MADNESS ARCHIVE

moving announcement

2009-12-10T00:05:00.000Z

We have > > > > MOVED

The return of the Ghost of Altantuya: PI’s lawyer – ‘Anwar not behind Bala tapes’ & Bala is away somewhere in India.

2009-11-26T15:02:00.000Z

Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim is not involved in the latest twist to P Balasubramaniam’s sensational allegations against Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak, said the private eye’s lawyer.

Balasubramaniam had last year produced a statutory declaration alleging that Najib had close personal ties with murdered Mongolian woman Altantuya Shaariibuu.

But 24 hours later, in a dramatic reversal, the private investigator recanted his statutory declaration and subsequently went into hiding in India for over one year.

In August, he re-emerged in Malaysia to stand by his first statutory declaration, saying that threats and inducements were used by certain quarters to make him change his story.

Balasubramaniam’s lawyer Americk Singh Sidhu, in an interview with Malaysiakini, denied that Anwar was behind this latest development.

“Many people think Anwar Ibrahim is behind all this. That is absolutely untrue. Anwar has no idea about this whole episode except what he may have read in the blogs and on Malaysiakini,” Americk told in an interview.

MAGUINDANAO MUSLIM MASSACRE - 59 CONFIRMED DEAD

2009-11-26T10:13:00.000Z

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the European Commission, as well as the US and British embassies in Manila have joined the chorus of condemnation of the massacre of more than 50 people, including journalists and lawyers, in Maguindanao last Monday.

The Secretary General is saddened by reports of the brutal killing of more than 50 civilians in Maguindanao province, Southern Philippines. He condemns this heinous crime committed in the context of a local election campaign, a statement from the Secretary Generals office read.

Ban called for the perpetrators of the heinous crime to be brought to justice.

President Arroyo declared on Tuesday a state of emergency in Maguindanao province following Mondays killings, which have been described as the worst election-related violence in the nations history.

The Secretary General extends heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims and hopes that no effort will be spared to bring justice and to hold the perpetrators accountable, the statement said.

Outgoing US Ambassador Kristie Kenney said such barbaric acts violate the most fundamental principles of human rights and democracy.

On behalf of all American and Filipino employees of the Embassy, Ambassador Kenney offers heartfelt condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of the victims, the US embassy statement said.

We strongly believe that a thorough, rapid, and transparent investigation must be conducted, and those responsible must be brought to swift justice, Kenney said.

I condemn in the strongest possible terms the barbaric killing of innocent civilians, including women, journalists and lawyers, who were preparing to participate in the electoral process in the Philippines, said European Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner.

I call for calm in the period leading up to the forthcoming elections scheduled for May 2010. In the face of this atrocity, the rule of law and democracy have to prevail, she said.

British Ambassador Stephen Lillie said: I condemn this brutal massacre of innocent civilians, including women, journalists and lawyers. I hope that the authorities in the Philippines will take urgent action to bring the perpetrators to justice and prevent further escalation of violence in the run-up to next year's elections here.

Effective action will be crucial in maintaining confidence in the Philippines' commitment to protect human rights, he added.

No accountability

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said the massacre was an effect of the failure of the Arroyo administration to hold accountable perpetrators of unexplained killings.

It urged the government to initiate an independent probe on the murders to be led by the National Bureau of Investigation. The possible involvement of state forces in the Maguindanao massacre means that security personnel shouldn’t be allowed to interfere in an independent investigation.

Extrajudicial killings will continue to be a serious problem in the Philippines until they are competently, transparently, and impartially investigated, and perpetrators, including members of security forces, are fully prosecuted, Elaine Pearson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said.

The history of election-related violence in the Philippines makes the lead up to the May 2010 elections a period of special concern, Pearson said.

U.S. will not join treaty banning landmines

2009-11-25T12:10:00.001Z

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - By David Alexander

President Barack Obama has no plans to join a global treaty banning landmines because a policy review found the United States could not meet its security commitments without them, the State Department said on Tuesday.

"This administration undertook a policy review and we decided that our land mine policy remains in effect," spokesman Ian Kelly told a briefing five days before a review conference in Cartegena, Colombia on the 10-year-old Mine Ban Treaty.

