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...we have all really become dumb when The Star reports stuff like this...

The Star Online > Nation

Tuesday June 30, 2009

‘Floating mat’ a sign to people

By SHAHRIL CHE WAN

KUALA TERENGGANU: The Terengganu chief imam has attributed the unusual occurrences at the Crystal Mosque here as a sign of the people distancing themselves from the religion.

Ustaz Azizi Saidi Abdul Aziz described claims that a visitor had seen and photographed prayer mats floating in the mosque as “hardly phenomenal” and people should stop thinking that it was due to genies or ghosts. (so mats float a lot in Terengganu?)

Mystifying: This ‘floating mat’ phenomenon occurred at the Crystal Mosque in Kuala Terengganu. The imam says such occurrences have been reported in Saudi Arabia.

“Such mystifying occurrences have been reported in Saudi Arabia,” he said yesterday. (So it must be normal...)

A woman from Negri Sembilan who visited the mosque had photographed the phenomenon with a mobile phone camera early this month, triggering fear among locals.

Azizi Saidi said the phenomenon could be linked to the lackadaisical attitude of Muslims in the state in performing congregational prayers. (thought the mosques are always full in Terengganu, unlike in the sinful valley of Klang...)

“There is nothing to panic. This is a call to Muslims not to overlook their obligation towards performing prayers together.

“There are umpteen mosques in Terengganu but there is a lack of mosque-goers.

“Some of our mosques lack people even during Friday prayers,” he added. (Why?)

He said the occurrence was not “bizarre” but should be seen as a miracle that could be considered a sign from the Al-Mighty. (I would have thought the Al-Mighty would have used something a bit more dramatic than flying mats...)

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© 1995-2009 Star Publications (Malaysia) Bhd (Co No 10894-D)

A Week of Anger and Sadness

Hi folks, been another of those weeks where I don't get enough time in front of the computer to blog about anything worthwhile. But I have to say that I've been so appalled by the stuff being said about Indonesian domestic workers just because our Government finally wants to treat them like any other workers by giving them a day off. Honestly, why do so many people make it seem as if we are doing them a favour by giving them a job, when we just can't cope without them? It's mutual need and dependency.

And what is this business about taking off from the domestic worker's salary whatever payments people make to the agent? If you employ a headhunter to find an employee for you, their fees can be up to six times the salary of the employee you take on! You don't take it off the employee because that's the fee you pay for the service. Getting the domestic worker to work for free is known as slavery, that's all. And yet there are all these people who actually think that's OK.

If the Indonesians are incensed, even if it's just for their elections, we should understand. What if it were our people who were being treated like that overseas? Wouldn't we care? We're now trying to appease the Indonesians by saying that not all of us treat our domestics badly. But anyone would get the opposite impression just by reading the papers every day, especially when we have so-called leaders spouting off in the most vile way about foreigners in our midst.

There are some people who are suggesting that domestic workers should only be allowed to work for families of the same religion as them. As if this necessarily makes them less vulnerable to abuse! I have met any number of domestic workers who have had the misfortune to work for so-called 'religious' people who simply 'forget' to pay their salaries, sometimes up to two years at a time, or just ignore requests by their worker to send money home to their families for them. Or who promise to get them all the permits to work here but then don't, leaving their worker totally dependent on them, afraid to go anywhere and unable to complain to anyone. No physical abuse no doubt, but still slavery.

The answer is not to look at other countries for domestic workers either. We will eventually have to reduce our dependency on domestic workers while at the same time improving working conditions for all women, including better childcare facilities and flexible hours.
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The shocker of the week was of course the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. The passing of the former was overwhelmingly overshadowed by the latter's but here's one tribute worth reading.

I'm sure you've read every single tribute to Michael Jackson there is out there. For me, what was most special about him was his dancing, which I rank alongside Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and the great tap dancer Gregory Hines. Here's my favourite music video by Michael which I like better than Thriller. Nobody makes videos like this anymore with a storyline, a lot of detail, great costumes and of course, just spectacular dancing. Enjoy!



RIP Farrah and Michael!

What Israeli Settlements Really Mean

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June 22, 2009

Op-Ed Contributor

FICTIONS ON THE GROUND

By TONY JUDT

I am old enough to remember when Israeli kibbutzim looked like settlements (“a small village or collection of houses” or “the act of peopling or colonizing a new country,” Oxford English Dictionary).

In the early 1960s, I spent time on Kibbutz Hakuk, a small community founded by the Palmah unit of the Haganah, the pre-state Jewish militia. Begun in 1945, Hakuk was just 18 years old when I first saw it, and was still raw at the edges. The few dozen families living there had built themselves a dining hall, farm sheds, homes and a “baby house” where the children were cared for during the workday. But where the residential buildings ended there were nothing but rock-covered hillsides and half-cleared fields.

The community’s members still dressed in blue work shirts, khaki shorts and triangular hats, consciously cultivating a pioneering image and ethos already at odds with the hectic urban atmosphere of Tel Aviv. Ours, they seemed to say to bright-eyed visitors and volunteers, is the real Israel; come and help us clear the boulders and grow bananas — and tell your friends in Europe and America to do likewise.

Hakuk is still there. But today it relies on a plastics factory and the tourists who flock to the nearby Sea of Galilee. The original farm, built around a fort, has been turned into a tourist attraction. To speak of this kibbutz as a settlement would be bizarre.

However, Israel needs “settlements.” They are intrinsic to the image it has long sought to convey to overseas admirers and fund-raisers: a struggling little country securing its rightful place in a hostile environment by the hard moral work of land clearance, irrigation, agrarian self-sufficiency, industrious productivity, legitimate self-defense and the building of Jewish communities. But this neo-collectivist frontier narrative rings false in modern, high-tech Israel. And so the settler myth has been transposed somewhere else — to the Palestinian lands seized in war in 1967 and occupied illegally ever since.

It is thus not by chance that the international press is encouraged to speak and write of Jewish “settlers” and “settlements” in the West Bank. But this image is profoundly misleading. The largest of these controversial communities in geographic terms is Maale Adumim. It has a population in excess of 35,000, demographically comparable to Montclair, N.J., or Winchester, England. What is most striking, however, about Maale Adumim is its territorial extent. This “settlement” comprises more than 30 square miles — making it one and a half times the size of Manhattan and nearly half as big as the borough and city of Manchester, England. Some “settlement.”

