Mas Selamat Captured!

After about a year on the run, Singapore’s most wanted man has finally been captured. Mas Selamat is believed to have been captured on the first of April this year (perfect April fools’ joke).

Mas Selamat Kastari swam across the Straits of Johor using an 'improvised flotation device' in his dash to freedom soon after his escape from Whitley Detention Centre on the 27th of February last year.

Mas Selamat in police custody

According to sources, Malaysian police closed in on him and shouted at him to give up, but Mas Selamat would not surrender so easily. He climbed to the second storey of the kampung house he was staying in and tried to escape. Police then kicked down the doors and brought him out with his hands cuffed behind his back and his head covered in a dark-blue checked sarong.

The house Mas Selamat was staying in

He was forced into a police vehicle and taken away from the place he was taking refuge in. He had been hiding in the secluded Kampung Tawakal near Skudai, Johor, and he was taken away early in the morning of 1st April.

His neighbour, Jamian Simin, recounted the drama that day.

The retired 70 year old was having coffee at the time when he heard the sounds of people running. He looked out of his window to find the capture of Singapore's most-wanted terrorist taking place before him. Before that, he had no clue about Mas Selamat's true identity. Neither did anyone in the village of about 100 people, it would appear, except for his landlord and wife.
In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian Home Minister Hishamuddin Hussein on Friday confirmed that Mas Selamat has been captured and is being held under its Internal Security Act for interrogation.

A poster making fun of Mas Selamat’s ‘great escape’ last year

Mas Selamat’s capture ends one of the largest manhunts ever undertaken by Singapore and its neighbours for a terrorist on the run. He was tracked down based on intelligence provided by Singapore's Internal Security Department, and a joint operation by Malaysia and Singapore's security agencies. This eventually led to his arrest on April Fools’ Day.

Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kang Seng told Singaporeans to stay vigilant. He also said that they should not think that the threat of terrorism has receded with the arrest of Singapore’s most wanted man for about a year. No date has been fixed to return Mas Selamat to Singapore.
'The Malaysian authorities want to interview him and we will let them do their job and when they feel it's time to send him back to us, we will be happy to receive him back,' Mr Wong said. He added that the arrest is the result of the strong co-operation between security agencies on both sides. Intelligence leads provided by Singapore's Internal Security Department late last year played a key role leading to the capture.

References:
http://photos-b.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v191/127/95/512224865/n512224865_329065_6093.jpg
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_373899.html
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_375559.html?vgnmr=1http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_374015.html

Cult of Personality

Cult of personality.

What a complicated term.

Do you know what it means?

Well, according to Wikipedia, a cult of personality arises when ‘a country's leader uses mass media to create a heroic public image through unquestioning flattery and praise’.

To put this in the class’ favourite way of explaining things, simple logic or layman’s terms, this quote means that a country’s leader uses newspapers, internet, et cetera to ‘fake’ a good image of him. For example, pretend there was this leader of a country named John. John was a cruel leader, what with threatening the people of the country to do his bidding with force and making them fearful of him. However, he had posters of him doing good things like donating money to orphanages put up around the whole country so people would still respect him for his ‘good deeds’.

In this situation, ‘John’ is a ‘copy’ of Stalin. In Stalin’s case, he had posters of him with big captions praising him.

Some of the posters of Stalin doing 'good' things

To create this cult personality, Stalin censored everything that put him in a bad light, had many posters and portraits of him doing ‘good’ things as mentioned above, had things spread through word of mouth-mothers told their children that Stalin was ‘the wisest man of age’ so they would tell their own children in the future, and also had people-those who had been involved in the Russian Revolution but had been ‘removed’ from the Soviet Union since-taken out of History about that time; making him the ‘hero’ of the revolution.

Stalin had many villages named after him and the Stalin Prize and Stalin Peace Prize were named in his honor. He also accepted (very complicated) titles such as “Coryphaeus of Science," "Father of Nations," "Brilliant Genius of Humanity," "Great Architect of Communism," "Gardener of Human Happiness," and many others.

This is similar to Napoleon in Animal Farm. Napoleon had a poem composed for him by Minimus and because it was mostly praising him, he had it ‘inscribed on the wall of the big barn, at the opposite end from the seven commandments’. Napoleon also had something named after him: the windmill. Like Stalin, Napoleon had a new decoration created, the Order of the Green Banner. In addition, he had everything good Snowball did ‘erased’.

Napoleon used his cult personality to ‘brainwash’ the animals into thinking that he had been responsible for all the good things that happened on the farm, while blaming all the bad things on Snowball, just like Stalin took the credit for everything good that happened in Russia at that time and blamed Trotsky for everything that went wrong.

Napoleon used his power on the farm to influence all that happened, from the reaction of the animals to certain things to doing things for his own benefit. Let us hope (and try hard) not to become like the animals: indifferent and unthinking.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Cult_of_stalinality.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c6/Roses_for_Stalin_by_Vladimirskij.jpg
http://studenteducationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=627

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!

It was staring me in the face. I knew i was going to pay the price for doing this. My Science textbook and files were in school. So that means i have nothing to do. So there i was, wondering what to do...... I should at least search for the some notes......But it was just sitting there...... Longing to be read...... Dust had settled on it because i had no time to pick it up...... It ought to have been finished by at most last month. I was too busy.......


The book seemed to have magical powers.

STOP DOING THAT! I shot a mental cry at it. I HAVE TO STUDY FOR THE TEST! I could resist it no longer. One little break wouldn't hurt, would it?

No it won't......

Alright, just a short peek.

Yes, that's the spirit......

I grabbed the book and flipped the pages until i reached the page with the prominent crease at the top corner that the bookmark had left.

I have no idea why but i really think there's some magic hidden in the pages of the book. when i picked up the book, it was 5.30pm. When i next looked at the clock, it was 7pm.

Wow.

Yes i know i'm good. I'm just like the story. Magical.

That's a really lame pun.

Says the person who makes lame jokes.

What about the one about the chicken?

That was an exception.

Sure.

Yes i'm sure.

I quicky snapped out of the 'trance'. I shoved the bookmark back into the place where i had stopped and slammed the book shut. It would be a long time before i next open it.

Now i have absolutely nothing to do. I feared that if i started reading the book, i might never make it to school tomorrow. Then it struck me. Why read a book when you could make one? That's a brilliant idea. I should start right away. Now all i need is an idea to develop on. It's just an idea. How hard could that be? Just a simple idea. It could help with my composition writing. But all i have to think of is an idea. An idea. A simple idea. I need HELP! Post on the tagboard. Help me. My blog is dying! Dying! Dying out like a beansprout with no beans!

Yet another lame pun to add to your list......

SHUT UP! (I'm serious about the idea for a book thing [i'm willing to give prizes for a worthy idea {TOTALLY SERIOUS! /SO SERIOUS I'VE RUN OUT OF DIFFERENT KINDS OF BRACKETS TO USE/}])