Blogging at the end of the world

That's what it feels like. The country I live in is on fire, the apocalypse is with us. A thousand homes burnt to the ground. Communities that have lived on edge for week after week after week, and summer is only about a third of the way through. An optimistic eight more weeks to go. Even in comparatively well-watered Melbourne, I still have some water in the tank, but not much. Usually at this stage of the year, it's pretty much full.

I'm not entirely sure how to make sense of this world anymore, so I'm using this blog as therapy.

If you listen to the news, which nowadays I generally try not to, you end up with the impression that the only thing of any importance is "the economy", but I'm left completely unsure what that is anymore.

When I was a baby economics student, back in the early 1990s, there was a bit of a link between a growing economy - GDP per capita - and the quality of lives people led. Countries with higher GDP were happier, the people lived longer, the standard of education was higher. But even then, these figures bore little scrutiny if applied over time. The happiest times in the West were, apparently, the '50s and '60s.

Now, I don't buy this wholesale. The entire 1950s female lifestyle thing has little to recommend it - I've never been a big fan on antidepressants, and if that's what it took to make sure women were happy, it is an odd sort of happiness. And I can't imagine it was much fun to be gay, or black, or anything other than a straight, white bloke. In Malaysia, we were still trying to build both our own country and the UK up from the devastation of the Second World War, with the UK taking the bulk of our income for their own needs.

But I suspect that there is still some truth in the stats. Some. There was a belief in the better world being built, either by capitalism or communism. There was a sense of purpose and optimism and it wasn't all tied in to the purchase of stuff. Stuff's great, but we now seem to live to acquire, rather than acquiring to live. And we all know, we know, that this is meaningless. So we buy our way to happiness through paid-for meditation and self-help courses, or self-realisation courses.

I'm only a generation away from hungry. But I'm worried that it's a generation in both directions. We urgently need to role in the addiction to stuff, and the money that buys the stuff, and the addiction to the belief that the GDP defines how well lives are lived.

And thus endeth today's lesson. I am slowing down and reflecting, I am refilling my reserves, and next week, I will breathe deep and steel myself for the battles to come this year and this decade. I hope that we are up to the task. Good luck, and much love, my friends.

Why we need to get over these elections

I understand the boycott campaign, and in better times, might even support them. These elections are not presenting us with a choice of good and better, but worse and worst. At least, let’s hope that this is as bad as a political option can get: Maybe Barisan still has some surprises up its electoral sleeves. Yet, I will be casting my vote. Not just because I have a candidate I can get behind standing in my electorate, not because for the first time in my life I’ll be able to contribute to a woman getting in to Parliament, but because these elections are going to decide whether we can just get over elections and get on with the task of building a politically aware electorate. There is no hope for that under BN. If you had any doubts of this beforehand, the dual farces of the fake news act and the redelineation exercise should have exorcised them.

It seems highly unlikely, but if the current Opposition wins, then we can finally get over that issue, the “can we get rid of BN” issue, and start looking at the more interesting stuff.

Like local elections. Anybody else notice that Pakatan Harapan seem to have dropped these from their manifesto? The ability to appoint councillors is a key power for the state government, it’s a system of patronage and gives those in place real powers. It’s easy to see why Pakatan Harapan have dropped it. We need to put pressure on them to reinstate, because local elections and local government are the power-house of a democracy, it’s where citizens are able to see how their vote directly impacts their lives. Decisions on zoning may sound dull, but if it’s about whether your pet is legitimate or not, they literally strike much closer to home. Decisions on parks, and advertising, on stalls and shops. Local councils is where we live, quite literally.

But what starts locally grows. There is an intoxicating power that comes from being able to control your own life, what the Founding Fathers referred to as public happiness. A friend told me it even has the power to extend your life: Power, real power, over your life tends to make you live longer, she said. Thomas Jefferson strove to bring power down to the smallest possible level, the ward. Democracy wasn’t just about choosing representatives, it was about generating political power at multiple levels, empowering each person to take control of the community decisions that affected their lives. And if they could experience this close to home, they’d be active in keeping an eye on what happened at a state, federal and international level. His views on public happiness were largely developed too late to influence the US Constitution, and writers from Tocqueville to Arendt have warned about the consequences, which were are now seeing blazoned across the White House in the 24-hour-tweet fiasco that is Donald Trump.

We need local elections, because until we have them, we will not have anything beyond a sham of democracy. And we need a strong, thriving democracy to face the challenges of the next fifty years.

We all know about climate change. It seems like something distant and far away to most people. It’s not. The impact of climate change, probably even if we do cut to zero emissions and start drawing carbon down tomorrow, are going to be massive. Because we’ve already started unlocking stores of methane and other greenhouse gases that have been locked away in permafrost, which is now melting.

Climate change means two things. We need to move to a zero carbon economy with urgency. But given our small population, and our geography, even more urgently we need to think about how we deal with a warming globe. Most Malaysians live on a peninsula. That means we are surrounded by water on three sides. Few people live in the interior of West Malaysia, we’re fairly well concentrated on the coast, and the same is true for Sabah and Sarawak: around 60% of the population. By 2050,  sea levels are predicted by conservative (small c) scientists to rise just under 60 cm. Rice production is expected to fall, by up to 30%. Malaria is set to increase as temperatures rise, and other health impacts are uncertain.

