Easter is Against Empire!

 

The attempt to dress violence in the language of divine will is as old as empire – and just as morally bankrupt. The recent bombing of Iran ordered by US President Donald Trump, and the chorus of justification from self-styled Christian Zionists, is more than a geopolitical act. It is something far more dangerous: the fusion of racism, militarism and theological distortion into a single, combustible ideology. (This is an adaptation of an article by Kua Kia Soong in Aliran)

 

The bombing of a sovereign nation is not “God’s intention” to punish an “evil regime”. It is blasphemy. It reduces God to a tribal war deity, conveniently aligned with the strategic interests of one superpower. This is not Christianity. It is a propaganda as good as the Crusades!

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org

 

The Easter message delivered by Pope Leo XIV offers a stark moral contrast. Easter, at its core, is about sacrifice, redemption and the triumph of life over violence. It is a reminder that the Divine cannot be invoked to sanctify destruction. A God worthy of worship cannot be conscripted into bombing campaigns. In John 10:10, Jesus was explicit about the thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy. Isn’t it religious hypocrisy to preach love on Sunday and justify war on Monday?

 

What we are witnessing is not just hypocrisy. It is a deeply racialised worldview. Iran is cast as inherently “evil”, its people reduced to caricatures, its society flattened into a target. This is the same logic that has justified countless injustices across history: the dehumanisation of ‘the other’ as a precondition for violence (including the Holocaust). There is no rationality to racism. There never has been and ever will be.

 

The same irrationality underpins the demonisation of Iran. Entire populations are judged not as individuals but as embodiments of an abstract “evil”. Once that narrative takes hold, violence becomes easier to justify. Bombs fall more readily when those below are seen not as human beings, but as enemies of God.

 

It is worth remembering, too, the historical irony – indeed, the moral inversion – at play here. Today, some Christian Zionists present themselves as defenders of Jewish destiny, invoking biblical narratives to support modern political agendas. Yet history tells a different story. For centuries, Christians in Europe were among the worst oppressors of Jews – subjecting them to persecution, expulsion, forced conversion and massacre. The legacy of Christian antisemitism is long and brutal. It should instil humility, not self-righteousness.

 

To now claim divine authority in matters of war, while ignoring this history, is not just ahistorical – it is dangerous. It suggests that lessons have not been learnt that the machinery of exclusion and violence can simply be repurposed with a different target.

 

The real Easter message – the one worth holding onto – is not about vengeance or punishment. It is about the refusal to answer violence with violence, the insistence on the dignity of every human being, rejection of hatred in all its forms and the power of the Cross to redeem all lost souls. Nothing violent in that!

 

If faith is to mean anything in the modern world, it must stand against the weaponisation of religion. It must challenge the narratives that turn people into enemies and wars into holy missions. And it must remind us that there is nothing divine about dropping bombs on human beings.

 

What we are seeing is not the will of God. It is the failure of humanity, dressed up in the language of righteousness – but exposed, ultimately, as what it is: racism, power and the tragic refusal to learn from history.

 

Reference:

Easter against Empire: Why God cannot justify the bombing of Iran, Kua Kia Soong, Aliran, 5 April 2026

Trump’s Silly War!

 

Are we slipping into World War Three (WWIII)? After eight decades of relative, we are now in the throes of a four-year-old Ukrainian war and an escalating Israel-US-Iran conflict. 

In 1984, American historian Barbara Tuchman, famous for her analysis of WWI – “The Guns of August”, wrote “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam” on how throughout history, governments pursued policies contrary to their own best interests, even though there are better alternatives. Governments make horrible mistakes when they are blinded by individual egos, excessive political shenanigans and lack of moral direction leading to outcomes that become catastrophic for everyone.

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org

Having bitterly lost in Vietnam, bogged down in the ruinous Iraq war, estimated to cost US$2.9 trillion, why should Trump repeat forever wars when he was elected as a president who will bring home the troops? Trump can blame Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan or his predecessors but this Iranian war, which did not receive Congressional approval will be known either as Trump’s silly war or Trump’s dangerous war. 

Tuchman argued that folly thrives where few key advisers or experts have the moral courage to speak truth to power, because many succumb to personal ambition or fear of being outcast in an institutionalised groupthink.History never repeats itself unless we have not learned. And we are now sliding into a dangerous psychological phase of a looming nuclear WWIII. 