There are about 120 official Israeli settlements in the occupied territories of the West Bank. In addition, there are “unofficial” settlements whose number is estimated variously from 80 to 100. Under international law, there is no difference between these two categories; both are contraventions of Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which explicitly prohibits the annexation of land consequent to the use of force, a principle re-stated in Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter.

Thus the distinction so often made in Israeli pronouncements between “authorized” and “unauthorized” settlements is specious — all are illegal, whether or not they have been officially approved and whether or not their expansion has been “frozen” or continues apace. (It is a matter of note that Israel’s new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, belongs to the West Bank settlement of Nokdim, established in 1982 and illegally expanded since.)

The blatant cynicism of the present Israeli government should not blind us to the responsibility of its more respectable-looking predecessors. The settler population has grown consistently at a rate of 5 percent annually over the past two decades, three times the rate of increase of the Israeli population as a whole. Together with the Jewish population of East Jerusalem (itself illegally annexed to Israel), the settlers today number more than half a million people: just over 10 percent of the Jewish population of so-called Greater Israel. This is one reason why settlers count for so much in Israeli elections, where proportional representation gives undue political leverage to even the smallest constituency.

But the settlers are no mere marginal interest group. To appreciate their significance, spread as they are over a dispersed archipelago of urban installations protected from Arab intrusion by 600 checkpoints and barriers, consider the following: taken together, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights constitute a homogenous demographic bloc nearly the size of the District of Columbia. It exceeds the population of Tel Aviv itself by almost one third. Some “settlement.”

If Israel is drunk on settlements, the United States has long been its enabler. Were Israel not the leading beneficiary of American foreign aid — averaging $2.8 billion a year from 2003 to 2007, and scheduled to reach $3.1 billion by 2013 — houses in West Bank settlements would not be so cheap: often less than half the price of equivalent homes in Israel proper.

Many of the people who move to these houses don’t even think of themselves as settlers. Newly arrived from Russia and elsewhere, they simply take up the offer of subsidized accommodation, move into the occupied areas and become — like peasants in southern Italy freshly supplied with roads and electricity — the grateful clients of their political patrons. Like American settlers heading west, Israeli colonists in the West Bank are the beneficiaries of their very own Homestead Act, and they will be equally difficult to uproot.

Despite all the diplomatic talk of disbanding the settlements as a condition for peace, no one seriously believes that these communities — with their half a million residents, their urban installations, their privileged access to fertile land and water — will ever be removed. The Israeli authorities, whether left, right or center, have no intention of removing them, and neither Palestinians nor informed Americans harbor illusions on this score.

To be sure, it suits almost everyone to pretend otherwise — to point to the 2003 “road map” and speak of a final accord based on the 1967 frontiers. But such feigned obliviousness is the small change of political hypocrisy, the lubricant of diplomatic exchange that facilitates communication and compromise.

There are occasions, however, when political hypocrisy is its own nemesis, and this is one of them. Because the settlements will never go, and yet almost everyone likes to pretend otherwise, we have resolutely ignored the implications of what Israelis have long been proud to call “the facts on the ground.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, knows this better than most. On June 14 he gave a much-anticipated speech in which he artfully blew smoke in the eyes of his American interlocutors. While offering to acknowledge the hypothetical existence of an eventual Palestinian state — on the explicit understanding that it exercise no control over its airspace and have no means of defending itself against aggression — he reiterated the only Israeli position that really matters: we won’t build illegal settlements but we reserve the right to expand “legal” ones according to their natural rate of growth. (It is not by chance that he chose to deliver this speech at Bar-Ilan University, the heartland of rabbinical intransigence where Yigal Amir learned to hate Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin before heading off to assassinate him in 2005.)

THE reassurances Mr. Netanyahu offered the settlers and their political constituency were as well received as ever, despite being couched in honeyed clichés directed at nervous American listeners. And the American news media, predictably, took the bait — uniformly emphasizing Mr. Netanyahu’s “support” for a Palestinian state and playing down everything else.

However, the real question now is whether President Obama will respond in a similar vein. He surely wants to. Nothing could better please the American president and his advisors than to be able to assert that, in the wake of his Cairo speech, even Mr. Netanyahu had shifted ground and was open to compromise. Thus Washington avoids a confrontation, for now, with its closest ally. But the uncomfortable reality is that the prime minister restated the unvarnished truth: His government has no intention of recognizing international law or opinion with respect to Israel’s land-grab in “Judea and Samaria.”

Thus President Obama faces a choice. He can play along with the Israelis, pretending to believe their promises of good intentions and the significance of the distinctions they offer him. Such a pretense would buy him time and favor with Congress. But the Israelis would be playing him for a fool, and he would be seen as one in the Mideast and beyond.

Alternatively, the president could break with two decades of American compliance, acknowledge publicly that the emperor is indeed naked, dismiss Mr. Netanyahu for the cynic he is and remind Israelis that all their settlements are hostage to American goodwill. He could also remind Israelis that the illegal communities have nothing to do with Israel’s defense, much less its founding ideals of agrarian self-sufficiency and Jewish autonomy. They are nothing but a colonial takeover that the United States has no business subsidizing.

But if I am right, and there is no realistic prospect of removing Israel’s settlements, then for the American government to agree that the mere nonexpansion of “authorized” settlements is a genuine step toward peace would be the worst possible outcome of the present diplomatic dance. No one else in the world believes this fairy tale; why should we? Israel’s political elite would breathe an unmerited sigh of relief, having once again pulled the wool over the eyes of its paymaster. The United States would be humiliated in the eyes of its friends, not to speak of its foes. If America cannot stand up for its own interests in the region, at least let it not be played yet again for a patsy.

Tony Judt is the director of the Remarque Institute at New York University and the author of “Postwar” and “Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century.”

Diversity and Equality: The Only Way Forward

Me and Prof Aneez onstage at the public forum last Tuesday.

If there was a theme to my week last week, I would call it 'Diversity and Equality' week. I've had busy weeks before but rarely does everything on my schedule synchronise quite so well.

