Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Must Read: Another Brilliantly Written Article By Dean Johns..

I have to reproduce this article here in my blog and share it with readers as what was written by Dean Johns skillfully touches every thoughts and feelings that is going through me at this moment.
The BNality of evil
Dean Johns
On this glorious autumn morning in Sydney, an absolute cliché of a perfect day, the air as clear as crystal and the sky a stunning blue.
By rights I should be revelling in the feeling that it’s great just to be alive.And I guess I am, in a physical sense.
But emotionally it’s another matter entirely, as with this column to write, I sit here cheerlessly confronting the cold eye of my computer screen and its mindlessly blinking cursor, struggling to strike a spark of inspiration from an uncooperative keyboard.
But I can hardly blame an innocent computer for the contrast between the brilliance of the day and the bleakness of my mood. In fact the fault is entirely my own.
Somehow I’m constitutionally incapable of the feeling that ‘God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world’ when the same alleged God that some imagine created this heavenly day perversely permits such hellish situations in so many other parts of the world.
Sometimes it seems that evil lurks almost everywhere on earth.
There seems no end to the pain and suffering and death that it causes, and no sign that any amount of intervention, divine or otherwise, will ever diminish it, let alone bring it to an end.
And for those of us who are driven to write or fight against it, it has an extra and especially excruciating dimension: it’s incredibly, endlessly boring.
The phrase “the banality of evil” is as apt today as it was back when Hannah Arendt coined it to describe the personality of Nazi genocide organiser Adolf Eichmann.Eichmann, she claimed, committed his atrocities not out of hatred for his victims, but out of a lack of imagination so total as to deprive him of any shred of empathy for fellow human beings.
I don’t believe that all of today’s major-league evil-doers are as motiveless as Eichmann, but they’re every bit as callous, banal and ultimately boring as he was in their insatiable cravings for power and feelings of self-importance.
Surely the most vivid embodiment of the banality of evil in the world today must be Kim Jong-Il of North Korea. A man, like his father before him, who has enslaved and starved his people in his demented quest to maintain a million-strong army and build a nuclear weapon for the single, pathetic purpose of expressing his paranoid egomania.
Then there’s Robert Mugabe (left), driven by a hatred for whites that Eichmann, according to Arendt, lacked for the Jews he slaughtered, but every bit as empty as Eichmann of any capacity for sympathy or empathy with anyone but himself and the supporters he needs to survive.
And he is as boring as every other tinpot dictator I can think of in his greed for such banalities as grand mansions, branded merchandise and shopping sprees for his stupid wife.
The leaders of Iran are another case in point, still tediously employing timeless sectarian hatred and insane religious extremism in the pursuit of sordid, mundane cravings for some shred of self-esteem.
And so it goes around the globe, such an endless parade of banality and evil as to disgrace the human race and bore us columnists - and our unfortunate readers - to tears.
Beyond banality
Of course the most crying shame of all to me, because I happen to read and write about it so much, is the chronically tedious situation in Malaysia. After more than half a century of monopolisation by Barisan Nasional (BN), the situation has gone way beyond banality to utter BNality, and seems to get more evil by the day.
The whole country is held to ransome by a bunch of people so BNal that all they can muster in the way of a slogan for a nation they’ve so strenuously kept divided all these years is a ludicrous lie like ‘1Malaysia’.
And all these so-called leaders seem to care about are BNalities like money, ridiculous titles, luxury cars, big houses, offshore holiday retreats and overseas junkets for themselves and their families.
The BNality of evil; the evil of BNality. Have you ever heard or read an utterance by a BN politician that wasn’t so dim, dull or such a litany of obfuscation and outright lies that it was anything but stupefyingly boring?

And no, fans of Dr Mahathir Mohamad (right) needn’t claim that their hero is an exception, as his every utterance is drearily, predictably false and sarcastic, and thus not a whit witty.
BNality of speech is, of course, just a symptom of BNality of thought. And just as I’ve never heard an even remotely interesting remark from a BN politician or official, nor have I seen evidence of a single creative idea.
There’s been no shortage of projects, I grant you. Like the Twin Towers, for example, which have proven a big tourist attraction. But they were built by Japanese and Korean contractors using mostly Indonesian labour, and when it came to the BNality of who paid the bill, the evil fact is that the Malaysian people did, through Petronas accounts so compromised that they’re an official state secret.
So, as with every project on which the BN government spends public funds, there’s no accounting for how much loot was siphoned-off in kickbacks, ‘commissions’, fraud and embezzlement. Just as there’s no way of telling which individuals and corporations evade tax by paying bribes in return for deep discounts.
But the greatest cost of all this venality isn’t financial, it’s social. For evil of such BNality to prosper and perpepuate itself, the populace has to be deprived of such safeguards as a proper police force, honest judiciary, trustworthy media, enlightened education system and independent civil services.
Deprivations that lead in turn to rampant corruption, uncontrolled crime, ceaseless suspicious deaths in custody, growing risk of arrest and detention without charge, heavily-skewed elections and, as recently experienced by the DAP, police harrassment of opposition politicians and supporters.
As I write this, people are being arrested in Ipoh for participating in a hunger strike to protest the recent power-grab in Perak. So at least I haven’t entirely wasted this beautiful day by spending it at the keyboard.
As long as courageous activists keep on fighting and we critics keep on typing, someday the majority of Malaysians will finally revolt against the intolerable reality - not to mention the flagrant immorality and growing illegality - of BN evil and banality.



