The first anniversary of Barack Obama's historic election finds many of his supporters already grousing. Fair enough: Obama has been more vigorous in some areas than others. But one essential question goes unasked: How much can any president accomplish against the wishes of recalcitrant power centers within his own government?

Americans harbor a quaint belief that a new US president takes charge of a government that eagerly awaits his next command. Like an orchestra conductor or perhaps a football coach, he can inspire or bludgeon and get what he wants. But that's not how things work at the top, especially where "national security" is concerned. The Pentagon and CIA are powerful and independent fiefdoms characterized by entrenched agendas and constant intrigue. They are full of lifers, who see an elected president largely as an annoyance, and have ways of dealing with those who won't come to heel.

Compound that with the Bush-Cheney administration's aggressive seeding of its staunch loyalists throughout the bureaucracy, and you have a pretty tough situation. Obama, then, has to contend not only with the big donors and corporate lobbies. His biggest problem resides right inside his "team."

The internal battles between American presidents and their national security establishments are not much reported. But if it is an invisible game, it is also a devious and even deadly one. Our civilian leaders end up mirroring the chronically nervous chiefs of state of the fragile democracies to our south.

Those who do not kowtow to the spies and generals have had a bumpy ride. FDR and Truman both faced insubordination. Dwight Eisenhower, who had served as chief of staff of the US Army, left the White House warning darkly about the "military industrial complex." (He of all presidents had reasons to know.) John Kennedy was repeatedly countermanded and double-crossed by his own supposed subordinates. The Joint Chiefs baited him; Allen Dulles despised him (more so after JFK fired him over the Bay of Pigs fiasco), and Henry Cabot Lodge, his ambassador to South Vietnam, deliberately undermined Kennedy's agenda. Kennedy called the trigger-happy generals "mad" and spoke angrily to aides of "scattering the CIA to the wind." The evidence is growing that he suffered the consequences.

In the 1950s, the late Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, a high-ranking Pentagon official, was assigned by CIA Director Allen Dulles to help place Dulles's officers under military cover throughout the federal government. As a result, Dulles not only knew what was happening before the president did, but had essentially infiltrated every corner of the president's domain. One Nixon-era Republican Party official told me that in the early 1970s, there were intelligence officers everywhere, including the White House. Nixon was unaware of the true background of many of his trusted aides, particularly those who helped drive him from office. Remember Alexander Butterfield, the so-called "military liaison," who told Congress about the White House taping system? Years later, Butterfield admitted to CIA connections.

In December 1971, Nixon learned of a military spy ring, the so-called Moorer-Radford operation, that was piping White House documents back to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Chiefs were wary of secret negotiations the president and Henry Kissinger were conducting with America's enemies, including North Vietnam, China and the USSR, and decided to keep tabs on this intrusion upon their domain. Jimmy Carter came into office as revelations of CIA abuses made headlines. He tried to dismantle the agency's dirty tricks office, but wound up instead a victim of it -- and a one-term president.

Those who avoided problems -- Johnson, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Jr. -- were chief executives that made no problems for the Pentagon and intelligence chiefs. All embraced military and covert operations, expanded wars or launched their own. The agile Bill Clinton was a special case -- no babe in the woods, he focused on domestic gains and pretty much steered clear of the hornets' nest.

As for the Bushes, their ascension represented a seizure of power by the national security state itself. Their family had profited from arms manufacturing for decades. The patriarch, Prescott Bush, monitored US assassination plots against foreign leaders as a senator; and records indicate that the elder George Bush had been a secret agency operative for decades before he became CIA director -- and then, 12 years later, president.

Obama seems to understand his narrow range of movement, and to be carefully picking his fights. He retained many of Bush's top military brass, and even Bush's Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who himself had served as a CIA director for Bush's father. He has trod very carefully with the spy agency and has declined to aggressively investigate Bush administration wrongdoing on torture and wiretapping. Obama's campaign rhetoric about disengaging from Iraq seems a long time ago, and the war in Afghanistan is taking on the hues of permanency.

The old boys' network is very much in place, and it is hard at work to force Obama's hand, a la Vietnam. Witness the leaking of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's supposedly "confidential report" calling for escalation in Afghanistan. The leak was, not surprisingly, to the reliable Bob Woodward. The reporter was himself in Naval Intelligence shortly before he went to work at the Washington Post, where he soon built a career around leaks from the military and spy establishment. The White House was furious at the McChrystal release. But what could it do? Presidents come and go, and the security folks have ways to hasten the latter.

Covert alliances and payments to corrupt foreign allies continue, making creative diplomacy more difficult. In late October came a front-page story that the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, suspected of being a major figure in that country's opium trade, has been on the CIA's payroll for eight years. Anyone who finds this shocking should go back and read about the CIA and the drug trade in Southeast Asia.

Throughout its six-decade history, the CIA has resisted accountability, with even some of its own nonspook directors kept in the dark about the agency's most troubling activities. As for the public's elected representatives, Nancy Pelosi is the most recent in a long line of legislators to accuse the CIA of deliberately misleading Congressional overseers.

None of this is likely to change soon, and not without a huge fight. Half a century after Ike's famous admonition, conflict and intrigue remain the engine of our economy, and everyone from private equity firms to missile makers to car and truck manufacturers count on that to continue. The homeland security industry, the most recent head to grow on this hydra, is now seeking permanency.

So Barack Obama is boxed in. But so are the American people, and so, really, is democracy itself. Bringing this inconvenient truth out in the open is the essential first step toward taking back control of our government -- and our future. For all the reasons laid out here, Obama will need help. He may, in the rote formulation, hold "the most powerful office in the world." However, the extent to which he controls the government he heads, is another matter.

Imagine a schoolboy who shows a lot of promise in academic terms, is well-behaved and popular to boot. Based on these virtues, he makes considerable impression on his peers and elders in school. He is then awarded the school’s top prize – even before the exams and still early in the term without any tangible yields. When the crunch came, he did so-so in the finals.

Does that make sense?

The Nobel Prize Committee in Norway thinks so. It has just awarded one of the world’s most prestigious but contentious prizes to US President Barak Obama. Citing Obama’s "hope for a better future" and striving for nuclear disarmament”, the committee’s decision perplexes me. This was on the same day that Obama met for a council of war in Washington to consider sending 40,000 more US troops to Afghanistan. Not to mention stepping up missile attacks by drones on the Pakistan side of the border.

He is barely in his eighth month in his term. Of course he has made a slew of pledges. But talking about making the world a better place to live in is far removed from resolving festering issues.The best that can be said is that Obama seem to bring hope initially, but recent developments in the world’s hot spots and even domestic issues have taken the shine on the youthful president.

Many point out that America’s new president hasn’t changed anything on the global stage, apart from his modest demeanour, amicability and apparent tolerance compared to his predecessor W Bush. He shied away from being a real honest broker in the West Asia conflict. Note that Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu has ignored Obama’s insistence of halting new Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, much to the frustration of the Arabs, who received promises from Washington on it’s commitment to be fair. Israel just carried on with it’s intrusion of Palestinian land and oppressing the Arabs just as it did during the previous US administration. Not to mention US’ failure to engage with the democratically-elected Hamas government. No real peace here, at least not yet.

Just declaring to make the World free of nuclear weapons just doesn’t cut it with nations who live in fear of nukes. Especially as the US and Russia have 90 % of those weapons of mass destruction and looks as it those stockpiles will remain for a long time, supposedly as a “deterrent”. And forcing nations who want to develop their nuclear capabilities as a replacement for fossil fuel looks really dodgy when Obama has recently agreed to officially turn a blind eye to Israel whom is generally acknowledged to possessing its own atomic arms for decades. Peace cannot be made with such double standards.

And what about Obama’s domestic problems? Americans are just as polarized now – if not more – as it had been when the Republicans ruled the roost. Admittedly, part of the problem could be the due to the age-old racial divide in America. But Obama refuses to deal with race relations, citing reasons that he is a “  President for All Americans “.