So far, the government’s response has been to see this as an investment opportunity. Malaysia punches far above its weight in terms of solar panel and LED light production. But in terms of building resilience, pushing unpopular but necessary changes to our lifestyle, there is no leadership. On either side of the political fence. Both sides keep our political minds focused on the comparatively minor issue of who wins the election. And until BN is evicted from power, it is the only question in Malaysian politics.

We need to get over it. We need a new government. Not just because of corruption. Not because we need a new set of cronies. But because we need to get over the question of whether government can be changed by the people, whether it is possible to make government scared of us, rather than the other way round.

There are real issues looming on the horizon. They will test our coherence and patience as a nation. With a race-based coalition, that premises its power on the idea that our interests are defined by our ethnicity, not our common Malaysian heritage, we cannot possible meet the challenges the coming decades offer. We will splinter along the lines fostered by those in power who benefit from us being Malay, Chinese, Indian first, Malaysian last. Those who want us to define ourselves by religion, against others.

I don’t have much hope in Harapan. But I’m not hopeless enough to think there is an alternative.

Keep on smoking....

That would be the advice to a cancer patient if current discussions on 'energy policy' are any indication.

Today there has been a large fracas on gas shortages, with worries about what changes to policy could mean for future investment in gas. The underlying assumption being that Australia needs future investment in gas.

I was listening, as I often do, to Jon Faine on the radio. He interviewed a colleague in Canberra about the implications and the options. But not once did either journalist mention climate change when discussing energy options.

This seems to be a persistent blind spot. Jon Faine, and colleagues in the ABC, seem to agree that climate change is real, that there is a scientific consensus on the issue, but they don't seem to think that this means that something has to be done. This isn't about politics, it isn't about radical positions, it is at the very least what needs to be done to protect the global economy (which is far more important than the people in that economy, obviously).

Climate change is a cross-cutting issue. It affects refugees, it affects women, it affects food security and energy security and jobs and health. Yet it is never mentioned in relation to any of these things, at least not on the ABC.

As you can tell, this is starting to annoy me. But it's more than that. It is an example of how media framing is preventing us from recognising the scale of this issue. This is the biggest problem the world faces right now, and yet most of the world's media are fiddling as the world burns.

As readers, as viewers, as human beings with a stake in the future, please urge your local, national and international media of choice to not just pay lip service to the reality of climate change, but look at how you might change your programming if the future of the people on this planet actually mattered.

PS This was supposed to be an uplifting happy post for International Women's Day. I got distracted.

The urgency of climate action

Too many headlines today indicated that we are not just living in a present that is driven by fossil fuels, but we're still investing in a future driven by fossil fuels. I sometimes wonder if bankers and politicians think that their children will be living in a different world than ours, if they are living in a different world from us, where the reality they can buy is reality, and it insulates them from the need for clean air, from a livable atmosphere, rising sea levels and thirsty koalas.

Which means there's an even greater need for action from people not blinded by rhetoric and money to make change happen.

One of the things I'm trying to do is work with my local climate action group, and I'm fortunate enough to be in an area where there is a FANTASTIC group doing amazing work. They're working hard on getting signatures for the Climate Emergency Declaration; are working to persuade politicians that there is a climate emergency; and providing voters with clear information about climate-friendly candidates in local, state and federal elections here in Victoria.

But perhaps one of the most important things is that they're helping disseminate ideas about what can be done on a local level, by local councils, by local governments, by communities, to those who can make changes.

In some ways, the need for change is comparatively clear cut from an Australian perspective. From a Malaysian one, when we talk about the need for change, there are so many urgent items on the agenda, that climate change seems to be, well, not insignificant, but we need to do so much other stuff FIRST before we can put it on the agenda.

The problem is that time is not on our side. Climate change is already causing changes in Malaysia's water supply, in the seasons. The prognosis is not good, and we need talk about climate resilience and cutting Malaysian emissions; working to reforest our landscapes.

But we can't wait for leaders to emerge who will create these changes, we can't wait for the systems to catch up with the problems, we need to create the solutions, and put them into action, leaving the 'leaders' to catch up. Interested? I'm hoping to post links in posts over the next few days on how communities can drive change :). Here's one file to start...

Morality

This week I have been told by one of my children what a bad person I am. More worryingly, I've been told by an adult who I have been trying to assist sort out her affairs for just over a year, what a bad person I am.

So I have been thinking, quite a bit, on what I think about the nature of good and evil, and what makes a person 'bad', or not. I'm not really interested in discussing whether Trump, for example, is the new evil, whether physical violence is wrong, but more in the banal everyday acts where people we might think of as 'good' contribute to clearly bad things.

The archetype of this is the average citizen of Nazi Germany. I have recently been reading a book on women journalists and writers who worked in Germany from 1900-1950, and the one I found most fascinating was the literature reviewer who wrote the New York Times, and in an underspoken way worked around the Third Reich, reviewing writers who were banned and talking to her American audience about a Germany that was being demolished before her wavering eyes. She certainly seems to me to be skirting around that line of allowing evil to happen, despite an apparent commitment to the pre-Reich days and writers, not drawing attention to the exceptional nature of the Nazi regime, pretending it wasn't really there.

I feel that there's a lot of this around today, that it is hard not to be part of it. We all know that there is really no such thing as cheap clothes, that someone somewhere pays the cost, and it is the cost of wasted lives attached to sewing machines in shoddy warehouses that might collapse or burn, the cost of cotton grown in fields and harvested by slave labour, and conditions of environmental degradation. We all know this. And yet, it is so easy to go and buy a cheap t-shirt, to buy a cheap t-shirt over the more expensive.

