Youngster wins Norway’s Got Talent singing Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ (VIDEO) |
- Youngster wins Norway’s Got Talent singing Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ (VIDEO)
- Nato agrees to ‘readiness action plan’ to counter Russia
- Moving beyond bus contracting model to improve service — Richard Hartung
- Young girl wins Norway’s Got Talent with rendition of Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’
- Jais raid shows injustice of unilateral conversions — Sisters In Islam
- Sexual violence and gender relations in Kelantan
| Youngster wins Norway’s Got Talent singing Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ (VIDEO) Posted: 03 Jun 2014 05:58 PM PDT JUNE 4 — Back in March, little Angelina Jordan Astar went viral online after singing Billie Holiday's Gloomy Sunday on Norway's Got Talent. That video stands with over 7 million views. The Internet was simply stunned by her mature voice and composure. It should come as no surprise that Angelina has won the talent contest, singing a jazzy rendition of the classic Gershwin tune Summertime. — viralviralvideos.com  |
| Nato agrees to ‘readiness action plan’ to counter Russia Posted: 03 Jun 2014 05:51 PM PDT
Nato head Anders Fogh Rasmussen said ministers had agreed to develop a "readiness action plan... to respond to the changed security environment" created by the escalating conflict in Ukraine. This will include measures such as pre-positioning supplies and equipment in member states and stepping up work to improve military capabilities to help Nato speed up its reaction time to any threat. The plan will go to Nato leaders at their September summit in Britain for approval. The decision comes after Moscow's annexation of Crimea and support for pro-Russian separatists in the east of Ukraine has plunged East-West relations to their worst point since the end of the Cold War. Russia's intervention in Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea mean it "is in blatant breach of the 1997 Founding Act," Rasmussen said. The 1997 Nato-Russia Founding Act formalised post-Cold War borders in Europe and crucially said neither the West, led by the United States, nor Russia would deploy forces or arms in the newly-freed east European countries in a threatening manner. Both sides also agreed that neither should treat the other as an "adversary", aiming to reduce the risk of future conflict. Russia's ambassador to Nato, Alexander Grush, said on Monday that Nato's temporary deployment of additional alliance planes and troops in member states such as Poland and the Baltic countries amounted to a breach of the treaty. Some Nato member states, especially in central and eastern Europe, have expressed concern and surprise at Russia's ability to mass 40,000 troops on the border with Ukraine very quickly and keep them there, ready for action, for some time. Rasmussen said Nato had to take necessary measures for "as long as necessary" to counter a new threat. He pointed out that Russia had increased defence spending by 50 per cent over the last five years, while the allies have cut theirs by a fifth. In this vein, he warmly welcomed President Barack Obama's announcement of a US$1 billion (RM3.2 billion) US security plan for eastern Europe aimed at reassuring Nato allies and friends, who have been increasingly concerned by Russian actions. Still, Nato and the West will stick with the treaty because they "want a rules-based security system" and "believe all the measures we are prepared to take can be taken within the existing" rules, Rasmussen said. While taking a hard line on Moscow, he also rejected suggestions that the Ukraine crisis had sparked a new Cold War, saying there the deep ideological and global divide created by the conflict, which lasted nearly 50 years, had dissolved. Russia now seems "quite isolated," he said, but its more "assertive attitude... reminds of the old-fashioned Cold-War thinking." ― AFP |
| Moving beyond bus contracting model to improve service — Richard Hartung Posted: 03 Jun 2014 05:47 PM PDT
This sums up the issues bus operators need to address. Commuters want a schedule they can rely upon, frequent service and enough space to board the bus when one shows up. It is unclear whether these will be met by the Land Transport Authority's (LTA) setting up of a new government contracting model in which bus services will be bundled into 12 packages to be tendered out to operators. Three tenders will start in the second half of this year. The focus for contracted services seems to be on how routes and companies will be managed. The LTA did say the new model would be more responsive to changes in ridership and commuter needs and that it would raise service levels for commuters over time. But it is unclear how exactly contracted companies will achieve higher service standards, including ensuring that buses arrive at intervals of no more than 15 minutes during the morning and evening peak periods, with at least half of the bus services having even shorter intervals of no more than 10 minutes. Rather than focusing on a business model that worked well elsewhere, it is time to focus on making three changes that will