 While the economy and Health services remain contentious issues, the angry voices in both opposing camps of the debate have become even more shrill. Despite promises to extend hands of friendship to nations deemed “ axis of evil” by Bush jr, the long-standing sanctions against Syria, Cuba and Iran remain in place as if to take the cue from America’s warmongering ultra-conservatives. So much for the international understanding and reconciliation.

 

Nevertheless, around the World, those who want to curry favour with Obama will congratulate him. Don’t expect honest public opinions from leaders who rely on being sycophantic, as they always have done with regards to ties with the US no matter who lives in the White House. It’s the communities who genuinely hope for American positive leadership globally who will express disappointment, because they fear it will make Obama’s efforts so much more difficult in current international issues

The Peace Prize will be mill-stone around his neck. Too much will be expected from Obama because of the accolades, and so far the results have not been encouraging. Maybe it’s still too early to dismiss the efforts as failures. But a prize as this point of time is premature. There is a real risk of him not being able to live up to those promises. Awards should be given in recognition of a lifetime of achievements, not prospective but retrospective.

In the final analysis critics of the Peace Prize would say that the Nobel foundation in particular and Europeans in general are still starry-eyed about Obama without waiting for the results. Winning something because of style over substance is not enough.

 

 

 

 

From an AFP News report on September 15

 

A Malaysian Islamic court has sentenced an Indonesian man to be caned and jailed for drinking alcohol, weeks after triggering a furore by ordering a woman to be caned for the same offence.

The Sharia High Court in central Pahang state on Monday sentenced odd-job worker Nazarudin Kamaruddin to six strokes of the cane and one year's imprisonment, a court official confirmed.

"The sentence meted out to him is not meant as punishment but to serve as a lesson," judge Abdul Rahman Yunus said according to the New Straits Times, adding that Nazarudin had dishonoured the holy month of Ramadan.

Malaysia, a multicultural country with large Chinese and Indian communities, has a dual-track legal system and sharia courts can try Muslim Malays -- who make up 60 percent of the population -- for religious and moral offences.

In some parts of the country it is a punishable offence for Malays to drink alcohol. They can be fined, caned, or jailed for up to three years but prosecutions have until now been extremely rare.

The case of Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno, a part-time model who in July was sentenced by the Pahang court to six strokes of the cane for drinking beer, was sharply criticised by human rights groups.

As international headlines mounted, jeopardising Malaysia's reputation as a moderate nation, the government last month announced her sentence would be reviewed, saying it was "too harsh".

Nazarudin, a 46-year-old permanent resident of Malaysia, said he had bought a bottle of "samsu", a cheap local liquor, to share with friends at a restaurant when religious authorities swooped in a raid.

"I've been in this country for so many years and have been very careful not to get onto the wrong side of the law," he told the paper.

 

It took a diminutive but courageous 32-year-old nurse and mother to expose what has been obvious to many but conveniently ignored: a grossly unjust and frankly hypocritical Malaysian Shari’a court system.
Subjecting a first offender – and a young mother at that – to six lashes of whipping for drinking beer in public cannot be considered a “just” punishment. Bluntly put, it is barbaric. And if something is not just, it cannot be Islamic. It is that simple. I wonder if those advocates for caning could tell me under what of the 99 attributes of Allah would caning a young mother fall under. Certainly not Ar Rauf (The Compassionate) or Ar Raheem (The Most Merciful)!

A Profile In Courage
Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno is truly a profile in courage, a genuine heroine. She did not seek out to be one; the circumstances could easily have tuned her into an angry rebel, or worse.
She succeeded by adhering to our traditional halus (soft) ways. She did not challenge the system; on the contrary she freely admitted to her error and accepted her fate, just like a good obedient Malay daughter was taught to be. She asked only that the whipping be done in public so others could learn from her mistake. How noble and touching!
By those seemingly meek actions she exposed the hypocrisy of the Islamic establishment, and did so far more effectively than all the shrill voices of those in Sisters-in-Islam and other vociferous advocates for reform. More significantly, her Gandhi-like passivity is now noticed by the world.
Thus far what seems to get whipped is the image of Malaysia as a modern tolerant Islamic country. Her submissiveness, reflecting her Islamic faith (Islam after all means ‘one who submits’), also rattled Prime Minister Najib and Women’s Minister Sharizat. It is hilarious if not pathetic to see them scurry for cover.
In urging Kartika to appeal despite having her appeal period lapse, both Najib and Sharizat must feel confident that the sentence would be reversed. What however, if it were sustained? Their utterances imply that they could influence if not control the Shari’a Appeals Court’s decision. That is a scary thought. It bears pointing out that Kartika was sentenced by a court in Pahang, Najib’s home state. Meanwhile Shahrizat is bewildered as to why Kartika refused to appeal. The poor Women’s Minister still has not figured it out.
Home Minister Hishammuddin too joined in with his share of idiocy. When Kartika presented herself to jail for the planned whipping, she was turned away as the prison, under Hishammuddin’s portfolio, was not prepared to carry out the sentence!
The idiocies did not stop there. The Chief Judge of Pahang’s Shari’a Court of Appeal ordered a deferment and review of the sentence “in the interest of justice.” Left unstated was under what statute his order was made. Then there was the Federal Attorney-General also intervening, obviously not realizing that Islam is strictly under state jurisdiction.
There are those who would like us to believe that the ‘Islamic’ version of whipping is not at all cruel. The association of Shari’a lawyers and an umbrella group of Muslim NGOs maintain that “caning, in the context of Muslim punishment, is for the purpose of education and is different from the penal nature of some provisions in the Common laws and the civil courts.” Let’s ‘educate’ them!
Presumably the ‘Islamic’ whipping is closer to the S&M variety. Kartika is assured that she would not be stripped but allowed to wear her baju kurong. How thoughtful! Perhaps they could supply her with a black leather one; she just might like the whipping.
The Perak mufti opined that Kartika should be grateful as she would receive only six instead of 80 lashes that the mufti himself would impose and, I presume, like to administer personally. Thanks to the mufti’s advice, Kartika has now accepted her fate with equanimity, if not his blessing.
In the ensuing furor, the sentence was deferred, “in the spirit of Ramadan!” The piety of these folks is truly touching. Presumably once Ramadan is over, and the furor subsided, the whipping could begin. What is obvious is that the deferment was a relief not for Kartika but the establishment, a chance for them to recover from their collective shame and stupidity.

Expansion of Shari’a
In the past, the Malaysian Shari’a was restricted to family laws with such mundane matters as inheritance, divorce, and adoption. As part of Mahathir’s move at “out Islaming” the opposition PAS, the Shari’a was granted greater jurisdictions such that today it is on par with the secular system, as well as extending into civil and criminal matters.
Malaysia prides itself in being the only nation with a unique dual-track justice system that coexists harmoniously. Both assertions are erroneous. Canada also has a dual judicial system, with Quebec following “civil law” based on the Napoleonic Code and the rest subscribing to common law of the English tradition. However, the Canadian Supreme Court has final authority over both.
As for the harmonious part, Malaysia has yet to resolve the often conflicting jurisdictions of the two systems. It is not at all clear whether the country’s Federal (Supreme) Court has jurisdiction over the Shari’a courts, which gives a special Malaysian meaning to the word “Supreme.” Many maintain that it does not, which makes a mockery of our constitution. This unresolved issue has consequences, often heart wrenching, as demonstrated in many recent well publicized cases.
As the Shari’a now also has criminal jurisdiction, Malaysians are inherently not treated equally under the law; their fate depends not on the crime but their faith. A non-Muslim man caught committing adultery faces only the wrath of his wife, and possibly her vicious divorce lawyer. A Muslim man however, could be whipped, the same ‘Islamic’ whipping that Kartika would face. Now imagine the complications if one partner is a Muslim and the other, non-Muslim.
There are other distressing inequities if not outright hypocrisy. While Kartika would be whipped for drinking beer in public, the Muslim directors of beer companies – the manufactures and pushers, in the language of the drug culture – are honored. I also do not see the Shari’a going after ministers and sultans running away from their gambling debts.
All these would have remained hidden had it not been for Kartika. We owe her an immense debt of gratitude for exposing this flawed and misguided system. She has done her part, but I do not see the nation doing its share. Instead we are consumed with the minutiae of her caning and ignore the huge elephant in the room: a hypocritical and an unjust Shari’a that is ill suited for our needs.
Muslims confuse the concept versus the content of Shari’a. The concept – Shari’a being a body of laws based on the Quran –is accepted by all. It is a matter of faith; no disagreement there. The contents however are the products of human interpretations. As such it suffers from all the imperfections inherent in such endeavors. It also results in the Shari’a of the Shiites being very different from that of the Sunnis, as well as variations within the Sunni Fighs.
The corollary is that the content of Shari’a can be debated. These discussions must necessarily involve all stakeholders, not just the scholars and ulamas, a point emphasized by Abdullahi An Naim in his book, The Future of Shari’a. He suggests that Muslims revisit the Shari’a using the same rigorous intellectual tools used by earlier luminaries while cognizant of today’s universally accepted norms of constitutionalism, gender equality, and human rights, among others.
If that is too ambitious, begin with a more modest one. Get rid of the unjust elements in our Shari’a, like whipping women, and the grossly “un-Islamic” elements in our secular laws, like jailing citizens without affording them due process.
That is the crux of the issue, not caning. Thanks to Kartika, she is forcing us to face this reality squarely. She gently stared at the system, and it blinked.

