my response

cruzeiro wrote:

I know lah you're being "sarcy" .......
but the problem is I know you don't like ISA.
it is precisely this simplistic rationale that is used for its perpetuation by it's proponents.
the question now is, what alternative do you suggest - and mind you, your argument against ISA "must hold water".
Let's hear it, Pete.

06/06 11:07:33

RPK's reply

Raja Petra wrote:

Dear cruzeiro, it IS simple. Extremists (or pelampau in BM) means people who are extreme (melampau, too much) and terrorists are people who terrorise others (menakutkan, ganas). Malays are terrified that the Chinese extremists will take away their rights and special privieges (including the NEP). They are also terrified that the Malay language will no longer be the National Language with Chinese asking for more Chinese schools and mother-tongue education. They are also worried that the non-Muslims are demanding that Muslims be allowed to leave Islam which will erode Islam.

Non-Malays support the ISA because they are scared of Muslim extremists and terrorists while the Malays support the ISA because they are scared of the extremists Chinese, Christians, etc. who challenge the position of Malays-Islam which the Constitution has already protected and given a special place.

You see, while the non-Malays have their reasons for supporting the ISA, the Malays too have their own reasons. Operasi Lalang was to stop the non-Malays from challenging the Malays rights and special privileges, Islam as the oficial religion, and Malay as the National Language.

So it is actually really very simple and that is how Malays see it. What's not 'simplistic' about this whole issue?

Oh, and of course we are all using our own yardstick as to what is extreme and what warrants detention under the ISA. But this will have to depend on the colour of your skin and the religion you believe in. The majority of Malays have no problems if murtads get detained without trial including those non-Muslims who instigate Muslims to leave Islam. Some even agree that they be put to death (worse than detention without trial).

06/06 10:58:57

RPK's Response to OU- my perspective

Dear Sir,

A wise man once said, "even if there is no God, Man has to create him".

Friedrich Nietzche, who was the son of a pastor, said that "God is dead", and landed in a lunatic asylum, trying to prove his point.

Since the advent of "institutionalized religions", wars were waged in the name of God. Religion (not God) has been, once too often, a curse to mankind. It has often been politicized (as correctly mentioned by you) for the sake of economic conquest, rather than spiritual.

I do believe in "GOD". However, while I accept the need for religious institutions as a necessary evil, I do not surrender my mind to them (meaning the "dogma").

As easy as that may seem to you and me, a vast majority of people (more so, those who aren't capable of “thinking” logically – whatever the reason may be) need these godmen to justify their actions using God as a tool of convenience. Therefore, one's perception of God, would depend a lot on Culture.

Culture is the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought. Culture is learned and shared within social groups and is transmitted by nongenetic means.

The "Godmen" (not "men of God") on the other hand, manipulate the ethics/ laws to influence the politics, thereby reaping the harvest from "lost souls". Therein sets in the corruption of "values" espoused by religions.

While it may be easy for one to say that "all Gods are One" or ""your God and my God are one and the same", it would be advisable for one to remember that people differ in their perception, definition and understanding of "God".

Therefore, while it may be correct as you understand, define and perceive God, it may not be the case with another. This difference in opinion needs to be respected first and foremost, should we discuss the nature of GOD.

These, I believe, are the facts that, both you and OU have been trying to illustrate in your own ways.

Although OU had mention the word "God", what he appears to me to be condemning, is actually, Religion.

Letter to Dr. Azly

Dear Dr. Azly,
Thank you for your prompt reply.
Your take was indeed very thought provoking.

However, it seemed a little too idealistic for my taste. (Very philosophical lah , doc)

All the development projects, and efforts towards modernization, is in my opinion, necessary – evil or not, it would depend on those who wield the technology/ wealth. What matters is, the man who truly wields this power, wealth and knowledge needs to be the one who truly deserves it.

He cannot be put in place by virtue of constitution, race, birthright, contacts or political influence. As must as I appreciate your take on it, somehow, I hoped that you'd point out that there were a lot of parallels between the words of the character in the excerpt, and our very own NEP and its political implications on Malaysian society. Anyway, here is my take on it.

Would you agree that as per our current policies in the implementation of the NEP, we are actually heading towards political disaster?

Allow me to illustrate: "To trade by means of money is the code of men of good will. ......................................................................... Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade - with reason, not force, as their final arbiter - it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability - and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward.
This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money.

Does the NEP acknowledge any part of this fact whatsoever?
I seriously doubt it. A good look around the nation would tell you that.

Nowhere in the NEP do the admit that in creating wealth for an elite class of Bumiputera, and in giving freebies to the common man that ....... money is only a tool.

It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.
It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with the desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality - the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

They give and they give what has been looted, only so that it is squandered, and so create a bumiputera class that is totally dependant on handouts.

Do they feel the pain in seeing money being abused? Of course not – for they never did create it – they only looted it. This of course assures them of a vote bank, but isn't it a scourge upon the Bumiputera (specifically the Malays)?