Barring how difficult it would be to negotiate peace after both sides have suffered seriously damaged infrastructure, including desalination plants, the only solution to a tenuous peace arrangement is the presence of a United Nations peace-keeping force that would inevitably include Russia, China, possibly India and Europe. No single power can again guarantee the strategic security arrangement in the region. 

America is fighting a war against a smaller enemy that it can afford less and less. The Pentagon has asked for another US$200bil to fight this war. The US Treasury Debt is already at a mind-boggling US$39 trillion, which according to monetarist Steve Hanke and Paul Walker (former comptroller of the currency) mean technical insolvency. If US off-balance sheet liabilities like unfunded pension liabilities are added to official off-balance sheet liabilities, “total federal obligations would now exceed US$136.2 trillion – roughly five times US annual gross domestic product.” 

The world marches to folly because there are no checks and balance back to rationality. The world’s institutions like the Security Council or the United Nations are all impotent or emasculated by Trump. There has to be a global, people movement to stop this march of evil!

 

Reference:

The folly of Trump’s war, Tan Sri Andrew Sheng, The Star, 04 Apr 2026

PMX Berates Bearers of Fake Fuel Price News!

 

In a special address on 1 April, PMX alluded to his conversations with leaders of Iran, Turkiye, Egypt, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states having pointed to one stark reality – the situation will get worse before it gets better. He further contended that the expenditure to cushion the impact of the global energy crisis has reached RM4 bil to date while PETRONAS has helped ensure there will be sufficient oil and gas supplies until at least May. There are steps, meanwhile, taken by the Government:

 

·         National Economic Action Council (MTEN) meetings to convene more frequently with the involvement of industry representatives, fishermen, farmers and related sectors to formulate follow-up actions;

·                 Cancellation of Federal-level Aidilfitri open houses as a cost-saving measure;

·                 Adjustment of BUDI95 quota to 200 litres/month as a temporary measure;

·                 Enforcement of subsidised diesel filling limits in Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan; and

·         Implementation of the (public sector) work from home (WFH) policy beginning April 15 to reduce fuel consumption.

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org

 

Then PMX hit out as an “act of sabotage and betrayal to the country” those who spread fake news about the price of fuel and other related goods. 

Interestingly, just prior to PMX’s special message, the Finance Ministry (MOF) had unveiled another shocker to especially individual 4×4 pick-up truckers as retail price of diesel in Peninsular Malaysia continues its spiral by a further 50 sen to a record RM6.02/litre for the April 2-8 period. 

However, the retail price of non-subsidised RON97 petrol under the Automatic Pricing Mechanism (APM) will be reduced by 20 sen to RM4.95/litre while the retail price for RON95 petrol will remain at RM3.87/litre. 

Politically, not only is the price disparity between diesel price in Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah/Sarawak which continue to enjoy the subsidised RM2.15/litre rate widening, the more pressing concern among B40 and M40 groups is inflationary pressure with an eventual spike in cost of living. How could diesel prices jump by over 112% – from RM2.84 to RM6.02 – in just two months without any effort to slow the increase. At the same time, global LNG (liquefied natural gas) prices have surged much higher than oil prices with PETRONAS expected to enjoy huge profits, according to a former Barisan Nasional (BN) strategic communication deputy director. So the question is where is this windfall going and why isn’t it being used in part to slow or control diesel prices? 

It’s not that the rakyat don’t understand economics. But if prices rise too quickly without control, the impact will be felt on food, logistics and the cost of living. Enough with the excuses. The rakyat want action. (Believe it or not, this was said by the former premier Datuk Seri Najib Razak) 

Reference:

PMX berates bearers of fake fuel price news as diesel pump price spiked to RM6.02/litre, FocusM, 2 April 2026

 

Norway – A Model for Oil Revenue?

 

On Christmas Eve 1969, deep beneath the freezing waters of the North Sea, drillers struck black gold. The Ekofisk field — one of the largest offshore oil discoveries in history was found. A small, quiet nation of fishermen and farmers was about to become unimaginably rich. 

What Norway did next is either the greatest financial decision in modern history… or the most boring story ever told. No victory parades. No palaces. No sudden checks raining down on citizens. While the oil money began pouring in, Norwegian politicians did something almost no government in history has managed: they resisted temptation. They had watched what happened to other oil-rich nations — Nigeria, Venezuela, Libya. They saw the “resource curse” in real time: easy money that brought corruption, inflation, inequality, and eventual collapse. Norway decided it would not become another cautionary tale.