Malaysian caning reveals politics behind the punishment

 

MARK COLVIN: Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak has intervened in the row over the Sharia law sentence of caning on a young woman for drinking a glass of beer.

The Prime Minister urged the woman Kartika Dewi Shukarno to appeal against the sentence. he said she'd been too quick in "asking for punishment".

Emeritus Professor Clive Kessler of the University of New South Wales has been studying Malaysian politics for more than 40 years and he's just back from two months there.

He says the whipping sentence on a woman was in itself a kind of political challenge to Najib Razak and his weakened UMNO Government.

The sentence had been due to be carried out yesterday but it was postponed allegedly because of Ramadan.

I asked Professor Kessler what was likely to have happened behind the scenes to delay the whipping.

CLIVE KESSLER: The story is that a higher authority prevented people proceeding with this. This presumably refers to the Federal Government which, in whose interests it is to stop this but in whose shorter term political expedient view it doesn't want to be seen to be acting and that's why there's a great degree of unclarity about how the matter is being handled.

Normally a first offender and one who shows remorse as this, as Kartika has, would not be treated severely. She might be fined if she was arrested at all. She has been given a maximum fine and sentenced to whipping.

MARK COLVIN: So why?

CLIVE KESSLER: Well because the Sharia Court wishes to impose that penalty. We shall come onto that in a moment. But the point is then that in order to have her whipped she technically needs to be in prison. She was not sentenced to a prison term so the manoeuvres yesterday were about the transferring of her to a prison even though she hadn't been sentenced...

MARK COLVIN: And that's got to be a federal prison...

CLIVE KESSLER: And that will have to be a federal prison...

MARK COLVIN: And that brings in the Federal Government.

CLIVE KESSLER: And that brings in the Federal Government, right.

MARK COLVIN: Are you saying that there is politics in the original decision? What, why? You said there was an interesting question as to why now.

CLIVE KESSLER: Well the deeper background to this is that you have a basic legal dualism, legal dichotomy in Malaysia. You have the coexistence both of derivatively common law, British law and Sharia based Islamic law.

In 1988 Dr Mahathir attempted to try and coopt or appease Islamist sentiment when Anwar Ibrahim was his deputy, passed a constitutional amendment whose implications he himself didn't really understand. He thought he was merely giving increased status to the Sharia courts; give them formal legal social equality with the other courts.

But in effect this has been the basis for massive expansion of the role, scope, the activism of Sharia law and placed the Sharia law and its proponents in a position where they can defy the claims of civil law and the state and even the Constitution.

MARK COLVIN: But you said that he did that in 1988. Why are they flexing their muscles now?

CLIVE KESSLER: Again good point. There has been an attempt to expand, to use that extra leeway ever since 1998 to expand the role, the scope, the activism of Sharia law.

The crucial, the crux of the matter came with the following the early 2008 elections, the March 2008 elections which represented a major setback for the UMNO - for the governing party and great advances in particular for its Islamist Opposition, the PAS, the Malayan Islamic party.

In this context the UMNO is seeking to detach PAS from the Opposition Coalition and to garner its support for itself. The UMNO is trying to appease the Islamic party and cannot afford to stand out and oppose it...

MARK COLVIN: So this is all about the fact that UMNO is extremely weak. The Government is crumbling.

CLIVE KESSLER: UMNO is in disarray. It's in paralysis. PAS knows it and in that context the people, whether they are Islamic supporters are not, but who are Sharia law activists and expansionist see the opportunity through the Sharia courts to suddenly impose unprecedented, outra...

MARK COLVIN: The divide and rule strategy.

CLIVE KESSLER: Well the UMNO is trying to play wedge politics of its own and the Islamic party response is playing its kind of wedge politics.

What they are, having failed earlier to get, have the formal institution of the Hudud punishments of the Sharia law, hand chopping and all the rest of it, enacted because to do that at a state level required federal consent which the federal government wouldn't give under Dr Mahathir.

What many of the Sharia court activists such as these judges in Pahang are basically declaring anyway de facto Hudud law sentences without there being enacted and as an ambit claim, as a challenge, as a try-on to see if the UMNO led Government has the courage to stand its ground and oppose them. And so far it has not shown that courage.

MARK COLVIN: Now Kartika, the woman at the centre of all this has said that she wants her caning to take place in public and probably on television. Does that indicate that she may also be playing a political game in all of this?

CLIVE KESSLER: This one can speculate about. I wondered for a while whether she had a very cunning and crafty lawyer and she was playing a very subtle strategy.

It would now seem that she, from the information I've heard, that she has not been particularly well served by her legal advisers. Her father has been very upset about this. And in this context she took the view she wanted it to be over and done with.

But in that context she or her father took the view that if this was going to be done it should be seen publicly to be done.

And that seemed to me would be a good strategy to stop people in their tracks. To some extent the thought of whipping anybody and whipping them in public is appalling.

Whipping is part of Malaysian law for certain crimes but under the civil law of the state whipping is nor permissible for men over 55 and for women at all. Yet the Sharia court authorities were seeking to have this woman transferred on their remit, on their order to a basic, basically to a civil law detention institution for her to be whipped under provisions, their provisions of Sharia law against the provisions of the civil law and constitutional tradition.

MARK COLVIN: How much damage in the end will it have done to Malaysia's international image?

CLIVE KESSLER: I think the potential for damage is enormous. Malaysia wishes to see itself and to be seen internationally as a model, modern, moderate, progressive Islamic country.

Well you can't pursue that objective, hold that view and go ahead with this whipping.

If ever there was a wish which I would want to be granted when I grow really old – this is not to say that I am not already old, it is just that I am not that old, yet – that would be a wish that I could be given the wisdom of knowing when to keep my mouth shut.

Because really, people who are past their “best-before” date could really sound curious and funny, especially when what they are saying now goes against what they have been saying and doing while they were younger.

Amidst all the grief and disbelief caused by the tragic lost of life of an innocent son of Malaysia in the past week, two Tuns were also hogging the headlines over what they said.

In a way, these two Tuns had almost connived to provide me – and many others, I believe – with much needed comic relief in times when such relief was really needed.

And so, I should have perhaps thanked both of them but for the fact that their statements were laced with so much irony and insidiousness.

Stand-up comic No 1

Firstly it was Tun Abdullah. He was apparently conferred an Honorary Doctorate in Democracy by Universiti Utara Malaysia.