Last Tuesday I had the honour of moderating the public forum entitled Race Relations:The British Experience hosted by the Institute of Ethnic Studies (KITA), UKM. It was held at the Malaysian Institute of Integrity at Jalan Duta to make it more accessible to the public and I think that's why there were more than 300 people in attendance. It also proved that people are interested in the subject because they came despite it being a weekday afternoon.

I found that I knew lots of people in the audience. Many of my NGO colleagues were there, as well as many from academia and individuals who just were curious about it. I forgot to ask who in the audience had heard about it from this blog.

A section of the crowd at the public forum.

Anyway after the formalities, which included an opening speech from Minister from the PM's Department in charge of national unity and KPIs, Tan Sri Koh Tsu Koon and who then had to leave, the forum was underway.

Prof Dr Aneez Esmail spoke about his experience of having his life changed by racism. He was born in Uganda but in 1972 all Asian Ugandans were given two months to get out of the country with only two suitcases, under orders from then President Idi Amin. Some 16,000 of these Asians went to the UK which took them in despite some opposition from locals.

He then went on to study medicine at university and then upon graduation started looking for a job. He soon realised that he had to send off many many more applications than any of his white colleagues.This was at a time when Britain was short of doctors in its National Health Service and was bringing in lots of doctors from the Indian Subcontinent.

Curious about why this was, he finally met one of the people in charge of recruitment and asked him how they selected who to employ. And the man said, "I put all the applications with white names in this pile and all the ones with the foreign names in another pile. Then I select from the first pile and only if I can't find anyone there, do I look at the second pile."

Prof Aneez realised that this man was not a malicious man but like many Brits at the time, they took these attitudes as normal. After all, there were many job ads in the British Medical Journal which actually said "British doctors only" (meaning white ones only) and where you could see signs outside boarding houses which said "No blacks, no Irish, no Asians, no dogs.".

He then set about to try and prove that these racist attitudes existed through empirical means. With a white colleague, he set up a simple study. They both sent out job application forms to many hospitals with identical qualifications. The only difference was that some had white names and some had 'foreign' names. And the results were astonishing:the white candidates were ten times more likely to be shortlisted for jobs than the non-white candidates, despite having the same qualifications. (A similar study recently in Australia showed the same thing.)

The results of this study was published in the British Medical Journal and uproar ensued. Prof Aneez was almost arrested for making 'fraudulent applications' while the British Medical Council wanted to censure him for bringing the medical profession into disrepute. But the study proved that although the British Parliament already had a Race Relations Act in 1976, racism still existed. Still, as Prof Aneez asserted, they needed the Act "to provide the mechanism to challenge whether the Constitution worked".

The RRA provided the framework but obviously did not solve the problem. It was not the solution but "the beginning of the journey." And the journey was tested again in 1993.

In that year a young black boy Steven Lawrence, waiting at a bus stop, was set upon by a bunch of white thugs and was beaten to death. When the police came, they assumed that it was Steven Lawrence who was the criminal and took their time calling the ambulance, ignored clues, didn't interview witnesses, etc. Lawrence's parents took the matter to court, accusing the police of racism, and the result was the MacPherson report which for the first time recognised 'institutional racism'. This resulted in an amendment of the Race Relations Act which stated that public bodies ' have a duty to promote racial equality'. Since then, all public institutions have to make concerted efforts to ensure diversity within their workforce. Or else they will be censured by the Government.

Today Prof Aneez is Vice-President of Diversity and Equality at the University of Manchester. This means that he has to not only ensure that there is racial diversity among the students , faculty and staff but also gender and socio-economic diversity. As an example, while there are many female lecturers, there are very few female professors. When the heads of faculties are asked why, they said that many women lecturers don't seem to be ready for professorships. Prof Aneez has the power to tell them that this was not good enough and that they had to go back and ensure that the women lecturers were made ready for professorships by the following year, or else nobody would be made professors at all! It works a treat!

He also spoke about how the University has tried to ensure that its students come from more diverse backgrounds. He explained how, with the standard offer of 2As and a B to get into the university, they had no trouble getting many students who were mostly from private schools or the elite state schools. So they decided to look at the schools around the Manchester area and realised that the students there found it hard to match their private school counterparts because their schools lacked facilities and they often came from families who could not afford books, computers or tuition for their kids. Hence their A Level results weren't that great.

Manchester U then decided to take a proactive step and invited the kids from these poorer backgrounds to summer camps where they were given tuition and help to improve their A Level grades. Also their entry requirements were lowered slightly to take into account their less advantaged backgrounds. As a result more students from these backgrounds were successful in entering degree courses at Manchester. And what's more, once in, they tended to do better than the students from the more privileged backgrounds!

So the main points that Prof Aneez wanted to stress from the British experience, were that:

Legislation is necessary but it must be more focussed on outcomes, rather than processes. We have to look at whether it works or not and then take steps to ensure that it does. Some of these steps are affirmative action, quotas and other needs-based affirmative action. (There are a lot of people here who are opposed to a Race Relations Act, not all for the same reasons. Some argue that we don't need it because we already have other Acts while others feel that we should really get rid of all these Acts because they don't help race relations at all, so another one is not really going to help.)

Many people may not agree with affirmative action but it can bring benefits. Prof Aneez gave the example of affirmative action in the US. To truly appreciate what an achievement for Barack Obama to become President, we have to realise that it was only in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act that African-Americans could even vote. After that, in order to bring African-Americans up to speed quickly, they instituted affirmative action specifically to get them in education and into public offices etc. Without this, it is highly unlikely that Barack Obama would get where he is today.

However, as succesful as that action was, it doesn't mean that it needs to continue always in the same form. As Barack Obama himself says, while he benefited from affirmative action, it doesn't mean that his daughters should also benefit from it. Obviously they are growing up in a very different environment from their parents so they can make it on their own. While the need for affirmative action remains in the US, it now needs to be a needs-based one, that is, one that is aimed at anyone from poor backgrounds, regardless of race. This would still mostly benefit African-Americans because they are still the poorest but would also cover Hispanics, Asian-Americans and also poor whites. (And if anyone is making comparisons with our situation here, it might be useful to remember that the NEP started off as a needs-based affirmative action programme meant for anyone who was poor.)