"We determined that we would not be able to meet our national defense needs nor our security commitments to our friends and allies if we signed this convention," he said.

It was the first time the administration had publicly disclosed the decision.

The treaty bans the use, stockpiling, production or transfer of antipersonnel mines. It has been endorsed by 156 countries, but the United States, Russia, China and India have not adopted it.

U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, a leading advocate for the treaty, called the decision "a default of U.S. leadership."

"It is a lost opportunity for the United States to show leadership instead of joining with China and Russia and impeding progress," Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said in a statement.

Landmines are known to have caused 5,197 casualties last year, a third of them children, according to the Nobel Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), which links some 1,000 activist groups.

The United States generally abides by the provisions of the treaty. It has not used antipersonnel mines since the 1991 Gulf War, has not exported any since 1992 and has not produced them since 1997, Steve Goose, director of the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch, told a briefing on Monday.

The review conference next Sunday is expected to draw more than 1,000 delegates representing more than 100 countries, including ministers and heads of state.

It will look at the progress of a broadly popular treaty that has helped cut land mine casualties around the world and provided relief to victims.

Kelly said the United States would send humanitarian mine relief experts from the State Department, Defense Department, U.S. Agency for International Development and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to observe the conference.

"As a global provider of security, we have an interest in the discussions there," Kelly said. "But we will be there as an observer, obviously, because we haven't signed the convention, nor do we plan to sign the convention."

"The very fact that they are showing up we take as a positive sign of movement on this issue within the Obama administration," Goose said.

"We hope they're not coming empty-handed," he added. "We very much want them to come and say that they intend to join this convention. Even if they can't give a timeline, we want them to say they intend to join at some point in time."

Anti-mine campaigners said a declaration of intent was important because the Bush administration reversed U.S. policy on accepting the convention and said it would never join.

While Kelly's comment indicated no shift in administration policy, Jeff Abramson, deputy director of the nonpartisan Arms Control Association, said the United States was expected to make a statement at the conference that might shed more light on the decision.

He said it would be disappointing if such a statement shut the door to continuing a review of U.S. policy.

Kelly said the United States was the world's single largest financial supporter of humanitarian mine action, having provided more than $1.5 billion since 1993 to support mine clearance and destruction of conventional weapons.

In contravention of the treaty, however, the United States stockpiles some 10 million antipersonnel mines and retains the option to use them.

But using mines would pose big problems for Washington, Goose said, because most of its allies including all but one NATO country, are parties to the treaty and are pledged not to help other countries use the weapons.

Holocaust Story Spoiled by Lies and Fraud.

2009-11-25T06:24:00.000Z

Shooting the messenger..

2009-11-24T07:03:00.001Z

Some 34 journalists died this year while doing their jobs. And the independent press organization Committee To Protect Journalists says another 30 correspondents have gone missing. In New York next Tuesday, (November 24th) members of the media from around the world will gather to honor and pay tribute to several international journalists. VOA's Chris Simkins has more.

VOA's Chris Simkins

21 Filipinos killed on way to file election papers

2009-11-23T16:27:00.000Z

The wife of a candidate for governor and about 30 others were abducted Monday morning in the southern Philippines -- with at least 21 of them later killed, army officials said.The woman was on her way to file her husband's nomination papers, when some 100 armed men abducted her and the others in Maguindanao province, said the candidate, Ibrahim Mangudadatu.

Army Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner said soldiers later recovered 21 bodies -- 13 women and eight men -- from the area where the abduction occurred.

Presidential Adviser on Mindanao Affairs Jesus Dureza has asked the government to place Maguindanao province under a state of emergency."This is a gruesome massacre of civilians unequaled in recent history. Even women and media men were not spared. There must be a total stop to this senseless violence," Dureza said told reporters.

How much do Malaysians spend?

2009-11-23T06:15:00.000Z

NATO trains Afghan Police and National Army training.

2009-11-22T10:13:00.000Z

The US had pass the buck to NATO to train Afghan Police and Army. Transparency International had placed Afghanistan among the bottom in their table of "perceptions of corruption".What can the oppressed Afghan expect out of this exercises?

