The case of the rooster and the duck.

By Azmi Sharom. Illustrations by Jun Kit.

(from the March 2014 issue of The B-Side)

Chapter One: Homecoming

An old and battered pickup truck trundles down a country road. Looking at this truck, you’d think that there was nothing particularly strange about it. In the flatbed, there is a black and white sheepdog; a border collie to be exact. Driving the truck wearing a tattered, old, peaked cap is a tall and gangly gentleman who is, shall we say, a little on the mature side.

However, if you were to look a little closer, you will see that all is not as ordinary as it seems. Inside the truck next to the farmer is a little piglet with an odd tuft of hair. Look even closer and there, next to the piglet is a trophy on which is inscribed ‘Best Sheepdog. County Trails’ (it was meant to read ‘trials’ not ‘trails’, but Bob the local engraver is getting on a bit).

Indeed the pig is Babe, the most famous – well, the only – sheep pig in all the world, and today he is a happy little pig indeed. After a resounding success at the sheepdog trials, he, Farmer Hogget and Fly the collie (and Babe’s adopted Mum) are going home to the farm after days away. Babe cannot wait to tell his friends about his adventures.

Babe wonders if Fly is alright in the back by herself. He raises himself on his hind trotters and looks out of the back window. Fly is hanging her head over the side of the truck with her tongue flapping in the breeze. She looks very pleased. ‘Mum, Mum,’ says Babe, but she can’t hear him for the wind in her ears.

Farmer Hogget turns at the sound of Babe squealing (humans can’t understand Pig. In fact they can’t understand any animals at all). He gives him a kindly smile and says in a soft voice, ‘That’ll do, Pig. That’ll do.’ Babe snuggles down, closes his eyes and with a sigh thinks to himself, ‘Home soon.’

If he only knew of the commotion that awaits him, he would undoubtedly not be so contented.

—

Chapter Two: Fear in the farmyard

‘Babe! Babe!’ quacks Ferdinand the duck, ‘it’s a catastrophe, it’s apocalyptic, it’s indescribable.’ The sight of Ferdinand, more frantic than usual, greets babe as soon as he gets home into the farmyard.

‘Calm down, Ferdinand. Tell me what happened,’ says the little sheep pig. But Ferdinand is beyond calm and he flaps his wings wildly as he runs around in circles.

‘It’s Rooster,’ says a deep gruff voice. Babe looks round to see Rex the male sheepdog (and Fly’s mate) pad up to him. ‘He was taken when you were away. If I wasn’t so deaf, I would have heard them and stopped them,’ Rex growls, his anger directed partly at the Rooster thieves and partly to his disability. ‘Don’t blame yourself, Rex,’ comes the slow, rumbling voice of Horse. ‘None of us heard them.’

‘But that is not the worst of it,’ screams Ferdinand. He tugs at something with his bill. Babe trots up to see and he gasps in horror. It is a newspaper, and on it is a picture of a group of ugly, fat men with faces twisted in hate. But that’s not what shocks Babe. The thing that so horrifies the piglet is the image at the feet of the ugly men; it is the mangled body of Rooster, his blood smeared all over a banner. 

‘How could they do such a thing,’ says Fly, ‘to kill an animal for no reason. The beasts.’

By this time Ferdinand is several levels past hysterical. He flaps around screeching that they may be back to take and kill more animals. ‘Stop it, Ferdinand,’ shouts Babe. ‘They won’t get you, I promise. I’ll stay with you all night. We’ll get them.’

Babe kindly nuzzles Ferdinand with his snout. If only he felt as confident as he sounded.

—

Chapter Three: Kidnapped

It is long past midnight and the heroic little pig finds himself nodding off. Ferdinand is twitching in his sleep, but at least he is finally asleep after hours of hyperventilating. 

‘I guess I could close my eyes for just a second,’ Babe thinks to himself. Scarcely have those words drifted through his mind when he’s sound asleep.

It feels like no time has passed when Babe awakes with a start. He can hear a wild quacking. No words can be made out as Ferdinand is panicking and was screeching incoherently. Babe is on his trotters in a flash. There across the farmyard are three men sneaking away. One of them grips the struggling Ferdinand!

