Former Secretary of State James Baker gives eulogy at George H.W. Bush’s funeral in Houston

December 7, 2018

 

Book Review: The Sustainable State: The Future of Government, Economy and Society

December 3, 2018

By: Cyril Pereira

A Radically Realistic Climate Vision

by Barbara Unmüßig

 

Limiting global temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels is the only way to achieve social justice while protecting our environment from devastating climate change. And, contrary to prevailing wisdom, it’s not an impossible goal.

BERLIN – According to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s main scientific authority on global warming, keeping global temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels is a feasible goal. The IPCC’s stance represents a move in the direction of the kind of “radical realism” that many civil-society actors have long advocated.

The IPCC does not bet on geo-engineering proposals – for example, deep-ocean sequestration of massive amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide, or “dimming the sun” by spraying the atmosphere with aerosols – to combat global warming. These largely theoretical solutions could have untold consequences for people and ecosystems, worsening not only the climate crisis, but also the other social and ecological crises we face.

 

Instead, the IPCC focuses on how we can avoid crossing the 1.5°C threshold in the first place. We must, it asserts, decarbonize the global economy immediately to ensure that global CO₂ emissions decline by about 45% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050.

Achieving this will require not just transforming economic activity, but also confronting destructive power dynamics and social inequalities. “Radical Realism for Climate Justice,” a new anthology published by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, sets out strategies developed by international civil-society and social movements to bring about such change.

In line with the IPCC’s core message, we urgently need a politically managed decline in fossil-fuel production. This means putting a brake on oil, coal, and gas production and exploration. As the group Oil Change International notes, it does not mean abrupt or panicked action that could lead to a “sudden and dramatic shut-down of fossil fuel production, stranding assets, damaging economies, and harming workers and communities reliant on the energy sector.”

In building up the renewable-energy sector, we should avoid replicating systems that have driven inequality and entrenched damaging power dynamics in the fossil-fuel sector and other industries. This means replacing the market-based, investor-focused approach to energy production with one that treats energy as a public good, while engineering a shift toward social ownership and management of energy supplies.

Rooted in energy sovereignty and self-determination, this approach would spur faster decarbonization, including by weakening vested interests’ power to resist change. It would also facilitate the restructuring of energy systems to serve social and ecological needs.

Another system-level transformation that would facilitate major emissions reductions would be the creation of a zero-waste circular economy, whereby everything we produce and consume returns safely to nature or is recycled and reused. Consider textiles production, which in 2015 generated greenhouse-gas emissions totaling 1.2 billion tons of CO₂-equivalents. These massive emissions – more than the combined total for all international flights and maritime shipping – reflect a “fast fashion” culture that produces garments as cheaply as possible, with the expectation of constant turnover in people’s wardrobes. If each garment were replaced half as often, the industry’s total greenhouse-gas emissions would plummet by 44%.

A zero-waste circular economy for textiles would include not just more use of the clothes that are produced, but also improved recycling and repurposing of materials, to avoid emissions-producing waste-disposal processes like incineration. The biggest gains would come from the introduction of less wasteful production processes.

Important steps should also be taken regarding land use (encompassing agriculture and zoning changes). As the international peasant’s movement La Via Campesina shows, the industrial food system’s emissions – including those from production, fertilizers, transport, processing, packaging, cooling, and food waste, and from deforestation associated with the expansion of industrial agriculture – account for 44-57% of the global total.

A peasant agro-ecological production system based on food sovereignty, small-scale farming, and agro-ecology could, La Via Campesina argues, halve carbon emissions from agriculture within a few decades. This approach is proven to work: small-scale farmers, peasants, fishers, indigenous communities, rural workers, women, and youth already feed 70% of the world’s population, while using only 25% of its agricultural resources.

There is also a need to restore natural ecosystems that have been destroyed. Forests and peatlands, in particular, can sequester several hundred gigatons of CO₂ from the atmosphere. Their restoration would protect not just biodiversity, but also local people, including the indigenous communities whose land-tenure rights have been systematically violated. In fact, retaining and expanding the land area under management by indigenous peoples and local communities could protect over 1,000 GtCO₂ worth of carbon stocks.