How US can pay for health care?

2009-11-22T06:54:00.004Z

Close Tax havens & tax currency speculation.

Conspiracy against anti-corruption top guns.

2009-11-20T07:35:00.001Z

Indonesian commission lays blame on police | Posted: 18 November 2009 0255 hrs

student's demo

JAKARTA: Indonesia's president should censure senior police and prosecutors accused of leading a conspiracy against the anti-corruption agency, an independent fact-finding team recommended Tuesday.

The so-called "Team 8" was appointed by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to look into allegations that police and prosecutors are trying to frame top anti-corruption investigators with false criminal charges.

The scandal has sparked protests and raised doubts over Yudhoyono's drive to lift the scourge of corruption from Indonesia, which remains ridden with graft despite 10 years of reform since the fall of the Suharto kleptocracy.

"Team 8 recommends to the president, in order to uphold justice for the people, that sanctions should be imposed on the officials responsible for this forced legal process," team spokesman Anies Baswedan told reporters after the committee handed in its report at the end of a two-week investigation.

It also said the police had no evidence to support their allegations of bribery and abuse of power against two deputy chairman of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), and recommended the charges be dropped.

Yudhoyono has been under mounting pressure to take action after wiretap recordings captured senior police and prosecutors discussing ways to apparently frame the commissioners, Chandra Hamzah and Bibit Samad Riyanto.

The anti-graft investigators were arrested last month but were released after the KPK's wiretaps were played in court on November 3.

Police general Susno Duadji and deputy attorney general Abdul Hakim Ritonga have stepped down over their roles in the alleged conspiracy, but anti-graft activists say police chief Bambang Hendarso Danuri and Attorney General Hendarman Supandji also must go.

The team also recommended authorities investigate a controversial, 6.7-trillion-rupiah (US$710-million) bank bailout many analysts believe is the source of friction between the police and the KPK.

Baswedan said Duadji's connections with an account holder reportedly close to Yudhoyono's Democratic Party who was able to withdraw supposedly frozen funds from the collapsed Bank Century should be part of the wider probe.

The Democrats have refused to back parliamentary calls for an inquiry into the Bank Century fiasco, arguing that any suspicions over the bailout should be investigated by the police and not by lawmakers.

Yudhoyono welcomed the Team 8 report but insisted he could not immediately act on its recommendations due to an "internal process" that he did not explain.

"As the head of the country and head of government, what I do will have to be in line with the constitutional order, laws, and government rules," he said, echoing his standard line that the "legal process" must be respected.

Police have refused to drop their allegations against the KPK officials despite the attorney general's office twice rejecting the case in the aftermath of the wiretap revelations.

Activists said Yudhoyono, a liberal ex-general who won re-election in July on promises of clean government and economic growth, was under mounting pressure to prove his anti-corruption credentials.

"The president must follow the recommendations of the team, otherwise what's the point in setting it up in the first place?" Indonesia Corruption Watch coordinator Danang Widoyoko told AFP.

"If he doesn't follow the team's recommendations, it will mean that he has not only failed in carrying out his job as president but also in stopping corruption. In fact, he's only encouraging corruption."

courtesy :channelnewsasia.com

American.Drug.War.

2009-11-19T01:03:00.000Z

Moves afoot to end Houthi fighting.

2009-11-18T03:45:00.000Z

Meanwhile Houthi rebels have released new video which they say shows destruction caused by continued Saudi air strikes.

But diplomatic moves are under way to end the fighting, as Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra reports.

U.S. Moves to Seize Properties Tied to Iran.

2009-11-17T10:25:00.003Z

Federal prosecutors continued legal action on Friday to seize properties, including several mosques, owned by a non-profit Muslim organization with alleged ties to the Iranian government. VOA correspondent Meredith Buel has details in this report from Washington.

Mohamed ElBaradei at CFR: A World Free of Nuclear Weapons.

2009-11-14T09:16:00.001Z

Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) speaking at the New York office of the Council on Foreign Relations on November 4, discussed ongoing negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program. ElBaradei reiterated that the agency had no evidence that Iran had an ongoing nuclear weapons program or had developed a nuclear weapon. He also expressed hope for the confidence-building plan that calls for Iran to ship much of its low-enriched uranium to Russia for reprocessing.

