just give me some truth

               

the reason for the radio silence over the past couple of days is quite a frustrating one frankly. as of tuesday night, around 7.43 pm CCT, facebook no longer works.

i usually have a substantially high level of tolerance for all things ludicrous. in secondary school, a bloke who sat next to me shat himself on his pants. i kid you not. and i merely laughed it off. once on a 16 hour flight to chicago, the girl to my right vomited continuously from the instant the aircraft took off till the moment it landed. and i'm not exaggerating. i might have thrown up a little in my mouth, but that's about it. you get my point.

i must profess that i have no qualms with sensible government censorship. we all need something to tickle our funny bone, and if a little censorship makes the government feel all warm and fuzzy inside, i'm all for it. after all, every dictatorship needs a certain amount of paranoia to justify themselves as a totalitarian regime, no?

just the other day, i was reading a certain online synopsis of the transformers movie that had just come out, and i realized that the government had inevitably taken out an entire hunk of potentially mind-blowing action. and as you could imagine, i was furious. then i realized why they did it: it involved an expose and had that scene remained, millions of little children would have grown up with the warped idea that every specimen of the female species possesses the perfect pair of uh... you know what i mean. and 20 years from now, the unfathomable disappointment on such a massive scale might just spark off a plundering birth rate that would be unprecedented. there, the government: 1, hollywood pervs: not.

okay i made that up. but that's besides the point. first there was no youtube, no blogger. i can live without youtube for a couple of months and there's always other ways to blog, like for example email. and then over the last week twitter stopped working. and i was puzzled. maybe it was a network glitch, because i haven't exactly had the best experiences with my internet provider. then on tuesday, it was facebook. that was the moment i realized how naive i had been.

yes, the chairman himself or the "president" as we now call him has never done anything to annoy me. in fact, so far as i can tell, he has never done anything at all. and yes, we no longer use "long live chairman mao" as our official greetings, yet this is still the same regime it was 20 years ago. nothing has changed.

who are the busybodies who say that we can’t upload ugly mugshots of ourselves for our imaginary friends to see or twitt to the world every time we take a dump? the nitwits who say that we should, i quote, "achieve the four modernizations"? where do we begin? how about you stop meddling with our internet?

a question. it’s addressed to all the self righteous, politically correct, back room, conservatives who advise the government: “i am chinese. why is that a good thing?” i bet they don’t have an answer. and until they can come up with one, chances are we’ll never win at anything other than table tennis again.

call me unpatriotic if you like, and don't blame me if i have no sympathy for the nincompoops running this country. a little truth wouldn't have hurt.

now excuse me while i'm off to conquer the sofa.


+listening to: just give me some truth by eddie vedder

» Read the Full Post of " just give me some truth "...

how to win an election

probably one of the funniest tweets i've seen in a while: iranian media: guardian council says more votes cast than eligible voters in 50 cities, but denies it affected outcome.

i must have sat in my seat laughing about it for a long time, because when i finally got myself together, i had completely forgotten what i was laughing about.

we should all take a moment to applaud the ingenuity of the elected regime. who would have thought that if you could put all of the world's leaders in the same room, that the smartest guy in the room would be mahmoud ahmadinejad? what he'd done is actually quite simple really, at the same time quite revolutionary. it takes a man of his caliber to have been able to come up with something that amazing, just like how isaac newton invented gravity, and how thomas edison invented light. without whom we might still all be in floating around uncontrollably in the dark.

what's his secret to success? many people might ask. i think it comes down to what most folks call a "winning formula": you promise the people an election to put the kibosh on any general negative sentiments towards you, then lecture the public on how just and fair the election was going to be, proceed to install a bunch of crooks who can't do math worth bananas in the electorial council, sit back and relax. seriously, it is that simple.

a lot of the current world leaders must be watching with a keen eye at the moment, many of whom are probably learning a trick or two from ahmadinejad himself and taking notes as we speak in preparation for their re-elections. then there are the facist and dictators out there (read: north korea, cambodia, somalia, etc.) who might be tempted to inject some much needed excitement into their mundane and boring political systems. can you imagine how much fun it would be if they could be seen by the world not as dictatorships but democracies, while being able to manipulate the outcome of elections at will? quite. and then there are the losers, who must be kicking themselves right now because they wouldn't have ended up the way they were had ahmadinjad shared his secrets to success with the world sooner.

in all seriousness, could a man named mir hossein moussavi have won the election? i don't think so. and even if moussavi had won the election, could the people really expect change? again, i don't think so. let's just take a moment and check out some of his accolades: ex-prime minister, check. defended taking of US hostages in 1979, check. supports controversial nuclear programme, check. regularly executed dissidents and backed the fatwa, check. and the list only gets longer.

sound pretty much identical to ahmadinejad, doesn't it? maybe the people have forgotten about moussavi's hardline, ball-busting approaches because really nobody knows where he had been or what he had done in a long time. after all, he had all but disappeared completely from the radar of public scrutiny for over 20 years.

and the ultimate irony? moussavi is a child of the revolution that the current system was founded upon. he was never a real reformer, either, when he was prime minister. and now he's being faced with the question: should he unleash the young people out onto the streets who supported him - thus threatening the very system that he fought for?

whatever the case, only iran can get itself out of the mess it is in. we can't really do much save look upon the tragedy that is unfolding all over the country, at the loss of innocent lives to the thuggery of government troops and militias alike. what we can do now is hope, and pray that such atrocities may end as soon as possible such that people's lives may regain some normalcy.

and to those who have perished, may you rest in peace.


