Re: USA started affirmative action, not Malaysia

On Oct 2, 12:24 am, adchin <adc...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Yup, cronies come in all races and creed.  Has nothing to do with having
> to be a Malay person in order to become a minister's crony.
>
> Ok, so back to your subject title of affirmative action.  It's misused in
> Malaysia, do you agree ?  Now what would you do, if you were in the
> position to address this issue ?

1. Give campaigns on "following rules". Malaysians just love to break
all rules. Corruption and misuses are just a manifestation of the
culture of the society.

Many businessmen in Malaysia, proudly proclaims that the only way to
succeed in business is through corruption. When confronted with the
Singapore and Brunei cases, I'm ridiculed of being too naive.

Some even argue that Malaysia is different so normal rules do not
apply. Rules about inflation and monetary policies, and even
engineering practises. The trouble is, they don't have any rule
themselves. The trouble with not following any rule at all is that, we
cannot determine what had been done and therefore cannot make a
thorough analysis.

All rules are not static. They have to be changed with time,but all
these must be documented so that we can monitor the effectiveness of
each rule and reason why they behave the way it was.

2. If some rules are rotten, then request for changes. Unfortunately
Malaysians frown on giving ideas. They view it as giving away secrets
and some even view as insulting.

There should be a way to encourage Malaysians to contribute ideas and
be rewarded for them. Many people question me as to what I can achieve
by giving ideas. Actually many of my ideas were implemented:

A. Internet was my idea. Jaring was initially set up as uucp network
only. Of course, I'm not the only one giving ideas, but I was one of
the few who emailed Awanglah directly with these ideas. He used to
joke with me about KA9Q protocol, but recently, I noticed that Windows
Internet protocols owe a lot to Ka9q.

B. ADSL(Streamyx) was my idea that I posted in this newgroup. Within a
few weeks, Mahathir made the order to TM to introduce ADSL, or
broadband, quoting my exact phrase, "although it is not profitable
now, ...".

The coincidence is just too much. Either Mahathir reads newsgroups, or
someone had forwarded the comments to him, or someone reading this
newsgroup, had forwarded to their respective political or lobby
groups, to be forwarded to the PM.

The latest one was a suggesting for the coast guard equivalent for
Malaysia that I sent through the PM(Abdullah)'s suggestion website.

Also implemented within weeks of me sending these ideas.

Unfortunately I was not even recognised for giving these ideas.
Someone could have stolen my ideas but it does not matter to me,
because we need someone else to develop these ideas, someone closer to
the establishments.

Still, we must encourage people to reward those who give ideas by
giving certificates, at least, or even better cash rewards, and it
should not be restricted who give complete ideas. Partial ideas should
be rewarded as well, because without partial ideas, subsequent
developments will not be possible.

It is due to the lack of respect for Malaysians for Intellectual
Property Rights. Plagiarism is an accepted way of life, when actually
it is equivalent to stealing. We don't lose much by refraining from
plagiarism except our pride which is false anyway and sooner or later
will be detected anyway.

Plagiarism is very different from outright copying, but is even worse.
Copying is usually accepted because it is part of learning but to
pretend that it originates from you is plagiarism. What is difficult
or costly about identifying the originators of ideas or articles or
information? Virtually nothing, but the impact can be very great, the
difference between success or failure of entire nations.

3. Increase the salaries of enforcement officers and people with
powers, such as Ministers and Mayors.

You may say that it rewards crooked people but actually it will
encourage honest people to join and compete for these posts.

If salaries of these posts are so low, honest people will know for
sure that they will not make ends meet and therefore will look for
better paying jobs that do not tempt them with illegal activities.
Dishonest people will fight for these power jobs because they know
that they can get much better side income.

This had been implemented in Singapore and it is very successful.

This is difficult in Malaysia because we have a low regard for labour.
WE are proud in exploiting fellow human beings by paying them so
little, but in the end, we will lose all our talented people.

If we pay our craftsmen better, we will encourage them to improve and
retain those skills.

Fwd: Alternative to Race Based Selection Criteria

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Ir. Hj. Othman bin Hj. Ahmad" <othm...@lycos.com>
Date: Oct 1, 1:51 am
Subject: Alternative to Race Based Selection Criteria
To: soc.culture.malaysia

Color and Money: How Rich White Kids are Winning the War over College
Affirmative Action by Peter Schmidt

Review of the above book:

http://folkpolitics.wordpress.com/2007/10/21/color-and-money-how-rich...