Saudis tighten Yemen border control

2009-11-12T18:45:00.001Z

Gone are the days when thousands of Yemeni workers, pilgrims, and businessmen used to enter Saudi Arabia without any problems.

Following the escalation in a conflict with rebel Houthi fighters and the Saudis' involvement in it, many of them are being sent back from the border by the Saudi authorities.

The Saudis are seeking to deny the Houthis access to the mountainous area straddling the border of the two countries, but it is the common people who are being inconvenienced.

Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra reports from northern Yemen.

Royalti minyak - H.A,K

2009-11-06T04:37:00.002Z

Rakyat Kelantan bukan peminta sedekah - Rakyat Kelantan memperjuangkan hak di atas semangat federalisme. Kita (ahli parlimen PAS) akan perjuangkan hak ini dan jelas jawapan perdana menteri tadi bertentangan dengan semangat federalisme, bertentangan dengan perlembagaan dan akta 144 petroleum yang disebut tadi," tegasnya yang juga Naib Presiden PAS dalam sidang media 4 November 2009. PM Najib masih mengikut cara Dr Mahathir - 1 Malaysia kah?

capitalism a love story trailer.

2009-11-02T19:09:00.002Z

AMY GOODMAN: Michael Moore, I wanted to turn to an interview that you did in Capitalism: A Love Story with the former bank regulator Bill Black about Timothy Geithner, President Obama’s Treasury Secretary and the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

BILL BLACK: …pretty much everything he’s done in life. Most of the institutions that destroyed the economy were under his direct regulatory authority.

MICHAEL MOORE: How did he get the job as Treasury Secretary?

BILL BLACK: By completely screwing up his job as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

MICHAEL MOORE: That makes no sense.

BILL BLACK: Of course it makes perfect sense. This is not new to Washington. People who will give you the wrong answer, but the answer you want, are invaluable, and they often get promoted precisely because they’re willing to say and do absurd things. These are the people that promised us that financial deregulation would make all of us rich, and these are the people who were personally made rich.

Israel denies illegal diamond trade

2009-10-29T19:35:00.003Z

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 PressTV

Israel has criticized a UN report which accuses Tel Aviv of involvement in illegal diamond trade from the Ivory Coast that could be helping re-arm rebels there (photo).

Israel's Diamond Controller Shmuel Morderchai dismissed the accusations in a Wednesday statement, insisting Israel has never dealt in diamond trade with the Ivory Coast.

"We are shocked by these false accusations and completely refute them," he said. The experts report was presented to the UN Security Council on international compliance with sanctions imposed by the international body on the Ivory Coast

The UN sanctions on the African nation's diamond trade came four years ago, after rebels took control of the country's north in a deadly civil war. The world body's investigation team on Tuesday urged Israel to 'investigate fully the possible involvement of Israeli nationals and companies in the illegal export of Ivorian rough diamonds'.

The panel also named the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Guinea and Liberia as some of the countries that needed to step up efforts to enforce the embargo on buying rough diamonds mined in the Ivory Coast.

But Israel insisted it had never imported conflict diamonds from the Ivory Coast or any other countries that are not members of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS).

The watchdog was set up in 2003 in a bid to stem the trade in 'blood diamonds' in the wake of civil wars in Angola, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, which were largely financed by illegal diamond trade. Israel has threatened to lodge an official complaint about its inclusion in the UN report at the upcoming meeting of Kimberley Process members scheduled for November 2-5 in Namibia.

Troubled Waters: Palestinians Denied Fair Access to Water

2009-10-27T19:39:00.001Z

Israel Cutting Palestinian Water: Amnesty

2009-10-27T10:12:00.001Z

27/10/2009 reported by almanar

Israel is denying Palestinians adequate access to clean, safe water while allowing almost unlimited supplies to Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, human rights group Amnesty International has said.

"Swimming pools, well-watered lawns and large irrigated farms in Israeli settlements... stand in stark contrast next to Palestinian villages whose inhabitants struggle even to meet their domestic water needs," the group said in a report released on Tuesday.