It is now of course fashionable within the ruling elite to have the prefix “Dr” somewhere between the array of prefixes preceding their name. Like Tun Tan Seri Datuk Seri Dr Hj So and so. It gives them the comfort of being in possession of something extra. Something which others do not have. Or so they think. Like when they buy a Mercedes, they must buy a Brabus. Things like that. Sorry, I digress.

Anyway, yes, Tun Abdullah was conferred an Honorary Doctorate in Democracy by UUM. I would not go into whether or not such conferment was justifiable – because this article would be too long otherwise – but what he said during his acceptance speech was what, in my opinion, precipitated the saying “silence is golden”.

Upon being conferred, our newly minted Doctor in Democracy proceeded to the microphone and, in what was believed to be nothing short of an astounding moment, called for the abolishment of the ISA. I really hope he had read his prepared speech before delivering it. And if he had read it, I hope he understood what he was saying. If anything, I hope he was awake while he was doing so.

That call would have, in the normal course of things, been met with jubilant celebrations of orgasmic proportion. However, coming from an ex Premier under whose administration there were 82 arrests; 76 new detention orders and 87 renewal of detention orders under the ISA as at the end of 2007 (figures are from the SUARAM’s Human Rights Report 2007), that call was as funny as – if not funnier than – a drunken kangaroo spinning like a top on its tail while shouting “kangaroo boleh!”

Added to that, under his administration, the ISA was abused beyond anything which was thought possible when Raja Petra Kamaruddin and Teresa Kok were arrested for apparently “insulting Muslims and Islam”.

Raja Petra, as we all know, was later detained at Kamunting before a brave Judge, Justice Dato’ Syed Helmi of the Shah Alam High Court, released him (the government’s appeal against that release is still pending in the Federal Court).

To top it up, it was under Tun Abdullah’s administration that the ISA, an Act which was designed to protect the security of the nation, had managed to morph itself into PSA – short for Personal Safety Act – without sanction of the Parliament, when a journalist of Sin Chew Jit Poh, Ms Tan Hoon Cheng, was arrested under the Act in order to protect her own safety.

Not enough with killing the audience with that call, the good Tun said he felt compelled to now give his “honest view” on the matter. Which begs the question, has he been dishonest about the matter all these while, particularly when he was the PM?

He then was reported to have said that the ISA should be replaced with a law which allows preventive detention and – hold on to your seats guys and gals – “at the same time protects fundamental rights.”

It’s like saying Hitler should be allowed to kill the Jews in a way which protects their fundamental rights to live. Awesome. I suppose only great minds could understand the depth of this statement. I must confess I can’t.

A day later, the good Tun continued by saying that he would have reviewed the ISA had he been given more time. Which begs the question, how long did he need? And what was he doing all those time?

Then he was reported by NST to have said:

“There was not much pressure to abolish the system at that time but if I had continued my term up to the next general election, I would have eventually reviewed it (ISA) myself,”

Thank you Tun for finally revealing to us that you were a man of “reaction” rather than “action”. That you only worked when you were pressured to do so.

If I had the ability to invent something useful, I would love to invent a “Talk-Cock Eater”, which would work in the same manner as an odour eater. I would spray it on Tun Abdullah and watch him disappear after a few seconds.

Stand-up comic No 2

The next stand-up comic over the past few weeks was none other than Tun Mahathir.

Firstly, this doyen of listen-to-the-people-movement started a poll on his blog in order to find out what the public thought about the present government’s move to abolish the teaching of Maths and Science in English in 2012.

During your time as Prime Minister dear Tun, how many times have you sought public opinions over anything?

Did you hear the public outcry over the Cheras toll? How about the public outcry over Operasi Lalang? Or Bank Bumi scandal? Or the Tun Salleh Abas’ dismissal and the subsequent molestation, rape and sodomy of the judiciary?

And speaking of sodomy, did you ever notice what the public said and continue to say about Anwar Ibrahim’s sodomy case?

About Konsortium Perkapalan having to be rescued by MISC and later, Petronas? About Putrajaya? About the removal of judicial power from the Courts? About whoever whatever and howsoever?

Now that you have retired and become insignificant, you are turning back to the people. The very people whom you ignored, time and time again, during 22 years of you being the Prime Minister.

Not enough with that, he recently bemoaned the fact the Malays are apparently not the “real masters (Tuan)” in their “own” country.

He lamented that after 39 years of the NEP, the Bumiputeras only hold 20% of corporate wealth when Bumiputeras form 60% of the total population while the non-Bumis hold 50% of the wealth while they only form 26% of the total population.

Let me tell you, dear Tun, that the 39 years of the NEP’s life consisted of a good 22 years of your rule, which amounts to 56.5% of the whole time the NEP was implemented. Thank you for telling us that you have failed Tun, Sir.

I have one question. As far as I know, every corporate exercise involving the public listing of corporations and also involving privatised projects under your famed EPU, at least 30% of the shares (wealth?) must go to the Bumis. If so, how come 20% are now being held by the Bumis? Where have the 10% gone to? They (the Bumis) disposed them?

You see, you don’t teach people to drive well by giving them Ferraris and expect them to transform themselves into the Schumachers of the world.

You have got to teach them how to drive, how to take corners, when to brake, when to change gear and appraise them on things like a smooth weight transfer, the danger of over-steering and under-steering, counter steer and the likes. You give them Ferraris and what will they do? They will sell it!

That was what happened Tun. The Chinese gets better and better because they were the ones who actually did all the works, the very works which under your policy, were dished out to some well known Bumis, who would make a quick buck by promptly sub-contracting those works to the Chinese. Why are you screaming now?

Speaking of categorisation, Malaysia is not only divided into Bumis and non-Bumis. There were also, under your rule, registered Bumis (registered with the MoF) and non-registered Bumis. Only registered Bumis will be able to share in this so called “corporate wealth” of yours.

What happened to the actual Bumiputeras on the buses, in the LRTs, riding bicycle in the kampungs, in the rubber estates, in the sawah bendang in Kedah, who toil under the sun in their small rented perahu in the middle of the sea, who “kais pagi makan pagi and kais petang makan petang”?

Compare them to the Tajuddin Ramlis of the world. The Halim Saads of the world. The Amin Shah of the worlds. The Daims of the world. I wonder out of the meager 20% of the “corporate wealth” which the Bumis have, how many percent are held by these people?

Oh, the non-Bumis (non-Malay?) are the one who are the real “Tuan”? How about 22 years of you being the PM? Are you saying that you are not a Malay?

 

It is rather odd.

 

The Malaysian government seem to have some double standards as to who which members/ insurgents of the infamous ex-PKM can recieve amnesty. And yet the Malaysian government had no hesitation to fully embrace Japan and China after independence. The Japanese killed many Malayans during the occupantion, beheading innocent Malay villagers  including thousands of fellow Malayan soldiers and colonial soldiers. The Japanese also insulted our monarchs and encouraged them to take opium so that the locals would lose respect for the royals. They looted buildings, invaded premises and took whatever they wanted.

 

After all that, the first Matsushita company - MELCOM - was established in Malaysia in 1965 (20 years later). We even allowed their cars in. Later we signed a memorandum of understanding with Mitsubishi which gave birth to Proton. Even the ex-prime minister Mahathir said: "Look East", so that we can learn from the Japanese.

 

Is it also parochial racism? Malay Communist who were active in the insurgency were eventually allowed to return home years ago and die in peace in their kampungs. They took advantage of the 1988 pact between the Malaysian government and the rump Parti Komunis Malaya, which was a legally binding agreement in which the  present Prime Minister has not honoured. Chin Peng led the signing on behalf of the insurgents who had laid down their arms, while the then Deputy IGP Datuk Rahim Noor sealed the landmark armistice in Thailand 1988 for the Royal Malaysian Police.

 

Furthermore, the PM Najib and the UMNO-controlled mainstream media are singing the praises of Malaysia's diplomatic links with Beijing. China is seen by the government as an important equation in Malaysia's socio-economic-development, even wooing investors from Shanghai. And yet Cin Peng can't come home, purportedly because he was doing the bidding of China's communists.