Don't worry about the “new bumiputeras” (ie the arabs, the “mamaks”, the converts and the “pan-asians”) - they'll be fine ..... if anything it'll be they who'll reap the harvest from the opportunities.
It is they who will usurp the nation.

Let's move on ..... "Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money.

The noble intention to uplift the Malays has long been been discarded. Today, they only wish to have the Malay purchase his happiness temporarily for a price in ringgit. They have forgotten that it is only through knowledge and wisdom that they can generate wealth. They have also ignored the fact that it is only these people who generate wealth that can hold on to it.

Or else, the money would slowly but surely dissipate. It is this lack of money that would “fire up” the racial supremacy that is touted by politicians at present.

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth - the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root.

Now we have the result of our noble NEP.

Let us move on .......
Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. "Money is your means of survival. the verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil.

Now, do we see a backlash against money (ala Talibanisation/ Islamisation?) - and ultra conservatism. In doing so, these advocates of ultra conservatism forget that ,

"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Now comes the scary part about Malaysian society ..... do you notice a strange kind of piety afflicting the Malaysian (muslim especially) illustrated by the creeping Arabisation (disguised as Islamisation) But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich - will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait of the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt - and of his life, as he deserves.

Do you see that hard working men are now forced to work harder to earn their keep so as to subsidize the cost of sustaining the NEP?
Do you see a brain drain in Malaysia?
Do you see the wealth generators transferring their assets and domicile overseas?
Do you see politicians stating that they want a greater stake in the economic pie?
Do you see men of enterprise being forced to part with their achievements to pacify the power brokers?
Do you see a proliferation of the “black market” economy?

"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard - the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money - the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law - men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims - then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

Are we talking about May 13 here? Definitely not.
We are now talking about the near future.
Why do we have greater polarization on all sectors of society today? Because it is the only way that the politically bankrupt can go on reaping their harvest of loot. It is only through suspicion and distrust of his neighbour, prosperous or otherwise, that the perpetuation of the looting may be done legally under the guise of the NEP.

"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

Should Rand's words be prophetic, the future when our beautiful nation would descend into chaos wouldn't be too far off ....................

"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

We cannot do much in the face of leaders who harp on insufficiency within the chosen race, while they everything within their power to perpetuate it by inducing desire and greed, that morphs into segregation and hatred for his neighbour.

When money ceases to be the tool by which mean deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns - or dollars. Take your choice - there is no other - and your time is running out."

From the above, I do not have the slightest doubt that there will one day be a form of ethnic cleansing or persecution which will destroy the nation, unless something is done fast.

This persecution (ala pogroms) will start with the “jizya” & the creation of the “dhimmi” class, when there is nothing left to loot, or the non-bumi entrepreneurial community is too small (due to migration) to sustain the looting. It will start when they need scapegoats for their economic failures and lack of taxes/ rentals/ jizya that is collected. Looking at the speed at which this evolution is taking place, I would give it a max of 20 yrs down the line.

Please do not print this in any public forum (blog). This is just a personal “academic” view which I wish to discuss. Of late, I get the feeling that I am being “observed” (paranoia perhaps, but I'd rather be careful). My hope for a comfortable future in Malaysia during my golden years is fading pretty fast, in tandem with our political evolution into the middle ages. Thank you.

Atlas shrugged -gist of it

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Anconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them.
Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force.
Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money.
Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor - your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions - and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth. "But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles.

Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made - before it can be looted or mooched - made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability.

An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced. "To trade by means of money is the code of men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return.

Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders.
Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss - the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery - that you must offer them values, not wounds - that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade - with reason, not force, as their final arbiter - it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability - and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward.
This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money.
Is this what you consider evil?

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with the desires.

Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality - the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind. "Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek.

Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money.
Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth - the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune.
Money is a living power that dies without its root.
Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it.
Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Money is your means of survival. the verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life.
If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence.
Did you get your money by fraud?
By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity?
By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves?
By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn?
If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame.
Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity?
Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil?
To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money - and he has good reason to hate it.
The lovers of money are willing to work for it.
They know they are able to deserve it.

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another - their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich - will not remain rich for long.

They are the natural bait of the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt - and of his life, as he deserves.

"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard - the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money - the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue.
In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them.
But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law - men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims - then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it.

Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money.

Money is the barometer of a society's virtue.
When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed.

Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot. "Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence.

Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper.
This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced.
Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims.

Watch for the day when it bounces, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'
"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral.
Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?'
You are.

"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood - money.

You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities.

Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves - slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries.

So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers - as industrialists.

"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money - and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being - the self-made man - the American industrialist.

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose - because it contains all the others - the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.'

No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity - to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to lean the difference on his own hide - as, I think, he will.

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which mean deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns - or dollars.
Take your choice - there is no other - and your time is running out."