Amnesty said between 180,000 and 200,000 Palestinians in West Bank rural communities have no access to running water, while taps in other areas often run dry. "Israel allows the Palestinians access to only a fraction of the shared water resources, which lie mostly in the occupied West Bank", Donatella Rovera, an Amnesty researcher, said.

Israel's daily water consumption per capita is four times higher than the 70 litre per person consumed in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, according to the report entitled: Troubled waters - Palestinians denied fair access to water Shortages.

Israel, which itself faces unprecedented water shortages, controls much of the West Bank's supplies, pumping from the so-called Mountain Aquifer. The Amnesty report said Israel uses more than 80 per cent of water drawn from the aquifer and while Israel has other water sources, the aquifer is the West Bank's only supply of water.

In the Gaza Strip, several repair works were under way to improve sanitation before the Israeli blockade was imposed in 2007. But the projects have been on hold under the siege, as Israel is preventing repair materials from coming into the Strip.

Adding to an already dire situation, Israel's war on Gaza early this year left water reservoirs, wells, sewage networks and pumping stations severely damaged. The Amnesty report said Gaza's coastal aquifer, its sole fresh water resource, has been polluted by infiltration of seawater and raw sewage and degraded by over-extraction.

The water situation in Gaza had now reached a "crisis point," with 90 to 95 per cent of the water supply contaminated and unfit for human consumption, Rovera said.

Israel's water authority called the report "biased and incorrect, at the very least" and said that while there is a water gap, it is not nearly as big as presented by Amnesty. The authority said Israel had met its obligations under the “Oslo peace agreement” but said the Palestinian authorities had failed to meet their own requirements to recycle water and were not distributing water efficiently.

The Nobel Peace Prize, 2009 - For Obama?

2009-10-10T08:50:00.002+01:00

The Norwegia n Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened. more>>

UK commander quits ....

2009-09-26T04:24:00.002+01:00

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:03:09 GMT

The resignation of a senior British general extremely critical of the handling of the war in Afghanistan has caused a media frenzy.

Major-General Andrew Mackay, 52, resigned his commission on Thursday "for personal reasons," according to the Ministry of Defense, but it is understood that the commander was unhappy about some aspects of current war strategy.

He is reportedly the most high-ranking commander to resign since the start of the operations in 2001, and the fifth senior officer to leave the Forces prematurely in the space of two years. With mounting number of casualties hurting the already floundering public support and elections due by June 2010, the series of high-ranking military resignations could not come at a worst time for the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

While the Sun newspaper interpreted Mackay's resignation as "a huge blow" for Brown's government, the Daily Mail denounced it as an "embarrassment". "Don't be surprised if other senior officers follow his lead between now and the election.

It has got to the stage where officers are now prepared to fall on their swords rather than pretend to their soldiers all is well when it is clearly not," a senior military source told the Daily Mirror. The Daily Telegraph said the former brigade commander was shocked at the state of affairs upon arriving in Afghanistan in 2007, and is quoted as having said senior officer were "making it up as we go along." Since April 2008, he has been critical of the conduct, saying no efforts were made to "retain, gain and win" the trust of the Afghan population and that could mean failure in the long term.

A damming parliamentary report published this August, with his insight and help, concluded that British troops in southern Afghanistan, especially in volatile Helmand province, were let down by senior officers. The mission there "was undermined by unrealistic planning at senior levels, poor coordination between (government) departments and, crucially, a failure to provide the military with clear direction," the report read.

There are also concerns over the future of a conflict already in its eighth year, and nowhere close to an end, according to senior military commanders of the NATO-led forces in Afghanistan. Military commanders have called for more troops to back Britain's current 9,000-strong presence, but Brown has recently indicated that he would not deploy any more combat forces amid public anger over mounting fatalities, which has surpassed the country's death toll in Iraq.

This is while the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, is expected to link avoiding failure in the war with the deployment of 30,000 more troops in his assessment due next week.

RM1.35juta Untuk Tawan Selangor

2009-09-13T14:51:00.003+01:00

Native American Genocide and the New World Order

2009-09-12T19:46:00.002+01:00

Iraq's row with Syria.