Extract of this book:
how to judge SAT scores, and race-neutral policies that target student
admissions according to factors such as family income and geographic
region, and strategies such as those used in Texas that have resulted
in higher minority admission and enrollment to state universities than
race-specific criteria.

As I had predicted, if true poverty were to be taken into account,
there will be more natives that will be helped, above the quotas that
are currently in place in Malaysia, while not denying the really poor
among the chinese.

The trouble with Malaysia is the difficulty in establishing income.
With so much corruption and cheating, it is difficult to pin point
true poverty. Chinese tend to be businessmen but will present very
little income. Even their taxable incomes are minimal but they could
be owning Mercedes Benzes.

The most promising is the geographical areas. By giving preferences to
areas, such as villages, even those in towns, it will be a more fool
proof way in identifying the really needy ones.

Malaysian government has started using in in patches. For example,
Felda Settler's children are given priority in taking up
apprenticeship in MAS Aircraft Maintenance Courses, but this could be
dangerous if the quality of students is too low.

Re: USA started affirmative action, not Malaysia

Extracted from wikipedia: Affirmative_action_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_United_States

* Regents of the University of California v. Bakke 438 U.S. 265
(1978)

The Supreme Court held that the UC Davis medical school admissions
program violated the equal protection clause with the institution of
quotas for underrepresented minorities. However, Justice Lewis
Powell's decision in the majority upheld diversity in higher education
as a "compelling interest" and held that race could be one of the
factors in university admissions.

[What it means is that "race could be one of the factors in university
admissions"]

* Hopwood v. Texas, :78 F.3d 932 (5th Cir.1996), 1996

(first successful legal challenge to racial preferences in student
admissions since Regents of the University of California v. Bakke).

If you read the details, the court still allows race as a
qualification but not in having separate evaluation committees and
test scores.

http://www.faculty.piercelaw.edu/redfield/library/case-hopwood.htm

"Moreover, the court held that the plaintiffs were not entitled to
prospective injunctive relief, because "of the law school's voluntary
change to a procedure, which on paper and from the testimony, appears
to remedy the defects the Court has found in the 1992 procedure." Id.
[FN15] To pass muster under the court's reasoning, the law school
simply had to have one committee that at one time during the process
reviewed all applications and did not establish separate TI numbers to
define the presumptive denial categories. In other words, if the law
school applied the same academic standards, but had commingled the
minority review in the discretionary zone with the review of whites,
its program would not have been struck down. The same admissions
result would occur, but the process would be "fair." Id.

* President Clinton's Affirmative Action Review, 1998
http://clinton2.nara.gov/WH/EOP/OP/html/aa/aa-index.html

4. THE JUSTIFICATIONS FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION:
THE CONTINUING NEED TO COMBAT DISCRIMINATION AND PROMOTE INCLUSION
http://clinton2.nara.gov/WH/EOP/OP/html/aa/aa04.html

4.1. Evidence of Continuing Discrimination

There has been undeniable progress in many areas. Nevertheless, the
evidence is overwhelming that the problems affirmative action seeks to
address -- widespread discrimination and exclusion and their ripple
effects -- continue to exist.

* Minorities and women remain economically disadvantaged: the
black unemployment rate remains over twice the white unemployment
rate; 97 percent of senior managers in Fortune 1000 corporations are
white males; (28) in 1992, 33.3 percent of blacks and 29.3 percent of
Hispanics lived in poverty, compared to 11.6 percent of whites. (29)
In 1993, Hispanic men were half as likely as white men to be managers
or professionals; (30) only 0.4 percent of senior management positions
in Fortune 1000 industrial and Fortune 500 service industries are
Hispanic. (31)

* Blatant discrimination is a continuing problem in the labor
market. Perhaps the most convincing evidence comes from "audit"
studies, in which white and minority (or male and female) job seekers
are given similar resumes and sent to the same set of firms to apply
for a job. These studies often find that employers are less likely to
interview or offer a job to minority applicants and to female
applicants. (32)

* Less direct evidence on discrimination comes from comparisons of
earnings of blacks and whites, or males and females. (33) Even after
adjusting for characteristics that affect earnings (such as years of
education and work experience), these studies typically find that
blacks and women are paid less than their white male counterparts. The
average income for Hispanic women with college degrees is less than
the average for white men with high school degrees. (34)

* Last year alone, the Federal government received over 90,000
complaints of employment discrimination. Moreover 64,423 complaints
were filed with state and local Fair Employment Practices Commissions,
bringing the total last year to over 154,000. Thousands of other
individuals filed complaints alleging racially motivated violence and
discrimination in housing, voting, and public accommodations, to name
just a few.