And even if we buy the more expensive t-shirt, is that doing the right thing? Are we being deceived by fair trade labels or taking jobs away from those most in need, and giving them to comparatively privileged Western factory workers?

Vegetarians are criticised, because they are taking food from poor farmers and inadvertently killing intelligent mice; vegans are culturally insensitive. And making ethical purchasing choices is the purview of privilege, and makes no difference so WHY BOTHER?

Some of these, particularly the last, are valid criticisms of trying to live ethically in a world that values money and consumption above all else, but I think they are important facets of trying to change that world starting with ourselves.

But changing our individual consumption patterns isn't going to make real changes to the planet unless we work on social changes too, on changing and re-imagining the world we live in, the world we share together.

And here I'm kind of stumped. I know how to get involved in big things, I can write letters and sign petitions and visit politicians, but none of that seems to get to the heart of the problem, which is imagining a better world and sharing and building that vision in the communities in which we live.

I'm currently exploring other people's ideas on this, from a local co-op that I'm part of (with the family) to reading and listening to new ideas. But I'd like to build something that will appeal to my (literal) neighbours, to my family and friends, and not just those who already recognise that this world isn't working.

So this is an invitation to the conversation, and perhaps a hope that it will help me learn more about how to be a better person.

On leaders and followers

The Citizen's Declaration is a fine document. I agree with almost everything that it contains. Some people worked hard to amend the original document so that it was in line with more progressive aims, and they did a good job at that. But I'm worried.

One of the reasons Malaysia is in the mess it is in today is because we place inordinate value on leaders, on trusting our leaders. There was trust in, belief in, the idea that politicians may be creaming a bit off here and there, but in general, they were ruling in our interests. There was no need for oversight, or scrutiny, because we could trust them.

The decision to hand over the leadership of the movement for the Citizen's Declaration to Mahathir seems to be share the same premise. If we bring Mahathir in, we bring in his 'followers', and that way, we can institute change. It is too easy. Change requires far more work than that.

But what sort of change would that entail? Swapping Najib for Mukhriz seems the most plausible scenario, and what does that mean? Will those followers rise up and demand democratic change, or will they follow blindly?

We need to do away with leaders, because we need to do away with followers. If the democratic movement in Malaysia is relying on someone who has begrudgingly signed onto democratic reform, and they are relying on him to bring along his followers, then we have a problem. Because what we need, for democratic reform, is that the 'followers', the rakyat demand of their leaders, do this or we will be done with you.

If the democratic movement allows itself leaders, rather than spokespeople, allows itself demagogues, then it is not a democratic movement. Let Mahathir join the people's movement, let him be part of a tidal wave of citizens demanding reform and resignation. But let's not make him a figurehead, a leader, when he cannot even mouth the slogans of reform.

Let's change those followers, work with them. If we're serious about this, those are the barricades that need to be stormed. Instead of bringing Mahathir and his followers into the fold, let's transform his followers into independent citizens determined to determine a future of their own, not follow an old man's demising dreaming.

What do I want from democracy?

More responses to my reading of Chantal Mouffe, valid for both Australia and Malaysia...

I want a political system that looks to the future, not to the past. That stops subsidising private transport, but guarantees free health-care for all, not just citizens or permanent residents. Citizens aren't the only ones paying taxes, and a sick migrant can infect a dozen healthy citizens. It's false economy to pretend we have a cordon sanitaire around those with rights and those without. That doesn't subsidise private education, or violent education, or racist inhumane education, and invests in sustainable and renewable energy, particularly for the poorest in society. It eases the transition away from coal, petrol and gas for miners, not for bosses. Perhaps a start would be a commitment to solar or hydro energy in remote communities, and helping people within the communities learn how to install and maintain systems, creating jobs and improving the sustainability of lifestyles even on a low income. A commitment to solar and heat exchange for public housing (and a commitment to public housing).

I want a government that works towards a four-day week, and prioritises small business who put money back into the community over transnational corporations who provide crap jobs. We produce more than we need, there is no reason why a minority can suck up all that wealth, while those at the bottom fight over fewer and fewer low-paid jobs, where production is mechanised. Perhaps this can be done through incentives to model co-operatives, ones that might provide a real challenge to the monopolies of some of the larger sectors.

I want a government that is concerned about the supply chain, because the world is inter-connected. Rather than funding either a massive aid budget or overseas military adventures, let's look at getting large companies to invest in their supply chain. Maybe a tax, or incentives for those over a certain profit margin. This could be related to the move to a four-day week.... Money could be spent on health and safety in factories overseas, and that could be translated into tax credits in Australia. Likewise on the sourcing of goods – a sustainable supply chain moves you into a different tax bracket. Let's try and think up imaginative solutions.

This is only possible if we reform democracy – Mouffe's main point in what I'm reading now – so that it incorporates politics once more, rather than just government. We need to think about, and demand, what we want – and force politicians to listen.

The point of stating this isn't to provoke agreement, but to provoke thought – another political system is possible. There are a lot of people trying to show how it can be done, in Syria for instance. Do we have to wait until people are so disillusioned with democracy that they abandon it entirely before we look at why?

Thoughts on reading Chantal Mouffe

This seems to me to have real relevance to my recent diatribes on Dick Smith and other big 'philanthropists' making symbolic gestures of benevolence while having accumulated wealth on the backs of working poor. Dick Smith is a particularly good example because he appears so benevolent through so many aspects of his life – his political participation and his charity.