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/2128104/there-tipping-point-un-warns-climate-change-goals

According to a report by the Climate, Land, Ambition, and Rights Alliance, ecosystem-based approaches in the land sector and agro-ecological changes to food production and consumption systems – including more local ownership – could deliver 13 GtCO₂eq per year in avoided emissions, and almost 10 GtCO₂eq annually in sequestered carbon by 2050. The result would be 448 GtCO₂ in cumulative removals by 2100 – around ten times current global annual emissions.

Limiting global temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels is our best hope of containing the effects of a climate crisis born of historical injustices and deep-rooted inequities. The only way to succeed will be to undertake a shift to a new socioeconomic system. This means abandoning the single-minded obsession with GDP growth – which has facilitated the proliferation of wasteful production and consumption patterns and fueled economic and social inequality and injustice – in favor of a public-goods approach that serves genuinely to make people’s lives better.

Demanding such a transformation is not “naive” or “politically unfeasible.” It is radically realistic. In fact, it is the only way we can achieve social justice while protecting our environment from devastating climate change.

 

Barbara Unmüßig

Writing for PS since 2013

Barbara Unmüßig is President of the Heinrich Böll Foundation

The Passing of Othman Wok

April 17, 2017

The Passing of Othman Wok: A Patriot whose courage and convictions made a difference to Singapore

Note: It was my good  fortune to have worked with Mr. (Pak) Othman Wok when we together with Mr. Neville Watson were fellow directors of Sime Sembawang Limited, which was engaged in the fabrication of oil rigs and platforms for oil and gas sector. As a director, Pak Othman brought his vast experience  to bear on deliberations of our Board. He was friendly and helpful to me, offering personal advice about building commercial networks based on trust and integrity. I shall miss him and  offer Al-Fatihah in his memory. To Ibu Wok and family, Dr. Kamsiah Haider and I convey our heartfelt and sincere condolences.

I was also grateful that I had the chance to work with Mr. Eddie Barker, Professor Tan Sri Maurice Baker, Mr. Michael Wong Pakshong and Pak Ridzwan Dzafir on the Board of Sime Darby Singapore Limited (1988-1991). They were outstanding individuals who served Singapore  with distinction.  They all touched my life and made a huge difference to my career with Sime Darby.–Din Merican

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/othman-wok-a-man-whose-courage-and-convictions-made-a-difference/3105692.html

Mr Othman Wok, a former Cabinet minister and one of Singapore’s first generation of leaders, died on Monday (Apr 17) at the age of 92.

A journalist, union leader, politician and Ambassador, Mr Othman’s courage and convictions made a difference to Singapore at a critical time in its history, said the late founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

Born in 1924, Mr Othman was the son of a Malay school principal. Despite objections from his grandfather, his progressive father sent the young Othman to Radin Mas School and Raffles Institution – both English-medium schools.

Mr Othman joined the Utusan Melayu, a Malay-language newspaper as a clerk, but was soon talent-spotted and offered a job as a cub reporter by its editor and managing director Mr Yusof Ishak, the man who was to become Singapore’s first President.

Mr Othman Wok in his youth.

While Mr. Othman was working for Utusan Melayu, he became involved in union activities, and it was as Secretary of the Singapore Printing Employees Union that he first met Mr Lee Kuan Yew – the union’s legal advisor.

Persuaded to enter politics, he joined the People’s Action Party (PAP) a few days after it was formed in 1954. Mr Othman won his first electoral battle in 1963, but was to learn that achieving racial harmony was easier said than done.

Following Singapore’s merger with Malaysia, racial tensions between the Malay and Chinese communities, stoked by fiery speeches by extremist Malay leaders from Kuala Lumpur, came to a head during the 1964 procession to celebrate the Prophet Mohamed’s birthday.