[The situations are similar to Malaysia as well where Chinese
dominated businesses refused to admit Malays an natives in significant
numbers as salary scales that will alleviate the glaring disparity in
incomes.]

Winning is more important than Economic Prosperity: US Debate comments

Afer reading comments in News that can are offered by Google News
Search
and the comments on TV of US voters who watched the debates, my
conclusion is that the US citizens are more concerned about winning
than
about their economic prosperity.

The prominent message given by McCain that the "burst" led to the
winning in Iraq but this is false. It was the support given by Iraqis
that led to the reduction in sectarian violences and US deaths.

Couldn't it be due to the threats by Democrats to give a time table
for
withdrawal, which made the Iraqi government more earnest in solving
their security problems rather than amassing their personal wealth?

I'm surprised that Obama didn't elaborate on this but it could be due
to
the sentiments of US citizens who believe that Iraqis are imbeciles
who
are incapable of looking after themselves, typical of racist attitudes
that I observe prominently in the citizens of USA. (racist here is the
true meaning: superiority derogatory, not racial discrimination)

Obama in the debate mentioned briefly about the need of Iraq to
shoulder
the burden of security for themselves but somehow commentators missed
on
this issue. Obama didn't help by not emphasising forcefully on this
issue. But many European commentators are already aware of this
tendency
of Obama in trying to get allies to shoulder more of the burden of
security for the world.

McCain's main message is the USA is winning in Iraq, and Obama had not
supported the move that led to the win, which is a blatant lie. In the
end the bill was passed but timetable for withdrawal is set at a later
date. This tentative withdrawal date which led the US commanders to
change their tactics in trying to get help from the Iraqis and the
Iraqis were more desperate in solving their own problems.

The US citizens' tendency to support winning at all cost despite
suffering from economic disaster as a result of this win is clearly
shown by the result of this debate. Obama dare not even touch on this
topic despite the obvious fact that losing in Cambodia and Vietnam,
never led to any security loss to USA but led to economic prosperity
for
USA which contributed greatly to ending the era of the cold war.

McCain's disregard for the well being of the citizens of the occupied
nations is also well respected by the US citizens. As pointed out by
Obama, supporting dictatorship regimes in Pakistan had not brought any
reward to USA in terms of increased security. The problems with Iraq
and
Afghanistan is that they are corrupt and inefficient. They were chosen
not because of their patriotism to their nations but by their
unconditional support for USA interests, above the interest of their
citizens. Taliban will never take root if Hamid's government is
respected by Afghans. Similarly for Iraq.

USA, no doubt supported by its citizens, mocked Iran for being a false
democracy, despite the fact that no citizen is denied the right to
vote, unlike in Afghanistan and Iraq. And yet dare to proclaim that
Afghanistan and Iraq are true democracies, while Iran is not.

Another failed US policy that is also supported by its citizens, is
the
acceptance that talking to terrorists is deemed as giving credibility
to
the terrorists. It does not occur to even Obama and US journalists,
that
this is mocking Jesus, the founder of Christianity who routinely
talked
to criminals, prostitutes and even the Romans, his enemies.

Even if Obama were to win, it is more due to the concern for the
economy. Most of the citizens of USA do not believe in just, freedom
and
democracy for people other than US citizens and Jews. Obama may be the
voice of reason, talking to people, even terrorists, concentrate on
the
real security of USA instead of just winning, which includes giving
true
justice and freedom as well as mutual respect for other nations, but
he
may have a hard time with the citizens of the USA. Obama should start
with the journalists who control the US media.

--
Sabah is heaven. Beautiful shark-free beaches and mountains next to
civilisation with no natural and man-made disasters except Malaysia.
My homepage:
http://othman.000webhost.info/
http://othmana.tripod.com/

War in Islam

War in Islam:

An excellent site for quaran and hadith search in many languages:
http://www.islamicity.com/QuranSearch/

English translation by Picktall

These phrases are found using the "fight" word search.