First, I'd like to think through what is happening with this 'charitable' gesture. Dick Smith and his wife see, from their train window, a young girl apparently so poor she can't afford clothes. They determine to offer her a better future. Rather than postpone a trip home, work through local organisations or attempt to use local experts (or even film-makers) to assist them, they employ an Australian film-maker to track down the girl and present her with their life-changing offer. They are bemused at the reluctance of local people to engage with the Western film-maker, but eventually track down the girl and begin changing the life of her and her family.

This does not strike me as a charity, it strikes me as publicity. Why engage a film-maker? Who has no experience of the country or the language? Even in the unlikely event that the film-maker, and assistant, were not being paid, how much were the expenses incurred in sending them over to India to undertake this excursion? There are a host of better candidates, including some who may have been able to point out that there could have been unintended social and psychological ramifications from this act of charity.

(I also have very little patience with the bemused attitude displayed. If a stranger came up to my neighbours with a photo, naked or otherwise, of my daughter, I hope they would call the police, rather than point her out to them.)

Further, apart from stereotypes that this confirms of the poor brown girl dependent on white male wealth, I also think we need to interrogate how genuine the gesture is, by looking at the source of the wealth. A businessman, dealing with electronics doesn't seem particularly exploitative – in fact, it's not. It isn't in the more problematic fields of say mining or timber. Yet, by examining the chain of supply that ultimately ends up in his wealth, exploitation undoubtedly occurs – one that we as consumers almost intentionally refuse to see. Even if we assume he has a 'right' to a return to risk-taking behaviour, is this really more of a risk than that faced by the workers in electronics factories in China faced with a lottery of safety conditions? The risks of those who mine the minerals necessary to the working phones and computers we all rely on.

So how could he have done things differently? And still offered consumers the satisfaction they want?

Perhaps, rather than creaming off super-profits, that money could have been put into the factories where the goods being sold were made, to improve 'efficiency' while improving the living standards for the workers, making them model factories to work in.

What would the consequences of this been in terms of downstream effects? What would have been the effect on the children of the workers, on other workers and other factories? Surely all far better consequences than spending money to send a team of film-makers to India in order to provide for one girl for the rest of her childhood?

Further, the commitment to increased social justice would almost certainly have had paybacks in terms of consumer loyalty, at least among certain segments of society.

I think it's also important that we think hard about what we term 'ethical' behaviour. We live in a world where ethics seems to be strangely divorced from everyday life, particularly in as far as everyday life is determined by purchasing decisions. In the not-so-distant past, food was imbued with ethics. It was the sacred nature of food that was celebrated in near-global rituals of thanksgiving, at harvest, and at meals. Consumption as partaking of the divine, not the mundane. But today's consumer society cannot afford to think in those terms, of the origins of what is consumed, whether of food or other goods. Yet, the costs of this 'lack of affordability' are real, even if they are not directly borne by the consumers themselves. Is it really ethical to live a life where you are able to devote massive resources to improving the life of one family, while those who produce the goods that allow this largesse receive only marginal benefit?

Further thoughts, more related to the reading....

1. Laclau and Mouffe say that in order to deal with the antagonisms raised by the defining idea of democracy, that of equality (which I have no argument with), then we need to deepen democracy. This does not mean that we need to deepen democracy as it exists today. The assertion that democracy as it exists today (which isn't made here) can help to peacefully negotiate constitutive differences between individuals and groups seems to me to be blatantly absurd.

Rather, this deepening commitment to democracy must include discussion of forms of democracy that go beyond representative Parliamentary systems, but look at decentralisation, a decrease of bureaucracy (which is evident in the writings) and improved ways of negotiating difference – not overcoming, not eliding, but finding ways by which people with fundamentally incompatible modes of political imagination can live peacefully, and equitably, together.

2. Would it be possible to have a binding contract with politicians? There should be some things (primarily negative) that if they do them, they are automatically perceived to have resigned, that they are not permitted to stand for public office in future, and that they have to bear a proportion of the costs of the ensuing by-election. There should be further 'commitments', in writing, that they will aim to achieve. If they wish to stand for re-election, they must persuade an electoral committee of say 25 diverse people that they have made serious effort on these issues, or have been successful in pursuing. These contracts could be individual or party-based. Not a solution, if such is possible, but perhaps an interim measure...

Reading Victoria Grace on Jean Baudrillard

Doodles on how I interpret the ideas, and questions it raises

What is identity? How is my identity defined, why does it involve cutting off from others – yet my being bleeds from this body, literally and figuratively, into the bodies of others, from my mother, to my children. My body is my brain is the thoughts I share, that circulate outside this maelstrom of hormones, and then reintegrate before journeying again into the maelstrom of others. Are they not me? The thoughts are me, and they leave me as me, and come back into me as me, and while they are in the maelstrom that is someone else, they are still me. Not all of me, but they are a part of me, and are a part of 'someone else' and they are themselves.

