Recently I asked an old friend, a Malaysian in Jakarta, a journalist who thinks he is a former journalist, a most handsome cina Malaysia, to blog his thoughts on the Dr M-Abdullah issue.
I know that looking in usually gives you a bigger picture even if clarity is sometimes compromised.
"These are people who owe their existence to patronage, not intellectual vigor," says Unspun.
"It is therefore not surprising that the arguments advanced against Mahathir are so lame, for example: Mahathir is questioning the government and asking it to account for four incidents. The response was to brand it as bad for the nation's stability, ask for Mahathir to resign from Umno. As a friend used to say: what's that got anything to do with the price of fish?"
Do read on. http://unspun.wordpress.com/2006/07/03/67/
Bro,
ReplyDeleteThanks for giving us Unspun.
Not bad for someone working in Jakarta.
Once a journalist always a journalist.
Old journalists dont retire....they just get more kepo.
cheers
Semalam Di Malaya
Rocky!
ReplyDeleteI am so good at sniffing, at anything actually, and I am pretty sure Unspun is that pompous Ong Hock Chuan, a fellow with the Star once that had serious personality bypass. I found this out when going to his website "unspun" and true there was his picture with a group of Caucasians. I also saw on his website your comment and our jolly good friend also former journalist Rusdi who also figure out Unspun was also Ong. What I cannot figure out is why is he in Indonesia, and what is he realy doing there, as I recalled he never did have a good thing to say about us Bumiputras! Well, to each his own, as long as his conscience is damn clear. Just to recap, he is an old and good friend of Kali, and still is!
Cheers!
P.S. I also like Rehman, I mean Bandit verbosity!
Pasquale must be congratulated for his investigative powers as all it would have taken was a Google search for the articles I wrote for the Jakarta Post, which are posted in my blog, to find out my identity.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, I find Pasquale's anger and contempt for others rather sad. Granted, I was probably quite angry and had an inflated ego as Pasquale suggests.
But that was more than 20 years ago. People learn form their mistakes and move on. They learn some humility, get rid of their inferiority complex about white people, and engage discussions with reasonable arguments rather than ad hominem attacks.
Maybe that's why I'm in Indonesia, where I can get away from the anger, frustrations and viciousness of some Malaysians who never move on and exert great righteous piety out of sweating the small stuff.
Maybe they should try living abroad, it gives you great perspective on the things that should and shouldn't matter.
SEGAMAT (some time in the future) -
ReplyDeleteSingapore hopes its violent standoff with Gemas (Gerakan Melayu Anti-Singapura) over a captured soldier will eventually produce a new cease-fire with the Johor terrorist organisation, a Singapore Cabinet minister said Saturday, as Singapore troops exchanged fire with Johorean gunmen and army bulldozers searched for terrorists' tunnels.
Until now, Singapore had set only two goals for its military campaign in Johor — to win the release of the soldier, Cpl. Chong Ahmat Muttu, and to halt Johorean rocket attacks on Singapore.
Cabinet minister Lee and Lee and More Lee said Saturday that Singapore wants to go beyond that.
"We have a great interest in changing the rules of the game," Lee and Lee and More Lee, a member of the PAP told Singapore Radio. "If we reach a situation in which there are no kidnappings, no rockets, no tunnels, no raids into our territory, certainly Singapore will have to reciprocate."
Gemas officials offered contradictory responses.
Shuhrir al-Shuhrir, a spokesman for the Gemas who is fighting Singapore accupation, suggested rocket fire could end if Singapore stops its offensive. However, the group said in a statement on its Web site that rockets "are the only available means for the Johor people to defend themselves in the face of the aggression by the Zionist-backed occupiers."
The latest round of fighting, which claimed the lives of 35 Johoreans and a Israeli soldier over the past three days, began two weeks ago with a cross-border raid in which Gemas-allied militants seized a Songapore outpost.
Troops initially entered southern Johor where the soldier is being held. Gemas said Friday he is being treated well, and a senior Singapore defense official, Col. Chok and Chok and More Chok, said Saturday that Singapore also believes the soldier is alive.
On Saturday morning, dozens of tanks drove toward Segamat City, taking up positions about 500 yards from the outlying neighborhoods of Kampung Boyan and Kampung Jawa. The army said the forces were sent to the area to search for tunnels being dug by militants for possible attacks on soldiers.
The air force fired missiles at a group of militants gathered at the outskirts of Segamat. Two Gemas gunmen were killed in the area, hospital officials said. Also, a Johorean died of wounds sustained in earlier fighting, bringing the three-day total to 35.
The majority of the Johoreans killed since Thursday were gunmen, but also included a number of civilians, including an 11-year-old boy.
(Adepted from an AP report, June 8 for a future scenario if we keep giving in to Singapore or if we listen to Syed Hamid).
pasquale
ReplyDeleteOng knows Kali, but they are not good friends.
