Govt abandons monkey export plans

Feb 2, 08 3:25pm

The Natural Resources and Environment Ministry has abandoned its controversial plan to export monkeys found in urban areas after a majority of them were found to be infected with deadly diseases. According to NST, minister Azmi Khalid said the decision was made after the discovery that about 80 percent of urban monkeys had contracted diseases and were deemed unfit for export. In August last year, the government said it would end a 23-year-old ban on trading monkeys for research and food as well as conducting talks with several countries including Japan for possible export. However, animal rights groups objected and said the monkeys would be sold to laboratories for a profit benefitting the minister instead. Yesterday, Azmi said that about 80 per cent of the 250,000 long-tailed macaques found in urban areas were found to have deadly diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, hepatitis and Aids. He said the export was to fulfil the demand for exotic meat in a few countries in Asia and in the west. "A study of 2,000 macaques in urban areas conducted several months ago found that 80 per cent of them were infected. "Only 20 per cent were healthy, and of this, only half the number were suitable for export," he said adding that the diseases could possibly spread among the human population. Relocation programmes According to veterinary experts, humans could be infected with diseases carried by the monkeys if there was close contact. Monkeys could also be infected with diseases contracted from humans if the animals licked human spit. Azmi added that the ministry feared that the move to export monkeys would encourage companies to hire agents to seize the monkeys which might lead to uncontrolled hunting of the animal. Veterinary experts have previously called for relocation programmes, reproduction controls and public education to stop residents from feeding or teasing the animals. They also opine that the monkey problem occurred in many major cities throughout the country due to the massive destruction of forests that has pushed the wildlife to seek shelter and food in urban areas. The monkey population in the country is about 700,000, with 250,000 in urban areas. The monkeys usually found at the urban areas include the long-tailed and pig-tailed macaques, and the leaf monkey.

Eco-socialism: 'feasible environmental solutions'

“It’s socialist because it’s essential that people confronting not just environmental problems, but any problems, understand what kind of system they are operating in. A socialist, class analysis will give people powerful insights into the struggle they’re engaged in. The process of winning reforms will at some point run up against the vested interests of capital. ”

“What happens then? A thorough grounding in socialist ideas and history will give people the best chance of responding effectively, because others have been down the road before us and have left us many lessons. ”

“The environmental movements across the world carry with them the baggage of the societies from which they emerge. Generally, in the advanced capitalist countries they display a strong lack of class consciousness — a product of the wider de-politicised social context. This can result in a focus on individualistic solutions, mysticism, criticisms of consumption rather than the way production is arranged, concerns about overpopulation, and so on. The Eco-socialist Network aims to address each one of these “detours” and to present people with material arguing against what we consider are serious diversions that are paralysing the environmental movement.”
-- John Rice

椅子

好久没有促膝长谈，
啤酒加清晨的冷风。

越醉醺醺的时刻，正是最清醒的时刻。
不再提起不代表已经忘了，
只是不想再忆起。
不再去回忆，不代表它不曾发生过。

无法解释的理由，成为最残忍的理由。

逃亡的旅途，硬逼自己将那一段记忆留白，
翻箱倒柜，怎么整理却还是心如刀割。

无限唏嘘，是不是拥有过已经不再重要。
每个人的心中，都有另一个人在里面留了一张椅子。

人不在了，背影还在，椅子还在。

Why jail unregistered doctor?

How about the negligent doctor who caused new born Baby-girl Yoke Shan's(Klang) left arm amputated?

How about the negligent doctor who caused the 3-month-old baby boy Mohd Danish's(Kota Baru) left leg amputated?

"Dr. Basmullah Yusom is serving three-month jail term for failing to pay RM120,000 fine for operating a clinic without registering it under the Private Health Facilities and Services Act (PHFSA) 1998.

Every day of jail by Dr. Basmullah is equivalent to paying RM1,333 of the fine. He has been jailed for 12 days or equivalent to paying RM15,996 of the RM120,000 fine!

This is also the most unfair and unjust three-month jail sentence - the first doctor to be jailed under the PHFSA despite assurances by both the Health Minister and Director-General of Health Services that private practitioners would not be jailed over a technicality.

Why is the Acting Health Minister, Datuk Seri Ong Ka Ting keeping quiet about this gross injustice in the implementation of the PHFSA?

A "Don't Jail Doctors Blog Campaign" has been launched by medical practitioners on the Internet. The Malaysian public demand a response from the Acting Health Minister as to what he is doing to end such injustice by getting Dr. Busmallah out of jail without any delay - as Dr. Basmullah, a Universiti Sains Malaysia-trained doctor and a father of eight children, should not be spending time in Kajang Prison at all."