Prof Aneez also spoke about quotas, another controversial measure which he doesn't normally favour unless it is for a specific purpose and is time-limited. He gave two examples of quotas for women that have been successful in redressing particular imbalances.

Many years ago, frustrated with the low numbers of female election candidates, the British Labour Party imposed a quota where a number of safe seats had to be given to women candidates for the general elections. Today there are about 100 women Labour MPs, compared to only 8 Conservative ones, and the quotas are no longer in place because the women are quite capable of flying on their own. (It also means that ironically, the party that has had a woman leader has a far smaller pool of women to choose leaders from than its opposition.) This would not be something too difficult for any party here to do either.

Another example was Norway which several years ago told all companies that 40% of the composition of their Boards of Directors had to be women within two years or else they would not get any contracts. The Government extended that period by another two years and today, most of Norway's companies have women filling at least half of their Board seats. So sometimes, wielding the big stick works when nothing else does. And by the way, none of these companies have suffered from having women in high positions either.

These were some of the practical examples that Prof Aneez cited has been done to redress imbalances within society, as far as race , gender and class are concerned. How did our audiences respond to this?

Q&A time at the forum

At both the public forum and the closed roundtable a few days later, Malaysians showed that they are very capable of discussing these issues with great maturity and rationality. (Perhaps because there weren't any politicians there?) They asked intelligent questions and they pondered how these lessons can be applied here in our country. Of course, our situation is not the same as in Britain. But it is clear that change is needed in order for us to move forward.

Perhaps the most important lesson is really that change has to come from below, not from the politicians. Nothing would have changed in the medical profession in Britain if Prof Aneez, a simple doctor, had not done his little study on recruitment. Perhaps, for example, what we need is something like a Macpherson report on the police to galvanise them into dealing with the possible institutionalising of prejudice within the ranks? Perhaps we need quotas and special incentives to bring in non-Malays into the civil service within a certain time frame, and not take "nobody wants to apply" as an excuse? The important thing to remember is not that we have quotas for unqualified people but for people with equal qualifications who may not even apply because of various reasons.

I personally don't think that we can deal with racial equality isolated from gender equality. In between the two forums on race relations, I went to Penang to speak at an in-house Intel conference on women in the workplace. Like many multinationals, Intel has a policy of ensuring diversity in their workplaces and actively works to make sure this happens in all their sites in the US and around the world. According to their Vice-President in charge of diversity, as a global company dealing with employees in so many countries and cultures, diversity is good for business. They recognise that a one-size-fits-all approach will not work and so they ensure that their staff have input in how their operations are run.

Judging by the types of people, especially women, I met working at Intel, it seems to me that a diversity policy attracts very good people. When people know that they are valued for their skills and knowledge, rather than things they can't do anything about such as race or gender, than they tend to be happier, and therefore more productive, employees. But there has to be special provisions to recognise structural impediments to lack of diversity, such as educational opportunities, gender barriers etc.

It was really instructive listening to the female (and male) staff at Intel talking about workplaces issues affecting their different genders. For example, despite the company offering flexible and part-time jobs that they thought might help some staff cope with balancing home and work better, few take them up largely because of fear that this would be seen as 'slacking'. Whereas in the US and Europe, flexitime is very popular. So these cultural issues need to be considered when trying to implement these policies.

Intel is not the only company I'm familiar with that has a diversity policy. But I don't know of any local company that has any sort of diversity policy where they seek to ensure not only racial diversity but also gender diversity. After all some workplaces could be said to have too many women!

All in all, it was a very interesting and stimulating week for me. There will be a CD of the public forum and reports done which I will inform you about when they are out. I think for me, I get the feeling that while we have innumerable problems, most people are keen to try and resolve them in a way that would benefit everyone. There was really a lot less blaming perhaps because without practical measures to overcome problems, nothing will be achieved.

By the way, the police were there at the public forum. Apparently the IGP sent 70 of his officers to attend and someone pointed out several CPOs to me. At one point, one member of the audience took the mike to complain about some incident he experienced where the police took no action and the Selangor CPO stood up and gave him his card. I just hope the police listened to the story of Steven Lawrence and reflected on themselves ( though actually I doubt self-reflection is big among the police).

People Power in Iran

Folks, I hope you're following what's happening in Iran. Things are moving so fast and I haven't been able to find the time to write anything about it because I've been caught up with so many things this week including the public forum yesterday (will post something on that later).

But here are some links you might be interested in:

Photos of the demos in Tehran here. And in Esfahan here.

An eyewitness account of what is happening in Iran can be read via the blog MyAsylum here.

The Iranians are really relying on Twitter to get the news out so if any of you are on Twitter, do follow IranElection and do retweet the news. The Iranians are relying on you to get the news out on what is happening there because the Iranian government has cut off access to Facebook and even smses.

If you'd like to show your support, wear green which is the colour of the Moussavi side.

There are many allegations that the elections were rigged to favour Ahmedinajad. Even Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, one of Iran’s leading religious figures, has slammed the results of recent elections and addressed an open letter to the Iranian people, referring to them as “oppressed.”

Montazeri is one of the leaders of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and is best known as the one-time designated successor to Ayatollah Khomeini.

In 1989 he fell out with Khomeini over the government’s repressive policies and the lack of freedom and human rights and has been a harsh critic of the ruling regime ever since.

The Council of Guardians, the most powerful body in Iran, is now agreeing to a recount because you can't ignore the millions of Iranians protesting the results and also the protests abroad.

And talking of which...when you see how young people and women are supporting Moussavi and are being beaten and teargassed there, you have to wonder why should we do the same to them here? How do we support them by revoking their visas? Do we want to send them back to danger at home? How would we feel if we were abroad and all this turmoil was going on in our own country? There is nothing in this story that suggests to me that teargas was warranted. And nothing starts chaos quite like unprovoked use of teargas. Imagine...if Moussavi did finally come into power, what would he say to us knowing we had teargassed his people? And what would the Iranian students here tell their folks back home about the way we behaved towards them?