actually improve service levels. RATIONALISING ROUTES AND BUS TYPES The first is to analyse current bus routes and shorten them. Research by National University of Singapore (NUS) Professor Lee Der-Horng and his colleagues showed that unreliability rises linearly with increasing travel distances, meaning that bus services are more reliable if routes are shorter. Future Cities Laboratory senior researcher Alex Erath similarly found in recent studies on bus systems here that splitting a long bus route into two parts can potentially increase reliability by 35 per cent. One solution that would increase bus frequency at low cost, NUS Professor Paul Barter explained, is to shift to a hub-and-spoke network layout whereby buses use shorter routes to take commuters to an interchange where they can connect to a bus or train on another shorter route. Revising routes and doing more to focus on the hub-and-spoke strategy to optimise travel time, before contracting for the routes rather than afterwards, could improve bus reliability. Second, bus companies need to put enough of the right kind of buses on the road. To be sure, the 800 new buses planned under the Bus Service Enhancement Programme will help. More than just putting buses on the road, selecting the right kind of buses is important. Dr Erath also found that having one more door on the bus would make alighting 1.86 times faster, speeding up buses significantly, especially during peak hours. BENEFITS OF A SCHEDULE Finally, bus companies should be required to publish actual arrival schedules for every route. The schedules published by SBS Transit today only indicate that buses are supposed to arrive within five minutes before or after the scheduled time, so commuters cannot plan to arrive just in time to get on the bus, as is the case in other cities. Using a bus app and finding that a bus is arriving, with the next one coming in 15 to 20 minutes, does not solve the problem. While the LTA said its new S$68 million (RM174 million) intelligent bus management system will help with operations control, fleet management, passenger information and businessmanagement, it seems designed to show how many minutes away a bus is rather than to set up a reliable bus schedule. London, New York, Tokyo and other cities large and small around the world with traffic congestion sometimes worse than Singapore have been able to publish bus schedules. While bus services are not perfect elsewhere, commuters can usually rely on the schedule and know when a bus will show up. A really intelligent system should provide a similar schedule and give confidence to commuters here. Along with a schedule for commuters, it is important for bus drivers to know their schedule for each stop. Dr Erath noted that major cities such as Zurich and London give drivers information on their schedule using on-board displays, with the units also feeding the bus position back to a traffic control centre. What needs to be done beyond a new bus contracting model is clear. Experts have provided the direction that is needed and shown how better practices can benefit consumers. Planning routes better before allocating them, buying buses that will improve boarding duration and designing accurate schedules rather than only telling how many minutes away the bus is are what commuters need the most. It is time to get back to basics so that more commuters say: "I do take the bus." — Today * Richard Hartung is a consultant who has lived in Singapore since 1992 and who regularly commutes to work by bus. ** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malay Mail Online. |
| Young girl wins Norway’s Got Talent with rendition of Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ Posted: 03 Jun 2014 05:39 PM PDT Duration: 02:31, Published 4 Jun 2014 Eight-year-old Angelina Jordan Astar won Norway's Got Talent on May 23. 2014 with her version of George Gershwin's well known aria 'Summertime' from the opera Porgy and Bess. |
| Jais raid shows injustice of unilateral conversions — Sisters In Islam Posted: 03 Jun 2014 05:38 PM PDT
At the root of this case is unilateral conversion - when one spouse silently converts his children to Islam without the knowledge or consent of the non-converting spouse. Zarena Abdul Majid, the 'Muslim' bride, is not alone. She is accompanied by the children of Shamala Sathiyaseelan, R. Subashini, Indira Gandhi and more recently S. Deepa, whose fathers all unilaterally converted them to Islam in secret. The impact is not just felt by the converted children, but by their mothers. In one fell swoop, these women lost the rights guaranteed to them under civil law – specifically, the Guardianship of Infants Act (amended in 1999) – where non-Muslims have equal rights to the guardianship of their children and thus equal rights to decide which religion they would adopt. Legal recourse for the non-converting spouse often becomes an issue. Under powers vested by the Constitution, the civil High Court has the authority to rule on matters concerning a marriage in which one party had converted to Islam. Yet, there have been cases where the High Court has abdicated its jurisdiction to quash the conversion of the children to