What about the so-called P5? The high-handed posturing of Iran’s principle accusers requires some scrutiny. They are the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. They are proof that nuclear weapons provide a seat at the top table of global security and thus power politics. Why else would Britain and France still have their own chairs? What right do any of them have to discuss illegal, so- called "preventative" attacks on a country?

Together they stand for over four decades of bad faith. Under the NPT they promised to disarm in return for all other signatories forgoing nuclear weapons. The P5 committed to negotiate away their deadly nuclear arsenals. They have not done so. Instead, they continue to invest; they continue to modernize their nuclear weapons and delivery mechanisms; they continue to undermine global nuclear non-proliferation efforts.

Before accusing Iran of duplicity, the nuclear weapons nations need to stop and reflect. In reality the grand bargain of the 'Atoms for Peace' pact at the heart of the NPT was always a dangerous lie. A diplomatic deceit promising to control the spread of nuclear weapons in return for support in developing nuclear power, an abundant power source that was supposed to be clean, safe and reliable, though it turned out to be dirty, dangerous, and expensive. A pact that Iran agreed to, but Israel has not.

Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are the Janus faces of nuclear technology: you cannot have one without the other. No amount of agreement, treaties and inspection will ever remove the risk and temptation of a nuclear power state becoming a nuclear weapons state.

It can be made harder, but never impossible. Just as the risks of meltdowns are present at every reactor site, the risk of nuclear proliferation is attendant in every nuclear program and the temptation to balance the possession by others of nuclear weapons is always there. The temptation to enter the arena of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is ever present.

I remember within my living memory, an India in which my parents' generation were very very knowledgeable about the culture of Islam, Hinduism so on; but would nevertheless sit around in the evenings and tell jokes, satirise and poke fun at and debunk certain aspects of religion; and there was no sense that something shocking or wrong was being done. This was just normal, everyday conversation.

As a young person in both India and Pakistan (because my family was equally divided between India and Pakistan), I heard in many gardens in the evenings people sitting around having fun with the ideas of their cultures and of their faith. And this was not considered to be a crime.

The idea that this is somehow wrong has crept in much more recently and does great disservice to all of us. What are the weapons used to impose this idea of wrongness? Of course, the old weapons of blasphemy and heresy are still there. But there are two new weapons, which are the ideas of "respect" and "offence". Now, when I use the word respect, it means that I take people seriously. I engage with them seriously. It doesn't mean that I agree with everything they say. But now is that the term respect is being used a way of demanding assent. "If you disagree with me, you are disrespecting me. And I will get very angry and may even pick up a weapon; because that's my way when I am disrespected."

A culture of "offendedness" is growing up, not just in this country, elsewhere too, but very much in this country, a culture in which your "offendedness" defines you. I mean, who are you if nothing offends you? You're probably a ‘liberal' -- and who would want to be that?

The fact is that in any open society people constantly say things that other people don't like. It's completely normal that that should happen and in any confident free society you just shrug it off and you proceed. There is no way of creating a free society where nobody says things that other people don't like. If offendedness is the point at which you have to limit thought then nothing can be said.

Behind these ideas of "offendedness" and "respect", there is always the threat of violence. Always, the threat is that if you do that which that disrespects or offends me, I will be violent towards you. So the real subject is not religion, it's violence and how we should face up to the threat of violence.

 

 

 

 

Salman Rushdie is talking about India but it could just as well be Malaysia.

To understand why Malaysia is such an attractive destination for Lynas, one has to understand some important differences between Australia and Malaysia – beyond the difference in the cost of inputs.

The United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the ruling party in Malaysia has ruled for over fifty years. Nominally democratic, elections in Malaysia are ugly affairs, routinely tarnished by allegations of vote rigging, voter intimidation and strict control of the media by the Government among many other issues.

This is where Malaysia’s actual comparative advantage lies in heavy industries such as the processing of rare earth.

Without question, the processing of rare earth pollutes. Massive quantities of super heated sulphuric acid are required to separate the rare earth elements from the rubbish elements they are found with under the ground.

In California, rare earth miner Molycorp was shut down in the late 1990′s after it was found out by government regulators that tons of radioactive tailings spilled out into the California desert many times over a number of years.

