, Sime Darby. It probably makes sense, from a business point of view, for Sime Darby. But it doesn't, to me, make sense from IJN's point of view, least of all from the patient's point of view.

I know IJN rather well, having spent a lot of time there when my father was warded for surgery. I know how hard everyone works there because there is a lot of demand for cardio-thoracic care in our country. And most of the patients are poor.

Just visit IJN on clinic days and you'll see how many people are there waiting to see the cardiologists. It's like a railway station. Most are your average Makcik or Pakcik, plus some children.

I've visited the wards and seen the children, even babies, waiting for heart surgery or after they've had their operations. It's heartbreaking seeing these tiny babies with tubes all over them. They come from all over the country and these operations are life-saving, no doubt about it.

(Not all patients can be saved. I've come across weeping mothers in the lifts after their babies had died. My young friend Fauziah from Sabah mustered all her courage to go for an operation that had a tiny chance of giving her a normal life, but that chance proved too tiny. My cousin Zahari went to IJN to have his lungs checked out but he was too far gone with cancer to survive. Even so IJN doctors gave him enough of a morale boost for him to fight as hard as he could to prolong his life.)

I know that IJN surgeons and anasthesiologists travel to places like Sabah to perform operations there so that Sabah patients don't have to spend money travelling to KL for their ops and treatment. I also know that sometimes they go overseas to poor countries in Africa and the Middle East to perform heart operations there. Without these humanitarian missions, people in those countries can never hope to get their hearts repaired.

Let's not forget things like transplants. Everyone remembers the miraculous story of Tee Hui Yi last year when after a year of waiting, she had not one but two donors within 24 hours. She had spent the wait on a mechanical heart, just like Mohd Fikri Nor Azmi the year before. It kept her alive but it curtailed her ability to take part in all the activities that a normal teenage girl would, including school. Now, because of the work of the IJN surgeons and doctors, she is back at school, healthy again.

(Me and my two girls, Melina and Hui Yi, at our Raya Open House this year. Photo, courtesy of Jinggo.)


Right now, there are two other women on mechanical hearts at IJN waiting for heart donors. Where else can they go? The mechanical heart and the transplants are hugely expensive endeavours but the patients don't pay for them.

If IJN is completely privatised, what will happen to all the people who cannot afford heart surgery? IJN takes in private patients which helps to pay for the surgery of those who cannot afford it. Even then, it's a decent price. Last year my blog readers helped to fund the hole-in-the-heart surgery of 15-year old East Timorese girl Melina Jokita at IJN. It cost a little under RM30,000. (Melina, being foreign, could not get the surgery free.)

The fees that private patients pay is not enough to cover all the ops required for poor patients. That's why the IJN Foundation was set up to raise funds for all those ops, which make up the bulk of their patients. What will happen to all of them?

I read with despair that the Government 'in principle' has no objection to Sime Darby buying over IJN. But what 'principle' is that? IJN was set up for a purpose, to provide cardio-thoracic care and treatment to those who need it and otherwise cannot afford it. It's done a fantastic job. Why now give it over to a for-profit company? Some things, which ain't broke, should really be left alone.

(See also P. Gunasegaram and Rocky Bru. My book, 50 Days, will also be out in the bookshops next week. It is a compilation of my blogposts during the time when my father was in IJN last year for his heart bypass, plus some additional commentary. It is also the story of IJN and includes the stories about Hui Yi and Melina.)

Creating Polyglot Kids

I was reading the Minister of Education's comments about the whole issue of whether to revert back to teaching Maths and Science in Bahasa Malaysia instead of English and really didn't feel optimistic about what the outcome is going to be. I don't envy him his position at all because there is definitely going to be unhappiness on the part of some parties.

The question put to him is whether his Ministry is going to make a political decision or an educational decision where our children's future is prioritised. With MCA now also bowing to pressure groups, it doesn't look like the future of our kids is of concern at all.

I'm on the side of keeping Maths and Science in English because that's the right thing to do. In fact I think it would be good if we designated certain days in the week where only English is spoken in schools. Our kids need to learn to speak English properly in order to get on in the world. That's not to say they should neglect their mother tongue and other languages. I happen to believe that children are capable of speaking more than one language easily. The key is exposing them to these languages early, as young as possible. Language researchers say that the best time to teach children languages is before they are five years old.

