MENUJU PENGUBAHSUAIAN PILIHAN RAYA DI MALAYSIA/TOWARDS ELECTION REFORM IN MALAYSIA

JEMPUTAN FORUM UMUM: MENUJU PENGUBAHSUAIAN PILIHAN RAYA DI MALAYSIA

Kami, bagi pihak Jawatankuasa Induk BERSIH 2.0, ingin menjemput anda dan organisasi anda ke forum umum mengenai Pengubahsuaian Terkini Suruhanjaya Pilihan Raya.

Fokus utama forum ini adalah untuk membincangkan isu-isu mengenai pengubahsuaian pilihan raya dan proses-proses yang terlibat untuk melanjutkan usaha ke arah pilihan raya yang telus, bersih dan adil.

Kami sangat mengalu-alukan kedatangan anda dan organisasi anda. Segala maklum balas sangat penting dan menyumbang ke arah pilhan raya yang telus, bersih dan adil.

Butir-butir pelancaran adalah seperti berikut:

Tarikh : 21 Februari 2011 (Isnin)

Masa : 8.00 malam – 10.30 malam

Tarikh : 21 Februari 2011 (Isnin)

Masa : 8.00 malam – 10.30 malam

Tempat : Bilik Gerakan, Tingkat 1, Majlis Bandaraya Petaling Jaya, Jalan Yong Shook Lin, 46675 Petaling Jaya, Selangor.

Untuk maklumat lanjut, sila berhubung dengan Nurul di talian 03-77844977.

Sekian, terima kasih.

Yang benar,

Dato’ Ambiga Sreenevasan

Pengerusi Ahli Jawatankuasa Induk

Ahli Jawatankuasa Induk BERSIH 2.0:

Dato’ Ambiga Sreenevasan, (Pengerusi), Andrew Khoo, Arumugam K., Dr Farouk Musa, Haris Ibrahim, Liau Kok Fah, Maria Chin Abdullah, Richard Y W Yeoh, Dr Toh Kin Woon, Dr Wong Chin Huat, Datuk Yeo Yang Poh, Zaid Kamaruddin, Subramaniam Pillay dan Arul Prakkash.

On behalf of BERSIH 2.0, we would like to invite you and your organization to our public forum on “Towards Election Reform in Malaysia”.

The aim of this forum is to promote discussion regarding the possible reform for elections and their processes, with the intention of making election transparent, clean and fair.

We sincerely, look forward to your attendance as your feedback is very important and will contribute towards bringing about a transparent, clean and fair election reforms.

The details are as follows.

Date : 21 February 2011 (Monday)

Time : 8.00 pm –10.30 pm

Venue : Bilik Gerakan

First Floor, Majlis Bandaraya Petaling Jaya, Jalan Yong Shook Lin, 46675 Petaling Jaya, Selangor.

We look forward to your positive response.

If you have any queries please do contact Miss Nurul at 03-77844977.

Yours sincerely,

Dato’ Ambiga Sreenevasan

Pengerusi Ahli Jawatankuasa Induk

The Steering Committee of BERSIH 2.0 comprises:

Dato’ Ambiga Sreenevasan, (Chairperson), Andrew Khoo, Arumugam K., Dr Farouk Musa, Haris Ibrahim, Liau Kok Fah, Maria Chin Abdullah, Richard Y W Yeoh, Dr Toh Kin Woon, Dr Wong Chin Huat, Datuk Yeo Yang Poh, Zaid Kamaruddin, Subramaniam Pillay and Arul Prakkash.

How to get the perfect divorce

Published by The Guardian UK on 9 Feb 2011. By Afua Hirsch.

1 Ensuring the best outcome for a divorce should start before a lawyer is even instructed. "Sometimes clients just need to leave time before proceeding with a divorce," says Vanessa Lloyd Platt, from divorce solicitors Lloyd Platt & Co. "I won't deal with a divorce less than six months after a woman has given birth for example, because people – both men and women – are often very exhausted, upset and disappointed in each other. Decisions taken then are not necessarily the best ones."

2 Many lawyers also recommend that clients have therapy while going through the divorce; it's rarely a good idea to use time with a lawyer to talk through the emotional issues. "We are infinitely more expensive than therapists and we need to be able to remain commercial about the process of a divorce, while providing empathy," says Sandra Davis, head of family law at Mishcon de Reya. "I always recommend a therapist, and for clients to use mediation or family therapy for child-related disputes."