Datuk Datin Paduka Ruby Lee 1927-2009

Ruby Lee and Tg Tan Sri Mohamad Tg Besar Burhanuddin with Tunku Abdul Rahman

Ruby Lee, Mrs Rasamah Buphalan and unidentified lady with Tun Abdul Razak

Ruby Lee with Tun Hussein Onn


Ruby Lee with Mum and Dad

DATUK DATIN PADUKA RUBY LEE PASSES AWAY

MALAYSIA, Sunday 14 June .

Former Secretary-General of the Malaysian Red Crescent Society, Datuk Datin Paduka Ruby Lee passed away peacefully at her home in Section 5, Petaling Jaya, aged 82,her family announced this evening.

In a life devoted to public service, consumerism and charitable causes, Datuk Lee served many organizations but is internationally known for helming the Malaysian Red Crescent Society as its Secretary-General for 32 years (1965-1996).

She served through four Prime Ministers, Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Abdul Razak, Tun Hussein Onn and Tun Dr.Mahathir Mohamed, and through some of the most critical situations facing the country including the May 13 Emergency and Highland Towers collapse.

She also helped provide shelter, relief and repatriation for over 20 years to more than 200,000 Vietnamese Boat people, who later found new homes and started new lives in other countries.
Lee joined the International Red Cross movement in 1953 and was one the world’s longest-serving Secretary-Generals of a humanitarian organization.

She was awarded the Panglima Jasa Negara by the Yang DiPertuan Agung in 1998 for her services to the country. Datuk Lee was also honoured with the Henry Dunant medal in March 2009 for a life dedicated to the cause of the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement of which Henry Dunant was the founder. This medal is the highest distinction awarded by the International Red Cross / Red Crescent movement based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Michael Lee, Datuk Lee’s eldest son said that while the family is grieving at their loss, they are also thankful for the gift of his mother’s life. He expressed his gratitude to the many Malaysians and people of all nationalities who have been part of her mission. ‘She was born to help others, and this she did with an indefatigable spirit, and sense of purpose. She worked tirelessly towards alleviating sorrow and pain, whatever the tragedy or critical situation she encountered, he said.

Ruby Lee spent her last years confined to a wheel chair after a stroke and a prolonged battle with cancer. Even as she became increasingly frail, she continued serving as the President of the Society for the Severely Mentally Handicapped.

Malaysia will miss the reassuring presence and voice of Ruby Lee .

The funeral service will be held at the St. Mary’s Anglican Cathedral, Jalan Raja (Dataran Merdeka), Kuala Lumpur on 17 June,2009 at 11am. The wake will be from 10am to 10pm on both 15 & 16 June at Nirvana Memorial Center, Jalan 1/116A off Sungai Besi. A wake service will also be held here on Tuesday,16 June at 8pm.

Datuk Datin Paduka Lee is survived by her husband Dato’ Douglas K.K Lee, her children Michael, Kenny and Janet; daughters and son in law Phyllis Chan, Noor Salasawati and Sonny Lim, and four grandchildren.

At the request of the family, no wreaths please. A donation in her name to the following organizations would be much appreciated :

• Malaysian Red Crescent Society
• Society for the Severely Mentally Handicapped
• Hospis Malaysia
• MAKNA

For further enquiries please contact Michael Lee at 012 3812833 or Sonny Lim at 012 2786219

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Datin Paduka Ruby Lee was one of those women who was always around. If you work in NGOs, especially women's NGOs, you knew her. I can't remember the first time I met her simply because she was always there. One of those stalwarts of women's and humanitarian organisations in Malaysia.

Way back in the mid-Nineties, I received a report on the vulnerability of women all over the world to HIV that so alarmed me that I sent it to many of our prominent women leaders. Only Ruby Lee responded, and responded with action. She organised a seminar on Women and AIDS and got her international Red Cross resource persons to come and help raise awareness on how women were at risk of becoming infected by HIV. This was a time when the numbers of women living with HIV in our country was still minuscule. Ruby Lee saw the future and didn't like it and took action. Not many people do that. And not many gave support as she did to a fledgling activist like I was.

It will definitely be strange not to see her at the many events and functions around town. But she has contributed more than her fair share of work and deserves to rest in peace. My sincerest condolences to her husband, children and grandchildren.

Come, Listen, Talk

Hi folks, just to remind you once again about the public forum tomorrow. The topic is Race Relations:The British Experience and it's at 3pm at the Malaysian Institute of Integrity, Jalan Duta, KL (see previous posting on this forum for the map).

I just met Prof Aneez Esmail, the speaker, and he has some very interesting things to say and we can learn a lot from his experience. So do come. I am moderating the forum and Q&A session.

The other forum, People Like Us:How Arrogance Divides Us, took place last Friday night and by all accounts it went very well. Absolutely no stone-throwing at all. Not even a rude word. Please do go to Rev Sivin Kit's blog to read his report and see some photos here.

OK, look forward to meeting some of you at the public forum tomorrow!

Rethinking the Drug War

The New York Times


June 14, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist

Drugs Won the War
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won.

“We’ve spent a trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs,” Norm Stamper, a former police chief of Seattle, told me. “What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at lower prices and higher levels of potency. It’s a dismal failure.”

For that reason, he favors legalization of drugs, perhaps by the equivalent of state liquor stores or registered pharmacists. Other experts favor keeping drug production and sales illegal but decriminalizing possession, as some foreign countries have done.

Here in the United States, four decades of drug war have had three consequences:

First, we have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average. In part, that’s because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today. Until the war on drugs, our incarceration rate was roughly the same as that of other countries.

Second, we have empowered criminals at home and terrorists abroad. One reason many prominent economists have favored easing drug laws is that interdiction raises prices, which increases profit margins for everyone, from the Latin drug cartels to the Taliban. Former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia this year jointly implored the United States to adopt a new approach to narcotics, based on the public health campaign against tobacco.

Third, we have squandered resources. Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, found that federal, state and local governments spend $44.1 billion annually enforcing drug prohibitions. We spend seven times as much on drug interdiction, policing and imprisonment as on treatment. (Of people with drug problems in state prisons, only 14 percent get treatment.)

I’ve seen lives destroyed by drugs, and many neighbors in my hometown of Yamhill, Oregon, have had their lives ripped apart by crystal meth. Yet I find people like Mr. Stamper persuasive when they argue that if our aim is to reduce the influence of harmful drugs, we can do better.