“UMNO had a meeting on July 19 at Pasir Panjang, (a) talk about racialism and all that by Jaafar Albar. He made a very strong communal speech at that gathering which included UMNO members from across the Causeway that they ferried down to Singapore by buses and lorries,” recalled Mr Othman. “And these people, after that meeting on the 19th, didn’t go home … they were used to cause trouble.”

Mr Othman, who led the contingent of Malay MPs and PAP supporters at the procession, recalled how trouble broke out: “When my contingent arrived at Kallang Bridge, there was this old Chinese man on a bicycle, on the left side. Some Malay youths came from the front, caught hold of him, beat him up with sticks and threw his bicycle into the drain. He was severely injured.”

For the rest of Mr Othman’s life, the horrific images would return whenever he shared his experiences.

“People were being beaten up, houses were being burnt, vehicles being burnt – all pictured in my mind at that time. I was involved in it, I saw it with my own eyes,” he said. “It is just like a film being played again and again to me. I was very sad. This is racial riot between the communities, the Chinese and the Malays. And before that they were very friendly.”

In the aftermath of the riots, it was clear that concerted and strenuous efforts were needed to rebuild relationships between the races, as racial polarisation was evident, even at relief centres.

“The Chinese didn’t go to where the Malays went – the police station; they went to other police stations, so became segregated again,” said Mr Othman. “And my ministry had to prepare food for these refugees. Every day we cooked, in our central kitchen, and I went around in our lorries together with my staff, and we found that for example, I went to Paya Lebar Police Station, they were all Malays there, no Chinese. Then I went to another police station, Serangoon at that time, they were all Chinese there, no Malays.

“So we decided after the riots that this should not go on – polarisation between the two communities. We had to let them live together. So at that time, we (were) building flats so we moved them, mixed (them) together. It was not an easy thing to do but eventually they began to learn how to live as good neighbours.”

At the height of the 1964 tensions, Mr Othman himself became the principal target of verbal abuse among some segments of the Malay-Muslim community.

The late Mr Lee Kuan Yew said of Mr Othman: “I remember your staunch loyalty during those troubled days when you were in Malaysia and the tensions were most severe, immediately before and following the bloody riots in July 1964.

“At that time, the greatest pressures were mounted by UMNO Malay extremists who denounced you and Malay PAP leaders – especially you – as infidels, “kafirs” and traitors, “khianat”, not to Singapore but to the Malay race.

“I heard it, the crowds said it, bunches of them. They were designed to intimidate him and the other Malay leaders in PAP. Because of the courage and the leadership you showed, not one PAP Malay leader wavered and that made a difference to Singapore.”

On the incident, Mr Othman simply said: “I was surprised, because not only I, but my Malay colleagues in the PAP stood together and faced the onslaught together with the Prime Minister, because we were fighting for what we believed in.

“So that accolade to me, I thought, was also for my colleagues because they faced the same danger, they faced the same accusation and criticism from the Malay community at that time.”

Singapore’s Mr. Cool

Mr Othman’s loyalty to Singapore was tested again in 1965, when they were faced with the critical decision to support or oppose separation from Malaysia.

“PM called me. He said: ‘Othman, come with me to the next room.’ And he said to me: ‘Would you sign this separation agreement?’ I said I would. I told him: ‘PM, the only worry I have is the Chinese in Singapore – what I meant was the communists in Singapore.’ ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘It’s my problem, I will handle it. You have nothing to worry.’ That was what he said to me.

“But my feeling when it was announced was, internally, you know, relief. After those two years of bickering, the pressure on me, my colleagues, the Malays in the PAP, on the government, I say it was a relief. No more pressure against us.”

And the next year, when an independent Singapore held its first National Day Parade, Mr Othman made sure he was there – a proud member of the People’s Defence Force.

Mr Othman was to serve for 17 years, 14 of them as Minister for Social Affairs.Promoting racial harmony was a key responsibility, as was the promotion of sports among the masses and encouraging athletes to represent Singapore.

Said SS Dhillon, former Secretary-General of the Singapore Olympic Council: “Mr Othman Wok – I always to refer to him as Mr Cool. He has a very cool personality, he is very approachable, very kind, very loving and he used to go around sportsmen and coax them to participate. Train harder and he encouraged them in that way.”

