Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
From Malaysiakini by Dean Jones While BN basks in the good news that it has ‘won’ the 13th general
election, I’m delighted to see how much bad news this crooked, lying
regime has to face in its moment of ‘triumph’. In other words,
though my hopes have been dashed that some kind of miracle might occur
to rid Malaysia of this chronic curse this time around, I’m absolutely
elated at the fact that it was such a pyrrhic victory for Najib Abdul
Razak and his gang of nasties. Survival with seven fewer federal seats than Abdullah Ahmad Badawi (left)
achieved in 2008 is absolutely pathetic considering the fraudulence of
the electoral system, the countless billions thrown around in
pork-barreling and bribery, and the combined might of the mendacious
mainstream media. And way beyond pathetic is Najib’s immediate
blaming of the Chinese Malaysian community for his failure to steal back
the two-thirds majority he and his accomplices so desperately craved.
In
achieving over 50 percent of the vote, Pakatan Rakyat clearly attracted
a great deal of support from Malaysians of every race and creed,
especially in most of the relatively enlightened and prosperous urban
centres. Paradoxically, it was the very people who BN has
systematically contrived to keep poor, ignorant and thus grateful for
peanuts in handouts who voted them back into office. That portion
of the population still innocent or ignorant enough to believe that
selling their votes for cash is some kind of entrepreneurial coup, and
that the pack of lies they’re fed by BN’s ‘mainstream’ media could
possibly be true. While,
no thanks to BN but rather over its dead body, urban Malaysians now
have access to genuine news online, it is an absolute disgrace to the
regime’s claims of progress that there are millions of Malaysians to
whom the Net is still just the thing you sleep under to keep the nyamuk from biting you in the night. No
wonder such deliberately-disadvantaged people neither know nor care
that for decades they’ve been fed false promises and pacified with
chicken-feed while BN has systematically looted the nation’s treasury
and resources and destroyed its civil institutions.
What’s great
news for the rest of us, however, and very bad news for BN, is that
urban Malaysians are abandoning the regime in overwhelming numbers,. Thus
rendering Najib’s ‘victory’ as hollow possible by depriving him of the
prizes he so dearly, indeed desperately wanted. Selangor, for a start,
where BN has been even more comprehensively slaughtered this time than
back in 2008, and Penang where the regime has suffered a similar fate.
Well deserved wipeouts
Then
there are all the triumphs that Pakatan scored on an individual level.
It was fantastic to see Nurul Izzah Anwar prevail despite the regime’s
throwing everything at her; to see Lim Kit Siang not only win but
achieve a landslide in a seat in Johor; and to witness the well deserved
wipeouts of the Malacca chief minister Mohd Ali Rustam and the
candidates fielded by Perkasa. And speaking of wipeouts, it was
an absolute joy to witness the eagerly anticipated near-annihilation of
Umno’s ever-compliant partners in the BN crime syndicate, the MCA, MIC
and Gerakan. While these parties have at least thus far been quite humble or at least fatalistic in defeat, Mohd Ali (left) has been loudly lamenting the ingratitude of the voters who deserted him in such droves.
According to BN ‘news’ agency Bernama,
he “lamented” that “voters, especially the Chinese, did not appreciate
all the services and efforts undertaken by the BN government in
developing the state and safeguarding the welfare of the rakyat”. What
Mohd Ali failed to mention, of course, was the possibility that the
voters, both Chinese and otherwise, had doubtlessly recalled how little
they appreciated the arrogant contempt he demonstrated for their welfare
on the occasion of his elder son’s marriage some months ago.
As
you’ll recall, and as the voters of Malacca surely did, Mohd Ali invited
so many guests that he claimed it was a Malaysian if not world record
for a wedding crowd, and had the bills for the entire affair sent to the
state government. Another sore loser for whom it is hard to feel a shred of sympathy is Johor BN chairperson Abdul Ghani Othman (right). Smarting
from his crushing 14,762-vote defeat in Gelang Patah parliamentary seat
by Lim, he blamed people who had “cast their votes based on their
emotions”.
How the voters are expected to remain unemotional in
the face of one massive BN scandal after another, he didn’t attempt to
explain. But whatever, emotions are still running very high indeed among
Pakatan members and supporters at the outrageous illegalities committed
by the regime before and during the general election, and blithely
condoned by the crooked Election Commission. Blatant
gerrymandering has delivered BN about 60 percent of parliamentary seats
with less than 50 percent of the popular vote. And even this minority of
votes for BN was achieved with a blend of alleged bribery, fraud and
rigging of the electoral rolls and postal votes.
What Malaysians
can or will do about being thus robbed of the change of government they
so clearly craved is anybody’s guess. Challenge the result in the
BN-biased courts? Stage Bersih-style public rallies in support of
demands for a re-run, in defiance of the BN-biased police? Meanwhile,
we all wait to hear the possible ultimate bad news for Najib, if not BN
in general, from the eternal and ever-malicious PM-behind-the-scenes Dr
Mahathir Mohamad (left). As gratified as he surely must
be by the success of son Mukhriz in the general election, and as
relieved to be spared facing justice at the hands of a Pakatan
government, he’s likely to be very unimpressed indeed by Najib’s abject
failure to win back BN’s cherished two-thirds majority.
So BN and
its supporters had better enjoy the good news while it lasts, because
they have so much bad news coming to them, from both inside and outside
their ranks, that they’ll wonder why they ever bothered engineering this
fake ‘win’ - and may even come to regret it. DEAN JOHNS,
after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife
and daughter in Sydney, where he coaches and mentors writers and authors
and practises as a writing therapist. Published books of his columns
for Malaysiakini include ‘Mad about Malaysia', ‘Even Madder about Malaysia', ‘Missing Malaysia', ‘1Malaysia.con’ and ‘Malaysia Mania’.