Ong never trusted Kali. We know Kali too well since our days in the Star.
pasquale
ReplyDeleteOng knows Kali, but they are not good friends.
Ong never trusted Kali. We know Kali too well since our days in the Star.
Pasquale,
ReplyDeletei thought your comments were funny, at best, and despondent, at worst.
but, hey,it is all in the name of blog freedom.
you even poke fun at yourself. i didnt care who you really are.
nevertheless, i take strong exception to your attempt at "memancing" the real identities of "bloggers"/commentators. Like you did with Bandit.
That is not nice,Pasquale. I know you may not even be a nice person. But, heck, that is real low.
Have you no dignity, You Moron.
You owe Rehman an apology.
And Rocky bro, you should tell Mr Moron Pasquale to keep it cool.
He sure aint cool.
Ask him to check his blood pressure.
Be cool.
bro,
ReplyDeleteI agree totally with you.
Mr Unspun is one goodlooking Cina Malaysia.
And I agree with anonymous. Ong,would, of course, know Kali. They were in the Star.
I dont know whether they are good friends.
But I know Ong. So I dont think Kali would be among his good friends.
Star reporters would know (that).
pasquale, or whatever, or whoever you are, you are making a lot of insinuations and sweeping statements. you owe an apology to rehman rashid, arguably the best writer of his generation.
ReplyDeleteI am sure "Bandit" would be just as insulted by being thought to be me as I am in being thought to be him. 1. I would never write anonymously. 2. I share very few of his opinions. 3. Limpets don't drool.
ReplyDeleteRocky,
ReplyDeleteWho's this Pasquale fellow huh ? Speaks good English thou, wonder where he is from ?
One should not blog with too much wine OR the Moron identity is glaringly revealed !That apology as suggested by mustang is the most decent thing to do now. Cheers mate.
Monsieur Pasquale,
ReplyDeleteCela n'est pas très agréable de vous. Vous ne devez pas faire. cela.
Pasquale. Do you know that some of us kinda guessed who you could be. But did we write it in this blog? NO. And don't you wonder why. Bien sûr, ne vous faites pas. Vous l'homme bête.
Because, that would have been wrong to name our guesses. "Honour among thieves",if you like.
SO, apologise to Rehman Rashid.
MAINTENANT, avant que nous vous nommons.
(Get your blood pressure higher. Find a French dictionary. Abientot. Viva La Rocky)
Since someone made some remarks in French,I woudlike todo the same. This is for Rehman.
ReplyDeleteMonsieur rehman rashid, je demande pardon de la part d'une personne très crétine.
Au revoir.
And this is from me. I don't know any French. But will a little Spanish do?
ReplyDeleteFor you, Rehman.
Senor Rehman Rashid. Perdone por favor Pasquale. El es un idiota.
Gracias.
to rocky,
ReplyDeletebro, lu pun satu la, even if that pasquale fella had broken the golden rule of bloggers in respect to their secret identities, kenapa u publish dia punya post pulak, buat der aje la, or set your ground rules with bloggers who do that, nanti bloggers yang lain will be takut as well, if u allow this guessing game to go on. i am sure those who are blogging in pseudonym have good reasons for doing that, and i think you should respect that, kan. cheers bro.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeletequote
ReplyDeleteAs a friend used to say: what's that got anything to do with the price of fish?"
unquote
Everything, when there's something fishy going on, with the foul stench of 22 questions to camouflage 4!
Dear Rocky!
ReplyDeleteI decided to delete my last posting for a certain reason. Anyway sorry to have caused an unnecessary anguish among many. I apologise and will not do it again, but can Bandit not be to be too verbose (meaning using or expressing more words than needed), bad enough I have not allowed many Malaysian newscasters in my living room for their pretentious familiarity with the English language and rolling their RRs...get me everytime, but now I have to put up with verbosity in Rocky Bru.
Cheers!
The Rehman Rashid–outed–as–Bandit bunk
ReplyDeleteTO those miscreants with the weak, overstretching imagination who squealed at the thought of outing the great Rehman Rashid as Bandit, you simply hopped on a fishing expedition trawling inside a toilet bowl. Like the man affirms, anonymity is alien to his literary chops.
But for me still being Bandit as Bandit would, I’m not about to hand out a cheap shot riposte, low-rent rebuttal or self-righteous retort, just this giddy reaction: “Yeeeeehaaaaaaa!” Aw, come on you unrelenting, floating gasbags: GIGGLE!
Did I feel insulted that I was mistaken for that English language martinet? Maybe a flea-sized bit but I’m not one to drown in any form of flagellation.
I’d be piqued to death if Rehman shared with all of my opinions, knowing his upright views on the Malaysian political cesspool, but when he wrote that “I share very few”, it means there are little specks of my views which he found appealing. I wonder which. Conversely, had he shared with most of my opinions, he would not have whipped up that “Dear Tun” whiplash.