 

Those who came back with much fanfare over the years were Shamsiah Faqih, Abdullah CD and the most notorious of them all - Rashid Maidin. Unlike Chin Peng they were not required to prove with a copy of their birth certificates that they were born in the federation. What raised eye-brows further was that they all lived in China before relations were normalised in 1973.So it's not fair to claim that only Chin Peng fraternised with the Maoists.

 

They all did.

If we can forgive the Japanese who do not belong here, why can't we forgive our own people? Plaing the racial and Communist card rings hollow, as it appears that those in power in Malaysia have no clear principles - just emotional gripes. Not forgiving is the same as invoking the confrontations of WW2. Even the Japanese government has forgiven the American government.

If Malaysia aspires to move ahead, we must learn to to come to terms with our recent history. Otherwise , we're still stuck with the baggage of having a third class mentality. The sad truth is that we discriminate qualities based on ethnicity.

 

 

 

While torture under the Bush administration was horrible, at least it has stopped. Right?

Wrong.

Jeremy Scahill (the reporter who broke most of the stories on Blackwater) says that a military police unit at Guantanamo regularly brutalizes unarmed prisoners, including gang-beating them, breaking their bones, gouging their eyes and dousing them with chemicals.

Specifically, whenever there is “disobedience” by the detainees - which can include praying, or having 2 styrofoam cups in their cell instead of 1, or refusing medication or failing to immediately respond when spoken to - the “Immediate Reaction Force” (IRF) is sent in.

Scahill describes what happens next:

When an IRF team is called in, its members are dressed in full riot gear, which some prisoners and their attorneys have compared to “Darth Vader” suits. Each officer is assigned a body part of the prisoner to restrain: head, right arm, left arm, left leg, right leg…

[The IRF teams then mete out brutal punishment, including] gang beating them, forcing their heads into toilets, breaking bones, gouging their eyes, squeezing their testicles, urinating on a prisoner’s head, banging their heads on concrete floors and hog-tying them — sometimes leaving prisoners tied in excruciating positions for hours on end…

[One prisoner was sprayed directly in the eyes with mace and gouged in the eyes and was then refused medical treatment, which resulted in permanent blindness in one eye. He also endured a "sexual attack".

Another prisoner had a third prisoner's feces spread on him.]

There was also torture using water:

The ERF team came into the cell with a water hose under very high pressure. He was totally shackled, and they would hold his head fixed still. They would force water up his nose until he was suffocating and would scream for them to stop. This was done with medical staff present, and they would join in.

Scahill says that these are not “a few bad apples”:

The IRF teams “were fully approved at the highest levels [of the Bush administration], including the Secretary of Defense and with outside consultation of the Justice Department,” says Scott Horton, one of the leading experts on U.S. Military and Constitutional law. This force “was designed to disabuse the prisoners of any idea that they would be free from physical assault while in U.S. custody,” he says. “They were trained to brutally punish prisoners in a brief period of time, and ridiculous pretexts were taken to justify” the beatings.

Scahill’s allegations are being confirmed by the Spanish torture investigation. Indeed:

“Up to 15 people attempted to commit suicide at Camp Delta due to the abuses of the IRF officials,” according to the Spanish investigation.

One particular incident shows how brutal the IRF interrogators are:

In January 2003, Sgt. Sean Baker [an active-duty U.S. soldier and Gulf War veteran] was ordered to participate in an IRF training drill at Guantánamo where he would play the role of an uncooperative prisoner. Sgt. Baker says he was ordered by his superior to take off his military uniform and put on an orange jumpsuit like those worn by prisoners. He was told to yell out the code word “red” if the situation became unbearable, or he wanted his fellow soldiers to stop.

According to sworn statements, upon entering his cell, IRF members thought they were restraining an actual prisoner. As Sgt. Baker later described:

They grabbed my arms, my legs, twisted me up and, unfortunately, one of the individuals got up on my back from behind and put pressure down on me while I was face down. Then he — the same individual — reached around and began to choke me and press my head down against the steel floor. After several seconds, 20 to 30 seconds, it seemed like an eternity because I couldn’t breathe. When I couldn’t breathe, I began to panic and I gave the code word I was supposed to give to stop the exercise, which was ‘red.’ … That individual slammed my head against the floor and continued to choke me. Somehow I got enough air. I muttered out: ‘I’m a U.S. soldier. I’m a U.S. soldier.’

Sgt. Baker said his head was slammed once more, and after groaning “I’m a U.S. soldier” one more time, “I heard them say, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ you know, like … he was telling the other guy to stop.”

According to CBS:

Bloodied and disoriented, Baker somehow made it back to his unit, and his first thought was to get hold of the videotape. “I said, ‘Go get the tape,’ ” recalls Baker. ” ‘They’ve got a tape. Go get the tape.’ My squad leader went to get the tape.”

Every extraction drill at Guantanamo was routinely videotaped, and the tape of this drill would show what happened. But Baker says his squad leader came back and said, “There is no tape.”

The New York Times later reported that the military “says it can’t find a videotape that is believed to have been made of the incident.” Baker was soon diagnosed with traumatic brain injury. He began suffering seizures, sometimes 10 to 12 per day.

“This was just one typical incident, and Baker was recognizable as an American,” says Horton. “But it gives a good flavor of what the Gitmo detainees went through, which was generally worse.”

If they did that to a U.S. soldier during a training exercise, one who was given a special code word to have the interrogation stop, what they do to actual detainees must be much worse.

The torture by IRF teams is continuing under the Obama administration. In fact, it is actually getting worse:

The Center for Constitutional Rights released a report titled “Conditions of Confinement at Guantánamo: Still In Violation of the Law,” which found that abuses continued. In fact, one Guantanamo lawyer, Ahmed Ghappour, said that his clients were reporting “a ramping up in abuse” since Obama was elected.

And see this.

Note: I don’t know whether or not torture is continuing in conjunction with interrogations. This essay focuses on a different type of torture.

When An Iranian appeals court announced that it was reducing the sentence and ordering the immediate release of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, who was convicted by an Iranian court last month of spying for the U.S. and sentenced to eight years in prison,work the Western News network aired saturated coverage of her.

 

But the US media and networks were cpmpletely silent on their government's incarceration of foreign journalists allegedly for espionage as well. However, unlike Saberi,none of them were ever charged.Saberi's imprisonment in January became a cause célèbre among American journalists, who -- along with the U.S. Government -- rallied to demand her release.  Within minutes of the announcement, several of them posted celebratory notices of Saberi's release.

 

 

 

 

Beginning in 2001, the U.S. held Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj for six years in Guantanamo with no trial of any kind, and spent most of that time interrogating him not about Terrorism, but about Al Jazeera.  For virtually the entire time, the due-process-less, six-year-long imprisonment of this journalist by the U.S. produced almost no coverage -- let alone any outcry -- from America's establishment media, other than some columns by Nicholas Kristof (though, for years, al-Haj's imprisonment was a major media story in the Muslim world).  As Kristof noted when al-Haj was finally released in 2007:  "there was never any real evidence that Sami was anything but a journalist"; "the interrogators quickly gave up on asking him substantive questions" and "instead, they asked him to spy on Al-Jazeera if he was released;" and "American officials, by imprisoning an Al-Jazeera journalist without charges or meaningful evidence, have done far more to damage American interests in the Muslim world than anything Sami could ever have done."

