On Freedom

1. To quote Barrack Obama on page 375 of his "Audacity of Hope" who talked about freedom. According to him in 1945 Franklin D Roosevelt looked forward to a world founded upon four essential freedom.

2. The four essential freedom are freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. I am sure since then there have been many interpretation of freedom and an equally amount of discussion on the subject. The various Prime Ministers and governments of Malaysia had talked about such freedom.

3. As far as freedom of speech is concerned much is desired as the government has many laws, regulations and acts that don't permit a full freedom of speech for fear of racial unrest and what-nots. Most newspapers reported what their masters wished to convey to the readers and not what the readers want to read and know. Many books have been banned from the public readership etc.

4. Freedom of worship is fulfilled without any hindrance except lately there were some people who capitalised on the controvery of the use of the name of Allah to gain sympathy from the Malaysian muslims. The Indonesians, Egyptians and Lebanese muslims and christians have been using the name of Allah. It is only those in Malaysia felt insecure.

5. In Malaysia there is so much poverty in rural areas, especially in the less developed states, including Kelantan. There are thousands whose monthly income is less than $300 per house-hold and yet they inspired for good water supply and food to eat, electricity to get uniform light to read and proper sanitation. Malaysia is a country of rich and diverse natural resources and very high GDP and annual growth. This is an irony.

6. In my past postings I discussed a certain degree of fear emancipated from the present government and the police in their quest to banish freedom of speech and expression that are not congruent from theirs. The government simply cannot except any views which are contrary to what they have wanted to hear and read. However, the present government under YAB Dato' Seri Najib is quite liberal in their thoughts and practice.

7. It is my wish that the four essential freedom is respected to the fullest as signs of independence and civilised society that Malaysians cherish.

On Scientific Collections and Material Transfer Regulations

1. At the on-set of CBD there were some trivial conflicts between the North and the South. The former is presumed to represent the rich and industrialised countries which have the technology to enhance the sustainable utilisation of natural resources in the less-developed countries. The South is presumed to be poor countries but have rich natural resources, especially biodiversity. The negotiators who are mostly lawyers and scientists turned businessmen sat across the tables to discuss material and technological transfers but failed. Then these North and South countries did it in bilateral negotiations and cooperation.

2. Malaysia is no exception. We claimed to be rich in biodiversity and moving towards becoming an industrialised country by 2020. But our human resources and scientific critical mass both in biodiversity and biotechnology is far behind countries like Cuba, Thailand, taiwan, not to mention Singapore and South Korea. To add salt to the wound we are yet to have a standard reference collections of our rich biodiversity to be housed in a Malaysian Natural History Museum.

3. In March 2010, Japan took an initiative to gather some scientists from South-east Asia, including Taiwan and met in Tokyo. We discussed scientific collections, modes of material transfer from country to country and also the national regulations. It must be emphasised that systematic study at a revisionary level can't be confined to a locality, state/province or even country for a taxon is widely distributed across a wide geographical range. We can't assume to do a revision, say of Vitaceae, without making specimen collections in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, the Phillipines, Thailsnd etc.

4. However, all countries claimed soverignity over their natural resources, including innocent specimens of corals, benthos, phytoplanktons, insects, beetles, birds, bats, grasses, weeds, mosses, ferns and other higher plants. All these countries believed they could find and harness richness from this biodiversity. I don't deny there is some money to be made in selling cut-flowers transported by Boeing 747 to Europe, smuggling Paphiopedilum, Nepenthes, fishes, turtles etc to the developed countries where ther are rich buyers. But these perceptions coupled with more stringent regulations, especially in Indonesia and the Philippines are hampering science, conservation and knowledge on biodiversity.

5. We met and we decided to approach ASEAN and other organisations to discuss on how to remedy these situations.

On Ornamental Plants

1. Man is born to apprecaitae beautiful things, be it rural or mountain landscape, old but delipidated buildings, beautiful flowers, slim or large cars, gigantic animals etc. It is second nature for man to like and love beautiful things even though as some people declared beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To me beauty is beauty.

2. Man loves to decorate his dwellings with beautiful landscape hence he planted and cultivated plants of all kinds of habit around him. He likes the aromatic smell of Cananga odorata or Michelia champaca; he likes the bracts of Bougainvillea glabra or Mussaenda philippica; he likes the ringed stems of Veitchia merrillii or Roytonea oleracea; he likes the petals of Hibiscur rosa-sinensis or Plumeria obtusa, etc

3. Hence he imported many more foreign plants which are supposed to be more exotic and put in the nurseries throughout the country. When the government agencies more plants to plant and when the housewives more herbs and shrubs to decorate their dwellings and building they buy from these nurseries.