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org

In 1990, the Norwegian Parliament passed a simple but revolutionary law. Every single krone of oil profit would go into a new Government Petroleum Fund — now known as the Oil Fund. The rules were strict and almost painfully disciplined: 

- All oil revenue goes into the fund. 

- The government can spend only a tiny percentage of the returns each year. 

- The rest stays invested. Forever. 

The first deposit in 1996 was modest, almost symbolic. Then came the hardest part: they kept the rules. 

Year after year, election after election, crisis after crisis, politicians who promised to raid the fund lost. Those who protected it won. For over three decades, across governments of every political stripe, one principle held firm: this money belongs to Norwegians who haven’t been born yet. 

The fund bought small stakes in thousands of companies worldwide — Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Nestlé, and countless others. It invested in real estate in Manhattan, London, Paris, and Tokyo. It didn’t gamble on hot trends. It simply bought a quiet piece of the global economy and waited. 

Today, Norway’s Oil Fund is worth nearly $2 trillion. For a country of just 5.6 million people, that’s roughly $340,000 for every man, woman, and child. No checks are mailed. The money belongs as much to future generations as to the present one. More than half of that wealth no longer comes from oil. It comes from investment returns. The fund now earns more from its global portfolio than Norway makes pumping oil out of the North Sea. They turned a finite resource into something close to infinite. 

Norway quietly became one of the largest investors on Earth — owning approximately 1.5% of every publicly traded company on the planet. Every time a major global business makes a profit, a tiny fraction quietly flows back to Norway’s children. 

The oil will eventually run out. Geologists give it 30 to 50 years, maybe more. It doesn’t matter. By then, the fund’s returns alone are projected to cover healthcare, education, and pensions — perhaps forever. Norway didn’t discover more oil than anyone else. They didn’t have superior geology or technology. They had one thing most nations lack: the courage to say no. 

No to easy money. 

No to short-term thinking. 

No to politicians who swore they’d only spend “just this once.” 

No to a generation that could have lived richer today — at the expense of every generation that follows.

 

Most countries can’t do it. Most people can’t do it. We’re wired for now, not for later. Norway looked human nature — greed, impatience, shortsightedness — squarely in the eye and built a system specifically designed to defeat it. That’s wisdom.

Please Wean Off Protectionism!

 

For the past four decades, Malaysians have had to pay high prices because of huge import fees on automobiles to allow the national auto players to grow. The problem is after more than 40 years, Malaysians are still paying a substantial amount of fees to protect the car companies. When will that change? That is pertinent as the two largest expenses for the average Malaysian are the house they are living in and also the car they own. 

The national auto industry had its foundation on the Look East Policy. The industry did not follow the eventual path laid out by Japan, which started off having high protectionist barrier but those were dismantled over time. Japan, South Korea and China, which have established auto industries benefited from tariffs and non-tariff barriers to help the domestic industries grow, but these levies were removed in more recent times, especially in Japan and South Korea. 

Source: https://www.investopedia.com

Miti says national automakers, Proton-Geely and Perodua-Daihatsu, account for over 63% of local vehicle sales and there are more than 700,000 employees in the ecosystem. All together, the industry contributes about 4% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) annually. After decades of investment, the statement says Perodua-Daihatsu maintains a localisation rate of over 75% on its mainstream models and Proton-Geely at 76% in 2025. 

Miti says the auto industry has developed new technologies through its localisation programme, which is the aim of the national car programme, and billions of ringgit had been chanelled through the vendor programme for the benefit of the small and medium enterprises and their employees. There is no doubt that there have been benefits as the national auto industry was a prelude towards the industrialisation of Malaysia. Boosting engineering levels was also an intent of the policy. But after decades, Malaysia’s commitment to research and development as a percentage of GDP is meagre. 

FDI as a means to drive the auto industry was executed by Thailand, which now sees its auto industry not only claim the moniker of Detroit of the East but also contributes about 10% of GDP and employs more people than the ecosystem in Malaysia. Indonesia, which once tried to have its own national car project but went the way of Thailand, has its auto industry ecosystem account for between 8% and 10% of GDP. But the Thailand auto industry model also led to a large share of exports as opposed to Malaysia. Thailand exported US$24bil worth of vehicles in 2024 compared with US$481mil in Malaysia. Indonesia exported US$6.23bil worth of vehicles in 2024. 