Feminists who attempt to assert the female are already accepting the patriarchal dichotomy of one and another, of difference and identity. When they grope my breasts as I walk down the street, they are asserting my difference, as well as my objectivity. When I am beaten, when we talk of femicide, these are assertions of difference, the difference that made the Holocaust possible. By asserting that I am not like them, that there is no them and no I, does it not make violence impossible? If you hurt me, that rebounds, like Death and the Maiden, straight onto you, because the separations that exist are fragile. Being female is not my identity. And to say I am Sonia is incomplete, though on one level, that is who and what I am, but I am not complete in and of myself, and this is not lack, any more than the sea has a lack until rained upon, a lack from evaporation that causes the circulation of water away before it returns. It is wholeness. What makes the sea 'lack' is not the incessant flow of rivers and rain and clouds, but the desecration of pollutions and plastics. But I am not the sea, and lack from me only comes when I do not recognise what makes me whole.

This does not mean I have no need for spaces, space to be alone, freedom from physical violation. There is a need for safety and security, but these are only possible when that interconnectedness is felt and realised. And while I sit in a room of my own, I need to be able to leave my room, and reconnect with those others who make me vital, otherwise solitude becomes loneliness, and like a snail in salt, I start to shrink.

It is not being female that makes me whole, it is being human. It is not being female that feeds my need for interconnectedness, it is being human. And it is not being female that makes me dependent on love and feedback and sharing, it is being human and being alive.

Is this why Baudrillard likes Calle? Because in her photographs she establishes an irreversible connection with a stranger, his life becomes incorporated in hers. Whenever we establish these connections, they are fraught with danger, because it is not easy, accepting, inviting in, this ongoing process of being who we are when we are with/ part of others. They enrich us, they enable us, but they are never one-way, they are reciprocal. And when that is not recognised or realised, if the person we are investing in suspects that their identity is being diluted, rather than enriched, the pain of separation can be intense, it is real. And that pain can be physcial – Calle could have been 'caught', arrested, beaten up. She is at risk. And the pain rebounds, she is risking not just herself, but also this ephemeral stranger... and by doing so her own risk is magnified.

In terms of the political project - and this is what those doodles are trying to make sense of - we need to see beyond democracy, democracy as a project that is about separation and difference. Perhaps taking a Gandhian starting point, meeting needs and reciprocity as the basis of a fair world.

Combatting crime

From afar, with anything-but-rose-tinted spectacles, crime seems to be reaching epidemic proportions. On a personal note, my parents' place has been subject to some baffling disturbances. Why someone felt the need to empty out the shoe cupboard, but leave nothing taken, will hopefully remain a mystery. I'm hoping they'll remain outside my parents' house, which is fitfully guarded by one large and one tiny dog, both equally inept at deterring anything but squirrels from entering the garden.

Nonetheless, I'm sickened by some of the vigilante videos I've been seeing on Youtube. Vigilantism doesn't keep us safe, it's just a different form of crime. There are plenty of really good reasons for this. First off, everyone is equal before the law. The person who first commits a crime, and the person who subsequently assaults them. Both the theft and the assault are crimes. Nobody - including the police - have the right to assault someone. Even if they committed a crime. If you aren't convinced, don't forget that those who participate in illegal assemblies are also committing a crime.

Second, everyone has the right to a fair trial. Part of the point of this system is to take the vengeance element out of the equation. The judge is impartial, and weighs up the evidence, only then is the suspect found guilty, or innocent. Until that point, they are innocent. Thus, each kick landed, each wallop walloped is given to an innocent person. Innocent until proven guilty, no exceptions. A fair trial happens prior to punishment, not after the person has been so badly beaten they can no longer stand. If you oppose detention without trial, that's the basis, the right to a fair trial. It applies universally.

Third, punishment is commensurate, and defined by law. This complements the last point, about taking vengeance out of the equation. The punishment for a crime is that which is defined by law. Few countries have made 'snatch theft' a capital offence.

So what can we do about crime, if we are serious in addressing the problem? More cops, generally, doesn't work too well. What does is social inclusion. This isn't quite the same as social justice. It's about making people feel part of the community. I'm not entirely sure how we build it - it starts with social justice, but it doesn't end there.

A clean slate

Khairy Jamaluddin has suggested that we need to start over, renew the social contract upon which Malaysia was, so myth has it, built.

It's a shame the idea hasn't garnered more attention. Because even if we decide that we're happy with the Constitution we have (and many of our best lawyers are, just think we could have better respect for the document), it doesn't hurt to look at what works about it, what doesn't and why things are the way they are. It might also help generate discussion on the ways in which we can agree on what Malaysia should be.

There are some reasons why I think this would be a good idea.

First, Malaysia was never our creation. We never voted on our constitution, and we never discussed what we wanted in it with our neighbours. As long as Malaysians were outside the drafting and accepting of the bedrock of our governmental system, it's going to be considered, at least by some, of questionable provenance. Those who argue the British imposed our Constitution upon us are going to have resonance, as long as that remains true.

Second, it gives us a chance to build capacity. I'm thinking a Venezualan-style nationwide discussion on democracy, democratic processes, the role of the Constitution, separation of powers... if I'm not making you hot and sweaty with this kind of talk, then you shouldn't be reading my blog! It's about as sexy as it gets, as far as I'm concerned.

I know that there are some problems, not least the distance between the supporters of an Islamic state and the supporters of a secular state. But ignoring this issue isn't making it go away. It was there at the drafting of the Constitution, and looking in the opposite direction has just made it grow bigger. However, it would be great to get the two sides to sit down and try to agree on something. Even better if they could. A constitution inspired by the values of Islam is something I would love to see, for example. I realise this isn't close to what some people want, but if we can get to the point where everyone understands that the Constitution has to be a document that everyone can agree on, a starting point for building a nation, then this in itself would be an achievement. (Admittedly, that just underscores how hard it would be!).