‘Hey you!’ yells Babe. ‘Let my friend go!’ he shouts at the top of his little lungs as he trots after them as fast as his short legs can carry him.

At the sound of his squealing the men turn around and a look a sheer terror crosses their faces as they see the creature running after them.

‘Oh no! It’s a pig! It’s a pig! It’s a forbidden animal. Run, don’t let it touch you. Don’t let it touch me. No, no, no. A pig!! A pig!!!’ the first one screams in a high-pitched voice.

‘This place is full of flies,’ screeches another. ‘What if one of those flies touched the pig and then it touched us. The essence of swine will be all over the fly and it will rub onto us. What can we do? Oh no. Run for your souls!’

The third is out of breath (he’s overweight and also burdened with the fighting duck) but he manages to pant, ‘If any fly touches us, we wouldn’t know if it was pig contaminated or not. To be safe we must bathe in mud water. Arrrgghhh!!’

He screams because Babe has caught up with them and his snout brushes their legs.

‘It touched us!!!’ they scream in unison.

The touch of Babe gives the strength of fear to their limbs and they sprint to their waiting mopeds on the road. They speed off, leaving Babe behind. 

‘Ferdinand! Ferdinand!’ yells Babe. 

By this time the animals are awake and they surround the piglet. ‘They got Ferdinand,’ cries Babe plaintively. Fly gently licks his pink snout which droops despondently.

Then Babe looks up. His eyes glint with resolve.

‘I don’t know what they’re going to do with a duck, but I’m going to find my friend and I’m going to rescue him.’ With that, he runs purposefully towards the road.

‘Be careful, Babe!’ barks Fly.

‘That is one determined pig,’ says Rex. ‘It’s those thugs who should be careful.’ 

We live in transitional times. The loss of one of the country’s few statesmen and genuine public figures is a blow to reforming this country’s abject political culture and crumbling national institutions. Karpal Singh was at the vanguard of the public interest to which he dedicated his life and from which he never retreated despite official persecution.

His conviction this year on a charge of sedition for his considered legal opinion on a point of constitutional law was greeted with incredulity by the international community. With dignity, Karpal took the court’s verdict on the chin, the hallmark of a formidable mind and spirit. It was a quality which earned him deep respect, something which sadly and for too long, cannot be said of the Malaysian judiciary. To his eternal credit, he continued the fight within the compromised legal system. His faith in the rule of law sustained his work in the face of chronic calumny and mendacity. Truth will out.

With the passing of Karpal Singh and Irene Fernandez, the country has lost two public defenders within weeks of each other. The pall of politics now looms overhead more forebodingly than before, threatening to snuff out any light of reform on the horizon.

But it is at such transitional moments that the magnitude of one’s lifelong vocation becomes clear, when the need for someone - a new generation –  to step into the breech becomes blindingly obvious. As with the need for national renewal, so too the need for elders to impress upon the younger that public life – with all its connotations of inclusivity, regardless of class or creed – are worth a fig.

Some Malaysians are now wondering aloud about the kind of country they are leaving their children. They can scarcely believe that defenders of the public interest whom they had come to rely on to say and do the right thing for them are no longer.

The B-Side March issue is updated with an interactive feature on the MH370: who said what when, in videos, illustrations and sound. Download for free now!

The things ministers say about the haze: a fairy tale for the hopeful.

—

While we wait for change in the kind of news we get, and how it is reported, we thought to speed  things up with these fairy tale press conferences below.

The Malaysian Minister for Natural Resources and the Environment, G. Palanivel, on the ‘innocuously named haze’.

What are your thoughts on the haze?

The Asean public health hazard that we know as the innocuously named ‘haze’ will continue to recur for the foreseeable future. This is because the oil palm industry is embedded in the Malaysian, Indonesian and Singaporean economies. 

Singapore, YB?

Indeed – while Malaysia and Indonesia are host to vast tracts of oil palm plantations and hundreds of thousands of smallholders or family-based growers whose livelihoods depend on the oleo-chemical sector, Singapore hosts the headquarters of integrated, multinational agribusiness companies.

Of course,  some Malaysian conglomerates too are multinational in nature. Some of these multinational companies own the entire production chain of palm oil, from plantations, mills, refineries and processing plants, to product-manufacturing and distribution.