+listening to: grave digger by dave matthews band

» Read the Full Post of " how to win an election "...

election day

"go barack go!... what do you say america?..."

the words echoed through the hallway as james and brian from down the hall made their rounds apparently gloating about the positive projections in favor of barack obama. cnn is calling it 174 to 64 right now along with a democrats majority in the senate.

it's just a little past 8pm here in obama's home state of illinois, and polls have officially closed. as i headed to dinner over an hour ago, there were still people streaming into the polling station set up at the main lounge, all looking eager to cast their ballot.

it has definitely been an eye opening experience, as i talked to friends who were eligible to participate in this historic occasion. the political apathy that i thought was so prevalent among the young people here somehow has not reared its ugly head as far as i see. then again, i can't be sure though, because the scope of my knowledge is limited to the circle of people i know.

still it was somehow satisfying to know that EDUCATED voters are going out to make INFORMED choices en masse today, especially people of my generation. these are the same people who will be the deciding factor in the decades of contests to come.

it's going to be hard to go to sleep tonight. america is awake and alert. the way i see it whoever wins doesn't really matter a whole lot. the most crucial issue is that people go out and make that decision for themselves and not let others do it for them.. isn't that the whole point of a free, democratic country? rock the vote -- change or no change.

ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country is doing to you.


+listening to: help help by pearl jam

» Read the Full Post of " election day "...

black or white

as i opened google reader this morning, i again found myself amused by the title of yet another poll on the US election much like the last time. it read "Poll Finds Obama’s Run Isn’t Closing Divide on Race".


yea sure there's all the hoo-ha over the race issues. black people thinks they're being treated unfairly and subject to racial prejudices and white people think that black people are too sensitive and that they are not being treated unfairly. black people think that racial relations have not made any progress over time while white people think that there have been real improvememnts. then the black people went on to hypothesize that under an obama administration, their rights and well-being would be better looked after while the white people think that obama says what people likes to hear rather than what he believes.

you follow the logic? neither do i.

what i wanted to ask is if everyone were a statistic, then where are the brown people, yellow people, beige people and all the other colours that are derivatives of the major shades? what are people who do not belong under the "cirle one of following: black/white" category supposed to do? do they just not turn up to vote since neither candidate represents them in colour?

i think it's polls like these that are driving the racial divide. imagine the reactions of both races when they read the report: one party would think that the other is foolish (just like they have always maintained), and the other party would label the former infidels and incapable of change, and so the vicious cycle continues. and then there's the question about how many people actually responded truthfully. there's already the widespread syndrome among white voters to not share their views truthfully and only reveal them at the last minute when the voting actually counted.

so to all the black people and white people, do what the brown people, yellow people, beige people and whatever other people have always done:

shut the fuck up and get over it.

you don't get any brownie points for being darker/fairer than all the other colours in between. you don't see brown/yellow/beige/misc people go bin laden every time someone calls them a paki/chink or whatever, do you?

look on the bright side: at the end of the day, whoever gets elected, it doesn't really matter a whole lot. because the government have, and always will eff you up in the A eventually. in fact it doesn't really matter what colour or creed you are, because it will always remain true that the US of A is the only country on earth where a black man can become a white man and pretend that he doesn't know anything about it.


+listening to: cold shot by dr. john

» Read the Full Post of " black or white "...

is there an option C?

as i opened google reader this morning, several identical news flashes were at the top of the pile of the latest updates. and the title reads: CBS Poll: Race, Age Are Issues For Voters.

i secretly chuckled to myself. has america ever been presented with a more atypical electoral dilemma like this before? even in the lead up to the official announcements of candidacy by both parties, the bizarre and eclectic mix of a blac... pardon me, african-american, a woman, an old hack/former POW, a mormon among other interesting characters in the primaries were enough to make many people's head spin in circles.


thus it is no surprise that the final duo of the strongest nominees both present major points of contention. one guy "has got a funny name, and did i mention he is black?" while the other seems to think that the correct answer to the question "what should america be looking for in our next president?" is "certainly, someone who is very, very, very old."

the only thing that's certain is that i'm not amused by the humour of either.

so the question on many people's mind remains: the black dude or the 71-year-old? it's really a tough call. the cbs poll shows that 30 percent of voters admit to having racial prejudices and find john mccain's age to be problematic.

research have also shown that white voters are less likely to reveal their racial prejudices in polls before the actual election. this may seem advantageous to mccain riding on a less-than-stellar performance in the primaries and lagging behind hugely in campaign funding donations to obama. on the other hand, is america ready for the oldest first term president in its history? and then there are the fundatmental questions of the merits of electing either. will obama pay more attention to the neglected poor and the african-american community because of his background? will mccain show more concern for the ailing health care system taking into account his age? there's only questions and no real answers.