Charles Berlitz, the linguist from the Berlitz School of Languages family, grew up in a household that spoke so many languages that as a child he simply assumed that everyone had their own language. As a result, by the time he was an adolescent, he spoke eight languages fluently. There are not a lot of adults who can do the same if they only started learning languages any later than that.

Last night I watched a BBC programme on this year's Nobel Prize winners. Around the table sat the winners for Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Economics and Literature. Most of them were non-native English speakers. But they all spoke good English, even the Japanese physicist. The point is that to be a top class scientist or expert of any kind, even if you're not at the Nobel Prize level, you need to speak and read English. Otherwise there will be huge swathes of knowledge that simply will not be accessible to you.

I'm not the only person who thinks this. Ong Kian Ming has some thoughts on this, as has Dr Bakri Musa.

In my schooldays, if you failed English in your LCE or MCE (ok it was a looong time ago), then you failed everything, just as if you failed your BM. I don't know what the system is now but maybe that might create an incentive for students to do better in English. What's more we used to have to do oral exams as well as written ones. Just going by the level of English I encounter among job candidates, salespeople and the like, I have to assume that all this is gone.

It also strikes me that none of the people insisting on the supremacy of the mother tongue are actually mothers. They are all fathers (I assume they actually have children). This might seem like a negligible point but there's a reason why the language you are born into is called your mother tongue. The first language you hear and learn is your mother's because that's who you spend most of your infancy with. That's not just the person who will teach you the language you speak but also how you speak it.

When my older daughter was born, we lived in Japan. I made the decision to only speak to her in Malay while encouraging her father to speak to her (less successfully) in his mother tongue, which was French. She also was exposed to Japanese from the woman who came to help me at home a few times a week.

When she started school back in KL, I stopped speaking Malay to her and started speaking exclusively in English. That was because I knew that school would hone her Malay every day while I was responsible for keeping her English up to scratch. Her French was not as good because she had no one to speak it with except for once-a-year holidays where she went to France to visit her relatives. Eventually she became good enough to sit for exams in French.

The point is children can learn any number of languages if they have enough exposure to them. They will naturally pick up their mother tongues and if they also had a diligent father who speaks another language, they may also pick up their father-tongue. Everything else needs to be picked up at school. As long as the teaching of language at home is solid (through the natural and informal family environment), there is nothing to worry about school education overriding the mother tongue.

And I really think the more languages one speaks, the better it is for one's brain. (It doesn't necessarily make you a better person of course; I once had a driver who spoke Tamil, English, Malay and Mandarin but he wasn't a very honest driver.) But certainly when I see a job applicant who speaks a lot of languages, I tend to be more interested in his or her application because the ability to speak many languages also tends to mean that you do have a better understanding of different mindsets and cultures.

Article 26.3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children." But parents will not willfully choose a bad education for their children unless they had no choice due usually to poverty. Ultimately I don't think anyone cares what language their children's schooling is in as long as it's good schooling. But the world is such now that good schooling does have to include English. And teaching Maths and Science in English is the least we can do for them.

Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

(Cartoon by Javad Alizadeh, Islamic Republic of Iran)

Today is the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In case anyone doesn't know what it is and what's in it, please see the entire declaration below.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

	(other language versions | Human Rights Day 10 December | 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
	Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948

On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the full text of which appears in the following pages. Following this historic act the Assembly called upon all Member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and "to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories."

PREAMBLE

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

Article 1.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3.

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4.

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6.

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7.

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8.

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10.

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11.

(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
(Cartoon by Zapiro, South Africa)

Article 14.

(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15.

(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16.

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17.

(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
(Cartoon by Tayo Fatunia,Nigeria)

Article 18.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20.

(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21.

(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.

(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22.

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23.

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24.

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25.

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27.

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28.

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29.

(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30.

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

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Selamat Hari Raya Aidil Adha

Dear folks,

Wishing you a peaceful and safe Aidil Adha today.

Do spare a thought for those who have lost their homes and family members in Bukit Antarabangsa and those facing heavy rains and floods in Kelantan, Terengganu and Johor.