If that happens, and we, the people, draft something which is then voted on in a fair and transparent process, and... this of course is where my house of cards all falls down. Because on the other side there are real problems with reworking what we have.

Who controls the process? Who participates in the process? Who drafts, who votes, and who oversees the voting process?

BUT... but but, surely we can talk about it? Start those hot and sweaty conversations going, even if the courtship leads nowhere?

More than sticking plaster

On Thursday, a day when boats were overturned and children drowned, my children and I heard the dulcet tones of Mr Abbott through the car radio. My reaction made my daughter think that her brother's life was in danger (from the Leader of the Opposition, not from me!).

I find it hard to fathom why Australia finds it so hard to agree upon a humane policy regarding refugees and asylum seekers. The rhetoric is blatantly inflated, the figures so tiny, and so bedraggled and haunting. But even if we play their game and pretend that Australia is in danger of being overrun by foreigners, that this is a threat to Australia's sovereignty and that the country has to control immigration for the sake of... a nation of immigrants. There is still a pretty simple solution, one that doesn't require overturning a commitment to the refugee convention and international human rights standards.

Stop the planes. Instead of stopping the most desperate, the worst off, the poorest, stop the ones with the 457 visas, the skilled migrants, the thousands who come in for blatantly economic purposes. Put an end to it. Instead, search among the lost and displaced, those seeking asylum and stuck in the no-persons-lands of camps, hostels and Malaysia. Let them be at the front of the queue. Upping the numbers let in, giving people hope that they might be resettled from the camps that are (almost, if you squint) on Australia's borders, would lessen the temptation to arrive by boat.

And the money saved from the shutting down of multi-million dollar facilities could be pumped directly into the countries where we getting the refugees from, into education and housing and sanitation and not not not guns and bombs. And maybe we'd be helping to staunch the flow of refugees into Indonesia and Malaysia, and giving them a chance to rebuild lives, homes and communities in the places they didn't want to leave in the first place.

Alvivi and the right to freedom of expression

Freedom of expression is not absolute, but it is fundamental to any pretensions we may have to democracy. And even Hayek argued that without the right to express opinions that are despised by the majority, there is unlikely to be any progress. Just ask Galileo, or Thomas Paine, or Martin Luther King, Jr. We need to hear things we don't like - and we aren't going to know which are the things we need to hear. History will, to some extent, be the judge of that.

I think it's highly unlikely that we will look back and feel that we needed the recent posts by the duo known as Alvivi. But the point is that the laws that we make and the laws that we enact, need to be based upon the arguments to respect freedom of expression - especially if we want to live up to the democratic ideals the country has, as I say, pretensions toward.

But, every government (the anarchist in me says, duh!) has laid out limitations to that right. I have difficulty, however, in seeing exactly which legitimate restriction of FOE the Alvivi post would fall into. It was offensive, of course. But the problem with restricting freedom of expression on the grounds that material is offensive sees an awful lot of speech shut down - from the writings and thoughts of Farish Noor and Zainah Anwar to those of Darul Arqam and SpongeBob SquarePants (allegedly). How do we define who gets to be offended and who doesn't? I'd rather leave it out of legislation altogether.

And let's be clear. Puerile and tasteless as the gag may have been, it wasn't even incitement to hatred of anyone (other than the two bloggers) and it wasn't incitement to violence. It wasn't a barely veiled threat, like the cow-head incident was, or the raising of a kris. Or an explicit threat - like those who beat up a young man who allegedly 'menghina Islam', writing the words on his body. That's a fairly explicit threat to all those who disagreed with the assailants interpretation of Islam.

So, yes, boycott the site. Write indignant letters expressing distaste, disgust and dismay. But let's steer clear of legislative action. This is a matter for the outraged citizenry, not the police or the bureaucrat.

Thinking laterally about crime

I'm not a huge fan of criminals. In the last five years I was living in Malaysia, my house was broken into on average five times a year. They rarely made off with anything of importance - except the first time when they managed to take my computer with years and years of work on it, along with my back-up hard drive. They stole things that ranged from the annoying (my phone chargers) to the bizarre (the brush I used to scrub my back with in the shower!). And each time they left a trail of damage and repair, and I'd have to scrape together both money and self-confidence.

So not much of a fan of criminals.

But I'm less of a fan of the police. Not once did they catch anyone. Not when they broke into my house, and not when they stole a pile of cable from TNB that would have required a forklift to carry it. Admittedly, after the first five or so futile police reports, I stopped bothering. There's a limit to how often I'm going to waste my time in a police station when there are no tangible results. I should add that the police were always polite and reasonably helpful. Just not really very... useful. And there's the problem of them, you know, spying on my friends, arresting people I care about for no very good reason, hitting them, that sort of thing.

Because of this, I've had an interest for a while in whether the police force, in any country, really works at keeping down crime. And the answer seems to be largely, no. What keeps crime down is communities, jobs, families, that sort of thing. I'm not saying we don't need a police force at - there are times they're needed, whether it's helping lost children, or, you know, solving the few crimes that would be left if we were doing the other things needed to stop crime. But generally, police are good at a huge array of stuff that isn't about solving crime - look to the NYPD and their racist 'stop-and-frisk' policy. Hasn't lowered the crime rate, has made huge numbers of young Black men angry/er and has helped some boys in uniform feel more important than they really are. Does this sound at all familiar?