In the northern region of China, rare earth processing has done untold damage to the livelihood of farmers and local residents. Much of the truth of what has happened in China will probably never be told.

In Malaysia itself, Japanese company Mitsubishi processed rare earth in the 1980′s and early 1990′s. Their shoddy operation is believed by public health experts to have done untold damage to a whole generation of Malaysian children in the area, some born with shocking birth defects and others contracting childhood leukaemia at five times the national average.

It is hard to think of an industry in more desperate need of democratic oversight. The rare earth industry needs to be monitored by bodies that source their authority from the very people that stand to lose the most if things go wrong.

The Malaysian Government does not represent the people of Malaysia. They represent the vested interests of big business. They represent the 1% of Malaysians that can afford to flee the country should it ever become necessary.

The problem is that democratic oversight is expensive.

If Lynas were to conduct their operations in Australia, or any other country with a strong democratic tradition, they would be required to negotiate with the local communities. They would be required to present an argument to the voters that their presence brings benefits that outweigh the inherent, undeniable risks in processing rare earth. They would be required by largely incorruptible public servants to adhere to stringent public health and safety regulations that reduce the risks to the public, down to the lowest level possible.

This is not the case in Malaysia.

The Malaysian public did not even find out about Lynas operations in Pahang until the construction of LAMP was almost finished. They read about it in the New York Times.

Access to official documentation surrounding the licensing scheme is a big farce.

Whistle-blower engineers working on the project tell of appalling breaches of basic standards in the construction while UMNO politicians seek to sow discord in the community claiming that Malaysians opposed to the Lynas plant are seeking to assist the rare earth industry in China.

These materials will eventually come to market. Somewhere in the world, these materials will be processed and then turned into iPhones, hybrid cars and wind turbines. This environmental activist accepts that as inevitable.

However it should not happen in Malaysia where the institutions are not mature enough to deal with opportunists like Lynas Corporation. More than skilled labour, fresh water or sulphuric acid, it is democratic oversight that makes doing business more expensive in Australia for Lynas. This is where Malaysia has its  comparative advantage.

In the latest 2009 PISA assessment, the Shanghai education system, which was evaluated for the first time, stunned the world by coming up tops in all three categories. It topped Singapore in maths, South Korea in reading and Finland in science out of the 65 countries surveyed.

More than one-quarter of Shanghai’s 15-year-olds demonstrated advanced mathematical thinking skills to solve complex problems, compared to an OECD average of just 3%. “Large fractions of these students demonstrate their ability to extrapolate from what they know and apply their knowledge very creatively in novel situations,” said Schleicher, breaking the myth of a Chinese education system focused on rote-learning.

Significantly, too, of the top five performers, four are Asian countries or economies – Shanghai, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore. Finland is third. Other countries making up the top 10 are Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Australia and Belgium.

What is hopeful about the Pisa assessment is that it provides evidence that change is possible. In his report, Schleicher concluded that the best school systems became great after undergoing a series of crucial changes. They made their teacher-training colleges much more rigorous; they prioritise developing high-quality principals and teachers above efforts like reducing class size or equipping sports teams; and they held teachers accountable for results while allowing creativity in their methods.

There are also gratifying findings about equity in education. The successful education systems are those that devoted equal or more resources to the schools with the poorest kids. There is little difference found in the performance of students from private schools and those from public schools, once socioeconomic differences have been factored out. It found that cooperation between schools and between teachers lead to better learning outcomes than aggressive competition. Trapping the most disadvantaged students in the least successful schools exacerbate social inequality and negatively impact a nation’s overall performance.

What is also interesting is that the top performing countries have contrasting approaches to education. While the Asian countries emphasise academic hot-housing and tests, Finland in contrast adopts a progressive approach. There are no standardised national tests, no streaming or ability grouping. Teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves.

The main driver of Finnish education policy that has brought it success today is the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location, says Pasi Sahlberg, the Finnish education expert. Education is regarded as an instrument to even out social inequality – an approach Malaysian policy makers should really be familiar with.

Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological counselling, early access to special education, and individualised student guidance. What Finland has shown is that a shift from an elitist and socially divided education system into an equitable public education system has produced top rate performance from students across all backgrounds.