3 Once the decision to proceed with a divorce has been taken, the choice of lawyer is key. Obviously it makes sense to choose one with experience in matrimonial law. But also, says Lloyd Platt, "Having two divorce lawyers who have a working relationship with each other is crucial."

4 Mediation can help avoid adversarial and antagonistic proceedings and the government now requires couples whose divorce is paid for by public funding to mediate, as a way of trying to resolve disputes out of court.

It involves a single mediator working with both parties to agree on the division of assets, maintenance and other issues. Mediators are often lawyers who have had special training and usually hold between three and five sessions, each lasting 60-90 minutes, over two or three months. This can cost from around £300 to £1,000 depending how many sessions are needed. Many lawyers recommend finding a mediator who is registered with Resolution, the family law advice organisation. But mediation must be done at the right stage. "If you mediate too early, and you don't have enough financial information or disclosure, it will unravel," says Lloyd Platt.

5 Collaborative law – a technique that requires both parties to work together in a constructive manner – is also popular with many lawyers. "This requires both parties and their solicitors to sign a participation agreement," says John Osborne, partner at Cumbria-based law firm Temple Heelis. "They agree not to go over past events, to deal with matters in a non-confrontational way, to be open about finances and arrangements, and not to give secret advice. All meetings are conducted together. If the process breaks down because they can't reach agreement, the two solicitors are automatically disqualified." The parties then need to go down the normal route.

Mediation and conflict resolution are particularly good at minimising the detrimental impact of divorce on children. "It's so important to maintain a line of communication where children are involved, and to find ways of agreeing about them," says Davis.

6 It's essential to maintain realistic expectations. Men and women tend to approach the outcomes very differently. "There is absolutely no doubt that many men treat the whole divorce issue as a business deal. Many women get very emotionally attached to the family home," says Lloyd Platt. "Sometimes we have to advise a woman that if she can let go of the notion that she needs to keep the home, she may be able to agree a better financial settlement."

"For a divorce to work, everyone has to feel a bit of pain when it comes to settlements and each side has to give and take," says Davis.

The Law Is Eroding Our Right To A Set Of Beliefs

Published by The Telegraph UK on 18 January 2011.

Telegraph View: The right to act in keeping with one's religious faith is being set against the right not to be offended – and is losing.

The owners of a Cornish hotel who refused to allow two homosexual men to take a double room were judged at Bristol county court yesterday to have acted unlawfully. Peter and Hazelmary Bull argued that, as Christians, they did not believe unmarried couples, whatever their sexual orientation, should share a room at their hotel. They said it was a policy they had operated since opening their doors for business 25 years ago. Indeed, their hotel website describes their hotel as "family-run for families" – which prompts us to ask why the couple, Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy, should have wanted to stay there in the first place. They had an absolute legal right to do so, of course, and no one could possibly condone a refusal to give them a room on the grounds of their sexuality. The Bulls said they based their refusal on their "married couples only" rule, a fine point given that the two men are civil partners.

Judge Andrew Rutherford, awarding Mr Hall and Mr Preddy £3,600 damages, told the Bulls that their views were out of date and added: "It is inevitable that laws will, from time to time, cut across the deeply held beliefs of individuals and sections of society." It should surprise no one that the Bulls received such short shrift from the courts and that their strongly held religious convictions should count for so little. Last year, Gary McFarlane, a Christian sex therapist, was sacked by Relate, the relationship charity, because he refused to counsel a homosexual couple. His case was taken up by Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who said Christians are being persecuted because a strongly held conviction that homosexuality is wrong is being superseded by laws outlawing discrimination on grounds of sexual discrimination. The McFarlane case went to the Appeal Court, which found against him. In a similar case, a registrar who refused to conduct civil partnerships because they were against her religious beliefs was sacked. In both cases, the aggrieved parties could have gone elsewhere to be counselled or married, just as Messrs Hall and Preddy could have found a different hotel.

The right to hold religious beliefs, and to act in keeping with one's faith, is being set against the right not to be offended – and is losing. This is a dispiriting trend in a free society. The views of the Bulls will seem to many to be old-fashioned, even distasteful – but they have every right to hold them. A pervasive climate of political correctness, however, is driving such beliefs to the margins; the law is out of kilter. It no longer protects the freedom of the believer in the way that it defends the interests of those who consider themselves discriminated against. As we have argued before, this is an unhealthy imbalance that needs to be redressed – if not by the courts, then by Parliament.