-AtlasShrugged
Ayn Rand

The Catholic Legacy - Reply to "padzac"

padzac wrote:
I am picking on the Catholic Church as an institution.
===============================
okay, so you wanna pick on the Vatican. fine.
friend, the catholic church is far more than just a religious institution- it is also a political entity/ symbol, without which civilisation as we know it wouldn't have come be (despite the fact that they were solely to blame for many atrocities).
You can deny it all you want, hurl all the abuses you want but the world knows that the Vatican is the symbol of christian civilisation.
It was partly due to their influence through their good and bad, that gave rise to political giants like Martin Luther, who transformed Europe, the Vatican and christianity forever.
its finance, political power and influence surpasses that of any of the other denominations, most governments and nations.
with its long and colorful history, it become a very convenient target for many wannabe godmen.
the theology, is far more complicated than you and i could possibly fathom.
the vatican has made a statement to say that it does not have a monopoly of "truth", knowing very well that human interpretations of god's word cannot be absolute - they should know the truth in that, as the bible as we know it in its many forms was first edited by them.
as in most theocracies and religious institutions, godmen do abuse the powers vested in them, and coruption would set in.
Friend, it is impossible for you to understand christian theology, and to know heresy, unless you first you first study the position of orthodoxy.
Christian churches today formulate their own theologies, with insufficient debate – they do not allow their theologies to formulate the churches, leading to confusion. Orthodox churches on the other hand fear change as they do not wish for corruption of values that they hold dear – hence the impatience of the “progressives”.
This is the problem with christianity today – unbridled freedom – so much so, everyone believes that he is right for the sake of convenience. Those who break away organise their own churches that formulate their own theology.
And guess what – you too are free to think and do what you like – based on the books that were agreed upon.
Peace.

21/05 21:50:42

5.13 revisited- MT

cruzeiro wrote:

Dear Dr.Azly,
You asked:
What will it take for us to prevent another May 13 from happening? Will a brand new regime be the answer?
Will a truly multiethnic, social-democratic, nationalistic government help us through the next 50 years of "Independence"?
Will replacing the NEP and redefining the meaning of "Bumiputera" to include ALL ethnic groups to be given similar special rights and privileges be the ultimate solution for peace and justice?
====================================
Permit me to ramble a little.
As we all know, the "two races that count" are the malays and chinese.
Whatever happenned on 5.13, happened because the powers that be, used the chauvinism of the chinese against them.
It was rather foolish of them to imagine that they could grab power from the Malays, and belittle them in the process.
The Malays used their trump card (right or wrong), and the rest is history.
The question remains - are the Malays secure in their grip on political power?
I guess not.

That is because, it can never happen as long as there remains Chinese or Indians who cannot assimilate.
There was a time when one could assimilate into Malay society quite easily, by adopting the Malay lifestyle. Not any more.
Assimilation is made difficult with current policies entrenched in the NEP.
The “religion factor” is added on to make things doubly difficult and worse, with the adoption of the "arabisation" of Malay culture. The quest for uniformity, intolerance of difference in opinion (ala the wahhabis) is very much prevalent today.
With further absorption of Indonesian and Filipino Muslims, the Malay culture and race has been altered artificially.
This has led to the dilution and emasculation of the true Malay identity, hence further insecurity among the Malays.
With these alterations in the demographics, the politicians now have a new "bogeyman" - the Islamic fundamentalist.
Now, why would any politician in his right mind want to give up absolute power?
The Malay politician in power at present has it all at his disposal. Now the only thing that he may lack partially is economic power - that the chinese still hold. Of course, he instils this "desire" for financial reward into the people - and voila! and the chinese bogeyman makes his presence felt.
There are now two bogeymen at the disposal of Mr. Politician to conveniently use.
Getting to the point, You asked: What will it take for us to prevent another May 13 from happening?
The answer to to that is – education and trust.
I do not for a minute believe that building trust among the various ethnic groups is as firmly on the agenda,( as compared to wealth acquisition with sectarian interests), among the various leaders. They give a façade of cooperation while they go on cheating each other.
Govt sponsored education cannot be used as a platform for indoctrination, as is currently practised in many third-world nations. Healthy debates need to be encouraged, so that the fear of new ideas is dispelled.
Will a brand new regime be the answer?
Not if the current concept of nationhood persists, or the people don't have a viable option. However, As long as there exists a significant Malay political vacuum in the opposition, this insecurity among the Malays would remain.
Will a truly multiethnic, social-democratic, nationalistic government help us through the next 50 years of "Independence"?
Yes. But first, there needs to be abolition of race based political parties/ alliances.
Non- Malays need to acknowledge the fact that it was the Malays (whatever their origins may be) who had the earliest kingdoms/ governments of the modern era in this land.
It would need a secular constitution, based on universal values.
It has to be led by a Malay majority. They need to have proper concepts of nationhood (akin to that of USA) guided by politicians who are able to freely articulate their thoughts without resorting to politics of fear. It has to be secular in nature. There has to be separation of religion and state.
Will replacing the NEP and redefining the meaning of "Bumiputera" to include ALL ethnic groups to be given similar special rights and privileges be the ultimate solution for peace and justice?
There needs to be a redefining of both NEP (not to be abolished entirely) and “bumiputera”, but it cannot happen unless the Malays themselves realise the need for it.
They need to realise that they can prosper together, should they build trust and welcome challenges and work without the crutch of the NEP.

21/05 12:00:14