Sunday, January 07, 2007
Couldn't versus Shouldn't
I recently came across an old Asiaweek article that spoke at length about China and the implications of her recent military hardware acquisitions for Asia and the rest of the world. Silent Kilo-class submarines, Moskit-armed Sovremenny-class destroyers, agile Sukhoi SU-27 fighter jets—none of these bothered me as much as Bunn Nagara being acknowledged in the piece as a 'Malaysian strategic thinker'.

This was the clever dick who, when confronted by the proliferation of cases in Malaysia whereby young girls were being raped by their own fathers, implied that the problem could be mitigated if locks were installed on the doors to the children's rooms. I guess by his reckoning only a locked door can stand between a girl's male kin and their violating her person. So much for fatherly or brotherly duty, or even plain human decency. 'I would've if I could've but I couldn't so I didn't.' Ah, those locked doors can be tricky.

Contrast this to Kurt Cobain's pronouncement on rape: 'Rape is one of the most terrible crimes on earth. The problem with groups who deal with rape is that they try to educate woman about how to defend themselves. What really needs to be done is to teach man not to rape.'


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posted by Hong at 12:17 am | Permalink | 0 comments