Thursday, March 16, 2017

The politics of xenophobia (or the short happy life of a dog named Senget)...

This is the tale of an odd-looking little dog I rescued from the street early in 2010...

I saw this rat-like creature running on spindly legs after a motorbike. A few moments later it was chasing a 4-wheel drive in the opposite direction. It must have got separated from its siblings and mother, I thought. So I picked the critter up and took him out of harm's way, intending to investigate where he came from and return him to his family.

Prudence, one of the Magick River bitches, had just given birth to eight healthy pups - actually seven, as she slept on one of them overnight and the poor thing suffocated. The spindly-legged mutt was about the same size as Prudence's own pups even though his features looked more mature. Prudence herself had been rescued a year earlier from Kuala Kubu Bharu where I'd spotted her with a noose around her neck, being dragged along the road by a fireman. I stopped and asked why he was using a noose on a puppy and he explained that the dog was pissing inside the fire station, so he had to drag her as far away as possible before releasing her. The noose on a stick was improvised so he could handle the mutt without touching her.


Two of my dogs had recently been murdered by some drunken Orang Asli, so I decided to adopt this street urchin who looked like a Prudence to me. Roger was delighted to welcome her into the menagerie and treated her like a princess, constantly grooming her. Anyway, as it turned out, Roger didn't get to deflower Prudence. Mary's macho dog Baggins got in first.

And now, Prudence had her full quota of eight pups again. After rejecting the newcomer initially, she relented and allowed him to join the other pups whenever they suckled. A few days later the foundling appeared sufficiently well-fed, so I took him over to a neighbor's house where a few spindly-legged pups had been spotted. It was obvious that the runaway had been part of that litter. However, the neighbor vehemently denied that the pup belonged to her. Looking at the four other pups under her house, it was impossible not to conclude they were from the same mother. Yet, this woman was telling me an outright lie without flinching.

Sad to say, there are lots of people who tell lies as a matter of course. It's a survival mechanism young children acquire to avoid punishment or deflect responsibility. Those who become compulsive liars often believe their own lies, once the tendency becomes ingrained in the chromosomes. Hence we have to deal with entire communities of congenital liars who assume everybody else also lies, and that's it's perfectly okay to lie. When their own tribal chiefs are in the habit of lying their way out of tight spots, honesty becomes an extremely rare commodity. But I digress.

After asking around and getting no satisfactory leads, it became obvious that we were stuck with the little foundling. He adapted fast to his new reality and soon charmed his way into Mary's heart and onto her veranda and furniture. She named him Senget ("slanting" in Malay) because he had a habit of looking at people with one ear up and the other down.


While Senget was happily romping with the other pups, the Jabatan Hal Ehwal Orang Asli (now renamed Jabatan Kemajuan Orang Asli or JAKOA, in line with Barisan Nasional's policy of sneakily acquiring control of all Orang Asli Reserve Lands) was working overtime doing what they do best...

In April 2010 JAKOA had been busy campaigning on behalf of the Barisan Nasional (anyone who feels government agencies should be politically neutral might wish to consider migrating - unless we succeed in forcibly removing these deadbeats from the catbird seat they've occupied for 60 years through an electoral force majeure). They had arranged for Umno members and pro-Umno NGOs to encamp themselves for nearly a whole week in Pertak Village just prior to the 25 April by-election.

During the campaign period JAKOA was acutely irked by the fact that a couple of houses at the far end of the village were proudly displaying Pakatan Rakyat insignia.

Traditionally, all Orang Asli communities could be counted upon to vote Barisan Nasional - they really were given no choice, since JAKOA officials physically escort them to their voting booths - and pay them a cash incentive in two instalments - one before casting their ballot, another afterwards, provided they voted "correctly."

The Batin or Headman of Pertak Village was incensed that this time around the Barisan Nasional had totally bypassed him and handed at least RM7,000 to one of the junior village officials under the JAKOA's tutelage. The money was supposed to be distributed amongst 70 registered voters to reward their voting for the political status quo. There could have been an extra RM1,000 to buy his personal loyalty and support. However, the guy decided to keep mum and pocket all the cash - and that's what infuriated the Headman, not the fact that serious corruption was involved. RM100 can buy quite a few bottles of unbranded whiskey.

Barisan Nasional won this by-election (by hook and by crook) and that's when JAKOA began plotting to pull out as many thorns from its side as possible. They filed a report to Selangor JAKOA complaining that "outsiders" were influencing the Orang Asli against the government. Some of these "outsiders" had actually embedded themselves within Pertak Village by renting a few empty houses from Orang Asli families.

I got wind of this (and a rather stinky wind it was too) when a Special Branch officer called me, politely inviting me to have a friendly chat with him and his colleagues. From this I learnt that JAKOA had been unhappy about the presence of large numbers of "outsiders" in what they continue to view as their fiefdom. Apart from the anti-BN campaigners during the by-election, they also disapproved of the constant stream of "Mat Sallehs" arriving and departing from Magick River.


