Pekong di Dada dan Kuman di Seberang

According to Barack Obama :

Malaysia must ensure non-Muslims in the country also have equal opportunities as its Muslim majority if the Southeast Asian nation  wanted to continue prospering.....

Malaysia won't succeed if the non-Muslims do not have the same opportunity.

(see Jennifer Gomez, The Malaysian Insider April 27th, 2014)

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/malaysia-cannot-succeed-unless-equal-opportunity-given-to-non-muslims-says

Let's look at who has the most opportunity for attaining prosperity.

Mean Monthly Gross Household Income by Ethnicity, Strata and State, 1970-2012.
Note that the richest states in the Peninsula - Penang and Selangor 'belong' to the Opposition.

To summarize the above which is not too legible, for which I apologize:

                          1970                  2012    
(RM/month)                 

Bumiputera          172                    4457

Chinese                394                   6366

Indians                 304                   5233

Others                  813                   3843

------------------------------------------

Average for

Malaysia               264                   5000

On another aspect of   "equal opportunities"  let's compare the poverty index of  the world's most powerful and richest country with that of Malaysia.  According to the World  Bank, Malaysia's  Poverty Rate was 3.8% in 2009 and 1.7% in 2012.  The United States of America, with a US$17 trillion economy, had a poverty rate of 15% in 2012.  Since it has been suggested to the President that the minorities in Malaysia are treated unfairly  and he had to advise us that that would impair our future prosperity, how did USA manage to "prosper" when the Poverty Rate (2012)  of the Blacks measure 35%, the Hispanics 33% and the Whites just 13% ?

Our human rights brigade, granted a precious audience with the President,  had the privilege of spilling out their angst about life in Malaysia , something which the poor in USA surely wish they could do too - people like .....

Homeless in Washington -

One out of every 5 children in the US is now living in poverty ( Source: US Census).  This child may have the same colour as the President but he doesn't have the privilege of growing up in a white middle class family.   This child, unlike the President, comes from a a line of slaves and whose forefathers knew only discrimination and abuse in a Judaeo-Christian culture.  Could he have been elected as a president like Barack Obama?

Usually, when I come across a feature on life in the USA, I notice one group has been carefully omitted.  These are the people you see in Hollywood movies killing and massacring the pioneer whites.  These'pioneers',  like all immigrants are always positively represented as hardworking, enterprising and hence deservedly successful.

Those left out are the Native Americans.  From The Guardian 22 April 2012 :  The UN is to conduct an investigation into the plight of US Native Americans, the first such mission in its history. 

  Photograph: Jennifer Brown/Corbis.   Taken from the Guardian.

Many of the country's estimated 2.7 million Native Americans  live in federally recognised  tribal areas which are plagued with unemployment, alcoholism, high suicide rates, incest and other social problems.

......... some US conservatives likely to object to international interference in domestic matters.

Now , doesn't that sound familiar?  To quote the MI :   "Obama said non-Muslims in Malaysia are currently facing hostility, and some have felt oppressed.  There shouldn't be reason to discriminate, and you have to make sure that you are speaking out against this in daily life.

Do read this: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2012/12/201212644149886282.html


It all started with the Pilgrim Fathers - escaping the prejudices of their motherland in Europe - immigrants starting a new life and all the blah, blah blahs about their toil and their sacrifice and of course their Thanksgiving Day.  Initially, they were welcomed by the Native Indians.  But the new arrivals had this caveat - one the Christians practised where ever they left their footprint.

Taken from Punch Diary 1973

Now that most people in Malaysia have watched the blockbuster movie Captain America why not give this movie "Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee" a try?  It's not breathtakingly exciting, -  full of thrills and spills - but it might make you cry.

 Here's a little background from YouTube.

Finally the MI wrote:  Obama  said that almost every religion teaches the basic principle of "do unto others as you want others to do unto you"  

Well, 'Muslim Malaysia's' track record here is not too bad.    Christians are hardly sidelined.    Read the following scans (courtesy of Iain Buchanan).

What more can Malaysia do?  Who is being  "discriminated against and sidelined" ?

I wonder?  Did anyone at the  "700-strong crowd of youths  and civil society representatives"  ask President Obama about his election promise to close down Guantanamo Bay prison?  Also, as he specifically asked "the new generation to stand in other 'people's shoes and look at things through their eyes'  ", did these civil society representatives ask the President  if he could imagine himself as one of the 11 people in Yemen who were killed by an American drone attack in December 2013 as they were returning from a wedding?
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Mind you, this was not the first or the last murder-by-drone under the President's watch.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, - though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, - the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!   (Laurence Sterne 1713-1768)