Some of them are also involved in commodities-trading that set the market prices that these multinational companies pay to the hundreds of thousands of smallholders who produce the palm oil that contribute to the national Gross Domestic Product of their respective countries.

Malaysia and Indonesia together produce some 80 per cent of the world’s palm oil.

According to some studies, smallholders in Indonesia and Malaysia account for 35 to 40 percent of planted oil palm, and as much as 33 per cent of the output.

Are the incomes of these smallholders commensurate with their contribution to the GDP?

Socio-economic rights are something the government is studying seriously.

What we are here to discuss now is the relationship between palm oil and the innocuously named ‘haze’.

Oil palm, being the agricultural commodity that is quickest to grow and most versatile in its usage, is a common ingredient that is used in everything from the global processed food industry, to cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. 

Therefore, its growth – and that of the innocuously named ‘haze’ – is ultimately driven by consumer demand and ‘modern’ lifestyles.

The palm oil that is used in manufactured goods is not the same as the nutritious raw palm oil that is obtained from pressed, fresh-fruit bunches, which have a limited shelf-life.

Processed palm oil undergoes an industrial process whereby it is cheaply refined, bleached and deodorised in vast quantities to become an industrial product that can be traded, exported and used in manufacturing plants anywhere in the world.

In conclusion, the regional public health hazard that we currently know as the ‘haze’ is ultimately an issue of competing land-use between exploitable ‘natural resources’ for the shareholders of the global industrial economy, and a natural heritage that really belongs to the children of the world.

There are issues of ethical financing, land rights, native rights, socio-economic rights, sustainability and environmental destruction, global trade, and more, within this thing that we call the ‘haze’. 

Once we see these, we will be better able to prevent future economic and environmental disasters like the ‘haze’ that now threatens the whole of the Asean region on a regular basis.

What can or are the government agencies doing about the situation

A point to note is that multinational companies now outstrip national governments in their ability to regulate trans-boundary crime, and that NGO-multinational initiatives such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, and Sustainable Soy, for that matter, must live up to their promise of transforming the global market of industrial commodities.

I regret to say that the government agencies of both Indonesia and Malaysia declared last year that they were going to pursue their own standards of ‘sustainable’ palm oil. 

Can we do the right thing?

We live in hope.

—

Malaysian Minister of International Trade and Industry, Mustapa Mohamad, offers his point of view

From the nation’s trade and industry point of view what are your thoughts?

I have to concede that the palm oil industry is hard to transform into a sustainable one, because it is a structural part of the Malaysian and global economy.

Palm oil is part of the comparative advantage that we have over the West; oil palm is the crop that grows fastest of all agricultural commodities, and the palm oil alone comprises 8 to 9 per cent of all Malaysian exports.

It is a crucial part of our balance of trade.

What do you feel is an appropriate course of action to aid in the sustainability of the industry?

What needs to be done now is to factor in the cost of ‘externalities’ such as environmental damage, which are not taken into account in the global pricing of the commodity between ‘willing buyer’ and ‘willing seller’.  

Maybe I can give an example of what I mean: let’s say I want to buy a car, and someone wants to sell me a car, or a fleet of cars. We agree on a price, the deal is done. This is an efficient economic transaction, both parties get what they want. 

But when I use the car, it adds to the traffic jam and pollution, and commuters on buses are late for work and suffer bad air quality.

The jam and pollution are ‘external’ to the economic transaction because I don’t pay for the costs of traffic jams and pollution; they are not factored into the price of the car.  

 The haze is like that. There are people who want to sell palm oil, and others who want to buy it as cheaply as possible.

But the price paid for crude palm oil does not take into account the social and environmental costs of cheap production using, for all intents and purposes, legal arson. 

And because the transaction is ‘globalised’, its ‘external’ effects are also trans-boundary: we feel those ‘external’ effects when poor Indonesians burn the land to clear it cheaply to produce what corporations want to buy, at the price these corporations are willing to pay for it.

Some multinationals based in developed countries are willing to pay more for crude palm oil, because the consumers in those markets demand more of their multinationals. 

This higher price should benefit smallholders, who would then no longer feel the need to.