Mr. Stamper is active in Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP, an organization of police officers, prosecutors, judges and citizens who favor a dramatic liberalization of American drug laws. He said he gradually became disillusioned with the drug war, beginning in 1967 when he was a young beat officer in San Diego.

“I had arrested a 19-year-old, in his own home, for possession of marijuana,” he recalled. “I literally broke down the door, on the basis of probable cause. I took him to jail on a felony charge.” The arrest and related paperwork took several hours, and Mr. Stamper suddenly had an “aha!” moment: “I could be doing real police work.”

It’s now broadly acknowledged that the drug war approach has failed. President Obama’s new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, told the Wall Street Journal that he wants to banish the war on drugs phraseology, while shifting more toward treatment over imprisonment.

The stakes are huge, the uncertainties great, and there’s a genuine risk that liberalizing drug laws might lead to an increase in use and in addiction. But the evidence suggests that such a risk is small. After all, cocaine was used at only one-fifth of current levels when it was legal in the United States before 1914. And those states that have decriminalized marijuana possession have not seen surging consumption.

“I don’t see any big downside to marijuana decriminalization,” said Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology at the University of Maryland who has been skeptical of some of the arguments of the legalization camp. At most, he said, there would be only a modest increase in usage.

Moving forward, we need to be less ideological and more empirical in figuring out what works in combating America’s drug problem. One approach would be for a state or two to experiment with legalization of marijuana, allowing it to be sold by licensed pharmacists, while measuring the impact on usage and crime.

I’m not the only one who is rethinking these issues. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia has sponsored legislation to create a presidential commission to examine various elements of the criminal justice system, including drug policy. So far 28 senators have co-sponsored the legislation, and Mr. Webb says that Mr. Obama has been supportive of the idea as well.

“Our nation’s broken drug policies are just one reason why we must re-examine the entire criminal justice system,” Mr. Webb says. That’s a brave position for a politician, and it’s the kind of leadership that we need as we grope toward a more effective strategy against narcotics in America.

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Since much of our approach to drugs in Malaysia have pretty much followed the American model, with much the same results (more drug users than before, more and more drugs being sold at cheaper prices), perhaps we should now consider also following them with their new approaches. I agree with the statement that our approach should be more empirical than ideological. Our war on drugs has failed miserably and on top of that, it has fueled the HIV epidemic. We need to change our attitudes and our approach.

Perhaps we should be like Iran and put the drug issue under the Ministry of Health, rather than Home Affairs. Drug traffiicking is a crime and that should remain under Home Affairs but treatment and rehabilitation should be under the charge of doctors and not the police or prisons.

Perhaps then we will get somewhere with this problem we've had for so many decades.

How Not To Be Arrogant: A Public Forum

Here's another public forum that should be of interest to you folks. Not only is the topic interesting but the fact that it is organised by a Muslim AND a Christian group is also worth mentioning.

Titled 'People Like Us:How Arrogance Divides People', this forum will be held on

Friday June 12 2009
at The Father's House,
Bangsar Lutheran Church,
23, Jalan Abdullah,
off Jalan Bangsar,

from 8.30pm to 10.00pm.

(Please visit blc.net.my for directions.) All are welcome.

The forum is jointly organised by the Muslim Professionals Forum and Friends in Conversation.

The speakers are Waleed Aly, a young Australian Muslim who has written a book called 'People Like Us:How Arrogance Divides Islam and the West'; Tricia Yeoh, Research Officer to the Selangor Menteri Besar's Office; and Dr. Ahmad Farouk Musa, founding member of MPF and lecturer at Monash University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. The moderator will be Rev Sivin Kit of the BLC.

For more information, please visit Rev Sivin's blog.

Let's Talk About Race!:A Public Forum

Prof Aneez Esmail

Folks, if you're interested in discussing the very delicate issue of race relations, do come to the following event which I'm moderating. The main speaker is Prof Aneez Esmail, a prominent anti-racism activist from the UK.

The free public forum will be held on Tuesday June 16 at 3pm at the Malaysian Institute of Integrity (formerly APDC), Jalan Duta, KL. It is organised by the Institute of Ethnic Studies(KITA) at UKM and Juken Consultancy Sdn Bhd with support from the Ministry of National Unity and the Bar Council.

To pique your interest, do take a look at this interview of Prof Aneez which came out in The Sun last February here.

See you there! Below is the map to the venue.

PAS Strikes Out Against Women...and Strikes Out Among Its own Women.

Web version available at: http://www.thenutgraph.com/pas-wants-sisters-in-islam-investigated

Home > News

PAS wants Sisters in Islam investigated (Updated 6.30pm)

7 Jun 09 : 11.19AM

By Deborah Loh and Shanon Shah
deborahloh@thenutgraph.com, shanonshah@thenutgraph.com

Updated 6.30pm on 7 June 2009

Documentation of PAS's resolution on Sisters in Islam

SHAH ALAM, 7 June 2009: Sisters in Islam (SIS) should be investigated and declared "haram" if it is found to be anti-Islam, the 55th PAS muktamar declared today.

The Islamist political party also said SIS members should undergo religious rehabilitation should the Muslim women's rights organisation be found to go against Islam.

The resolution to ban SIS was among 11 other motions adopted without debate. Muktamar resolutions committee chairperson, Datuk Mahfuz Omar, announced that these motions had been approved by the committee.

Khalid Samad

The motion against SIS was tabled by Shah Alam PAS, whose chief is Khalid Samad, seen by some quarters as being one of the more progressive leaders in PAS. The motion said SIS espoused a liberal form of Islam and urged the National Fatwa Council to investigate its leanings.

"If proven that it goes against the principles (syariat) of Islam, it should be banned (mengharamkan) and its members to go for religious rehabilitation," the motion read.

It also stated that SIS's liberal views caused confusion and were a threat to Muslims' faith, "especially to the younger generation and to those who have a secular education."

Khalid: Engage with SIS

Khalid, however, explained to The Nut Graph that the resolution was initially mooted by the Shah Alam Muslimat wing.

"I decided to accept the resolution without debate at the division level, but had asked them to revise it to tone down the punitive aspects and stress engagement with SIS," he said after the muktamar officially closed today.