5 comments:

Starmandala said...

Bloody Hell, Duke! I was just about to do the same! Ha ha ha... but you're right, the inspired heading alone is worth reproducing a million times over :-)

Anonymous said...

People of Malaysia, regardless of race , rise up and fight against the evil government. You may be in BN or in PKR, please close ranks and jointly take a stand against the abusive government, police, judiciary and even the palace. For the sake of the future of our children, do not let the evil engulf us until we cannot save the future of our children.

dheep said...

well said~

we are with u on this~

Anonymous said...

Hear ye...! Hear ye......!!!

TheWhisperer said...

Comments from MToday:

written by fknajib, May 27, 2009 15:50:20

Good article, lets hope in all its stupidity of BNal, Malaysia doesn't turn into another Burma, or there are wide spread unrest like Thailand. The best way forward, is a democratic election that gets rid of the current corrupt regime. We must have change in order for progress to begin. Having the same old guards just doesn't work anymore.
http://fakenajib.blogspot.com

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written by AngryTaxpayer, May 27, 2009 16:23:08

My heart aches for this nation too.....it seems BN is so sure of their immortality......despite big red warning signs issued last March 2008.....in fact, they've not even bothered to hide their shameful ways anymore.....

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written by mick_err_stan, May 27, 2009 16:23:59

YUP..... total BNality !!!! A lot of talk but not the walk. No direction...nothing to strive for....no Ideas ???

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written by arazak, May 27, 2009 16:29:30

This article of BN evil and banality is absolutely brilliant! It really sums up what the BN/UMNO regime is all about. . .!

Truly, this is a must read article for all Malaysians!

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written by Kuku Burung, May 27, 2009 18:09:48

A very emotional and excellent article that describes how I feel for Malaysia. Our nation has become a showcase of BNality that we usually see in other nations like N. Korea, Zimbabwe, Burma, Uganda under Amin, and the Nazi evil regime. The honorable (or dis-honorable) Rais accused the alternative media of propagating communism. What Malaysian police, judiciary, and the power to be, are a direct mirror of what communism is all about...oppression, tortures, threats, and BNality. I cry for you Malaysia.

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written by Fuminari, May 27, 2009 19:26:23

umno thieves n bandits do not propagate lov n affection among malaysian,instead their standard operandi n doctrine of survival is to make sure malaysian hate each other!!down with the evil inhuman corrupted to core regime,that's the main responsibility of each n every fair minded malaysian of the day.

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written by asguard, May 27, 2009 21:15:20

Barang Naik is evil and demons in disguise which can be very deceiving, manipulation!

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written by Tok Din, May 27, 2009 21:30:15

Our hope for building a prosperous and harmonious nation under BN government is evaporating fast.

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written by 1eyecls, May 28, 2009 08:58:52

the katak king ezam when asked why he keeps his mouth shut related to UMNO corruption answered:corruption in any gomen is normal,it happens everywhere!

the daring Agus asked him again what happen to the six boxes of UMNO corruption files,he said,Anwar keeps the files,not him!

now,everybody knows that he is being bribed by UMNO to keep his mouth shut!

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written by Aria, May 28, 2009 09:05:55

That was a good article. We should look at sorting out our own internal problems first before worrying about other countries. Why didn’t the police arrest the protestors that were there for the Sri Lankan politician? It is alright for us to protest about other countries bad deeds but not our own.

We need to have a new breed of politicians. I don’t think that all the people in PKR are suitable, but we will be definitely improving the political maturity by putting in PKR as the next government. The voters of Malaysia must be confidant enough to get rid of BN. In the last election most voters just wanted BN to loose the two third majority because of the fear of what change could bring. Also Malaysia has never had a change of government and there is a fear of the unknown.