If politicians, and the public, are really interested in lowering crime there are a number of concrete steps that can be done. First, putting social justice, not neoliberal ideology, at the forefront of economic policy. Neoliberal economics doesn't even work by its own yardsticks, never mind that this yardsticks are flawed in the first place. Second, putting resources into building communities. This isn't as difficult as it sounds. Start off by decreasing school and class size, and mosque/ church/ temple size. Encourage local businesses, not big businesses (that's also where the jobs are). Stop building roads - or build smaller ones with lots of bumps and potholes that slow cars down so the streets are safe for kids to play on. Third, and this isn't going to win anyone any votes, let's take a more sensible approach to citizenship and immigration. Crime is going to be a factor as long as there are various tiers of residents and no, to quote Obama, 'pathway to citizenship' for a huge sector of Malaysian residents, whether they're workers or refugees. We need to stop this underclass from existing, from being exploited, and from not giving a damn about the society they live in (why should they, society doesn't care about them). And, last, let's look at what our prisons do to people. They are hellholes into which people disappear, then reappear worse than before. Is that really a good use of taxpayer's money?

I could also mention access to reproductive health care and information for both women and men, regardless of marital status or sexual preference, but that might be going too far for any of our political parties. Ah well.

Democracy and Egypt

CNN, among others, is baulking at the idea that Morsi, a democratically elected leader, if an Islamist, has been ousted. The means by which he came to power appears to be the trump card - this was democracy, this was a transition of power, now all wrongs became rights, and the people had to live with their choice. That there are three major power brokers, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Mubarak die-hards and the army, and the people must choose between them.

The problem is that the people don't seem to realise that their actions are causing confusion among the elites. The people don't seem to want to choose between these three power-brokers - at least not on the terms they're happy with. What the people want is to have the power themselves.

Yes, Morsi was democratically elected. But, unlike in the West, the people were not content with then handing all power over to him for the limits of his term. When he broke promises, they went back to the streets. And they've been there, maybe not continuously, but growing in number, while promise after rights-based promise was thrown in the bin. They've dusted out those promises - a consultative process for drafting the new constitution; an end to police impunity; and a renewed neoliberal agenda (perhaps the real reason CNN and others are mourning his ouster).

It seems to me that while the elites are in disarray, the people are quite clear on what they want.

Reducing women's choices

It seems that the State Government in their wisdom has decided that they will close down the Family Birth Centre, apparently to give women more choice about how they give birth. The problem with this idea is that it seems to neglect that in order to have a choice you have to have things to choose between. Choosing between two identical methods of care, just in different wards, doesn't amount to a choice.

I chose to have both my children in the Mercy Family Birth Centre, the one that is being threatened with closure. I wasn't able to have my first child there, she was induced, and the experience I had was everything that I had not wanted it to be - the doctor putting pressure on me to have a c-section, pressure on me to take pain-killers. I made a complaint, but felt so ill at ease that I spent a large sum of money going to a 'hypno-birthing' class for my second child.

He was born at the Family Birth Centre. He was delivered by a midwife I'd come to know well, he came out about 20 minutes after I became certain I was in labour, and while we had some complications, my trust in the midwives helped us overcome the problems. Then my husband and I went to sleep together, in the double bed, my son went to sleep, and I stole to the kitchen to eat my big block of stinky cheese. Because in the birth centre, they make an effort to ensure you have the comforts of home - like access to a fridge where you can keep stinky cheese.

First thing in the morning, big sister came in with her Granny, and met her brother. They stayed most of the morning, which was good for both her and me.

And NONE of this would have been possible in the ward.

The FBC was a nurturing and welcoming environment in which to bring a new life into the world. While some women - like myself first time round - have to be transferred out, for those who do give birth there, it offers a more personal, richer environment than the ward or the birthing suites. So I've signed this petition and urge you to do the same.

A wide-ranging think on post-colonialism

Today I'm reading about postcoloniality. And I wonder what we do with our colonial experience. Do we do what Mahathir did, castigating the West, but determined to win on the playing field that they have defined? Or what Badawi and Najib have done, are doing - and if someone could explain to me the big picture behind either of them, I'd be impressed. Or what Anwar seems to want, the capitalist playground, with Islamic tinges of social justice in the margins? We'll tinker with the system, but we'll pretend, along with most of the world, that it works.

But the system just isn't working. In the United States, which may not be the epitome of democracy or freedom as it assumes, but is certainly the epitome of 'this system', the gap between rich and poor helps to wage a war on the underclass that is labelled a war on drugs, occasionally labelled a war on poverty, but appears to be a war on the poor. Things aren't much better in Europe, where the drift to the right seems in danger of becoming less of a drift, more full throttle. And all of it not even a nod to climate change, that which turning our world upside down.

In Malaysia, we don't want to grapple with any of this. Climate change isn't our problem, crime is. We don't want to look at alternative economic models, we just want to excise the corruption from this one. We think more cops on the streets, straight, good cops, is going to stop the crime - when nowhere notime has ever shown this to be true.

What we need in Malaysia right now is not leadership and certainly not unity (and probably a lot less certainty as well). We need discussion and debate and to work out some of the issues that we have been bequeathed by both colonialism and the colonialists' chosen successors. We need education and reading, and I love BFM's Night School for at least attempting this, and Hisham Rais and the concept of UBU, and late night Malay-language Marxism classes.