JAKOA were referring specifically to the Love Bus, who represent all the positive human qualities they themselves desperately lack. The Love Bus phenomenon is, in effect, part of the manifestation of Heaven on Earth - and this really scares all those who have been programmed to serve as mindless agents of Hell on Earth (any reality where you can get thrown in jail for 20 years for eating pussy, sucking dick, or lubricating your butthole- and risk getting caned for knocking back a couple of beers or getting clobbered to death in police custody for being dark-skinned - is undoubtedly Hell on Earth).

That's right. It's really all about marking one's territory and protecting one's own culture from deleterious western influences, isn't it? Every redneck rabble-rouser knows how to scare his rustic audiences into fearing the pendatang (immigrant) bogeyman. What JAKOA has been systematically doing over the last 60 and specifically over the last 30 years is to encourage the new generation of Orang Asli to think and feel and react like pathologically insecure and aggressively territorial Umno Malays.

The embracing Islam bit is difficult to pull off as no Orang Asli will ever give up eating the flesh of recently killed wild boar. Nor are the menfolk likely to become teetotalers. Indeed, alcoholism has taken a turn for the worse since one of the villagers began selling cheap plonk at RM3 a bottle. In the old days, they had to go all the way to town (8 miles away) to replenish their supply. Now they can score another round of brain-pickling brew just by staggering a few yards up the road.

This is the generation of Orang Asli that grew up being entertained by TV3 and RTM instead of listening in rapture to grandmother and grandfather's stories. All the young ones now own cellphones and motorbikes; a few drive secondhand Proton Wiras, Nissans, and even Pajeros (if they happen to have worked in JAKOA and acquired the art of pocketing commissions from loggers and developers).

Long story short, JAKOA instigated a small cabal of Orang Asli in their mid-30s into putting pressure on my brother-in-law Ali to terminate the rental agreement that had existed since 2003 with friends from KL who appreciated access to an idyllic weekend retreat. They also browbeat another family into not accepting rent from a Canadian musician who had been using one of the houses as a Southeast Asian base for a couple of years. The families were informed that these houses belonged to the government - and the Orang Asli required clearance from JAKOA if they wished to sublease their homes to anybody. Complete crap, of course, since the Orang Asli have been issued 99-year leases on their homes and they are at liberty to sublease any houses they don't actually occupy.

Anoora Chapek with Colette Paterson, who was part of the Love Bus
The upshot of this sudden surge of xenophobia and unfriendliness towards orang asing (literally, "aliens") was that the house next to mine was handed over by the JAKOA to Wati - a single mother who reportedly converted to Islam a few years ago. I've known this woman since she was 13 years old and she has always been friendly and sweet-natured. However, she met an Orang Asli guy named Man from a different village about a year ago and he moved in with her. They now have several kids and two houses in the same village. I didn't know Man was a Muslim convert till I saw his wife and even their young daughters wearing hijabs.

Within hours of becoming our neighbors, Man began to cause ill feeling. Every time any of our dogs barked at him, he would confront them with maximum aggression rather than attempt to befriend them. Orang Asli are used to dogs. They have kept dogs for thousands of years. Surely they know that dogs react to body language. If they show no fear and send out friendly vibes, the mutts will immediately regard them as persona grata. Whipping out a can of insect spray and blasting the vile poison in the dogs' faces is certainly no way to establish good relations with one's new neighbors.

One morning I heard a loud yelping and as I went out to investigate I saw Senget running away with an intensely traumatized look on his face. Man was holding a catapult, his face contorted by unmitigated hate.

"Why did you shoot the dog?" I asked and he gestured towards a small tree he had just planted in the front garden. "The dog was disturbing the plant," he muttered. Well, there was no plant in that spot the day before, so how would any of the dogs know to avoid running into the tiny tree? He could have put a low fence around the seedling to protect it, which is what anyone with a functional brain would do. I shook my head in utter disbelief that this guy could be so dumb. It seemed as if he was going out of his way to be a hostile neighbor. This had never happened in the village in all the years I had lived here.

A few hours later my wife announced that Senget had died. I found him rigid beneath a clump of banana trees. His tiny body was already in an advanced state of rigor mortis. We found no visible wounds on his body, so Man must have aimed for his head and released the stone from his catapult with such unrestrained violence the dog suffered brain hemorrhage and collapsed. Senget was buried just before dusk. I felt angry and sad that he had been so cruelly punished for doing what any young dog would do. We discussed the possibility that Senget might have been a nature spirit in a dog's body. When Mary saw Man walk past the next day, she asked if he knew he had killed our dog, and he just turned his head away without answering. He has avoided looking us in the eye since. His wife informed me she had scolded him for being such an unthinking hothead.

