Detox for the soul of a chicken soup nation

Technorati tags: Human Rights, World Human Rights Day, Malaysia, Arrested Lawyers

CMYK can be a bitch sometimes. Especially when the color ratios aren't done right, and your image comes out.... well, like this - from page 37 of The Sun today.

What Walski sees as a sneaky but subtle rebuff...
(click image to download original page 37)

Well, if that's what detox does to you - making you a paler shade of the Incredible Hulk - Walski prefers to keep his body naturally contaminated, thank you very much.

Or is there some subtlety at work here? Sneakily subtle. Or simply CMYK gone green... who knows. But assuming the sneakiest case scenario, and being that the press is pretty much muzzled from telling it like it is - even The Sun, as bold as they can be sometimes - perhaps there's a certain amount of resentment when we're told by our dear 'ol PM that no one is above the law.

What the headlines were probably forced to report...

Particularly when a certain someone close to him behaved in nowhere near as dignified a manner compared to the lawyers and human rights activists that were nabbed yesterday, but got away with no punishment, no rebuke, no chemically laced water cannons and tear gas...

Remember this ugly display?
(lawyers charged in court, and more revolting stuff, in the full post)

Image "borrowed" from Rocky's Bru, reporting on the same headlines

Ironically, yesterdays arrests were indirectly in conjunction with today being World Human Right's Day. Even more ironic is that the theme this time around is "Dignity and Justice for all of us" (and not just for some). Even more ironic than that is the fact that Malaysia sits on the UN Human Rights Council - now, how that could've happened is anybody's guess - not exactly behaving like a role model, are we?

Meanwhile, the nine persons arrested yesterday, were charged in court earlier today (via Malaysiakini).

clipped from www5.malaysiakini.com

Human rights festival: 9 charged

Eight people, including five lawyers, were charged today with participating al assembly yesterday. They also faced a further charge of disobeying the police order to disperse.

To add to this, another lawyer, Edmund Bon, was charged with obstructing Kuala Lumpur City Hall officers from performing their duty.

All nine of those charged claimed trial at the Kuala Lumpur Sessions Court. Prosecution is personally led by attorney-general Abdul Gani Patail - the government's highest ranking legal officer - who is objecting bail for all charged today.

Abdul Gani, on his submission as to why Bon should not be granted bail, said that the lawyer’s act of defiance would “create the perception that it is okay to defy the authorities”.

“This will create disorder and threat to the national security,” he submitted.

However Sessions Judge Komathy Suppiah rejected Abdul Gani's arguments and allowed bail for all the accused persons.

Walski doesn't know about you, but he surely finds it extremely mind-boggling that disobeying DBKL is tantamount to threatening national security. Just remember this little nugget of insanity the next time you even think about tearing up that City Hall summons.

First it was the IGP (playing political favorites, per buddy Ktemoc's assessment), then the Elections Commission head honcho (who pretty much confirmed who the EC, or at least he, really works for - via Malaysiakini), and now the Attorney General. Aren't Civil Servants supposed to be non-partisan? Or does that only happen in more civilized places, where a ruling party only has representatives in the Executive, and not actually becomes the government outright. Yeah, yeah... Walski knows that this is Malaysia were talking about, after all.

What's scarier still is the prognostication (or spin, as some choose to call it) that Raja Petra Kamaruddin has made, that taking all things into consideration, the scene is being set up for another back-door political power consolidation. If you haven't read it yet, and were disappointed at the lame movie offerings Astro had for Halloween, hop on over to Malaysia-Today, and give yourself a nice scare.

Talk about a nation needing serious a detox, huh? To parapharase what Jack Nicholson's Joker character in the 1989 film Batman said,

"This town country needs an enema..."

Speaking of which, have you registered to vote?

Walski's chicken soup detox footnote: The title of the post, is of course, a play on the popular Chicken Soup for the Soul series of motivational books (by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen). Don't ask why a "chicken soup nation" is, though.... perhaps a nation that's got a lot going for it on the surface, but lacks that certain X-factor to really become great? Maybe.

Oh, and also a big thank you to Unspun for introducing Walski to the nifty Clipmarks application, which you'll be seeing a lot more of here in the future....