Khalid said that the Muslimat had agreed to reword it, but they ended up submitting the resolution in its original wording to the main body's muktamar without his knowledge.

"But even in its existing wording, the banning of SIS is only a final resort — what is stressed is engagement with SIS to clarify their positions on Islam," he said.

He said that the Shah Alam Muslimat were worried about several views expressed by SIS, and would only seek to rehabilitate and ban them if the National Fatwa Council found their positions to be against Islam.

He also clarified that the party's central working committee would have more flexibility to address motions that were accepted without debate.

"If a resolution was accepted after debate, the committee would have no choice but to implement it to the final letter," he said, adding that in this case, the party could still use its discretion to act on the SIS resolution.

"We might not need to escalate it to the fatwa council immediately — the party itself could choose to engage with SIS first," he said.

But at the moment, however, Khalid said the working committee would probably forward the resolution to the fatwa council.

Mahfuz Omar

Other leaders speak out

Three other PAS leaders also told The Nut Graph they disagreed with the punitive aspects of the resolution on SIS.

Mahfuz said, "[The resolution is] just asking the fatwa council to investigate SIS."

He said the party decided not to debate it because it could not "debate every single resolution tabled" due to "lack of time".

"There were other resolutions not debated also," he said.

Central working committee member Dr Lo' Lo Mohamad Ghazali said, "I have a more open attitude: SIS is a registered NGO, so if you don't agree with them, you can just state your views."

She said that calling for SIS to be banned was not an inclusive step.

Lo' Lo Ghazali

"Why not just discuss your views with them, engage them?" she said, adding that Dewan Muslimat was ready to engage with SIS on this matter.

Former central working committee member Dr Siti Mariah Mahmud also agreed that it was best to engage with SIS.

"I don't agree with banning them because I believe everybody needs to be able to speak their minds," she said.

"We may not agree all the time, and if we feel they are really wrong, it is up to us to engage them and present evidence for our case," she continued.

Siti Mariah said that while she did not agree with everything SIS did or said, she respected that SIS performed good work in protecting the legal rights of Muslim women.

"People think they are wrong, but I think their thoughts are rarely heard in Malaysia, and people tend to misunderstand them," she said.

Siti Mariah

She added that in her understanding, SIS's main message was that Islam is a just religion and accepts diversity within the framework of syariah.

"So if they invite me to their functions, I will go, because I don't have any problems with them," she said.

SIS urges retraction

In an immediate response, SIS senior manager Maria Chin Abdullah said in statement that the move by PAS was "retrogressive" and "undemocratic" and urged the party to retract its resolution.

"It contravenes the guarantee of rights to freedom of expression under the federal constitution. Implicit in the PAS resolution is its intolerance and prejudice against SIS," she said.

"This demonstrates the arrogance and undemocratic practices of PAS and that it has forgotten that the key reason why they were voted in during the 8 March general election. People voted against discrimination, undemocratic practices, non-participation.

"And now PAS's actions have turned the table against the peoples' wishes," she said.

Maria said the resolution showed an intolerance for diverse views and was typical of a totalitarian mindset that brooked no dissent.

She stressed that over the past 20 years, SIS's work was based on a belief that Islam was a just and egalitarian religion.

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Disclosure: Shanon Shah is an associate member of Sisters in Islam.

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You know what? Why don't Lo' Lo' and Siti Mariah just take over PAS (and even UMNO) because they are so much more sensible than anyone else I know?

And I don't buy Khalid Samad's 'clarification' that an undebated resolution is better than a debated one. Shouldn't he have said something when he realised it hadn't been modified?

Obama's Speech: A Sceptic's Review

Obama acknowledges the cheers at his speech at Cairo University.

I guess it must be normal for any healthily sceptical person to view the buzz about Obama's speech 'to the Muslim world' with some cynicism. Why all the fuss? And what's with this 'Muslim world' business when the Muslim world is so diverse? Why speak in Cairo and not in Jakarta, the capital of the largest Muslim country in the world.

Whatever it was, I tuned into the CNN live broadcast, not least because I was also asked by one of the wire services to comment afterwards.

Anyway...I remain healthily sceptical. Which I think any intelligent person should be, because after all, it is just a speech and what matters is what happens afterwards, what is the follow-through.

Having said that, as a speech it was impressive. When was the last time we ever heard the President of the United States greet anyone with 'Assalamualaikum' without mangling it? Never. It so helps not to have a Texan accent when you have to sprinkle foreign words in your speech.

And sprinkle he did. He quoted from the Quran three times, he remembered to say 'Peace be upon him' after mentioning the Prophet Mohamed ( to great cheers), he pronounced most Arabic words pretty accurately with the exception of 'hijab'. which came out as 'hajib'. Hopefully that's not obscene in Arabic.

But generally he said most of the right things. He acknowledged that tensions have been building over a long time between the US and the Muslim world and this was not going to change overnight. But that there were commonalities between both worlds that can be used to create peace. He acknowledged Islam's contributions to knowledge, science, arts and many other areas on which Western civilisation was built but subtly mentioned that now it is the US that leads in progress. He made a point of stating how much a part Islam plays in American history; the first foreign country to recognise American independence was Morocco. (Boy, does he have good researchers to dig up that factoid!). Obama also acknowledged the contributions American Muslims have made to their country and nicely slipped in that the first Muslim Congressman, Keith Ellison, took his oath of office by swearing on a copy of the Quran originally owned by Thomas Jefferson. ( Clunk! Sound of some Malaysians fainting at the thought of a Quran owned by an infidel American President...)

In what was an acknowledgement of a major irritation for many Muslims, Obama swore to fight negative stereotypes of Muslims, presumably in the American media (hmmm...did Fox TV carry this speech? Let's start there, Barack!). But he said, Muslims must also forsake stereotypes they carry about Americans. Which are of course plentiful and just as idiotic and whimsical as Americans' stereotypes about Muslims. (No, he didn't say that...not the idiotic part).