It was also Mr Othman who got the National Stadium built. “When you think back to those times, those were very economically hard times, and yet he could push this through Parliament and get it passed,” said former Olympian sprinter C Kunalan. “So I think more importantly it was not how he fired us up but how he fired up the Cabinet to get the approval for all the plans that he had.”

“Always be loyal to your country. You’re a Singaporean, you will always be a Singaporean.”–Othman Wok

As Minister overseeing the Malay-Muslim community, Mr Othman’s legacy includes the setting up of the Mosque Building Fund as well as the Islamic Religious Council or MUIS, which sees to the welfare of Muslims in Singapore.

“Through this fund, we managed to build a first mosque at Toa Payoh,” said Mr Othman. “A modern, better, multi-purpose mosque, not like the old ones, only for prayer; (there were) other activities. And people came to support and it was not difficult to get people to contribute. We had the contribution by deducting their salaries, voluntarily if they wanted to, through the CPF. It started with S$0.50. They could write in to say: ‘I don’t want to contribute’, but the majority, all I think the Muslims who worked with the Government then, contributed and they were able to build one mosque after another.”

After retiring from active politics in 1980, Mr Othman served as Singapore’s Ambassador to Indonesia and also on the Singapore Tourism Board and Sentosa Development Corporation.

The born storyteller also published his collections of horror stories as well as his autobiography, Never In My Wildest Dreams.

But for the man who lived through the race riots of the 1960s, unity among Singaporeans was an enduring mission, and Mr Othman continued to serve well into his 80s, giving talks on National Education to civil servants.

“Even with this terrorism problem, some of these young people do not take it seriously because it has not happened in Singapore,” said Mr Othman. “The test will come when a bomb explodes in Singapore, people are killed … What happens, do we tighten our bonding, become a united front of faith or we disintegrate? This is the test that we have to face if the real thing happens. I hope not. Because today when there are disasters in other countries, Singapore came together to help. I am sure were this to happen in Singapore, we will get together, to face it and solve it. I have that confidence.”

He added: “Always be loyal to your country. You’re a Singaporean, you will always be a Singaporean.”

Mr Othman leaves his wife and four daughters.

– Channel News Asia

Nationalism in Malaysia in Extremis

November 17, 2016

by Dr. Ooi Kee Beng

Malay Nationalism or Tribalism ala Ku Kluk Klan

One thing that shocked me when I first went to Sweden for my studies 35 years ago was how dirty a word “Nationalism” was in Western Europe. This reaction, I realized, was very much a reflection of how the concept was positively implanted in my mind while a schoolboy in Malaysia; but it also demonstrated how greatly human experiences can differ in different parts of the world.

More importantly, it revealed to me how strongly we are intellectually captured by the language use of our times and our location.

But the Swedes are very proud of their country, so how come nationalism is frowned upon so badly? The same thing applied throughout Europe, at least until recently. Excessive immigration over the last two decades, coupled with declining economic fortunes and waning self-confidence has buoyed the ascendance of ultra-rightists groups in all countries throughout the continent.

So why was Nationalism so despised? Europe is after all the home continent of the Nation State.

For starters, Europe was always a place of endless wars often fought ostensibly for religious reasons between feudal powers. The arrival of the Nation state ideology helped to lower the frequencies of these tragedies, but only to replace it soon after with non-religious types of rationale for conflict. The American Revolution and French Republicanism added the new phenomenon of “government by the people”. The French case also brought into the equation the Left-Right Dimension that would define politics and political thinking for the next two centuries.

This conceptual division between Popular Mandate and Elite Rule expressed sharply the rights of common people on the one hand, and the role of the state on the other. Once this gap was articulated, conflating the two poles anew became a necessary task.

The three major articulations in Europe of this mammoth mission to bridge the divide and achieve a functional modern system were Liberal Democracy, Communism and Fascism. While the Anglo-Saxon world championed the first, Stalin’s Soviet Union perfected the second and Adolf Hitler developed the third to its insane conclusion. In Europe, it was basically these three actors who fought the Second World War.