However, companies based in China and India must also be willing to do the same, otherwise there will be an uneven trading field – though I doubt their consumers think very hard about sustainability.

And why should they?  The West has, after all,  been living it up for the longest time and consuming all the world’s resources!

Now, it’s the East’s turn to ‘enjoy life’, mother nature be damned.

Is this fair?

This is only human nature. So, the oleo-chemical sector, like all sectors that have been ‘globalised’, must be regulated well.

Only fundamentalist neo-liberals still believe in the ‘magic’ of self-regulated markets. 

Look at what happened to the global economy when we were led into believing that the financial sector would benefit from ‘light touch’ regulation.

There is no such thing as an unregulated market in anything.

Public money is still being used to bail out private banks in the UK, Europe, and the US. Poor people are not able to handle ‘austerity’ measures as well as others.  

On the subject of regulations, what can be done about trans-boundary environmental crimes?

The only way to stop trans-boundary environmental crime such as the ‘haze’ is for the companies that perpetrate them to suffer ‘reputational damage’, as has happened to the financial sector in the West.

Virgin rainforests are still being lost to fire, which are burnt on the pretext of planting economic crops such as oil palm.

The high economic value of tropical timber makes virgin rainforests very lucrative to some short-term businessmen.  

However,  we must respect the biodiversity that rainforests give life to, because their economic value cannot be calculated on a balance sheet.

Economic life is built on human life, which is part of nature.

The Malaysian government is committed to fairness and justice, and equal opportunity for all its people, regardless of race, religion or creed – and even regardless of political party membership. 

‘Babe! Babe!’ quacks Ferdinand the duck, ‘it’s a catastrophe, it’s apocalyptic, it’s indescribable.’ The sight of Ferdinand, more frantic than usual, greets babe as soon as he gets home into the farmyard.

‘Calm down, Ferdinand. Tell me what happened,’ says the little sheep pig. But Ferdinand is beyond calm and he flaps his wings wildly as he runs around in circles.

‘It’s Rooster,’ says a deep gruff voice. Babe looks round to see Rex the male sheepdog (and Fly’s mate) pad up to him. ‘He was taken when you were away. If I wasn’t so deaf, I would have heard them and stopped them,’ Rex growls, his anger directed partly at the Rooster thieves and partly to his disability. ‘Don’t blame yourself, Rex,’ comes the slow, rumbling voice of Horse. ‘None of us heard them.’

‘But that is not the worst of it,’ screams Ferdinand. He tugs at something with his bill. Babe trots up to see and he gasps in horror. It is a newspaper, and on it is a picture of a group of ugly, fat men with faces twisted in hate. But that’s not what shocks Babe. The thing that so horrifies the piglet is the image at the feet of the ugly men; it is the mangled body of Rooster, his blood smeared all over a banner. 

‘How could they do such a thing,’ says Fly, ‘to kill an animal for no reason. The beasts.’

By this time Ferdinand is several levels past hysterical. He flaps around screeching that they may be back to take and kill more animals. ‘Stop it, Ferdinand,’ shouts Babe. ‘They won’t get you, I promise. I’ll stay with you all night. We’ll get them.’

Babe kindly nuzzles Ferdinand with his snout. If only he felt as confident as he sounded.

– An excerpt from 'Babe III: The Pig Detective' by Azmi Sharom. Read the full story in the March issue of The B-Side, coming soon!

New issue out now! The New Year is saved! Super compact super fast download even on not-so-broadband! Gambling! Datukship! Drinking (coming soon)! New TV series! Stories from Indonesia, Singapore, kung-fu acar and more!

An image from photographer Kenny Loh.

“This is a barber in Ipoh. I cut my hair here when I was young. I’d seen him a number of times over the years. The last time I visited, things were thrown on the floor because the shop was being renovated. The developer had told him to leave and move back when renovations are done and that he can continue to pay the same rent for the next two years. But that was not true and now this shop is a café.”

Bubbly, Foodie and Magical! The New Year calls our name, and the Season of the Party is upon us all! Celebrate on The B-Side with

The Hottest Horse Trainer, The Deepest Underwater Photographer, and, all the fish in the sea and... Beware the Mark of The Yeast! And read/listen to Mat Sabu on the Malay Dilemma.