Salams,

Marina and family

Volunteers Needed for Bukit Antarabangsa

Folks, got this message this morning:

'Volunteers needed for surau Bukit Antarabangsa. Minta bantuan orang bersihkan sebab medics and police disitu sibuk menolong orang di surau. Kena bersih. Pls contact MARES/rescue (Aziz) 0169007763. Also bawa biskot & roti, dia orang tak makan. Pakai boots lecah. Bawa hp fully charged.'

Also that there are people stuck in the apartments who cannot evacuate (presumably because access out is blocked) and they don't have food either and their hps have no batteries (I think they don't have electricity so can't charge their hps).

If any of you in the KL area can help with this, Bukit Antarabangsa people will be very grateful.

Last night I managed to get my brother Mokhzani to arrange for mineral water to be sent and distributed to five locations. Will see what else can be done today.

Please help, folks. Thanks and God bless!

How's This for Sensitivity?

"..residents living in slope areas should be more sensitive to their environments as landslides can happen anywhere." - Datuk Shaziman Abu Mansor, Energy, Water and Communications Minister. Here's the full report.

Yes, right, let's blame the victims, shall we? And let developers and local councils off?

A busy week in KL...And a Disaster...

UPDATE:
Thanks for your kind wishes, folks. Mum-in-law is better and now out of ICU but is weak. We still don't know what happened exactly and the neurologist won't be in til Monday. That's how it works in Jakarta (sigh).

But meantime...Bukit Antarabangsa is a disaster area. A friend of mine who was there said that rescue operations were very very slow. At 2pm this afternoon, 10 hours after the landslide happened, they had not started rescue work yet because the equipment had not arrived. At about 5.30pm the equipment had arrived but they are not enough. Meanwhile it's raining and flooding and the folks there can expect a miserable night.

Prayers for those still buried will be much appreciated by all the people affected. And any ideas on how to help will be good too. At the moment, I've been told that the volunteers and victims need fresh water so have contacted some people to get mineral water sent up there. Hopefully they can get through to where the rescuers and victims are.

ORIGINAL POST:
Sorry I haven't posted much lately folks but life has been an endless string of writing assignments, symposiums and forums as well obligations to family and friends. I was supposed to take my entire office plus family to Bangkok for this long weekend but as we all know, the airport got closed, everyone got nervous so we cancelled the whole trip, only to hear that the airport re-opened yesterday.

Still it was a good thing we didn't go because yesterday afternoon, we heard that my mother-in-law may have suffered a stroke ( not sure til they do a scan today) so hubby had to rush off to Jakarta to be with her. Doesn't look like a time to make plans right now.

Seems to be a cloud literally over everyone's heads these days. Early this morning I got news of yet another landslide in Bukit Antarabangsa, KL where four people lost their lives. This came less than a week after that other dreadful one recently which took the lives of two young girls.

That Ampang area, where Bukit Antarabangsa is, seems to be eternally dogged with these landslide problems. I remember only too well that terrible Highland Towers tragedy some 15 years ago where so many people, including my friends Carlos Rashid Musa and Rosie Bakar, died. You would think that our authorities would learn the lessons from that, yet still we hear of landslides and deaths. Are our people's lives worth so little that city councils can wilfully allow such hillside developments to continue? When will we ever learn about the dangers of building on hillslopes and the cutting of trees? I hope this permanently stops that hillside development in Medan Damansara before even more people lose their lives.

Meanwhile a lot has been going on in KL. I went to a symposium on Building a Stable Family organised by Sisters in Islam, Gabungan Hak Wanita Islam and the Joint Action Group on Gender Equality (JAG) where a whole roomful of grassroots Muslim women were demanding change in the Islamic court system to ensure fairness and justice for Muslim women. It was opened by Special Adviser to the PM Dato Seri Shahrizat Jalil and among those who attended were YB Dr Siti Mariah Mahmud, PAS MP for Kota Raja and Dato Ismail Yahya, Head of the Syariah Court and Mufti of Terengganu.

