Kris Khaira

“Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama pledged steadfast aid to Afghanistan in talks Sunday with its Western-backed leader and vowed to pursue the war on terror “with vigor” if elected, an Afghan official said.”

Source: AP

Not now, but one day.

As soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.

- Marx, Concept of Man

[via Design Your Life]

Old news, but MySpace was recently redesigned by one of my web usability heroes, Adaptive Path. This means that I’ll be using MySpace a lot more for getting in touch with bands, like Magrudergrind who played some kickass grindcore last night at Soundmaker Studdio.

I’m sitting right now on a sofa in the waiting lounge at my car’s service workshop, and the first thing that came to mind are those reports about how putting your laptop on your lap can make you sterile. For men, at least.

It crosses my mind all the time but fuck that. I’m not bothered because it affects my sterilty, not my libido and I’m probably going to adopt anyway. It’s probably one of those scientific scares anyway.

I’m typing this while sitting comfortably on a sofa with my laptop on my lap.

From an email:

Dear All,

During the Parliamentary debate on Friday, the issue of RELA was raised again. There was a small report in the SUN (4 July 2008) of the supplementary question by YB Fong Poh Kuan (DAP-Batu Gajah) concerning disciplinary action against 9 RELA officers last year.

In reply to her question the Deputy Home Minister said, amongst other things, that “a special bill on Rela was being drafted and would be tabled in Parliament to ensure its effectiveness and give its members more powers.” ( quote from the SUN report).

Bernama also reported that the Home Ministry plans to upgrade RELA and accord its members more powers. Moreover, RELA is in the process of being made a government department and only needs cabinet approval for the process to be finalised.

The Minister disclosed that an allocation of RM15 million has been made to fund RELA operations. RELA has 520,000 members currently according to the report.

This needs to be discussed by ALL organizations working with and servicing migrants and refugees, as passing of the RELA Bill will only serve to legitimize RELA and its increased power. RELA comes under the Home Ministry and Immigration Department control. Neither the Police nor the Armed Forces in this country have any authority over RELA.
Please could the organizations concerned give some input as to the approach to be taken on the RELA issue and if and when a discussion should be held ASAP.

WE DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE PROVISIONS OF THE RELA BILL ARE AS IT HAS BEEN CLASSIFIED UNDER THE OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT SINCE LAST YEAR.

Thank You.

Regards,
Angeline
(JUMP)

Note for those new to the subject of RELA.
RELA is used to crackdown on undocumented immigrants in this country. This frequently includes refugees, registered by UNHCR, who are protected persons under international law and should not be deported to their home countries as their lives are in danger there. RELA does not recognize UNHCR documents as the Home Ministry does not recognize refugees. The Malaysian government has no proper immigration policy or system to cater for refugees and only allows UNHCR to register the refugees and give them UNHCR documents on humanitarian grounds. This puts refugees in a very difficult situation in which they struggle to survive in this country apart from having to face the possibility of being arrested and detained by RELA.

RELA is now in charge of security in Immigration Detention Centers, apart from operations to ‘roundup’ undocumented migrants.

Migrant workers, even those with legally recognized documents are also in danger of being arrested and detained by RELA. RELA is often very violent when arresting any migrant. The MWG (KL) has received numerous reports from migrant workers and refugees about ill-treatment of persons RELA detains. These acts of violence range from beating migrants( including minors and children) to sexual abuse of female migrants.

Cool video with amazing head-tracking produced by Lovely Productions.

ORBA SQUARA “GRAVEL” MUSIC VIDEO from LORCANFINNEGAN on Vimeo.

[Via createdigitalmotion.com]

I’ve just begun to really use Photoshop’s keyboard shortcuts. Here’s my new rule – anything I do 3 or more times during an editing session MUST be assigned a keyboard shortcut. And the result has been me working 2x as fast! I’ve assigned shortcuts to everything from aligning to viewing Layer Properties (very useful for quickly renaming a layer or group). Press Shift+Opt+Cmd+K to start assigning shortcuts.