Malay Tribalism in Action

In Asia, Japan’s brand of state fascism ran riot throughout the region, rhetorically championing nationalism in the lands it took from the European colonialists.

While the National Socialism of the Third Reich died with Hitler, Fascism lived on in Franco’s Spain until 1975 and Nationalist Communism of Stalin continued in Eastern Europe until the early 1990s.

Nationalism in the rest of Europe after 1945 came to be understood with disdain as the longing of the Nation State for purity and autonomy taken to pathological lengths. It is after all always a defensive posture, as is evidenced today in its return in the form of right-wing anti-immigrant groups.

Maruah Melayu dijual ka-Cina untuk membela masa depan politik Najib Razak–Jualan Aset 1MDB

In Malaysia, nationalism was—and for many, still is—the most highly rated attitude for a citizen to adopt.There are obvious reasons for this, given the historical and socio-political context in which Malaysia came into being. Constructing a new country out of nine sultanates, the three parts of the Straits Settlements, with Sabah and Sarawak on top of that, was a more daunting task than we can imagine today. Furthermore, the contest was also against other powerful “-isms”, especially Communism and Pan-Indonesianism. These threatened to posit what are Malaysia’s states today in a larger framework, and would have diminished these territories’ importance and uniqueness.

Putting a new regime in place of the retreating British required a rallying idea; and what better than the very fashionable image of a new nation to whom all should swear allegiance. Malayan nationalism was thus born.

For Inclusive, Liberal and Progressive Malaysia–Escaping the Nationalism Trap

It is no coincidence that the path to independence became much easier after Malaysia’s major political party, UMNO, decided under Tunku Abdul Rahman to change its slogan from the provincial “Hidup Melayu” [Long Live the Malays] to the inclusive “Merdeka” [Independence].

But already in that transition, one can see the problem that Malaysia still lives with today. Is Malaysia the political expression of the prescriptive majority called “Melayu” [later stretched to become “Bumiputera”], or is it the arena in which the multi-ethnic nation of “Malaysians” is to evolve?

Nationalism in essence, and most evidently so in its narrow ethno-centric sense, is defensive and fearful, and understood simplistically and applied arrogantly very quickly show strong fascist tendencies. The issue is therefore a philosophical one.

What Malaysia needs today, is to accept the regional and global context that sustains it, and work out as best it can a suitable balance between Popular Mandate and Elite Rule which is clearly less belaboured and less painful than the cul-de-sac alleyway it has backed itself into.

OOI KEE BENG is the Deputy Director of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute) and the Editor of the Penang Monthly (Penang Institute). He is the author of the prizewinning The Reluctant Politician: Tun Dr Ismail and His Time (ISEAS 2006).

Muhammad Ali Inspires Writers in Life and Death

June 16, 2016

by  Richard Sandormir

http://www.nytimes.com

Norman Mailer, the pugilistic literary lion, opened “The Fight,” his account of Muhammad Ali’s victory in Zaire over George Foreman in 1974, with a ripe evocation of Ali’s magnetism, a sort of carnal electricity, which made him such a compelling subject.

“There is always a shock in seeing him again,” he wrote. “Not live as in television, but standing before you, looking his best. Then the World’s Greatest Athlete is in danger of being our most beautiful man, and the vocabulary of Camp is doomed to appear. Women draw an audible breath. Men look down. They are reminded of their lack of worth. If Ali never opened his mouth to quiver the jellies of public opinion, he would inspire love and hate. For he is the Prince of Heaven — so says the silence around his body when he is luminous.”

Ali captivated writers for more than 50 years, and his death this month at 74 is unlikely to diminish his power as a literary muse.

David Hirshey, the Senior Vice President and Executive Editor of HarperCollins, called Ali “the perfect prism through which to view sports, race, religion, politics, celebrity, comedy, tragedy.” Hirshey, who published Mark Kram’s revisionist look at Ali, “Ghosts of Manila,” in 2001, added: “And at the same time, he’s also an extraordinary kaleidoscope — depending on who is looking at him, and how you always get a different image. I suspect there will be endless angles for generations to come.”