 

In Iraq, we imprisoned Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein -- part of AP's Pulitzer Prize-winning war coverage -- for almost two years with no charges of any kind, after Hussein's photographs from the Anbar province directly contradicted Bush administration claims about the state of affairs there.  And that behavior was far from aberrational for the U.S., as the Committee to Protect Journalists -- which led the effort to free Saberi -- documented:

Hussein’s detention is not an isolated incident. Over the last three years, dozens of journalists—mostly Iraqis—have been detained by U.S. troops, according to a Centre To Protect Journalist research. While most have been released after short periods, in at least eight cases documented by CPJ Iraqi journalists have been held by U.S. forces for weeks or months without charge or conviction. In one highly publicized case, Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein, a freelance cameraman working for CBS, was detained after being wounded by U.S. military fire as he filmed clashes in Mosul in northern Iraq on April 5, 2005. U.S. military officials claimed footage in his camera led them to suspect Hussein had prior knowledge of attacks on coalition forces. In April 2006, a year after his arrest, Hussein was freed after an Iraqi criminal court, citing a lack of evidence, acquitted him of collaborating with insurgents.

 

As the American press corps celebrates itself for demanding Saberi's release in Iran -- the U.S. continues to imprison Ibrahim Jassam, a freelance photographer for Reuters, even though an Iraqi court last December -- more than five months ago -- found that there was no evidence to justify his detention and ordered him released.  The U.S. -- over the objections of the CPJ, Reporters Without Borders and Reuters -- refused to recognize the validity of that Iraqi court order and announced it would continue to keep him imprisoned.

 

One finds only a tiny fraction of news coverage in the U.S. regarding the treatment of al-Haj, Hussein, Jassam and these other imprisoned journalists as has been devoted to Saberi.  It ought to be exactly the reverse:  the American media should be far more interested in, and opposed to, infringements of press freedoms by the U.S. Government than by governments of other countries.  Yet the former merits hardly a peep, while the latter provokes all sorts of smug and self-righteous protests from American journalists who suddenly discover their brave commitment to press freedoms when all that requires is pointing to a demonized, hated foreign government and complaining.

 

Many people scoff at the notion that the American media propagandizes the American citizenry, but here one sees the vivid essence of that process.The US mainstream media loves to point to and loudly condemn the behavior of other governments as proof of how tyrannical and evil they are -- look at those Iranian mullah-fanatics imprisoning journalists/look at those primitive, corrupt, lawless Iraqis and their "culture of impunity"/look at the UAE and their tolerance of torture -- while completely ignoring, when they aren't justifying, identical behavior by their own government.

 

In Iran, at least Saberi received the pretense of an actual trial and appeal (one that resulted in her rather rapid release, a mere three weeks after she was convicted), as compared to the journalists put in cages for years by the U.S. Government with no charges of any kind, or as compared to the individuals whom we continue to abduct, transport to Bagram, and insist on the right to imprison indefinitely with no charges of any kind.  Who was treated better and more consistently with ostensible Western precepts of justice and press freedoms:  Roxana Saberi or Sami al-Haj?  Saberi or Bilal Hussein?  Saberi or Ibrahim Jassam?  Saberi or the Bagram detainees shipped to Afghanistan and held in a dank prison, away from the sight of the entire world, without even a pretense of judicial review, a power the Obama administration continues to insist it possesses?

 

Pointing to other governments and highlighting their oppressive behavior can be cathartic, fun and gratifying in a self-justifying sort of way.  Ask Fred Hiatt; it's virtually all he ever does.  But the first duty of the American media -- like the first duty of American citizens -- is to oppose oppressive behavior by our own government.  That's not as fun or as easy, but it is far more important.  Moreover, obsessively complaining about the rights-abridging behavior of other countries while ignoring the same behavior from our own government is worse than a mere failure of duty.  It is propagandistic and deceitful, as it paints a misleading picture that it is other governments -- but not our own -- which engage in such conduct.

 

A search for "Roxana Saberi" reveals 2,201 mentions in press reports, virtually all of them in the last two months regarding her arrest by Iran.  By stark contrast, a search for "Ibrahim Jassam" -- the Iraqi journalist still held without charges by the U.S. even in the face of an Iraqi court finding that there's no evidence of his guilt -- produces a grand total of 71 mentions.  A search of "Sami al-Haj" for the first five years of his detention in Guantanamo (2001-2006) reveals a grand total of 101 mentions.  For the entire period of his lawless detention, Bilal Hussein's name was mentioned 556 times.  See those Nexis searches here.

 

One of the rare mentions of Jassam was an Associated Press International report that ran in the February 11, 2009, issue of The New Zealand Herald.  It reported:

A media watchdog group [the Committee to Protect Journalists] said it has urged President Barack Obama to end the US military's practice of detaining journalists without charges and asked for a full investigation into killings of journalists by US military forces. . . .

Officials with the New York-based group took the United States to task, saying the detention of journalists without trial by US authorities in such countries as Iraq has reduced America's standing in the world and emboldened other countries to do the same. . . .

[Wall St. Journal editor Paul Steiger] noted in [the letter to Obama] that 14 journalists have been held without due process for long periods in Iraq, Afghanistan and at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Sixteen journalists have been killed by US fire in Iraq, he said.

"We don't believe that these are deliberate attacks, but they have not been adequately investigated," Simon said.

Journalists detained by US forces in Iraq include Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, who was held without charges for two years before being released in April 2008.

 

 

 

 

 

Something very questionable is happening in US President Barak Obama’s Department of Justice. I don’t know if it is simply institutional loyalty that is the reason for a once admired office of justice to simply abdicate from its official duty. Whatever the reason, there is one question that no one will answer and this question only grows more urgent as new developments are made public.

Why is no one being held accountable? It is one thing to overlook a series of bad choices made in good faith. But the issues at hand have nothing to do with good faith or even bad choices. The allegations of criminal activity and extreme and willful abuses of power by officials of the Bush administration fall directly under the very definition of high crimes. The crimes are not small ones either.

The Watergate break-in, for example, appears insignificant against the backdrop of the Bush-Cheney legacy. No, the crimes are not small or even limited to a single genre or type of crime. From the outing of a CIA officer for political payback, to the massive illegal domestic surveillance program, to a policy of torture that resulted in multiple homicides; high crimes were committed and more startling, no one has been held to account.

Why?

The Manipulation of Language

In all other times in the past, when a crime occurred involving officials in the highest positions of government, no one thought to dare argue the necessity for committing the crime or how truly patriotic the crime was. Now we are told that we were spied on for our own good, that torture saves lives, that outing a CIA officer is okay, that starting an illegal war was just a series of decisions based on bad intelligence.

The debate over these various crimes has been drawn in such a way as to make it seem too complicated for the average American, too steeped in national security for the average American to understand, and missing in important details because those are too classified for the average American to see.

What of the domestic political prosecutions then and the victims who were targeted for political reasons? Why is no one being held accountable? Worse still, why is Obama’s DOJ seemingly engaging in payback given the latest news?

Over 1 million records on US government’s combined watch list

The US government’s consolidated terrorist watch list has exceeded an estimated 400,000 “unique” records of “known or suspected terrorist identities,” according to a Justice Department report released today.

The controversial list, according to the report issued by the Office of the Inspector General Audit Division, is a combined database of various federal law enforcement agencies, administered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) via its Terrorist Screening Center (TSC).

As of 31 December 31 2008, 1.1 million records exist on the government’s combined watch list, according to the Inspector General’s report. That number, however, includes duplicate files and aliases and does not reflect the actual number of people on the terrorist watch list.

The TSC estimated, as of 9 September 2008, that the total number of “unique” individuals on the watch list was approximately 400,000.

The report is the result of an investigation by the Audit Division and discusses findings related to three objectives:

(1) [D]etermine whether subjects of FBI terrorism investigations are appropriately and timely watchlisted and if these records are updated with new identifying information as required; (2) determine whether subjects of closed FBI terrorism investigations are removed from the consolidated terrorist watchlist in a timely manner when appropriate; and (3) examine the FBI’s watchlist nomination practices for individuals that were not associated with current terrorism case designations.

What about those wrongly listed?

The current report does not, however, address issues where individuals have been flagged as a result of mistaken identity or due to various other reasons not related to terrorism or any form of illegal activity.

James Moore, a Texas journalist who wrote two searing books on former Bush White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, found himself included on a no-fly list, a component of the combined terrorist watch list, and has not been able to get his name removed. It is unclear why Moore was listed and why he remains on the list — but Moore told RAW STORY that the list hasn’t made anyone safer.