the Syariah Court, as in the case of Shamala S. Given that the Syariah Court has no jurisdiction over non-Muslims, she was trapped in a legal no-man's land with no way out. Her rights might have been violated, but she had absolutely no recourse to any legal remedy. This jurisdictional limbo also extends to law enforcement. The reluctance of police to take action against Deepa's ex-husband, Izwan Abdullah, after he abducted their youngest son is a case in point. While the Syariah Court had granted Izwan custody, the Seremban High Court later granted Deepa custody of their two children and a recovery order. Despite this, the police have yet to enforce the recovery order, claiming it could not act due to conflicting orders from the syariah and civil courts. What is abundantly clear is that none of these cases would have come about if unilateral conversions were prohibited. For as long as the courts, the police and law-makers continue to shift responsibility and delay addressing the crux of the problem, more lives will be destroyed. * This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malay Mail Online. |
| Sexual violence and gender relations in Kelantan Posted: 03 Jun 2014 05:36 PM PDT JUNE 4 — On May 20th, a 15-year-old girl was gang raped by up to 38 men in an abandoned house in Ketereh, Kelantan. It has been reported that the victim was lured by a female friend to go to Ketereh all the way from Kuala Krai, about 30 kilometres away. When the victim arrived, having persuaded a male companion to give her a ride on his motorcycle, she was brought to an abandoned house in Kampung Huta Pasir, where a group of men ambushed, raped and sodomised the schoolgirl for hours until she lost consciousness, while her male companion was forced to watch. The victim's female friend may have been raped as well. Most if not all the rapists were high on drugs, and many of them were related, including a father and his two sons. The gang rape in Ketereh is not merely a heinous act of sexual violence; it is also a symptom of the deteriorating status of women and gender relations in Kelantan. Beyond the horrors of the particular incident, this case raises pertinent questions about changing attitudes between the sexes, as well as the link between religious puritanism and the unprecedented perversity that plagues Kelantanese society and Malaysia as a whole. While this particular case of gang rape is shocking, it is also nothing new. It is alarming to note that rape has been steadily on the rise in Kelantan for at least the past five years, many cases involving minors. Statistics show that Kelantan repeatedly scores the highest incidence of rape, drug abuse and HIV positive cases in the country.
Considering the important place of women in traditional Kelantanese society, the frequency and increasing brutality of gender violence in this state reveals a deeply unsettling pattern of social breakdown that needs to be examined seriously and addressed at the root. Powerful women in traditional society The centrality of women in traditional Kelantanese society is evident from the powerful presence of women both in Kelantan's mythology as well as in the local economy. The mythological landscape of Kelantan-Pattani is populated by female figures, notably queens and princesses who were powerful rulers of their kingdoms. The legendary queen of Kelantan, Che Siti Wan Kembang, said to have reigned during the 14th century, was renowned for her beauty, wisdom and her skills as a warrior. She and her adopted daughter, Puteri Saadong – who was later installed as Raja of Kelantan – are also believed to have mystical powers. There are also the legendary Four Queens of Pattani – three royal sisters named Raja Hijau (Green), Raja Biru (Blue) and Raja Ungu (Violet), who ruled the kingdom from 1584 to 1635 and were succeeded by Raja Kuning (Yellow), the princess of Raja Ungu. The reign of the Four Queens was a glorious era of stability and prosperity in the Kingdom of Pattani. Siti Dewi – the heroine of Kelantan's Wayang Kulit tradition – is one of the most admired and cherished characters, more beloved in fact than her vainglorious husband, Prince Seri Rama. In the mundane realm, the traditional role of women in Kelantan is one of household authority and economic power. On his voyage to Kelantan in 1837, Munsyi Abdullah observed that Kelantanese women dominated trade at the marketplace and remarked on their industriousness. Even today, women wield more presence and power than men at the local markets in Kelantan and often manage the family expenses. However, the Kelantanese woman's robust sense of self seems to be less and less apparent in younger women who have been through the current school system and social conditioning. In her book, Visible Women in East Coast Malay Society: On the Reproduction of Gender in Ceremonial, School and Market (Scandinavian University Press, 1994), Prof. Ingrid Rudie charts the changing status and role of women in Kelantan, comparing her fieldwork findings from 1986-88 to her earlier research carried out in 1964-65. Rudie finds that Kelantanese women had greater freedom, scope and authority in household and economic life in the 