A)Only in self-defense.
Al-Baqara (The Cow)
2:190 fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you,
but begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not, aggressors.

B)War is compulsory and muslims are forbidden from tolerating
persecution.
Al-Baqara (The Cow)

2:191 And slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the
places whence they drove you out, for persecution is worse than
slaughter. And fight not with them at the Inviolable Place of Worship
until they first attack you there, but if they attack you (there) then
slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers.

C)Stop if the persecution is gone. Note the phrase "religion is for
Allah", not necessarily converstion to Islam.
Al-Baqara (The Cow)

2:193 And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is for
Allah. But if they desist, then let there be no hostility except
against wrongdoers.

D)Islam prefers set piece battles to guerilla warfare.
Saff
61:4 Lo! Allah loveth those who battle for His cause in ranks, as if
they were a solid structure.

E) Muslims must intervene in order to stop wars.
Al-Hujurat (The Dwellings)

49:9 And if two parties of believers fall to fighting, then make peace
between them. And if one party of them doeth wrong to the other, fight
ye that which doeth wrong till it return unto the ordinance of Allah;
then, if it return, make peace between them justly, and act equitably.
Lo! Allah loveth the equitable.

My overall analaysis is this:

The most favoured way of fighting is the one adopted by Hezbollah.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Lebanon_War

Whereas Hamas and Fatah style of fightig in Palestine is allowed but
not favoured despite them being called terrorists by many Western
Natiions. Israel take advantage of the situation by declaring them as
terrorst organisations.

Alqaedah style of fighting is the worst because there is no order in
battle. There is no clear definition of the transgressors. Is it USA,
Pakistan, Australia or Indonesia. There is little chance for the other
party to stop their aggression and repent.

The Taliban fighting in Afghanistan can be considered as a civil war.
Muslim nations are supposed to intervene in order to have justice
prevail. It can be achieved by allowing Taliban to be involved in the
voting process. When USA denied Taliban the right to the voting
process and forcefully removed from government, it is the USA that had
done wrong to the Taliban so Muslim nations are not allowed to
intervene and help USA and allies.

The bali bomber and Marriot bomber in Pakistan recently is not allowed
in Islam because there is no clear persecution involved. The
persecution that is mentioned in the quran is to be driven from ones'
homeland.

Muslims can argue that they are fighting for Palestinians that are
persecuted in Israel but the real enemy is Israel, not the other
nations. Whether it is allowed to fight the non-combatant allies of
the enemy of Islam, it is not stated in the verses that I had
searched. Based on Albawarah 2:190, it is clear that Muslims can only
fight against those that fight against Muslims. Fight, here means,
physical violence. Giving arms and weapons is not fighting. The case
is similar in the 1st world war when Germany did not declare war on
USA despite it sending war supplies to UK.

Disappointed with Wikipedia and Joomla: try tikiwii

http://www.wikimatrix.org/compare/JSPWiki+MediaWiki+TikiWiki-CMS-Groupware+WikkaWiki

A good comparison of Wiki software. These are free and user
installable with mySQL database storage.

http://info.tikiwiki.org/tiki-index.php?page=Top+10+Reasons&bl

Look at this description of tikiwiki.
Very impressive.

I'm currently testing mambo, joomla1.0 and joomla1.5 but are
disappointed with their handlings of java applets and javascripts, and
the lack of decent panoramic picture viewers and galleries.

I'm stuck with my normal html code in order to allow users to view my
panoramic pictures.

http://panorama.freewebhosting247.com/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php
You can try TikiWiki v1.9.8.3 at the link above.

The latest version is 1.9.11 which you can download from http://tikiwiki.org/

Wikipedia is more famous and is based on Wikimedia but it is only
optimised as an encyclopaedia. It is also filled with editors who are
so anxious to delete other people's articles based on false reasons.

Imagine deleting an article because England is not an International
team.
Scoring 2 goals in football is not significant enough. The editor
thought that it was US football, instead of International Football.

My contributions towards the culture of the Suluks in Sabah were
deleted because they are not substantiated. How can I substantiate my
everyday living? I can record them on videos with well known personnel
such as the current ADUN for Sekong showing how Daling-daling is
performed in Sandakan.