“The terrorist watchlist is an icon for government malfunction and abuse,” Moore wrote in an email message Wednesday. “Politicians can seemingly nominate their enemies for the list or have it done by proxy using their bureaucratic influence. And the lists are maintained using outdated matching software that is incapable of finding discrepancies in all of the various data formats used by federal agencies. The list has made a lot of work for a lot of bureaucrats but it hasn’t caught a single terrorist or made safer one American soul.”

According to a March 2004 USA Today article, “51,000 have filed ‘redress’ requests claiming they were wrongly included on the watchlist.” USA Today also noted at that time that in the vast majority of cases reviewed so far, it had turned out that the petitioners were not actually on the list, with most having been misidentified at airports because their names resembled others on it.

There have been 830 redress requests since 2005 where the person in question was, in fact, confirmed to be on the watch list. Further review by the screening center led to the removal of 150, or 18% of them.

The most visible case of consequences for an individual wrongly placed on the watchlist was Canadian software engineer Maher Arar. In 2002, Arar was detained at a New York City airport, then rendered without a court order to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured—all because Canadian officials had wrongly asked for his name to be included on a watchlist.

More often, however, those wrongly identified have merely had to endure the hassles of being on the no-fly list. In 2004, it was reported that both Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) had been inconvenienced in this manner.

These misidentifications are generally explained as affecting only individuals with common names which they might share with actual terrorism suspects. However, last year Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) called for a probe after learning that the name of CNN correspondent Drew Griffin had appeared on the no-fly list shortly after he had done an investigative report on weaknesses in the federal air marshal system. A TSA spokesperson insisted that any connection between the two events was “absolutely fabricated.”

Griffin’s case raises questions similar to Moore’s. Both seemingly ended up on the no-fly list after publishing something unfavorable about the Bush administration or administration officials.

The ACLU has called for the list to be reviewed and pared down to only “credible” threats.

Calls to the TSC for comment were not returned.

The government’s consolidated terrorist watch list was created in March 2004 by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 6, issued by then-President George W. Bush.

Internally the consolidated database of “known or suspected terrorists” is called the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB). It acts as the central registry for various federal departments and state agencies.

The Inspector General’s report released today reaffirms the findings of the Government Accountability Office’s report from February of last year, with a slight difference in the non-unique individuals count.

The International Monetary Fund's 1997 meeting has a special place in the hearts of many journalists.

There we were in Hong Kong, Asia's economies crashing around us, watching George Soros duke it out with Malaysia's prime minister. The billionaire described Dr Mohamad as a "menace to his own economy". Mahathir labelled Soros, one of the speculators blamed for attacking Malaysia, a "moron".

That brawl comes to mind as another big story out of the event comes full-circle. It involves an Asia-only bailout fund, Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner. Its implications will travel far and wide in the fastest-growing economic region.

The "Asian Monetary Fund," so passionately derided by Summers and Geithner at the time, is back. There is little a crisis-plagued US can do to stop Asia's $US120 billion foreign-exchange reserve pool. Its creation is the clearest sign yet that Asia is getting serious about combating the global crisis. Done right, it will bode well for the region's outlook.

There is still a role for Soros and Dr Mahathir in this story more than a decade later, and I'll get back to them shortly.

In September 1997, Summers was deputy US Treasury secretary and Geithner was just being sworn in as assistant secretary for international affairs. Today, they are director of the White House National Economic Council and Treasury secretary, respectively. Back then, Summers, Geithner and their boss, Robert Rubin, objected to Asia having a bailout fund.

Eclipsing the IMF

Their concern was that it would eclipse the IMF in the region and, by extension, the US's say in how Asia retooled economies. They feared doling out billions of dollars in aid with few policy-change strings attached would prove dangerous. And they got their way. That changed this week.

From 1997 to 1998, the IMF arranged about $US100 billion of loans to Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand as currencies collapsed. In return, governments had to cut spending, raise interest rates and sell state-owned companies. The IMF's policies needlessly deepened the turmoil.

During this global crisis, nations sought help from neighbors instead of borrowing from the IMF. Indonesia, for example, raised $US5.5 billion of standby loans from the Asian Development Bank, World Bank, Australia and Japan, and increased the size of its currency-swap arrangements with China and Japan to bolster access to foreign exchange.

Whole New Level

Asia's new fund takes things to another level. On May 3, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, together with Japan, China and South Korea, agreed on terms for the so-called Chiang Mai Initiative and to use the funds in times of trouble. The pool, to be ready by year-end, largely neuters the IMF in Asia.

Granted, $US120 billion seems like a paltry sum in today's world of cascading markets and recession. American International Group Inc. alone received $US183 billion worth of public bailouts. The size of the stockpile isn't the issue. It can always get bigger. China and Japan boast almost $US3 trillion of currency reserves. It's the symbolism that really matters here.

Asia has been lacking in the cooperation department as the US credit crisis infected global markets. Meeting in Bali, Indonesia, this week, governments put their money where their vulnerabilities are, and it's about time.

There are risks to consider, including moral hazard. Will having a pile of money to tap, with few conditions, encourage bad behavior? Asian governments need to enforce a specific and clear set of guidelines and surveillance practices for nations accessing its new reserve pool. This money shouldn't be used to encourage largess or complacency.

Not that Summers or Geithner are in a position to comment this time around. Asia sent financial contagion around the globe in the late 1990s. Now the US is returning the favor, and then some. US President Barack Obama's top economic officials lack the moral high ground or time to intervene in Asia's plans.

Mahathir's anti-free-market rhetoric won him a special animus in the hearts of investors a decade ago. That was before the US, with massive public bailouts, low rates and "buy American" provisions, began reading from a similar playbook. It's not Malaysia that Soros criticizes these days, but the US.

Markets are getting ahead of themselves in betting that the worst global recession since World War II is over. The ADB expects regional growth to accelerate to 6% next year from 3.4% in 2009. Analysts are pinning their hopes on stimulus packages, including China's 4 trillion yuan ($US585 billion) one. We have seen too many false bottoms in the last year to trust markets.

It's worth noting that policy makers this week seemed less optimistic about the global economy than analysts and investors.

Job security may explain the disconnect. Wall Street needs to foster the view that things are improving to save the financial industry. Government officials know that nothing will boost Asia more than a rebound in the $US14 trillion US economy. And US employment is still sliding.

Summers and Geithner are plenty busy trying to engineer that recovery. As Asia goes its own way, eschewing Washington's advice, there's little the U.S. can do - besides keep quiet.

 

Reporters covering the press conference after the leaders met at the presidential palace were refused permission to ask about the case of 17-year-old Indonesian-American model Manohara Odelia Pinot. --

 

 

JAKARTA - Prime Minister Najib Razak dodged questions about the alleged abduction of a young model by a Malaysian prince as he met Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Jakarta on Thursday.

Reporters covering the press conference after the leaders met at the presidential palace were refused permission to ask about the case of 17-year-old Indonesian-American model Manohara Odelia Pinot.

As they fielded approved questions about closer bilateral relations and economic cooperation, Miss Manohara's mother held an emotional press conference of her own to plead with Mr Najib for help in finding her socialite daughter.

Miss Manohara married last year to Tengku Temenggong Mohammad Fakhry, the prince of Malaysia's Kelantan state.

Her mother, Daisy Fajarina, said her daughter had suffered 'emotional and physical abuse' at the hands of her husband, who was holding her against her will in Malaysia.

She said she had been refused entry to Malaysia to see her daughter, who was crying and distraught when she last spoke to her Indonesian family by phone from Malaysia on March 21.

'As the new prime minister of Malaysia I urge Najib to investigate to defend our rights and the truth,' Mdm Fajarina told reporters at the offices of the national human rights commission.

'I just want my daughter to be set free... As a mother I have a right to see my daughter.'