In typical academic fashion, Obama had seven key messages to present to the Muslim world. First was to confront 'violent extremism'. It was interesting to note that the word 'terrorist' is now taboo in Obamaworld. It is now replaced with 'violent extremists', which presumably can be applied to anyone, Muslim or not. In doing this, he used Afghanistan to illustrate how he was dealing with extremists. The US did not go into Afghanistan by choice, he said, they went in by necessity to go after Al-Qaeda who are evil and dangerous. "These are not opinions, these are facts." he said. Pointing out that such violent extremists also kill thousands of Muslims, he said that the US will increase their commitment to fight them by pouring in billions for development in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He didn't say whether they would stop the drones bombing civilians in those places though.

Iraq, however, was a war of choice; by implication a bad one made by the Bush administration. The Obama administration is committed to pulling out of Iraq, once they are sure it can stand on its own, and leaving it to the Iraqis. US combat brigades are to be pulled out by August this year and all Americans should be out of there by 2012. Aha, an exit plan!

He also reiterated that torture will be forbidden for any prisoners and that Guantanamo will be closed by early 2010. We shall see....

Of course, there was no escaping the question of Palestine and Obama took the bull by the horns. Saying that the bonds the US has with Israel are unbreakable, Obama nevertheless expressed sympathy with the plight of the Palestinians, unable to live with dignity in their own land. He reiterated the need for a two-state solution and again repeated in no uncertain terms that Israel has to stop the settlements in the West Bank. In return, he called for Palestinian responsibility in stopping violence and recognition of Israel's right to exist. Whether Netanyahu or the Palestinian Authority or Hamas will listen to any of this is the real question. There needs to be some incentive somewhere to make them do this. But at least he said this out loud within shouting distance of Israel, and recognised the root causes of Palestinian unhappiness and suffering.

In talking about Iran and its nuclear programme, Obama actually acknowledged that the US played a role in overthrowing a democratically elected government in Iran way back in the 50s. But he reaffirmed (though I'm not sure when this was ever US policy) that the US seeks a world in which no nation has nuclear weapons. Presumably he means this includes the largest nuclear power in the world, the US itself, and the largest nuclear power in the Middle east, Israel. Otherwise, Iran is not going to believe him. Nuclear energy for peaceful purposes however, he said, is OK.

His fourth key message was about democracy. "Let me be clear," he said, "No system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other." Unlike previous administrations, "America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election." Really, I think that is one of the best things he said. It acknowledges that they used to presume to know what was best for everyone and did used to pick the outcome of peaceful elections.

Religious freedom was another key message, one that hopefully many Muslim and Muslim-majority governments will hear.

"Freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together. We must always examine the ways in which we protect it. For instance, in the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That is why I am committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat.

"Likewise, it is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit - for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear. We cannot disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretence of liberalism." (This sounded like a dig at France...).

Related to this is the issue of women's rights. "I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well-educated are far more likely to be prosperous." Yup, no coincidence indeed.

And finally, in talking about economic development, we got a mention. "There need not be contradiction between development and tradition. Countries like Japan and South Korea grew their economies while maintaining distinct cultures. The same is true for the astonishing progress within Muslim-majority countries from Kuala Lumpur to Dubai. In ancient times and in our times, Muslim communities have been at the forefront of innovation and education." (And he pronounced KL correctly too!).

I have to say that overall it was a well-crafted speech which pushed all the right buttons. He said everything we wanted him to say and a bit more. The very fact that the President of the US was saying these things, albeit one who is already visually groundbreaking, is itself something. You just can't imagine Bush saying any of these things.

The challenge, as Obama himself ackowledged, is to translate what he says into action, to walk the talk. Until we see real action, I think I'll remain healthily sceptical.

For the full text of Obama's speech, please see this.

Forecasting the Future in Sunny London

Hi folks, I know, I know, I haven't posted anything for a while. Was in London for a very interesting meeting on a project called AIDS2031. The report on the project, which aims to forecast what the global AIDS pandemic will be like 50 years after HIV was first identified, will be out at the end of the year.

Sometimes it is really great to get out of Malaysia and get put in a tiny bubble, even if for just a day, and sit with some really knowledgeable people to talk about an issue of common interest. My colleagues on the International Advisory Group of AIDS2031 are people like Sir George Alleyne, the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative on AIDS for the Carribean and also Chancellor of the University of the West Indies; Ruth Dreifuss, former President of Switzerland;Archbishop Gunnar Stallset, former Archbishop of Oslo;Sir Roy Anderson, Rector of Imperial College, London and Noreen Kaleeba, founder of The AIDS Support Organisation, Uganda. The convenor of the meeting was Dr Peter Piot, formerly the Executive Director of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Basically the report will make recommendations for what we can do now to get the best possible outcome for the pandemic in 2031. There are successes all over the world in managing the AIDS pandemic but there are also many challenges. For instance, the current global economic crisis is putting a spanner in the works for many AIDS programmes because many funders are short of money. But we also have to remember that in the next 25 years, there will most likely be another economic crisis or even two. So we need to factor that into our predictions particularly for how to manage treatment programmes for people living with HIV, including improving health systems to cope with such programmes. I will make an announcement on this blog when the report, An Agenda for the Future, comes out end of the year.

Meantime....I was away and many things happened back home and elsewhere. Jaya Supermarket collapsed, Penanti by-election took place, Gong Badak stadium roof also collapsed and PM Najib is now in China, 40 years after his father first went (and coincidentally, 20 years after Tiananmen Square today. You think he'll make note of it???). One day before I was to fly home, that Air France plane disappeared. I was to fly on exactly the same sort of plane but well, these things happen and I did need to get home. Very sorry for all those who lost their family members however.

But I got back yesterday and this morning I had to attend an event where L'Oreal company was donating RM150,000 to the Malaysian AIDS Foundation for a campaign called Keep In School Scheme (KISS) to support 100 children living with HIV continue their education in secondary school. This was part of L'Oreal's 100th anniversary celebration where in the 60 countries where they are, they are supporting 100 community projects particularly in education. So I was pleased to receive that cheque on behalf of the Foundation.

So it's been a very fruitful week but it meant that I just did not have time to really sit down and post anything. It didn't help that the weather in London was so good that I couldn't bear to stay indoors :-)

Anyway, will try to be good and post more regularly. Right now, am waiting to listen to President Barack Obama's speech 'to the Muslim world' in Cairo and then write my thoughts on that.