While Finland’s approach differ from the top Asian countries, what they have in common is this: priority on quality teachers and school leaders. They depend on expert, experienced teachers and on excellent teacher training. They pay their teachers well and teaching remains respected and prestigious. Finland recruits from the top 10% of its university graduates into teacher training. Every teacher has a Masters degree and teacher training programmes are among the most selective professional schools in the country.

Interestingly, too, the finding in Shanghai shows that its high performance is also due to a “sea change in pedagogy”. From an emphasis on rote learning, the new school slogan today is: “To every question there should be more than a single answer.” Something I am afraid that Malaysian officialdom remains unfamiliar with.

In the age of Google where facts can be found at the click of a mouse, Chinese students today learn how to learn, rather than how to memorise, thus developing minds that are more adept at learning how to solve complex problems, rather than regurgitate facts.

The headline of this article is "The Learning Tower of Pisa" – very clever. But even more importantly, what drew my attention to it is the objectives of this survey and its findings. It seems that many the most successful economies realise the truth of the quote from PISA head Andreas Schleicher which is the headline of this post. When will the morons in charge of education in Malaysia learn this?

There are two immediate and practical reasons for improving the English proficiency of our kampong students. One is to enhance their employability. In today’s world, the least advantaged (or most disadvantaged) are those who can speak only one language, and that language is other than English. This is true whether that language is Malay, Mandarin, or Swahili. The most advantaged are those who are bilingual, with one of the languages being English.

For kampong youths, there is another equally relevant reason for enhancing their English fluency, and that is to increase their self confidence. A major handicap for kampong youths is their lack of self confidence. Increase their proficiency in English and watch their confidence grow. This is more effective than repeatedly reveling in our imagined glorious past during Hang Tuah’s time, or proudly proclaiming our special status under the constitution, as the Perkasa folks are wont to do.

as almost everybody in this nation with even a shred of awareness knows by now, Umno/BN, behind its pretence of promoting and protecting Malay rights, religious beliefs and prosperity, has been misleading, suppressing and shamelessly ripping-off the Malaysian people, Malay and non-Malay alike, for decades.

Defective ‘growing-up’ milk powder

     And perhaps most reprehensible, at least in the long-term, is this kleptocratic regime’s depriving millions of young Malaysians of the truly excellent and enlightened education they need and deserve, while sending its own pampered offspring overseas or, in flagrant breach of its own rules, to local international schools.

And now, apparently no longer content with educationally and otherwise victimising children and adolescents, now Umno/BN has been cheating toddlers and babes in arms by selling sub-standard milk powder to their unsuspecting parents through its lavishly publicly-funded chain of ‘discount’ stores known as Kedai Rakyat 1Malaysia, or KR1M.

Investigations by Tony Pua (left) and other diligent opposition politicians have revealed that the now-discontinued 1Malaysia ‘growing-up’ milk powder previously sold for months in KR1M outlets contained no trace whatever of 15 essential nutrients, vitamins and trace elements, and provided a mere 4.5 percent of the calcium and just 7.4 percent of the iron that the relevant food regulations deem necessary for healthy growth and development of young bodies and minds.

And arguably even more disgraceful was that this same product for babies and toddlers was found to contain many times the maximum permitted level of Vitamin A, which in excess can lead to symptoms including liver dysfunction, reduced bone mineral density, skin discolouration and hair loss.

Yet, when faced with these shocking revelations, the Health Minister Liow Tiong Lai, the same Lai who lied when he denied that police fired water cannons and teargas grenades into the grounds of a hospital during the Bersih 2.0 rally earlier this year, rather than apologising or better yet resigning, attacked Tony Pua for revealing the truth to the previously unsuspecting public.

In fact, Lai had the hide to accuse Pua of “trying to politicise the matter”.

Fraudulent concept

Which was hypocritical in the extreme in light of the plainly evident reality that the entire KR1M operation is just another cheap and shabby attempt by Najib Razak and his Umno/BN colleagues and cronies to use their fraudulent ‘1Malaysia’ concept to politicise every possible aspect of society.