2009-09-06T03:06:00.001+01:00

Nuri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, has ordered thousands of troops to the border with Syria, to stop what Iraq says are fighters crossing over and carrying out attacks on its soil.

Fares Braizat, a Middle East analyst at Qatar University in Doha, discusses the issue with Al Jazeera's Shulie Ghosh

Money Spinning Michael's Finances Examined.

2009-06-28T16:21:00.000+01:00

27 June 2009 - Within hours of Michael Jackson's death people were printed T-shirts and auction sites were doing a roaring trade in memorabilia. But there's even bigger sums at stake - with the singer's estate and royalties up for grabs.

Experts fear Michael Jackson's children may be at the centre of a titanic legal battle as they stand to inherit a vast fortune that is protected from the star's many creditors.
The star's three children are currently being looked after by his mother Katherine.

But reports have emerged of a possible custody battle with Debbie Rowe, biological mother to Jackson's two eldest children.

It is believed Ms Rowe could take full custody of Paris and Prince Michael under California law.

If she does gain parental control of the children, she could be entitled to a "huge amount of child support" from Jackson's estate, according to showbiz website TMZ.com.

Media lawyer Mark Stephens told Sky News: "It looks as though she [Jackson's mother] wants to keep them as she has all the other children around her.

"Michael, in his lifetime, expressed that he wanted the nanny to look after them and, of course, there is his first wife [Debbie Rowe] with whom he had two children.

"Ms Rowe says that she is entitled to them so clearly everyone is squaring up for a fight over the children."

There is a reason for this "other than natural affection", said Mr Stephens.

"These children are going to be incredibly rich, probably the richest since Onassis," he explained.

There has been speculation that Jackson reportedly had huge debts and any money will be seized on by his creditors.

But in perhaps the ultimate irony, it seems the King of Pop's death could see a turnaround in the fortunes of his struggling estate.

In the 24 hours since Jackson's death, HMV says it has sold 80 times more Michael Jackson albums than it would have in a corresponding period.

The surge in album sales is much greater than that for Elvis Presley and John Lennon following their deaths.

And Mr Stephens said the pop legend had enormous assets tied up in a trust that his debtors will not be able to access.

"It is something called a spendthrift trust - he wasn't anything of a spendthrift - but that's what the trust is called," he said.

Hollywood Drugs To Blame For Jackson's Death?

2009-06-28T12:47:00.002+01:00

27 June 2009 - At the centre of the inquiry into Michael Jackson's death is the drug Demerol. It's thought that he - in common with many other Hollywood celebrities - was abusing that and a cocktail of other perscription pills.

Michael Jackson's family say they are angry and frustrated over unanswered questions surrounding his death and may seek a second post mortem.Speaking to ABC television's Good Morning America, US activist Reverend Jesse Jackson said he had spent time comforting the family at their estate in northern LA.

He said they have concerns with the late singer's personal doctor, who was with the 50-year-old when he died on Thursday.

LA police have already spoken to cardiologist Conrad Murray and say they intend to interview him a second time.

A post mortem completed by the LA coroner has ruled out foul play, but revealed Jackson had been taking some unspecified prescription medications.

Asked if the family would seek their own post mortem, Rev Jackson replied: "I'm sure they ought to, they probably will."

The comments were followed soon after by an internet report which said LA police wanted to speak to a second person in connection with Jackson's death.

Showbiz website TMZ.com said police wanted to talk to Dr Tohme Tohme about an "alleged indirect connection" between prescription drugs and the pop singer's demise, according to their sources.

However, LAPD officer Norma Eisenman denied knowing anything about the report.

TMZ quotes Dr Tohme who as saying to them: "I don't have anything to do with his (Michael's) medication or health... Why should I talk to police?"

Sky correspondent Greg Milam, who is in LA, says Dr Tohme was one of many doctors that cared for Jackson.

"It is a name that has been in the Michael Jackson circle for a number of years - one of the many in the entourage - and nobody really knew what they were up to and what role they fulfilled," he said.

"Clearly police have a responsibility to investigate and will want to speak to everyone who has something to shed on that picture... the minute he was removed from his home and died in hospital."