制度不健全，真的害人。

今年的新春，暨南大学马来西亚校友会将和留中同学会、马来西亚中国留学生联合举行新春晚宴。这次的筹备工作中，我直接接触了三所华小（森美兰东华小学、森美兰巴都依淡华小以及白小）的校长及董事。

前个晚上，森美兰州东华华小的黄耀权校长打电话给我，由于邮寄失误

，他的学校资料一直无法寄到我手中。他和学校董事都很紧张，一直追问，深怕资料不全。

在电话中：他声声感激地说：“真的很感谢你们，没有想到现在的年轻人也这么关心华小。”
我说，我们有机会到中国读书、看世界，都是华校的栽培，第一次办这样的活动，很多不周到的地方，筹到的可能不会很多，但校长还是很感激地说："有心就好，有心就好，从来没有人关心过这所学校。"

我说，其实你要感谢教总，是他们给我们名单，我们才知道你的学校需要帮忙，他说："幸好还有华社，幸好还有华社... "

在新山，我曾经是华教工作的一份子，对华小、独中的血泪故事，满腔热血，久而久之，也几乎已经感到麻木不堪。来到吉隆坡从事政治工作以后，工作圈子认识的英文教育背景的人士对华教不以为然，报纸上、网路上还看到有人写要关闭华小、支持英语教数理。我本身忙着协助别人进行制度改革，根本没有多余的能力去出钱出力。

校长的话，好像又触动了我心里面那一条敏感的神经线。
是我们的政府不好，才让我们的华小变得那么穷，但面对一个电话坏了没人理、传真机要向别人借的小学、要搬迁却还找不到校地的小学，全校只剩四名印度学生，我的心里其实很难过。

中国小学方便更惨，中国学生的负责人得打通多少个部门，几经辛苦，才“弄"到那所小学的资料，因为那所小学的位置太过偏远的地方，就连传真三张资料过来，也须要依靠当地政府的设备。

那种情景，怎么想，都与报章经济版上看到的中国完全是两回事，这个中是什么原因，中国同学自己最清楚了。

制度不健全，真的害人。

更由于自己是华小生、独中生、中国大学毕业生，说起华教，我的心里总会酸酸的。

不只是针对华校而已，因为，我非常确定，在我看见淡小学生被逼在店屋上课、当我知道一些国小没有水供的时候，那种气愤的感觉是同等值的。

每当新闻报道与独中有关的政策、拨款时，我也会很激动，脑袋只有一个问题：为什么你们不承认独中统考文凭？难道我会比你们用我爸爸的纳税钱培育出来的国中生差吗？

今年接近30岁的我，对于中学时代一次为校筹款被人丢过一个20仙的羞辱感，还是感觉心在绞痛。

最近在推销餐券时，被一些校友在电话中冷冷地回拒后，那种羞辱感又再度回来。

面对近乎断粮的华小，身为华小毕业生的一群，就算一点点的乐捐也不愿意，他们于心何忍啊？

制度不健全，真的害人。

Kenya: chaos and responsibility

Michael Holman 3 - 01 - 2008

The post-election turbulence should provoke hard questions among Kenya’s western patrons, says Michael Holman.

Kenya's much-vaunted presidential election on 27 December 2007 has turned from what could have been a trailblazing exercise in democracy into a catastrophe. A flawed count has been followed by escalating violence that may have taken as many as 300 lives. The crisis has repercussions that go well beyond Kenya’s borders - and raises some tough questions for the country’s foreign-aid donors (see “The crisis in Kenya leaves a guilty stain on the west”, Financial Times, 2 January 2008).

Until this disputed election and its aftermath, the former British colony had been able to avoid the miserable record of debt, disease and man-made disaster that has scarred much of post-independence Africa.

For the outside world, Kenya is the acceptable face of Africa: a safe destination for a million tourists a year from Europe, Asia and north America to the country of surf and safari; a reliable base, in a tough neighbourhood, for a burgeoning aid industry; regional headquarters for the United Nations; and a country whose military pacts with the UN and Britain have made it a key ally in the “war on terror”.

Now, Kenya is in the grip of a crisis which the “international community” is belatedly attempting to resolve. The events since the election have dealt a severe blow to the belief of foreign investors that the continent has turned the corner, and is on the path to economic recovery.

Democracy’s handicap

The poll should have marked a rare event in Africa - the peaceful removal of an incumbent civilian president through the ballot-box. Instead voters' anger at the claim of Mwai Kibaki that he won a second term - which was made possible almost certainly by electoral rigging - turned to looting across the country, particularly in the western heartlands of Kibaki's chief rival (and former ally) Raila Odinga.

It is a nightmare dominated by the spectres that have corroded or destroyed so many of the continent's states: tribalism, corruption and incompetent management. These have created a generation of Africans let down by its leaders and left without hope. Is this now to be Kenya's fate?