I also have a few blogs on food in Sabah as well as panoramic pictures
that I want to share with others so that they will know more about
Sabah. I write about Sabah simply because I live in Sabah and there
are not many articles about Sabah.

I also can write about my researches on Intelligence theory that are
published in International conference papers but I welcome people to
write their own theories so that we can record and compare with each
other.

Technical articles are not as useful as travel articles so we
encourage people to contribute their experiences, by noting the time
that they are talking about. Information about travel and politics
change very rapidly. Similarly for reviews about technologies.

Contributors are welcomed and encouraged but I still don't know how to
allow people to contribute to tikwiki. I also would like to allow
contributors to insert adverts in their articles, especially Google
Adsense.

Google Adsense is the technology of the century. I had made Google the
richest Internet company and will soon overtake Microsoft.

The beauty of Adsense is that, it is more like a useful link than an
advertisement. Adsense will offer links that are relevant to the
article that is written. If you talk about panorama, it will provide
links to advertisers related to the "panoramic picture" industry.

If your reader clicks these links, the author can make money. That is
the way we should reward contributors while not offending the readers,
and even helps the readers with useful links to the article.

So register with Adsense: by clicking
<SCRIPT>
<!--
google_ad_client = "pub-2898215078168601";
google_ad_width = 468;
google_ad_height = 60;
google_ad_format = "468x60_as_rimg";
google_cpa_choice = "CAAQlfaWhAIaCDgcetl7W8a7KNvD93M";
google_ad_channel = "2182994049";
//-->
</SCRIPT>

<SCRIPT SRC="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/
show_ads.js"></SCRIPT>

or link to http://www.google.com.my/ads/

I shall encourage my colleagues and those in the know to engage in
this business of providing content while making money.

Now we must find ways to link these databases together. My idea is
just to use the wiki technology to link to other sites. Wikipedia
doesn't seem to encourage linking to others because it is not supposed
to be a linking centre but Wikipedia is only useful for its links.
Original articles are not its strength since their authors are mostly
amateur authors.

So don't worry about your grammar and spelling. We should not mind
their spellings and command of language but please use spelling
checkers in Firefox. We need to gather their facts and opinions. It
does not matter if their opinions are right or wrong. These opinions
must be recorded for eternity. I'm sure these opinions will change
with time but it is a normal process and should be recorded as
history.

You can upload anything you want. Pictures and even videos of whatever
format. Youtube is just too overloaded at the moment. We should create
our own in order to reduce the burden on Youtube and other video
sharing services.

It will also avoid office firewalls.

Sabah is heaven. Beautiful shark-free beaches and mountains next to
civilisation with no natural and man-made disasters except Malaysia.
My homepage:
http://othmana.tripod.com/
http://sabahheaven.blogspot.com/
http://panorama.000webhost.info/
http://panorama.webhosting4free.info/
http://othman.1stfreehosting.com/
http://othman.aokhost.com/
http://panorama.freewebhosting247.com/

Deterioration of UK 1st Class Honours

It is obvious since the 1990s when the numbers of students getting
first class honours from British Universities become more and more.

I didn't know the reasons until this article.

This is especially true for overseas students because it is deemed
that plagiarism is part of their culture.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/lecturers-pressed-to-boost-degree-results-848481.html

Lecturers 'pressed to boost degree results'

By Richard Garner, Education Editor
Tuesday, 17 June 2008

Degree standards in many British universities are in danger of
collapsing because lecturers are under pressure to "mark positively"
and turn a blind eye to plagiarism, the man who was in charge of
safeguarding standards at Britain's largest university will say today.
Professor Geoffrey Alderman, former chairman of the academic council
at the University of London, warns that "league table culture" has led
to an explosion in the number of firsts awarded.

Latest figures show they have gone up by more than 100 per cent over
the past decade from 16,708 to 36,645 – at a time when the
undergraduate population has risen by just over 40 per cent. In a
lecture at the University of Buckingham, Professor Alderman will also
argue that universities have been particularly lenient with overseas
students because they rely on them so heavily for fee income – so much
so that they turn a blind eye to plagiarism and cheating.

...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/lecturers-pressed-to-boost-degree-results-848481.html