Ali Rustam turns Terminator

I am not an affirmative supporter of Hindraf's movement. But I'm empathetic towards the plight of a large segment of Indians who are poor and distress. They deserved to be heard and attended to. They had been neglected and uncared for.

Tho' Hindraf's recent act was wrong methodologically, however it did proved effective. From it, we now heard the PM says "he hears", he has big ears and is listening... I thought he was deaf all along; not only him, but his predecessors as well.

The saddest part is that the leaders of the country aren't those who takes note of those in need. Instead, they choose to portray their might and power which sought to oppress and suppress. UMNO vice-president Mohd Ali Rustam urged the Government to revoke the Citizenship of Hindrafs' members. He also wants them to be jailed. In fact he wanted the Internal Security Act to be used against Hindraf because "They (Hindraf) are going to send their memorandum to India, Britain and even the United Nations. These people are betraying their own country."

Reading his statement, I just wonder whether Pak Lah and his son-in-lawn would do what Ali Rustam suggested. I will watch... I don't think they dare, for, if they ever do, they would drive those into desperation. The Chinese had a proverb: "Don't drive your enemy to desperation such that they get pinned to the wall; with no choice and no alternative, they would bounce back hard and lethal." Then, we would see the rise of a new "Tamil Malaysian Tiger"... it isn't wise; and it isn't right. They are citizens of the nation. Their plights must be considered. Though they may have acted indiscreetly, but, two wrongs won't make one right. A good government is one that would act affirmatively and educate those who make mistakes or acted in a manner that is uncalled. It won't be fair to say that the demonstration was uncivil for it was a peaceful demonstration except for the teargas and chemical spraying which was "justified" by those who acted in the name of civilization and control.

When Tun Abdul Razak, then the Deputy Prime Minister, presented the Bill for the ISA in Parliament for its second reading, he said: "Let me make it quite clear that it is no pleasure for the Government to order the detention of any person. Nor will these powers be abused."

Subsequently when giving his reply on 22 June 1960 to the issue raised during the parliamentary debate on the 2nd reading of the ISA Bill, Tun Razak said: "We have, Sir, as has been said, to defend our independence and to defend democracy which we intend to establish. ...Sir, no one can predict the future, history alone can tell; but I am of the firm conviction that if we pass this Bill today our children and grand-children will be very thankful for our foresight,..."

Reading what Ali Rustam had said, and also those pleas from UMNO leaders urging the Prime Minister to use the ISA on demonstrators, I could not ever agree with Tun Razak that, today, those children and grand-children can be very thankful for his foresight, and of those who had voted for the Act of Oppression.

Today, after 50 years of Independence, after we had extinguished the communist insurgents and brought peace to the nation, we are again living in the age filled with apocalyptic images of national destruction. The spiritual and moral darkness of State absolutism is spreading at a quickened pace.

We have no reason to take this threat lightly, says Carl G. Jung. Everywhere in the West and the East too, there are subversive elements who, sheltered by humanitarianism and the sense of justice, hold the incendiary torches ready, with nothing to stop the spread of their ideas except the critical reason of a single, fairly intelligent, mental stable stratum of the population. One should not, however, overestimate the thickness of this stratum. A rather more pessimistic view would not be unjustified, since the gift of reason and critical reflection is not one of man’s outstanding peculiarities, and even if it exists it proves to be wavering and inconstant. This necessarily leads to doctrinaire and authoritarian tyranny if ever the constitutional state should succumb to a fit of weakness.

In Jung's view, rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the effective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason’s having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish-fantasies. The collective possession results would rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic. In this state all those elements which is asocial under the rule of reason come to the top.

Such individuals are by no mean rare curiosities to be met with only in prison or lunatic asylums. For every manifest case of insanity there are those cases which seldom get to the point of breaking out openly but whose views and behavior, for all the appearance of normality, are influenced by unconsciously morbid and perverse factors. But even if their numbers are relatively small percentage of the population which they represent, it is more than compensated for by the peculiar dangerousness of these people. Their mental state is ruled by affective judgments and wish-fantasies. In a state of “collective possession”, they are the adapted ones and consequently they feel quite at home in it. They know from their own experience the language of these conditions and they know how to handle them. Their chimerical ideas, up borne by fanatical resentment, appeal to the collective irrationality and find fruitful soil there, for they express all those motives and resentments which lurks in more normal people under the cloak of reason and insight. They are, therefore, despite their small number in comparison with the population as a whole, dangerous as sources of infection.

Over the last two decades, we can observed that citizens are increasingly deprived of the moral decision and capability as to how they should and could live his own life, and instead is ruled, and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the oligarchy. The oligarchy, in their turn, are just as much social units as the ruled and are distinguished only by the fact that they are specialized mouthpiece of the State doctrine. They are not personalities capable of judgment, but thoroughgoing specialists who are unusable outside the political arena.

The seemingly omnipotent, Fair and Just "State Doctrines" are for its part manipulated in the name of state policy by those occupying the highest positions in the government, where all the power is concentrated. Whoever, by election or caprice, gets into one of these positions is no longer subservient to authority, for he is the state policy itself and within the limits of the situation can proceed at his own discretion. However, they are more likely to be slaves of their own fiction.

As pointed out, the anointed oligarchy, besides, robbing the individual of his rights, has also cut the ground from under his feet psychically by depriving him of the metaphysical foundations of his existence. The ethical decision of the individual human being no longer counts – what alone matters is the blind movement of the masses and the lie thus become the operation principle of political action. The state has drawn the logical conclusion from this, as the existence of many millions who are deprived of their fundamental rights mutely testifies.

Both the oligarchy and the denominated religion lay quite particular emphasis on the idea of community. This is the basic ideal of “communalism” and it is thrust down the throats of the people so much that it has the exact opposite of the desired effect: it inspires divisiveness and mistrust.

As easily as seen, community is an indispensable aid in the organization of masses and is therefore a two-edged weapon. The value of a community depends on the spiritual and moral stature of those individuals composing it. For this reason one cannot expect from the community any effect that would outweigh the suggestive influence of the environment – that is, a real and fundamental change, whether for good or for bad. How superficial the effect of communal propaganda actually is can be seen from recent events. The communal ideal reckons without its host, overlooking the individual human being, who in the end will assert his claims.

There are always upright and truth-loving legislators to whom lying and tyranny are hateful, but one cannot judge whether they are able to exert any decisive influence on the oligarchy under the police regimes. Individuals' rights are now cut short by a collective prejudice and often curtailed in the most sensitive area. The most powerful organization have so far being able to maintain their position by the greatest ruthlessness of their leaders and the cheapest of slogans.

We have unfortunately not yet awakened to the fact that our appeal to reason and other desirable virtues are mere sound and fury. It is a puff of wind swept away in the storm of faith, however twisted this faith may appear to us. We are faced, not with a situation that can be overcome by rational or moral argument, but with an unleashing of emotional forces and ideas engendered by the spirit of the times, and these are not much influenced by rational reflection and still less by moral exhortation. We truly lack a uniform faith that could block the progress of a fanatical ideology which makes use of exactly the same spiritual assumptions, the same arguments and aims.

The horror which the dictator States have of late brought upon mankind is nothing less than the culmination of all those atrocities of which our ancestors made themselves guilty in the not so distant past.

The individual man knows that as an individual being he is more or less meaningless and feels himself the victim of uncontrollable forces.