Ali has had his life story told repeatedly. He has been written about as a mystic, a healer, a friend to ordinary folks, a rapper and an acolyte of Malcolm X. He put his name to a 1975 autobiography and cooperated with Thomas Hauser on a 1991 biography that was written as an oral history (“Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times”). He was the co-author of “The Soul of a Butterfly” with one of his daughters, Hana, and the outsize star of a 75-pound tome(“GOAT: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali”) that was covered in silk and leather and cost up to $7,000.

New entries are already being added. Sports Illustrated is publishing a commemorative book this month composed largely of Ali articles from its archive. The magazine, as well as Time and Life, put out a special edition that went on sale Friday.

Another Ali book by Hauser, “Muhammad Ali: A Tribute to the Greatest” — a reissue of a 2005 collection of his writings about Ali with some newer pieces added — was just published. And a book by Josh Gross about Ali’s not-so-great adventure in Japan with the wrestler Antonio Inoki in 1976 (“Ali vs. Inoki”) — and its influence on mixed martial arts — will be available this month from BenBella Books.

A biography from Jonathan Eig, who has written books about Lou Gehrig, Al Capone and Jackie Robinson, is scheduled to be published in 2017. Eig looked at the array of Ali books about three years ago and determined that the oeuvre lacked a complete biography, the closest being Hauser’s oral history.

There’s a ton of new material and new information that no one has come across before,” Eig said. “I found some of it in the archives of people who interviewed him over the years, who left their note and tapes, some in court records, and some in interviews. His wives had never really discussed what their lives were like with him.”

President Bill Clinton delivered a moving eulogy to The Greatest

And in a vow that sounded almost Ali-like, he added: “I think I’ll blow people’s minds with some of the stuff I’ve discovered about Ali, in good ways and bad ways. I think people will be shocked by the book.”

While Eig chose to re-examine the full breadth of Ali’s life and career, Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith took a rigorous look at a critical slice of Ali’s earlier years: how Cassius Clay become Muhammad Ali, which they delve into in their recently published book, “Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X” (Basic Books).

“We weren’t the first to recognize this, but most of their relationship was clandestine, so the only way to get to it was to systematically go through newspapers and F.B.I. reports to create a day-by-day itinerary of each man,” Roberts, a history professor at Purdue, said of Ali and Malcolm X. “We got into the politics of the Nation of Islam, the schism between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, what role Cassius Clay played in that schism and how he was used as a pawn by both characters.”

Once Muhammad had cast Malcolm X out of the Nation of Islam, Clay, who had only recently taken his new name, turned his back on Malcolm X.

“When Malcolm lost the contest for Clay’s loyalty,” Roberts and Smith write, “he had no more moves, no more pawns to sacrifice. At that moment Malcolm was expendable. At that moment, his life was in jeopardy.” He was assassinated on February 21, 1965.

Hauser, a longtime boxing writer who spent considerable time with Ali in the 1980s and ’90s, reflected with sadness that the world was able to watch Ali deteriorate over the years, in contrast with world figures like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, whose physical declines were largely shielded from the public. Ali was not ashamed of the effects of Parkinson’s disease and often wanted to travel and be seen.

“We watched this man wither in the public eye,” Hauser said by telephone. “Lennox Lewis told me he retired when he did as heavyweight champion because of what happened to Ali. Everyone knew the end was coming and quite a few people, myself included, felt it was merciful.” And, he said, younger generations who experienced Ali in decline missed the sight of him healthy, flicking his jab, declaring his greatness, admiring his prettiness and standing, in braggadocio, in victory over a supine Sonny Liston.

It will take time,” he wrote, “for the image of the aging Ali to fade and for the image of the young Ali to be restored.”

A version of this article appears in print on June 12, 2016, on page SP6 of the New York edition with the headline: A Writers’ Muse in Life and Death.Today’s Paper