When I see news about people like Pasir Mas MP Dato Ibrahim Ali saying that "men marry many wives due to women's strong desire" and when CM of Melaka Dato Ali Rustam offers RM1000 incentives to men to marry single mothers in that state, I wish they could face all these women whom I met at this symposium. These are women who have suffered so much because of the feckless and irresponsible men they had the misfortune to marry and who then absconded with no regard for the welfare of their children and the mothers of their children. These women had plenty to say about the injustices they have suffered in the syariah court system and have no patience anymore with excuses. They are not 'Western-influenced' feminists, nor immoral, nor impious. Just ordinary women who feel that our Government has really not done enough to ensure these citizens have access to justice. And they are mad as hell.

(And why are men so shameless? One Syariah lawyer told me that if she could get an errant husband to pay a paltry Rm350 a month to support his ex-wife and five children, she'd be happy. Anything bigger was just so hard to get!)

Then there are all these celebrity talks around town occurring on the same day. On one side of KL was the Global Brand Forum. I decided to go to that one to listen to Ivanka Trump and Oliver Stone. Ivanka didn't show up in person but she did speak via videoconferencing which was less satisfactory to a lot of people (especially the guys...wonder why?). But despite that she did come across as a smart and articulate young woman who knows what she is doing and seems poised to take over her family company with much substance and style.

I found Oliver Stone the director of movies like 'Platoon', 'Born on the Fourth of July', 'JFK' and 'Nixon' to be far more interesting than I expected. A former Vietnam veteran who had been at Yale at the same time as George W. Bush, he has very strong views on war and how the US government frequently uses war and fear, with the complicity of the media, to control their people. "The use of fear and then the offer of help afterwards (to alleviate that fear) is the oldest election campaign trick" he said, hence the reason why Bush was able to win his second term in 2004 despite a poor track record.

Stone has a new movie out called 'W' which, from the short trailer he showed, looks almost Michael Moore-esque. It is the latest in the long line of serious satirical movies he has made about the state of the American political system.

Afdlin Shauki was in the audience and put, to my mind, the only intelligent question to Stone, about the portrayal of Muslims in Hollywood movies of late, usually in connection with terrorism. Stone said that that was true although in several films, including the new one 'Body of Lies', Arab and Muslim characters seem to be able to handle ambivalence much better whereas the American characters all had to be black or white, on one side or the other. If they were at all ambivalent, he said, "they wind up dead, as did George Clooney's character in 'Syriana' ". Perhaps this is also a result of Bush-ism, with his 'are you with us,or against us' dictum. No room for any grey areas.

Grey was also what Malikka Sherawat said is the hallmark of her acting 'brand'. Previously Indian movie heroines were either the sweet submissive types or the vampy slut. She would like to portray more realistic women, who have tread the many grey areas of life and faced up to those challenges. I thought Malikka was also a bright woman and the whole audience seemed to agree with that, showing their support for her when she deftly answered a woman who had asked a really insulting question about why she was on the same stage as Oliver Stone. Hardly her fault really since it was the organisers who had invited her but she said she, as a newbie in the movie business, was honoured to be on the same platform as someone as distinguished as Stone.

Anyway....across town, everyone was flocking to go listen to Bill Clinton ( even though his talk could be viewed live on Astro Awani). I've heard him speak before and I know that he's very charismatic and articulate. He seems to have wowed everyone here as expected. Although back home, there have been some harrumphs.

More floods due

Folks, the weather isn't holding up too well. We've already heard about the floods in Kelantan and Terengganu (including sadly, some deaths) but floods are also threatening to hit Johor again. That's because the weather prediction for this coming weekend is very heavy rain.

So everybody needs to be prepared. The Red Crescent is heavily involved in relief work and is appealing to everyone for help. Please see my previous post for what is needed.

YAM Raja Zarith Sofiah, Chairman of the Community Services Committee, Malaysian Red Crescent Society, is appealing for donations to buy the 'Clinton Cookers' which are mobile kitchens they need to prepare food for flood victims.

Since my last post to appeal for donations, they have received absolutely nothing. Zilch. I know times are hard, folks, but if you lose everything in the floods, as many of our fellow citizens will, then times will not just be hard, they'll be disastrous. So do try and give what you can. All donations are tax-exempted.

Please send donations to:

name : MRCS JOHOR BAHRU CHAPTER PROJECT FUND
bank : Alliance Bank
account number : 011300010220091

Donations of clothes and other stuff in kind should be sent to MRCS headquarters in KL.

Thanks, folks.