4. Then the problem started as the local taxonomists like me have a lot of difficulties in identifying the foreign plants to species. At the most I could get to the family level period and to get to the genus and what more species took a lot of pain referring to the unavailable books. In Thailand and Singapore my counter-parts have less problems as the reference books are plenty. In addition, many exotic plant species came to Malaysia via Thailand.

5. Taxonomy is beautiful if you could impress the public with binomial nomenclature but when you are stuck with foreign plant species you were more like a fool. These plant species didn't come through the immigration channels for passport registration like we do. How nice if these species were to line up in the immigration channels with their passport in their branches where we can register their species names and origin, and sometimes their sex too, monoecious or dioecious or polygamous.

6. Malaysia needs more reference books with beautifully illustrated pictures of the ornamental plant resources.

On biopiracy

1. When I watched Pirates of the Caribbean, a few bioheritage issues cropped up. When the Portuguese were here in 1511, the Dutch in 1642 and the British in 1787, the Japanese in 1940 and the British came back in 1945, surely they did not come innocently. The textbooks they came for spices. However, I think they came for many other reasons ...spice was probably one of them.

2. After Independence in 1957 many more peoples came to Malaysia, Portugueses, Dutch, British, Japanese and others ....this time not for spice, but for our natural resources. They were looking for soil bacteria, leaf litter bacteria and other protistans. Many also came to screen our anthophytes for possible new chemicals to fight cancer and AID. Many came looking for exotics such as orchids, aroids, gingers etc.

3. Many came for exotic animals such as lizards, turtles, birds, insects to trade. Many came as tourists but they went home and biopirates. Many came through a proper channel via EPU and local counter-parts and went back as collaborators in R & D. In the case of the latter, after a couple of publications, the locals were satified but they kept the Malaysian specimens in their labs working further on new innovations.

4. So there are a few kinds of biopirates, those without license to rob and those with license to rob. In the epic films only the strong became the pirates and the weaks became the victims. Normally the strong won and became the hero until the end. The weaks normally forgot what they had lost because they were handicapped and too innocents.

5. I am suggesting let the pirates-to-be and the Malaysian scientists work together on equal terms in honesty and sincerity for humanity. After all the Malaysian resources are world's resources before polity was introduced and practiced in the name of socialism and democracy.

Malaysian Wildlife Trade

1. After reading the article entitled, "Trafficking in Wildlife" in National Geographic January 2010, by Brian Christy, I am compelled to post some of my perceptions and thoughts herein. Earlier I had bought and read "Lizard King" and just ordered "Orchid Fever" at Kinokunia KLCC. Bpth of these books reported the trade in wildlife and orchids.

2. Whether we liked it or not, Malaysia has been reported as an active hub in Asian and World trade in both the wildlife and plants. There were incidents in the past where Malaysians were caught and jailed in USA and England for trafficking plant and animal materials which are listed in under CITES Appendix I. One of the the ironic things is that these involved Malaysians and they were caught outside our country. Are we saying they were more sensitive than the Malaysian authorities in handling these kind of cases. Malaysia has been a signatory of CITES.

3. It is reported that import and export of these items are very lucrative economically as there are many buyers in the world and the demands for the exotics are on the increase. Some under the pretext of R & D for medical reasons, e.g. the exports of Macaca fascicularis three years ago, involving some high ranking government servants. Whenever there are demands the suppliers and the middlemen became more active.

4. The staffs of WWF Malaysia reporetd that there is no more evidence of Sumateran rhinoceros anymore in Belum Forest Reserve, Perak; the number of tigers is dwindling as the poachers from neighbouring countries are becoming more daring. However, they have the locals as their accomplish. The populations of civet cats, reticulated pythons, cobras, monitor lizards, crocodiles, mynahs, ant-eaters, slow lories, flying squirrels, etc have decreased alarmingly due to this phenomenon. Like-wise the orchid and ferns trades are also becoming active, with the Singaporean tourists cum collectors were observed buying them from road-side Orang Asli sellers in a very innocent manner.