Being “martinetinistic” (I almost suffered a mental hernia coining that up) about how English should be written, you could hear from across the NST newsroom Rehman’s venomous rants when he stumbles upon a pathetic piece of dreck doubling up as news writing.
It’s understandable that he could not help but administer corrective measures on my perfectly flawed prose. I can, while squirming, feel his ubiquitous red pen making corrections on this piece like an acetylene torch.
Lighten up, will ya, and permit the limpets to drool, even if they can’t, but thanks anyway for reading that particular piece, dude. You’re still my main man when it comes to cloud seeding the English language on the intellectual wasteland that continues to slobber pervasively over the Mawi–AF fixation or whatever mawkishness converting that barrenness into a picayune swamp.
And for the simple-minded jabbers who have to swallow my verbosity like an absinthe, as Pasquale grudgingly laments, I wear my circumlocution like Superman slips into his tights and cape, like Spiderman masks his face and spews a web of corny one-liners, and like Batman dons the pointed-eared bat suit. Otherwise, you can avoid my ramblings like you would avoid a pugnacious thug on a street corner.
Now, could we return to the business of outing the callow cabal’s stringing of the Prime Minister, subservience to Singapore’s trampling on our collective butts and deconstruction of Dr Mahathir Mohamad?
There’s the Shahrir Samad apologist defence of Singapore’s land grab of national assets to restart with after Mingguan Malaysia’s late rejoinder on the issue. As belated as it is, now there’s a drooling debate that has pushed up the defcon, to a 2 maybe?
hey bandit, can you keep your language smple. if lazarus rokk's writing is verbose, yours is from another planet. you must remember that many visitors to this blog do not have your command of english.
ReplyDeleteI'm grateful to everyone who tried to set the record straight after Pasquale's provocative posting.
ReplyDeleteBut at the risk of spoiling the fun, shouldn't this be a discussion of issues, rather than personalities of commentators, in the Mahathir-Badawi spat?
The issue is, I suppose, whether Malaysia is in for an unproductive time when you have politicians who do not realize that technology has changed the way we communicate; that technology has made everything more transparent and that unless they realize and skill up you'd have rather poor quality arguments going all round with nothing being resolved.
And to borrow some of Pasquale's provocativeness: Something that everyone might want to consider is whether this discussion thread so far is a microsm of what's happening on the national front. If no then good. If yes, then...scary.
if i am not mistaken, unspun, or ong hock chuan, was a rising star in the Star in the early eighties. he was touted to be the head honcho, not for his looks, but for his close links with mca bigwigs and umno leaders. heard he was the object of envy, jealousy among fellow rising stars in the paper. then he had a fallout with mca leaders. by the way, this is all second or third hand hearsay. it's up to the man himself to tell us what happened.
ReplyDeletenstman,
ReplyDeleteWhen the Star was forced to temporarily close down following the operations lallang in 1987, a few of the top Star journalists left th paper.
I think Ong was one of them. Ong was then wtih the Sunday Star whose editor at the time was Cheryl Dorall.
He then went to work in Hong Kong. Some of those who left included Cheryl, Rajeswary & K. Nadarajah.
Cheryl went to work in London, Rajes had an offer with the UN in N. York and Nada, who is back in the NST, went to Hong Kong.
anonymous seems very well informed. why do I think that we worked together before.
ReplyDeleteNstman, however, has heard fromm people too kind to me. I was not good looking at all, was -- at the very best -- only one of the more promising reporters at The Star but I never had close contacts with Umno and MCA bigwigs.
I like to think that whatever success I enjoyed was earned from being able to synthesize and build on the information that other then - such as Zainal Epi, Rahman, Suhaini Aznam and Maria Samad had eked out of their contacts. (I never formally thanked them in the aftermath of Operasi lallang, so guys: thanks) That, and the excellent mentorship of editors like Cheryl and Mohan, who taught me how to think and to write with clarity.
So not having high powered contacts, I could not have had a fallout, especially with MCA leaders because although we were of same ethnicity there was very little in common between us. I never dug those ridiculous white shoes that they wore.
But here we go again, digressing into personalities. I think Malaysia needs you brainy lot of journalists to focus the debate and discussion on the issues rather than the personalities.
So I hope this comment, which will be my last I post on myself, will have answered questions sufficiently and bring the dicussion back to the issues that matter.
thanks, ong, for the short take. mentioning people like cheryl doral always brings back wonderful memories. i was among the lucky few who were taught by this great lady. superb command of the language plus a keen nose for news have put her in the pantheon of journalism. she is truly the first lady of journalism. her departure for london was perhaps the greatest loss suffered by malaysian journalism, especially the star , which is now run as an advertisement paper and also run by charlatans masquerading as journalists.
ReplyDelete