Not much good that did. In the following weeks Man persisted in antagonizing my mutts by coming home tipsy late at night; waking me up with his bushcutter on a Sunday morning, and conspicuously leaving a tiny clump of grass uncut just because it was growing a couple of feet on our side of the garden; and, saddest of all, advertising his poor choice of role models by sporting a Barisan Nasional T-shirt. [As fate would have it, our Neighbor from Hell was forced to move out less than a year later - after he attempted to rape my wife's 11-year-old niece.]

All this negative energy that has been injected into what used to be a fairly contented and peaceful village can be felt throughout the entire country. The insidious pall of dark energy became a tangible sense of evil in early 2009, when an innocent 20-year-old named A. Kugan was pummeled to death in police custody and the entire government went into overdrive to cover up the atrocity. Nothing has been resolved.

Within weeks a popularly elected state government in Perak was toppled by utterly devious means (with royal connivance); and on April 3rd, a pink-lipped crime minister and his ruthlessly ambitious wife were foisted upon us by 191 Umno division chiefs (again with royal acquiescence). Three months after that, a 30-year-old political secretary named Teoh Beng Hock was found dead outside the Selangor headquarters of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission after a totally unjustifiable late-night interrogation over a RM2,400 accounting discrepancy. Nearly eight years later, nothing has been resolved either. The MACC officers who "interrogated" Beng Hock to death weren't even sacked. Indeed, their leader was transferred to another state and promoted!

Indeed, if you consider the unfortunate turn of events that have befallen this country since 20 October 2006, you're likely to conclude that the ghost of a brutally murdered Mongolian woman will not rest until she sees justice done - and that won't happen till all the thieves and murderers are removed from public office- and all the bigots too.

Thanks for the fond memories, dear Senget.

[First published in September 2010, reposted 4 August 2013]

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Sunday, March 12, 2017

FINAL CALL (from my ascended friend Michael Dean)...

[Received this collection of cheerful quotes from my dear friend Michael Dean, an actor, author and magus residing in London, who returned to the stars at dawn on 25 August 2016...]

Take-off is now only moments away. The homeward journey we have all been waiting for, praying for, is about to begin. As the following quotes will confirm, this is the best news the human race has ever received. Please share it with everyone who you think will be glad to hear it. ~ Michael Dean

“Every year Earth and Heaven draw closer together, in preparation for the great coming fusion...”
Vera Stanley Alder
The Initiation of the World
[Rider, 1939]

"Please understand that for various reasons, Earth was set aside for the special task of being the purifier for a time - like a kidney in the body of the solar system, so to speak, removing impurities and returning to the body of the whole only what is harmonious and integrated. In this fashion your planet has performed a tremendous service to all lifestreams and all planetary systems within the solar family, enabling them to continue their patterns of development with greater ease.

"No planet or being is asked to perform such a sacrificial task endlessly, nor is it allowed to do so. The time must come when it resumes its own pattern of growth, new service and development.


"We who have associated with Earth since her inception now look upon this time as one of beauty without measure, joy without comparison. A vast work of purification is upon us to cleanse and beautify Earth as one would beautify and enrobe a bride before her marriage. We recognize that you are still in the outworking of this great event - while to us it is already accomplished."
David Spangler
Links With Space
[Findhorn Press, 1977]




"As the door leading to the future swings open, you are sensing that the game is up, that your obsession with matter is an illusion, and that you are about to undergo a head-on collision with ultimate reality.

“When the breakthrough comes - and it is only moments away, on the hands of the cosmic clock - all the man-made laws and mechanisms that have held you in their thrall for so many centuries - the politics of confrontation, secrecy, espionage, dogma, suspicion, the military machine, social hierarchies and the like - will no longer apply, because that breakthrough, by its very nature, will reveal such systems to be irrelevant.

“It will finally be proved that you belong to the planet, and not the planet to you; that the human race is a single organism; that all energies, terrestrial and cosmic alike, are free, having been placed at your disposal for a purpose - and can no longer be hoarded, withheld, and charged at so much per unit!

“When you wake from your long and troubled sleep, you will see that there is a Plan for humankind. These discoveries will trigger an explosion of creativity such as the world has never seen. Technology will never be the same again.

“When the door is fully open, it will be as if a vast treasure-chest has been flung open and all its wonders are being poured over your heads.

“Never forget, these treasure are not external, bestowed on you from on high, but aspects of yourselves, released at last from the wellsprings of your being.

“This great moment will signal the beginning of yet another chapter in the drama. You will rediscover your real identity, your inner powers, and the purpose of your tenancy of this lovely world:

“You will discover what the atom really is. You will learn who you really are. You will harness Light, and you will decipher the secrets of sound. You will diagnose and heal as if by magic. You will light and heat and power your lives, virtually without cost. You will communicate not only with each other, but with beings from other worlds, other dimensions. You will release the Creator in yourselves. ‘Ordinary’ people, will daily perform what you now call ‘miracles.’