in fact, some have resorted to discussing about the prospect of alternative theories: what if the nominees hadn't been these two? what then? the answer is pretty straight forward actually and could be presented in the form of another question: would you have preferred a woman and a mormon? those choices aren't exactly no-brainers either.

i think it's high time that the american people stop living in a bubble. the reality is that the whole world is evolving. and with changing times, the civil prejudices that have dogged them in the past like race, gender, religion, etc. cannot continue to be the sole impetus or the deciding factor of the outcomes of major choices that concern their own fate. but having said all that, do i think that race and age will be the defining crossroad of this election? MOST DEF.

come november i'll be eagerly waiting for the result in obama's home state of illinois. seeing all the events unfold is much like watching a circus - you never know what's going to come next.


+listening to: hideaway by freddie king

» Read the Full Post of " is there an option C? "...

make knowledge not war

finally got everything ready (i hope) for the student visa application. it was really a huge sigh of relief because everything seemed so confusing. and the amount of paper work is staggering, with all sorts of preposterous forms and fees.

and so as i was finally able to enjoy some moments of self-satisfaction, i was also equally and utterly shocked while reading the story on how the united states withdrew 7 fullbright grants from gaza because israel refused to grant the students permission to leave.


i've always been neutral on the subject of the israeli-palestinian crisis. to me, the middle-east peace roadmap is about as significant/symbolic as me having an occasional constipation - in other words, i just don't give a shit. honestly, i put more thought into which finger i'd use to pick my nostrails.

but today something stirred inside me. the actions of the israeli government not only seem extremely discriminatory, but it's also truly a step backwards in building a more cordial relationship with palestine. and you wonder why the roadmap never seem to point to anywhere, maybe it's because one of the parties responsible for drawing it up is really a cock and has no sense of direction at all?

the claim on the israeli's part is that that education has no relations to humanitarian concerns in gaza and hence it would be pose too much of a risk to the israeli soldiers. too much of a risk for what? that the soldiers would inadvertently soil themselves upon letting 7 students out of gaza? or that letting 7 students past the checkpoint would make them seem a bit weak and homosexual?

it's quite pointless to continue the argument knowing there's nothing anyone can do to change the israelis' mind, because obviously the israeli government has got its head stuck so far up its ass that it would be akin to telling a cow to milk itself - wishful thinking. peace is an ideal, and education can help to inculcate and spread that ideal to the masses and nurture people who cherish that ideal. so apparently it's not peace that the israelis want?

now you know why people often express their frustration towards certain irrational individuals with the phrase "(someone) is being so jewish". in the case of the israeli government, i can't help but snicker at the irony of the double whammy there. classic.


+listening to: jesus just left chicago by gov't mule

» Read the Full Post of " make knowledge not war "...

dirty little politics

politics is perhaps one of my least favourite subjects, not because i'm against it in principle. in fact i think it is absolutely necessary because without politicians, we'd all become a bunch of barbarians and savages. rome would not have been the mighty republic without its senate, even though it's filled with aristocratic scumbags.


however the reason with my dissatisfaction with politics in general lies with the fact that politicians are all two-faced fucks (pardon my french). The taiwanese election just concluded on saturday. as expected Ma Ying-jeou from Kuomintang (KMT) beat Frank Hsieh of the ruling party.

in principle he's against Taiwan's independence, calling to boost economic ties and normalisation of cross-straights relations and what not. but isn't that what the notorious outgoing President Chen promised before he came into office? well, minus the anti-independence part. it turned into another story once he actually got his grubby meathooks on the steering wheel of the behemoth bureaucratic machine. like i've always maintained, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

there is simply no certainty in the politics business. it's as much about dirty deeds and power plays behind the scene as actual politicking as seen by the noble citizenry. and oh yea, i love watching the parliament in taiwan on tv. well not particularly the topics up for discussion - those are usually about as interesting as the life story of a sloth.

the main attraction is how they take democracy to the next level. i think chinese people as a race do not mix well with democracy, because in my opinion it's in our genes to be hot-headed and and get carried away with what we do. effective democracy demands a rational, well-informed citizenry, who possess their own opinions and judgments and are not easily swayed by nonsensical hearsays or become cantankerous mobsters at the slightest provocation. we (chinese people) either go for outright dictatorship ala ancient china, pseudo multi-party socialism ala present-day china, *self censored in fear of persecution* democracy in singapore, or steroid - laden - about - to - explode - in - your - face kinda democracy in taiwan.

the drama in the taiwanese parliament amazes me: people spitting on one another, throwing coffee mugs at each other, outright bar-brawl style kungfu fights breaking out at random, speakers screaming profanities at the top of their lungs into the microphone. and these are just some of the more common "happenings" to say the least. to an outside observer, it's nothing short of jaw-droppingly hilarious.

and interestingly, i actually read the news article about the taiwan election at al jazeera. it's not half bad really, somewhat a refreshing change from your everyday western observers' point of view.

read more: Taiwan's Opposition wins election

» Read the Full Post of " dirty little politics "...