1960s, whereas by the late 1980s, Islamic revivalism throughout Malaysia had significantly affected gender roles in Kelantan. The rhetoric of Islamic values saw a gradual redefining of women's duties and position in the family – including obedience to the male head of the household. This view seems to concord with Prof. Wazir Jahan Karim who asserts in her book, Women and Culture: Between Malay Adat and Islam (Westview Press, 1992), that Malay adat (customary law) provides women with avenues of freedom and participation that have been undermined by the ascendancy of Islamic orthodoxy in Malaysia in recent decades. All this is testifies to an overall decline in the status of women over the past few decades in Kelantan (as well as other parts of the country), and the circumscribing of women's traditional authority in public and private space. Needless to say, the decline in the status of women often corresponds to the rise in gender attitudes that inadvertently condone violence against women, including rape. The long shadow of Puritanism Many have pointed to our poor education system as the root cause of such a despicable act as the brutal gang rape in Ketereh. Meanwhile some religious leaders, including PAS vice-president Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man, have suggested that this case simply proves the need for the implementation of hudud law. Both these views do not seem to grasp that the sexual violence that is becoming more common in Kelantan and elsewhere in Malaysia is rooted in deep socio-cultural-psychological dilemmas that won't be easily solved by reforming external systems such as education or law. The perversity that urges this kind of sexual violence brews and ferments in the shadow of Puritanism that is permeating all aspects of social life in Kelantan. The imposition of religious edict that, among other things, has called for gender segregation in public places, has demonised ancient cultural traditions like the Wayang Kulit and Mak Yong, and even tried to forbid female hairdressers from attending to male clients, only serves to underscore the incongruence between the sanctimonious genuflections of morality politics and the dynamics of real community life. While religious practice in Kelantan has been traditionally conservative, it also co-existed with traditional social values and local worldviews, where women played a dominant and highly visible role in community life. By contrast, the revivalist Islam that has gained popularity and influence in the Malaysia since the late 1980s has ushered in a new brand of Puritanism that alienates both Kelantanese women and men from their own cultural identity and sense of self. From my years of working closely with cultural traditions in Kelantan, I have observed that the older generation of Kelantanese do not seem to be as affected by the Puritan politics and conditioning as the younger generation. The older Kelantanese are more rooted in who they are and, staying true to the independent Kelantanese spirit, will ignore or disregard edicts that don't make sense to their lives. The younger generation have far less to hold on to. With their own cultural fabric literally torn away from them and with little opportunity for upward social mobility, they have nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no way to release their boundless energy. Is it so surprising then that they should gravitate towards motorbike racing, drugs, and engage in bullying and violence? Between gender segregation and alienation from themselves, is it so surprising that young men in Kelantan have lost the art of communication and interaction with women? The proscription of cultural traditions such as the Wayang Kulit, Mak Yong, Manora, and Main Puteri has contributed significantly to the erosion of a Kelantanese sensibility, and to deteriorating gender relations particularly among the young. The female-centred Mak Yong tradition is in fact a ritual space where young people are exposed to the power and complexity of the female presence. By witnessing and imbibing the authority and emotional intricacy of the female Mak Yong characters, young men and women learn how to perceive each other in layered ways. These traditions also offer cultural strategies where young people learn that sensuality is part and parcel of the human personality and is a natural and playful dimension of community life. If all traces of sensuality and playfulness are banished from the environment and experience of the young, they will grow up being ashamed and resentful of their natural urges, and will end up approaching sex through violence or fear. Moral education is neither the root nor the remedy of social ills among the young in Kelantan. Neither will the implementation of hudud resolve escalating sexual violence and social breakdown. Perhaps the first step to addressing these problems is to acknowledge that they originate in a socio-cultural self and psyche that has been battered, twisted and made perverse by decades of Puritanism and the morality politics it insists on forcing down our throats. * This is the personal opinion of the columnist. |
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