Yet, even here we're missing the main topic. Top of any country's agenda has to be survival - as in how do we slow down and reverse our contributions to climate change, and how do we anticipate and deal with the consequences. I don't think this is overly alarmist - any perusal of the literature on climate change makes it pretty conservative.

Where they are contributing is to our more endemic issues. Though I'd love to see an inclusive discussion, with all Malaysians (or at least a more representative spectrum than the spectrum of Malay men currently on offer), on the place of Islam in public life. If the last decade has shown us anything, it is surely that, first, Islam has a place in Malaysian, not just Malay, public life, and, second, that we are all going to be (and currently are) affected by it. We need an inclusive discussion on how we are collectively going to agree on what that place is. We need this discussion to be open and frank and multi-leveled. And it needs to be related to a discussion on federalism, on the State-Federal relationship. And local government, and how this all fit together.

I don't know what the answers are, but I know that if we don't start talking about these questions, all of us, then we're going to remain captives of our colonial masters' heritage well into the future.

Genocide on our doorstep

After last night's post, I slept fitfully. Because 13 May isn't the only abyss we cannot look into, as Malaysians. The other is the genocide happening right now on our doorstep. Never mind the manner in which we have consistently mistreated Burmese refugees, but what is happening in Burma today is nothing short of genocide. People are being targetted for cleansing on the grounds of their religion. They're being killed and raped and forcibly evicted, forced to deny their heritage, their ancestry and their names. The children who stand up to the killers are being killed.

The CHILDREN who stand up, the children who dare to be counted, who dare to say their names, to sing and shout in the face of oppression, the children are being killed.

Where does non-interference begin and end? Does it encompass the haze? And does it encompass compassion and humanity, that basic gut feeling that makes us feel a little ill, a little uneasy, a little nauseous, when we contemplate the Hutu man who said that they didn't bother torturing the babies, because the babies didn't understand what was happening to them, so there was no point. If it doesn't, then it isn't a policy worth having. If it means that we stand by and watch as our neighbour slaughters and rapes and maims, on any ground, but particularly on grounds of religion, or race, or gender, then it is not a policy worth having. And if it means that our leaders feel justified espousing maniac mantras of Islamic brotherhood while reaping in the profits of joint-venture mining and timber corporations with Burmese generals, then it is not a policy worth having.

When the Hutus murdered the Tutsis, we could blithely murmur that the West sat idly by, the West did not care, because these men, these women, these children, these babies, these Tutsis, they were black. And the West cares not for those who are black. What can we say when it is the Burmese who are doing the slaughtering and who are being slaughtered? When it is happening on our doorstep? Will we say it was not our business, that Burma is too far, too foreign, too difficult? That we have no mechanisms to aid, abet or influence? That these people are not our brethren, these people who live by our side, who have been living among us, these people are too foreign for us to care, when they are slaughtered, worse than sheep, worse than cattle?

On various occasions, over the years, I have read editorials condemning Malaysians, particularly Muslims, for ignoring the plight of the Rohingya refugees, particularly the children, who had fled the Burmese junta, been born on our shores but are stateless, unable to get an education. And we responded, we changed our laws, we helped make lives better. The situation now is incomparably worse. Is there really nothing we can make our leaders do?

Hearing the unseeable, what are our limits?

Continuing an earlier thought-train inspired by Geraldine Muhlmann, she writes that journalism's role in a democracy is to do more than just problematise homogeneity, though this is important. It needs to help the 'we' that is formed by journalism (the nation, or, in a Malaysian context, the race) become 'decentred', which I read as being analagous to 'unbalanced', a place where we teeter on the edge of unreason, fearing that the abyss is gazing back at us. She illustrates this being successfully achieved through Hatzfeld's work on the Rwandan genocide. I've not read these works, but she quotes two books, one that documents the voices of the survivors, one of the perpetrators.

I was reminded of a disturbing account written a view years back of 13 May 1969. The reporter had interviewed older Malay men who reminisced about doing what had to be done, and lamenting that there were no youths today who would be able to defend the race, as they had done in the past. And in trying (unsuccessfully) to track down that post, I came across the story of a man who had left others behind to die in a cinema, knowing that his race wasn't being targeted.

As a Malaysian, these are the areas of darkness that I don't know how to look at. Knowing that this uncle or that uncle in my past or my present were almost certainly in that moment, on that precipice. And that they fell, arbitrarily, on one side or another. It makes our capital city something of a little miracle, that we manage to go on, living side by side, day by day.

But as citizens we need to probe this everyday miracle, to prod and poke at it, because miracles are the substance of myth and fairytale. We need something more substantial on which to base our nation.

Reflecting some more

When I was younger, younger than I thought I was at the time, I had a confidence in my own opinions that has waned with age, much as I try to disguise it. At the time a friend told me that my main problem was I sounded too much like an avenging angel, a little too self-righteous, a little too convinced of my own good. I still think hard on those words. But to act on them, now, would be akin to cowardice, because now is a time when we need people who are concerned more about being and doing, or at least trying to do and be good, than we need people who are trying to be right. It's not that being right isn't important - it just isn't enough.

So this is by way of warning and apology. I'm writing because I think the world needs to change. I want to write posts that challenge and inspire me, and hope that they'll connect with others. Because I know that what Margaret Mead said remains true, that the only thing that can change the world is a small group of committed individuals. And I'm not sure how else to show or be part of that small group of committed individuals. But I'm open to suggestions.