She fainted when she was mobbed by journalists from Indonesia's celebrity press, who have written extensively about Miss Manohara's plight. -- AFP

 Malaysia has been identified as a destination for human trafficking, according to the 2008 Human Rights Report released by the US State Department last week.

 

What a waste of public funds! The creation of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission will go down in history as a feeble and pathetic final clutch at the straws by a sitting duck prime minister best remembered for his inexhaustible supply of good intentions but with nothing to show for them. The MACC was hastily conceived against a murky background of a web of duplicity and deceit. It was a desperate attempt at deluding the people of this country and the world anti-corruption community at large that the Abdullah Badawi administration still had a lot of fire in its belly to make corruption a high risk and low return business. The whole process was nothing more that a charade, a sleight of hand that we had come to expect of this government.

In the meantime, corruption continues to be in robust good health. We saw the Anti-Corruption Agency for what it really was in operational terms. It was the weakest link in both the “supply and demand sides” of the corruption equation. We saw the ACA as part of the problem of corruption and not, as it should rightly have been, part of the solution. We thought its claim to “independence” was a joke in poor taste. It was as independent as a beached whale. We demanded from day one that the ACA be converted into an independent commission along the lines of the highly professional Independent Commission Against Corruption with a strong and influential oversight civilian committee to keep an eye on the staff who could otherwise be tempted to abuse their wide powers. After years of insisting that the ACA was independent despite glaring examples to the contrary, the government finally relented just as the Abdullah Badawi administration went into its death throes. Abdullah Badawi woke up all of a sudden to try to put in place the flawed Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission. He is, he has just told us, happy with the judiciary and the MACC. But then our prime minister is an easy man to please. You will note that for all the rhetoric about an independent commission, the key operating word itself does not appear in the name and title of the new body. I suppose it matters not what name you give it, the creation of the MACC is nothing if not a clumsy attempt at decanting old wine into a new bottle. As for the much hyped up “Hong Kong model” upon which the new corruption fighting machine is apparently based, the less said about this the better. It is clear for all to see that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission falls far short of the Hong Kong template on at least two counts. The first and most obvious shortcoming is an absence in the current law of a provision enabling a MACC officer to call anyone to account for their wealth and lifestyle that stick out like a sore thumb against his known income. It is not a crime for public servants to be wealthy, but would they please explain how they have acquired their wealth to the satisfaction of the authorities, assuming naturally that the authorities themselves are incorruptible? The absence of this specific provision in the law renders the fight against corruption an exercise in futility. The legions of the corrupt in Malaysian public life know that they cannot be touched. The framers of the law knew what they were doing when they decided to omit this powerful provision both in the 1997 Act as well as the current law. They claim that there is no need for it as there is already in the statute book a provision against money laundering. They have missed the point deliberately and with a cynicism of Machiavellian proportions. It is frighteningly sinister. The second and equally serious shortcoming is the quality of the commissioners. You cannot by any stretch of the imagination compare them with their highly professional Hong Kong counterparts. I have kept abreast of the excellent work of the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption from the time when the iconic Bertrand de Speville was its commissioner. The Hong Kong model works because of the quality of the officers employed. They are all of them drawn from the professions, and are well trained to behave and act professionally. Above all, the ICAC is truly independent, set out to be just that from day one. Now that the MACC has been officially launched, let us hope it will shed its reputation for bias and sloppy approach to its mission, and above all, its officers must resist the great temptation of seeking premature publicity such as the “million flying licences” of some years ago. Let your professionalism be its own reward, and Datuk Seri Ahmad Said Hamdan, the head of the organisation should learn to keep his counsel and not repeat that most uncalled for and disgraceful act of finding Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim guilty while his “car and cow” case was still a work in progress. I wrote this piece before the official launch of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission yesterday, and I am glad that I delayed submitting it to the editors so that I can now have the pleasure of congratulating Datuk Anwar Fazal, a partner in the setting up of Transparency International Malaysia, Tan Sri Megat Najmuddin, and Tan Sri Yong Poh Kon, all strong anti-corruption advocates and my co-workers, on their appointment to the advisory board. They have their work cut out for them, and I wish them well. As for the MACC, remember this; we can have the best legal framework, systems and procedures, but if we put crooks in charge, nothing will change. A “bunga tahi ayam” by any other name will not smell like a rose.

 

Barely a month after the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) was formed after much controversy and dissatisfaction on both sides of the political divide, it looks like even PM Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s party is openly resisting  recent apparent moves to crack down on graft in UMNO.

In an unprecedented and brazen act of defiance against the very top party leadership a group of people turned up to protest against the MACC for arresting Umno members, and against the party’s disciplinary board.

They  turned up on Thursday evening  at the main entrance to Menara Datuk Onn, the building where party leaders were scheduled to hold a supreme council meeting.

They held up placards that read “The Disciplinary Board is senile,” “Don’t take away our rights” and “We reject the MACC, butt out!”

The group shouted out their demands at Umno leaders and supreme council members as they arrived at the building, and handed over a memorandum to party president Datuk Seri Abdullah  when he arrived at about 8.35pm.

This open show of dissatisfaction is just the latest event of internal turmoil  within UMNO as the present leadership is percieved to be weak. The various factions against any change have become bolder and bolder, especially after the major setback in the general election less than a year ago.

While some UMNO members may want  a status quo in the party ( i.e. allow corruption to continue as usual ) the opposition had expressed misgivings about the MACC, pointing out that it is not truly independent. Over the past five years the Prime Minister had backed down from several attempts of what he called reform, under intense internal pressure.

It looks as if his anointed successor Najib Razak  will have his hands full, as Abdullah has increasingly passed on all the unpleasant tasks to the deputy prime minister. Najib and the other UMNO leaders will hard-pressed to answer why those arrested for alleged graft are the relatively unknown while the big fish and sharks aspiring for the top posts have not been nabbed despite accusations and complaints of money being exchanged for nominations in the past three months.

 

A United Nations agency warned that more than 50 million jobs could disappear around the world in 2009. As the global economy battles its worst downturn since the Great Depression, the International Labour Organisation, ILO said its worst case scenario would see 51 million more jobs lost by the end of this year, taking the global unemployment rate to 7.1% from 6% last year.

More realistically, the organisation estimates that 30 million people could lose their jobs if financial turmoil continues through 2009, pushing the unemployment rate to 6.5%. Under its most optimistic scenario, this year would end with 18 million more people out of their jobs and a jobless rate of 6.1%.

"If the recession deepens in 2009, as many forecasters expect, the global jobs crisis will worsen sharply," the ILO said. "We can expect that for many of those who manage to keep a job, earnings and other conditions of employment will deteriorate."

Developing countries will suffer most, according to the organisation, whose governing structure includes governments, employers and workers' groups.

"Sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia stand out as regions with extremely harsh labour market conditions and with the highest shares of working poor of all regions," the report said.

The ILO estimates that North Africa and the Middle East had the highest unemployment rates at the end of 2008, at 10.3% and 9.4% respectively.

Central and south-eastern Europe and the former Soviet states ended last year with a jobless rate of 8.8%. In sub-Saharan Africa it was 7.9% and Latin America's rate was 7.3%. East Asia fared best of the world's regions at 3.8%.

Most job creation in 2008 came from south Asia, south-east Asia and east Asia, while developed economies and the European Union had a net loss of about 900,000 jobs.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund, IMF says UK economy will be hardest hit in worst recession since second world war, shrinking 2.8 %, the "deepest recession since the second world war."

The IMF now expects the UK economy to shrink by 2.8% this year, compared with the 1.3% it was forecasting in November. This is worse than the 2% average drop in output the organisation has estimated for advanced nations.

Global growth is expected to fall to 0.5% this year as the "scale and scope of the current financial crisis have taken the global economy into uncharted waters".

Official figures last week confirmed that Britain fell into recession at the end of 2008. The UK economy slumped by 1.5% in the final three months of the year – worse than expected and sparking fears of a deep and prolonged recession. Over 2008 as a whole, the British economy shrank by 0.7%.