A Father's Love Should Be For Life

Published by The Telegraph on 20 January 2011.

The law should reflect that parenthood is not just a woman's job, says Allison Pearson.

Keith Macdonald is called Britain’s Most Feckless Father. Admittedly, competition for that title is fierce, but Keith established a comfortable lead on Monday night when BBC1’s Panorama asked him to name his children. Tall, wan and sepulchral as a Dickensian undertaker, Keith was hesitant at first, trying to recall the eight children by eight different women that his 25-year-old loins had spawned. He managed the first six names, but then, with two children still to go, he got stuck, shrugged, took a stab at the seventh before finally admitting defeat...

Giving life to eight blameless babies who will never know a father’s love and care, appears to be acceptable, but using a condom is repugnant. Welcome to 2011: post-morality and stigma-free. One in eight children under five will never meet the man who donated half their genes. Seventy per cent of young offenders were raised in a lone-parent home. It’s an anguished statistic. “I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father’s protection,” said Sigmund Freud...

What takes your breath away is not just the social and ethical carnage that the change has wrought, but the speed with which it happened. As the Labour MP Frank Field says: “We’re the first generation in recorded history where society has not made the man who begets a child responsible for that child.”...

Frank Field, who has taken on the role of ''poverty tsar’’ for the Coalition, has suggested schools should start giving parenting lessons. I would go further. Boys need to be taught that fathers are not just sperm donors, they have an irreplaceable protective role to play in their children’s lives. Girls need to be taught that treating the father of your baby as if he’s a turkey baster with a benefits cheque attached is as damaging as it’s cruel...

Read more here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/allison-pearson/8270249/A-fathers-love-should-be-for-life.html

Celebrating the thoughts & vision of Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra

Greetings from IDEAS,

On behalf of the President of the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS), I would like to invite you to a public forum celebrating the thoughts and visions of Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra, in conjunction with celebrating Almarhum Tunku's birthday and the first anniversary of IDEAS.

Almarhum Tunku's family members will also grace the event with their attendance.

This event will include a presentation on IDEAS' achievements in 2010 and a panel discussion. Tentatively, we expect to debate Malaysia's economic reform programme, particularly the NEM and ETP, vis a vis the vision of Bapa Malaysia and the issues around how Malays and Bumiputeras will be affected by the changes. The attached document provides background for the discussion.

The details are as follows:

Date: 8th of February 2011 (Tuesday)

Time: 10am-12pm (Doors open for registration from 9.30am)

Venue: The Auditorium, Memorial Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra, Jalan Dato' Onn, Kuala Lumpur (map: http://bit.ly/hJxbhO)

Dress Code: Smart Casual

Light lunch will be served.

Kindly RSVP to aizuddin@ideas.org.my & admin@ideas.org.my by Thursday the 27th of January 2011, confirming the number of guests that will be attending with you. As this event is free and open to the public, we would be grateful if you could pass this invitation to others in your network.

Please do not hesitate to contact us should you have any queries regarding the event.

Regards,

Programme Officer
Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS)
K3 Taman Tunku, Bukit Tunku,
50480 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Tel: +60 3 6201 6334
Fax: +60 3 6201 5334
Mobile: +6013 299 8334
Web: www.ideas.org.my

What the Military Must Learn from the Church

Published by National Catholic Register on 23 December 2010. By Tim Drake.

In Michael Rose’s 2002 book Goodbye! Good Men: How Catholic Seminaries Turned Away Two Generations of Vocations From the Priesthood, he explores the Church’s own period of openly accepting homosexual seminary candidates. Many seminaries celebrated the intimacies of homosexual relations, which are directly opposed to true “brotherhood.”

Rose describes the “lavenderization” of seminaries such as Chicago’s Mundelein Seminary and the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, and the homosexual culture present there even into the 1990s.

It is this culture that gave rise to the ordination of homosexuals who later went on to become serial abusers, men like Daniel McCormack, who reportedly had engaged in homosexual relations prior to and during his time at Mundelein. After his ordination, Father Daniel McCormack molested at least 23 boys.

