What Idols? Read and be saved!

The young (and may be also the old) yearning for a figure to adore and love, will lean on singers and pimps as their idols. We got American Idols, Malaysian Idols, Akademi Fantasia, Obama, Anwar, Nik Aziz, Mahathir and so on. We love fantasy, we love stories and we love to exaggerate.

(An idol for someone out there but not me. He bangs!)

This was not a recent phenomena, but something that has happened many many times since the creation of Adam. Was it just human nature to be ignorant?  No I don't think so!

Recently I’ve read an autobiography of Che Guevara by Daniel James that was written back in 1970 (exactly 40 years ago!). It was not a planned reading at first as I was reading a motivational book about charisma and the author talked about how charismatic was this guy name Che Guevara. I ended up devouring the whole autobiography for a week or so and I found some interesting facts about Che:

1. His real name is Ernesto Guevara, he is an Argentinian, a doctor by practiced and was asthmatic since he was a child.

2. He fought several guerrilla-style wars in Cuba, Congo and Bolivia and also worked under Fidel Castro.

3. He was an ardent communist-marxist-maoist 

4. He wrote religiously as he wrote a daily journal every day (that results in his detailed autobiography)

5. He died in the jungles of Bolivia after being hunted down by the Bolovian army for several months.

Che Guevara is known all over the world because of his posters especially the one shown below. His face adorned caps, shirts, buildings and anything printable in the West.

However, he was not known for the real Che Guevara: 

1. He stood for Communism of which we knew is a failed system. Today, only Cuba and China are going Communist, even China is not that Communist anymore.

2. He was also against the "Yankee-imperialist"- a view still held by many current batch of world leaders especially Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad etc- a world-view compelled by domestic politics not by virtue. 

3. He was also not known for his disastrous economic planning in Cuba when he was the Economic Minister as well as his failed attempt to induce Communist "revolutions" in Africa and South America.

4. He was abandoned by Soviet Union, Communist China as well as his friends in Cuba especially Fidel Castro at the end of his life.

Yet, people adore Che so much that people wear his caricatures, wrote songs for him like Hasta Siempre (love...this song), ran riots for him and so on.

So the question is, should one idolized someone or somebody or something?
It's your choice. Read more is what I could offer as an answer.

The more one read, the more we know about someone. The more we know,  the wiser we could answer the question facing us. I was at first "idolized" Che Guevara because he was said to be charismatic but after reading his autobiography and getting the "real" story, my view changed dramatically. That's how powerful reading is. 

Everyone is a leader in themselves and leaders read and they read a lot. 

Reading defeats ignorance. Always. 

Hail Obama!-Malaysia's New Foreign Policy

Recently, Malaysia has turn from a openly neutral country in its foreign policy to an openly Pro-Washington. What Bush has failed to do was achieved brilliantly by Obama's "Soft-Diplomacy".

The one-year old administration of Najib has laid out strong foundation in its domestic policy such as forming labs through the Government Transformation Programme to solve the never ending problems of goverment delivery system as well as wooing the disillusioned voters through the "1Malaysia" concept. It has stop short in introducing Goods and Services Tax (GST)this year lest Barisan Nasional would like to lose the next general election.

Based on the "People first, Performance Now" dogma, a recent poll by the Merdeka Foundation has shown that the ra'yat were responding favourably towards Najib and based on this "good-factor", the next GE will probably going to be held ASAP, i.e. 2011. And based on his performance on the domestic front, I am openly supporting Barisan Nasional in the next GE. The mood is there and BN will win big (I mean better than 2008).

However, an issue that might changed my mind whether to vote Barisan or Pakatan would be about his foreign policy. Malaysia's "default" foreign policy since Mahathir is for Malaysia to be neutral at all cost. In other words, Malaysia should never ever openly pro-US.

But the recent news report of Petronas cutting gas supplies to Iran has suggest otherwise. Najib has confirmed this and coupled with his recent meeting with Obama in Washington on Iran nuclear issue etc, has made Najib's credibility to champion the rights of Islamic countries being QUESTIONABLE.

Najib must clarify and discuss this issue openly (if possible go live on TV) because Malaysians are personally proud to be neutral on our foreign policy and our neutrality has made Malaysia a respectable country. And currently, his ministers have kept mummed on this issue altogether.

At the time of the writing, Najib had responded "glibly" on Malaysia's sudden foreign policy u-turn on Iran as reported in the Staronline, April 18 2010:

"The Prime Minister said Petronas was involved in a spot sale to Iran in mid-March through a third-party deal but there had been no requests since.

The transaction, he added, was a commercial deal and it was up to the parties involved to decide on the supply if there were further requests for spot sales."

If Malaysia has turned its back on Iran, it would be his worst political error. I predict the Malay voters will be the most agitated and banking on his "1Malaysia", GTP or whatever of his domestic policies would not be of any help.

Never in my life history has foreign policy was made such an issue during the GE, and it would be played to the greatest extent by Anwar and his colleagues in the running towards the next GE in 2011 (?).

"Hail Obama!" and "Salam Satu Malaysia!!!"