When Mwai Kibaki swept into power in 2002, he was regarded not primarily as a member of Kenya's largest tribe, the Kikuyu; but as a reformer at the head of a coalition which promised clean government and a break from the practices of his predecessor, Daniel arap Moi.

Barely a year later, the man appointed by Kibaki to lead the campaign against graft - John Githongo, himself a Kikuyu - went into self-imposed exile in London. The president and his cabinet, far from tackling sleaze, allegedly initiated a further series of scams. Over the next three years, the coalition fell out and fell apart. Raila Odinga, a member of Kenya's third largest tribe, the Luo - broke away to pursue his long held presidential ambition.

But to see the crisis only in terms of tribe and corruption is to miss a vital element in the Kenyan picture.

Today, over forty-three years after independence in 1963, nearly 55% of Kenyans are subsisting on a couple of dollars a day. Annual GDP growth under Kibaki may have reached 6%, but the gap between the haves and have-nots has widened. The number of unemployed and of landless is increasing. For these people, there is nothing to lose by taking to the streets, driven by frustration and fury that transcends their tribe.

For Kenya's western allies, a crisis confronts them: Kenya has been treated like Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) during the cold war - allowed to get away with its abuse of good governance, because of its perceived role in the "war on terror" (see Paul Rogers, "The United States and Africa: eyes on the prize", 15 March 2007). The cynical attitude that has dominated the first years of this century - if you're not for us, you are against us - has had ramifications beyond the geopolitical and military fields: if you are for us, you also get special treatment from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which also lean over backwards to accommodate an ally's needs.

The west's hard questions

The election of 27 December 2007 and its messy, bloody fallout suggests that Kenya may have embarked on a process which could well see it become "just another African country".

But this is only half the story.

When a catastrophe like Kenya occurs, the question is almost immediately posed in Europe: what can "we" do to put the affected country to rights? Even to ask this question is revealing, for it assumes that there is - or should be - something that Europeans should or can be doing. In fact, there is very little apart from applying rhetorical pressure that we can do; but even such pressure will be meaningless in the longer term unless it is accompanied by critical self-questioning among Kenya's foreign donors.

There are at least six such questions that the turmoil in Kenya should prompt:

* why was so little done by the donors when John Githongo exposed corruption at the highest levels of government?

* why did the World Bank and the IMF continue to do business with a corrupt regime?

* why was the United Kingdom's leading aid agency, the department for international development (Dfid), not challenged when it claimed that the British government's development assistance - which increased to $50 million in 2005-06 - could be effective in a corrupt environment?

* why has the overall aid record to Kenya ($16 billion in official aid alone) been so poor in terms of its results?

* should there be a clearer linkage between aid and good governance, and what should the conditions look like?

* is the relationship between Britain and Kenya any healthier than the relationship between the United States and Zaire in the era of the corrupt dictator Mobutu Sese-Soko?

As Kenya's tragedy unfolds, those in the wider world who claim to be seeking solutions must examine the decisions that have helped lead the country to this point.

Save a McDonald's set burger, you can save a family.

Dear friends,

My good friend Atieno from Kenya called for help recently, you may have known that Kenya is in chaos now, people are facing humanitarian crisis.

She told me that Five (5) US dollars(or RM 16 or 2.5 pounds) is enough to buy flour for a family of four for a week.

Although I never been to Kenya, I still feel how sad it is when my friend told me about her sadness, it was a peaceful country, but now, because of what? people have to pay their life.

We all cannot be there at the moment, but this is how I think me and you can do at least ,
save a McDonald's set burger, you can save a family.

Here is the detail of how you can help people who is suffering :
http://odhiambombai.blogspot.com/search/label/home


--

《光明日报》太过份了！GuangMing Daily has gone too far!

在蔡细历性爱光碟中，片中的女主角可说是无辜的受伤者。我们可以质疑这名女主角与蔡细历是不是有公事上的纠葛？蔡细历与她交往时，有没有假公济私？但倘若她仅仅是蔡细历的“女性朋友”，她的身材、样貌、声音、职业，这与公众利益有什么关系，如果与我、与你、与大家都无关，这样的揣测难道不是对她进行二度伤害？

身为女性在毫不知情的情况下，衣不蔽体地出现在全世界人面前，影星被偷拍尚且会难过，更何况是一名与名人的性爱过程被摄下的女性？媒体一定要如此对待女性吗？会不会欺人太甚？

将心比心，若片中女主角是《光明日报》总编辑的女性亲属或女性朋友，她会做何感想？

就算是婚姻的第三者，一定是第三者有错吗？一定要把她的身份公诸于世吗？

什么时候，我国的媒体工作者才会懂得要保护已经受伤的女性？
如果为了刺激报份，连基本的媒体道德都可以不顾，那干脆称之为“霉体”吧！