The connection between homosexuality and abuse was clearly demonstrated in 2004’s The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States, otherwise known as the John Jay Report, which was conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and commissioned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

According to the John Jay Report, 81% of the victims of clerical sexual abuse were males, the majority of whom were between the ages of 11-17.

Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, has said that the report shows that the Catholic abuse crisis was “homosexual predation on American Catholic youth.”

Psychiatrist Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons has echoed that.

“The John Jay report has revealed clearly that the crisis in the Church is not one of pedophilia but of homosexuality. The primary victims have not been children but adolescent males. Fitzgibbons told Catholic News Agency that “every priest whom I treated who was involved with children sexually had previously been involved in adult homosexual relationships.”

It has always been the policy of the Church not to accept homosexuals as priests. For three decades that policy was egregiously disregarded. Following the sexual abuse crisis in the Church, and the results of the John Jay Report, the Church reaffirmed its policy in the 2005 statement, “Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with Regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in View of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders.”

That statement indicated that “the Church…cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture.’” Furthermore, the statement went on, “Such persons, in fact, find themselves in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women.”

In an accompanying Vatican commentary on the statement, Monsignor Tony Anatrella argued that theologically, homosexual priests cannot effectively incarnate either the “spousal bond” between God and the Church, or “spiritual paternity.”

“He must, in principle, be suitable for marriage and able to exercise fatherhood over his children,” wrote Monsignor Anatrella. Because the priest acts in the “person of Christ,” Anatrella said that the Church calls only “men mature in their masculine identity.”

“The Church has the right to refuse holy orders to those who do not have the requested attitudes or who, in one way or another, are not in harmony with the teaching it has received from its divine master,” he added, saying that the homosexual tendency was actually a “counterindication to the call to holy orders.”

Homosexual relationships caused a deep fracture in the priestly male fraternity. Pseudo-intimacy and intrigue replaced the outward looking evangelization of apostolic brotherhood. Bishops were unwilling to discipline the abusive priests under their charge. The Communio became divided. Religious leaders hid their own homosexual proclivities. The worst priests desacralized the liturgy and their vows and their priestly identity, while good priests often became isolated, fearful, and rigid. All priests were maimed.

What will be the result once the military has been compromised by disordered love? What will happen when an 18-year-old recruit finds himself in an unequal power differential with a superior officer who wants something more than push-ups? What’s likely to happen when brotherhood is tested on the field in the midst of battle?

Albert Einstein once said that doing the same thing, yet expecting different results, is the definition of insanity.

Is there some relationship that all of us can understand, which is deeply harmed by eroticization? That relationship, of course, would be the family. This is why the incest taboo is universal. The relationship of brothers in a family is powerful because there’s absolutely a sexual taboo which disallows eroticizing that relationship. Just as incest destroys the family as a body, the eroticization of male-male relationships destroys true brotherhood – the kind of brotherhood that is necessary for group strength and unity.

According to the report of the Pentagon’s Comprehensive Review Working Group, 62% of service members predicted potentially negative effects from the repeal. 67% of U.S. Marine combat forces said that putting homosexuals in their units would hurt their effectiveness in the field. 48% of Marines said that it would hurt their effectiveness in “intense combat situations.”

General James Amos, commandant of the Marines, told reporters that the distraction of having homosexuals in the ranks could cost Marines their lives.

When the loyalty of a brother soldier is corrupted – whether in barracks, cockpits, or foxholes – the strength of a nation’s military is severely compromised.

Disordered love leads to disordered loyalties.

Take, for example, the case of open homosexual, Army specialist Bradley Manning. Asreported by the U.K.’s “The Telegraph,” Manning is the soldier who was demanding “equality on the battlefield,” and spent more than eight months downloading hundreds of thousands of classified documents and cables, which he later leaked to Wikileak.org creator Julian Assang.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/what-the-military-must-learn-from-the-church

When we tell God to get out of our lives

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.

My confession:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees... I don't feel threatened.. I don't feel discriminated against.. That's what they are, Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, 'Merry Christmas' to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu .. If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham's daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her 'How could God let something like this happen?' (regarding Hurricane Katrina).. Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response.. She said, 'I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?'

In light of recent events... terrorists attack, school shootings, etc.. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about.. And we said okay..

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.'

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not, then just discard it... no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.