5. Read more in the national geographic for more details.

Out Of Africa

1. When I finished reading Martin Meredith's "The State of Africa" a couple of things stuck in my mind. Amongst them are:

2. Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa once said. Africa was renowned for the pyramids of Egypt, the Benin bronzes of Nigeria, the obelisks of Aksum in Ethiopia, the libraries of Timbuktu in Mali, the stone fortresses of Zimbabwe and the ancient rock arts of South Africa. What had happened to all these .....

3. In July 2002, President Muamar Gadaffi of Libya once stated, "Africa for Africans. the land is ours.No more slavery. No more colonisation.. It is a new dawn.We are bigger than the Whites. We are mighty. If they want to serve us, okay. If they want to go back, okay" .

4. These are pure rhetorics. After 2002, African dictators went on to plunder the natural resources of their own countries to enrich themselves and their cronies. They had their accounts in Europe. And today Africa was where it was after Independence, far worst when they were under colonialism. I am not saying colonialism was good, far from it, but the African dictators simply betrayed democracy and their own peoples.

5. There was similarity with Malaysia after her Independence. We had "Bersih, Cekap and Amanah", we had "Masyarakat Madani" and we have 1Malaysia". Though we didn't have military dictators, we had corruption of high level, evidences of cronyism, we had patronage in sports and party politics, etc that attempted to plunder our rich natural resources, namely forests, wildlife, petroleum, gas, flora and fauna, and our beautiful and clean environment.
It is not too late to be sober and go for more transparency in running the accounts of PETRONAS, awarding logging concessions, awarding negotiated business deals and mega-projects; handling corruption by MACC, handling students demonstration by Police, newspaper reporting, TV news reporting etc.

6. Please forgive me for saying all these simply because I love Malaysia and the only country I can make a home and I don't want to see my country going the African way of governance and independence. "Malaysia Boleh" is one slogan of ego-centric arrogance, if used in negative ways. Tun Mahathir meant well with that slogan, but was misused by many in sports and business transactions. Malaysian soccer has gone below unknown countries like Vanuatu in international ranking. However, thanks to Nicols David and Lee Chong Wei for putting us on the squash and badminton maps. Why do we have to run the Sepang circuit and a FI Lotus with foreign drivers?

On Martin Meredith's The State of Africa"

1. After I finished reading Zaid Ibrahim's, "I, too, am a Malay" I moved to Martin Meredith's The State of Africa. It is about a history of 50 years of Independence of many of the African nations. According to The Economists it is a highly readable digest of half a century of woes in the cradle of mankind. It is in the horn of Africa where I believe the man originated and I think here too mankind would bring unto himself self-destruction.

2. Malaysia gains her Independence from Britain in 1957, about 52 years ago. It was the same time as many African countries under the European powers gained their Independence. In other words what had happened in some African countries are not much different from what had happened in Malaysia. However, we were quite lucky in having our Prime Ministers and their ministers, armies and police who were not that corrupt. As a country bestowed with rich natural resources we, however, became rich by utilising foreign species, namely the rubber and oilpalm, neglecting our own indigenous species.

3. President Nkrumah, President Gamal Nasser, President Felix Houphouet-Boigny, President Hasting Banda, President Robert Mugabe, President Mobutu, and I can go on mentioning the dictators of Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, South Africa, Mozambique, Angola, Cameroon, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ghana, Congo etc who had plundered their golds, diamonds, copper, oil to enrich themselves and their cronies.

4. Millions of Africans died in tribal wars becoming the ponds between waring nations and provinces within the nation while their elite were enjoying their champagne and cereals, including human flesh. The killing fields of Rwanda when Hutu and Tutsi took turm to kill each other were testimony of the greed those dictators had.

5. I thought it was only in Khmer that Pol Pot used the chidren army to kill adults. I was wrong, in Liberia they did the same thing earlier. Apparently, Pol Pot copied what had happened in Liberia. And the super-powers the US, Russia, France, Britain, Cuba, Belgium etc were making money selling weapons of African destruction. These western powers were indeed behind the waring parties. It was no different from the politics of this decade when the US, Britain and Russia conspired to punish other less-developed nations. This is politics of the highest order of hypocricy.

6. Zaid Ibrahim cynically compare Malaysia with Mugabe's Zambia which was a beautiful country with rich natural resources. Today 1 billion of their currency could but 3 eggs! I pray that my beloved country will not get near of being 10% of Mugabe's greed. What who knows if what Zaid Ibrahim wrote in his little book might come through in 10 years time if they are not checked by the Malaysians.