Ragip Zarakolu in 1998. Photograph: Heribert Proepper/AP

The international literary community is demanding the immediate release of Turkish publisher and free speech activist Ragip Zarakolu, who has been arrested and imprisoned in Turkey under the country's anti-terrorism laws.

Zarakolu, director of Belge Publishing House, a member of Turkish PEN and chair of Turkey's Freedom to Publish Committee, is one of more than 40 activists who were detained in Istanbul on Friday, according to PEN and the International Publishers Association. The arrests are part of a crackdown against Kurdish political parties which has seen more than 1,800 supporters of the banned Koma Civakên Kurdistan party jailed since 2009. PEN said that if an appeal against the charges is unsuccessful, Zarakolu will be held through a trial process which is likely to last over a year.

Zarakolu founded Belge in 1977 and has tested publishing restrictions in Turkey ever since by releasing controversial books from Armenian, Greek and Kurdish authors in Turkish editions, including books documenting the Armenian genocide. His office was firebombed by a right-wing extremist group in 1995, said PEN, he was banned from leaving Turkey between 1971 and 1991 and he has been the subject of repeated charges, most recently being fined for releasing Mehmet Güler's The KCK File/The Global State and Kurds Without a State in March 2011.

Bjørn Smith-Simonsen, chair of the International Publishers Association's freedom to publish committee, said that Zarakolu "does not belong to prison, he deserves a Nobel prize". Calling him "the pride of publishing" and "the limelight of freedom to publish in Turkey", Smith-Simonsen demanded he be released immediately. "The trial is likely to begin in a year's time only. Ragip Zarakolu's health is not good. We fear that he will not stand his detention conditions in the terrible F-type (high security) prisons," he said. The IPA is intending to meet the Permanent Representative of Turkey to the United Nations Office in Geneva as soon as possible to urge the Turkish government to release the publisher immediately.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, the President of PEN American Center, said yesterday that the arrest was “a disturbing sign of a decline in the climate for free expression in Turkey after several years of hopeful developments.”

Barbara Goldsmith said, “If Zarakolu is not free, then none of us are free.”

Farm workers tend young plants at the palm oil plantation owned by the Indian company Karuturi near the town of Bako in Ethiopia. Photograph: Jose Cendon/Getty

For a few thousands dollars a year, an Indian agribusiness, Karuturi, rents 2,500 sq km of land in Ethiopia's Gambela province. Government ministers in Addis Ababa claim it is marginal, unused land, and its situation at the far western border with Sudan suggests this is so.

In fact, the black soil is extremely fertile, the vast landholding is accessible by a good road, and, above all, the land borders the mighty river Baro, a tributary of the Nile. It is prime land in one Africa's least exploited regions. Karuturi's owners, who are planning to grow palm oil, cotton, vegetables and maize there, only had to look at a good map to understand its real value.

But, say Oxfam researchers, it is one of the four great myths built up by governments and companies that most of the 100m hectares of land allocated in the last few years by governments in Africa and Asia to foreign agribusinesses, pension funds or speculators is "marginal" or little used.

"Despite claims to the contrary, investors target the best lands," say the researchers. "They seek land with access to water resources, fertile soil, infrastructure and proximity to markets to facilitate the profitability and viability of their ventures. The large-scale projects tend to be located where most people live. Further analysis shows that these are also the places where poverty rates are relatively lower and where land was already in use for food production – rather than it being empty, unused, marginal land in poor regions."

Climate change, booming populations, the lack of arable land, the increasing demand for commodities like palm oil and cotton, these are some of the reasons why many countries are "leasing" land in the Third World for agriculture.

Over the last couple of weeks, I made a new friend who comes from South Africa. She reckons that 40% of her country has been sold to China. I haven't confirmed this but she says that much of the country's farmland has been lost to foreigners as the white South African farmers sell up but the black South Africans are not in the position to buy. In this flux, foreigners – largely Chinese investors, she said – snap up these farms, which she described as "beautiful, fertile land".

The same thing is happening in Zimbabwe, she said.

This trend could be a precursor to a new wave of colonisation. History tells us that one of the reasons why Tanah Melayu and Borneo were colonised in the first place was to protect British interests, which included those of the corporations that owned the vast tracts of land planted with rubber.