“All this will unleash a tidal wave of joy, relief and goodwill that will sweep away much of your pain, your suffering and your guilt. And when that happens, listen hard, my friends - and you will hear the whole Creation singing:“‘Halleluiah! They are coming home!’”
Merlin
1977

A great miracle is coming for planet Earth, and the time is now. A new consciousness will be created by the children of the Sun as they ascend with the Earth to a new place among the stars. A new harmonic of light and sound, a golden octave, is being heard on Earth, ringing in the frequencies of ecstasy, union and unconditional love.

Child of the Sun, why did you come to Earth? You came to Earth with a purpose, a plan, a master blueprint encoded in your feelings. Open your world to the Great Mystery.

From now on, there are no more road maps, no more creeds, no more philosophies. From here on, your inspiration comes straight from the Universe, moment by moment. This is the path of innocence, the path of trust. Here, each step is walked only once, and the Universe speaks in the voice of the present. By simply embodying love, you are living the new myth that will create the wave home.

The Mayan Oracle: Return Path to the Stars
Ariel Spillsbury& Michael Bryner
[Bear & Co, 1992]



“We know that this mission is not easy. We also know that many tears have been shed in the awesome process of its unfoldment. Be consoled in the knowing that all tears are soon to be wiped from your eyes and all your pain dismissed and forgotten. The glory and joy of what is about to transpire will render all you have endured a minor expense, a price you would be more than willing to pay again.

“Your task is almost over. This carbon-based planet will shortly burst into a diamond, a gem in the crown of this solar system’s skies. The celebration will then begin. This is Mission Control. Over and out.”

E.T. 101 The Cosmic Instruction Manual
Mission Control with
Diana Luppi
1990


“In this quarter century, your dream produces its harvest. The bridge between Creator and Creation appears. . .”
Ken Carey
Starseed: The Third Millennium
[Harper San Francisco, 1991]



“Before long, all the threads will converge like countless filaments of light, and when they do, the flashpoint will trigger everything that we carry within our hearts and minds and memories.

“Fight on, give heart to your fellow soldiers, and remember that the night before the battle is and ever was the coldest, longest, most desolate of nights.

“We and our companions have all tasted despair, endured delay, borne injustice, perfidy, betrayal. Now rejoice that we are soon to savor the long-awaited banquet of accomplishment, the wine of victory.”

Archangel Michael
Regent’s Park, London
1995



“Traveling on the new road is like being in the eye of the storm: you can feel the vast changes swirling and churning around you, yet you remain in a state of timelessness and serenity.

“Although we each contain the hologram of the new map within our cellular memory-banks, none of us has yet been given total access to it - most likely because of its unimaginable vastness.

“The process is irreversible. We can wait for countless aeons, or we can do it now. And right now, the Doorway stands open. The pathway is clearly before us. The old road draws to an end. Why wait any longer?!

“The Great Work has just begun. This is what we came here to do, so long, long ago...”
Solara
Starborne: A Remembrance for the Awakened Ones
[Starborne Unlimited, 1989]


“You know, I feel the whole of humankind is poised for a mass awakening...”
Antares
Magick River
21 August 2001



“The pendulum that has been swinging for aeons away from the vertical will pause for a fraction of a second before beginning its counter-swing.To put it another way: having sunk deeper and deeper into matter - so deep that we have all but forgotten who we really are, where we came from and what we are supposed to be doing here - we’re about to hit the bottom of the U and sheer momentum is going to set us rocketing away on our inevitable return path - upward. Our long climb back towards the Light is about to begin.”

The Project
[HeartWorks, 2010]

“The planetary awakening will occur in but a single moment. It is the event that is central to all of human history. More energy will be released in a very few moments than is typically released upon the surface of the Earth in many years.
Ken Carey
Starseed: The Third Millennium
[Harper San Francisco, 1991]


The heightening of energies is allowing you to take an enormous step in evolution, because you will be comparable to and like the angels. Imagine for a moment the difference between what you are now and what early man, the cave man was. We do not exaggerate when we tell you that it is an even greater step you are now coming to. This will enable you to soar to greater heights on all levels of existence. You are nearly there.

Julie Soskin
The Wind of Change
[Barton House, 1991]




"May Light explode all round the Earth, like the biggest fireworks display of all time, filling the hearts and minds of everyone alive. “May a moment of indescribable joy and love and revelation hit the Earth like an asteroid - now! And if not now - soon! May the nightmare end, and may the party begin... There, I’ve said it. Happy?!”
Diana
Heaven calling Earth: Dialogues with Diana
[2011]


See you in the departure lounge!

Michael Dean

[First posted 2 January 2011]