The government is to collect about RM11.6bil in auto-related taxes in 2026 which pales in comparison with the contribution the auto sector has on GDP. Malaysia’s auto sales are dependent on the local market because of the low level of exports. At around 800,000 vehicles per year, Malaysia’s auto sales are not small but they do not offer scale to drop the unit cost against countries with larger exports or heavy subsidies are allowed to achieve. 

But that does not mean protectionist policies must continue. The welfare loss from high taxes to protect the domestic industry can be large, but policy has to be tweaked to incorporate some withdrawal of protection for the benefit of consumers. For one, Malaysian manufacturers have to increase their exports significantly if there is to be a continuation of protectionist policies. That way, forcing companies to be more competitive will only mean longer term survival in a more open market place akin to Japan and South Korea.  

Forty years of protectionism is enough! If a child remains a child at 40, the fault lies with the parents not the child. And parents should know when to let go. Why can’t the Government over a period let go these two kids – Proton and Perodua – and face market forces? 

Reference:

Time to wean off protectionism, Jagdev Singh Sidhu, The Star, 4 Apr 2026

 

Death Penalty for Fatal Corruption?

 

The Klang road tragedy has become racialised online. The blame has turned into racial stereotypes of a “drunk Indian”, while forgetting he was also high on dadah, or drugs, which are normally typecast with another racial group. The video of the accident was horrific.

Now, some are calling for the death penalty. But let’s be consistent. What about other dangerous, negligent, and corrupt behaviour that causes death? 

Some are “high” on reckless riding or driving, while others are “drunk” on bribes. All have deadly consequences.

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org

1. Mat Rempit

Motorcyclists made up two-thirds of 6,537 road deaths in 2025, with those aged 16 to 30 at the highest risk, according to the transport minister. In contrast, there were only 69 cases of fatal drink driving over 10 years (2011-2021), according to police statistics. 

This is not to downplay the need to punish drunk drivers, but to ask: why isn’t there similar outrage against the notorious Mat Rempit? 

2. Logging and deadly landslides 

Five people were killed in December 2021 near Bentong, Pahang, after deadly landslides laden with mud and logs. Or is it ‘Tuhan punya pasal’, as late Samy Velu will put it. 

3. Dangerous lorry, bus drivers

We have become immune to news of bus and lorry accidents. A total of 203 bus-related accidents occurred in Malaysia from January 2023 to May 2026, resulting in 39 deaths and 68 serious injuries. The causes, said police, included overworked drivers chasing tight schedules, speeding on wet roads, brake failure, worn-out tyres, and yes, drugs. News reports also point to drivers being hired despite multiple past traffic violations. Biasa la (normal la). Somehow, these don’t raise the same level of indignation as alcohol.

 

In May 2025, nine FRU men near Teluk Intan were killed by a lorry driver with six past criminal cases for drugs, rape, and theft. The carnage continues. In March, a trailer lorry smashed into three cars in Penang, causing serious injuries. The driver tested positive for syabu or methamphetamine. 

A study revealed that fatal road accidents involving heavy vehicles like lorries have claimed 1,457 lives from 2019 to 2024. That’s one life lost every 36 hours. Luckily, deaths declined in 2025. 

Finally, let’s come to government responsibility. In June last year, a tragic accident on the East-West Highway killed 15 UPSI students. Six months later, a Transport Ministry special task force released its findings. 

Highways have guardrails to prevent vehicles from plunging into ravines. However, at the accident site, they acted not to save the bus, but as a giant “spear” piercing through the left side of the vehicle, causing 11 of the 15 deaths. How did this happen? The spacing between guardrail posts was 3.8m, far over the 2m limit. The guardrail panels were installed against the flow of traffic, and multiple bolts were missing. Instead of cushioning the bus, the end of the guardrail snapped and failed to fold upon impact, becoming a sharp, piercing object. 

So, if we’re calling for drunk drivers to be hanged, what about bus and lorry drivers on drugs? What about corrupt officers who enable this bloodbath on the roads? What about transport companies that hire drivers with multiple misdeeds? 

Reference:

COMMENT | Death penalty for fatal corruption, not just drink driving? Andrew Sia, Malaysiakini, 2 Apr 2026

10 Leadership Rules for Trust & Success

 

Reference:

10 Leadership rules for trust & success, post by Afizan Amer on Linkein