The singer's body has been released to his family, but further toxicology tests have been ordered, which could take several weeks to be completed.

LA Police Department assistant police chief Charlie Beck said further tests would provide "key results that will steer the direction of the investigation".

No funeral plans have been announced, but the Jackson family say they have not ruled out a public event.

Speculation over the music icon's death is being fuelled by reports Jackson had been receiving a daily injection of Demerol, a synthetic narcotic similar to morphine, and may have been given "too much" on the day he died.

Earlier reports said the Jackson family had been concerned over pop star's use of drugs as he prepared for a series of comeback concerts in London.

Physician and Jackson confidante, Dr Deepak Chopra, told CNN bluntly: "I think drugs killed him."

Thoughts have also turned to the pop singer's three children, who are currently being cared for by Jackson's mother.

But reports have emerged of a possible custody battle with Debbie Rowe, biological mother to Jackson's two eldest children.

The mother of all election thieves.

2009-06-24T19:16:00.003+01:00

Bush should not have been president in 2000 and he should not have been president in 2004.

The evidence of organized vote-counting fraud in both elections was overwhelming, but the news media and the Democratic party did nothing.

And nothing has changed since 2004.

What will the news media and the Democratic party do if the same fraud machine that put Bush into office illegally does the same thing for John McCain?

Past performance suggests they will do nothing.

The Man Who Shook Westminster - UK

2009-06-22T20:22:00.001+01:00

June 2009, The man behind the scandalous British expenses row reveals himself in a one-off televised interview. Henry Gewanter approached the British media, and The Daily Telegraph were more than willing to oblige.

In the current economic climate what is sure to rouse angry voters to lose faith in politicians? MPs paying for porn with taxpayers money perhaps? After an anonymous tip-off Henry Gewanter has single handedly caused 7 MPs to stand down amid evidence that they have fraudulently claimed expenses. The original source of the material however is still unnamed.

I havent received a single penny for this, I did it for the public good claims Gewanter, now a local celebrity. Ive been bombarded by media interest. Gordon Brown is now in the spotlight after losing dramatically in the European elections: He has been caught with his pants down and has been struggling ever since.

[ Video Inside ]

Sexual Assault in the US Army

2009-06-22T19:54:00.003+01:00

Sexual assault is a pervasive problem, with Veterans Affairs statistics showing nearly one in three female soldiers are sexually harassed while serving their country, and for some the consequences are devastating.

Private LaVena Lyn Johnson (photo) was just five weeks into her tour of Iraq when she was found dead in a contractor’s tent. The US Army concluded the 19-year-old committed suicide after firing her M16 rifle into her mouth.

However, her father, who worked in the military as a civilian specialist in psychology, refuses to believe his daughter committed suicide.

For the past three years, Dr John Johnson has studied almost every aspect of his daughter’s death. He now believes LaVena was raped and murdered by someone in her camp, and accuses the army of covering up a soldier on soldier slaying.

Dr Johnson says he will keep fighting for justice until the army changes “their attitude about how they treat women in the military”.[more]

Campaign to stop IMF and war funding

2009-06-17T20:01:00.000+01:00

15 June 2009 - Bill for supplemental war and IMF funding could be defeated.

Hamas Considers Suspending Participation in Cairo Dialogue

2009-05-31T15:39:00.001+01:00

31/05/2009 | AlmanarTV

The Palestinian Hamas Resistance movement said on Sunday it considers the possibility to suspend participation in inter-Palestinian dialogue following the killing of its two members during clashes with security forces in the West Bank.

"We are now studying the suspension of our participation in the Cairo-hosted dialogue as part of the response to the assassination of two holy fighters in Qalqilya city in the West Bank," Salah al-Bardaweel, a Hamas spokesman, told reporters in Gaza.

Three policemen and a civilian were also killed in the armed clashes which broke off early Sunday between the two Hamas members and the security forces.

Al-Bardaweel reiterated that what happened was "a plot the Palestinian (National) Authority (PNA) and Israel planned to end the resistance and uproot Hamas," in the West Bank, ruled by Abbas ' Fatah party.

Petronas: The next "rape" victim ?

2009-05-30T04:00:00.002+01:00

When can there be an ultimate serenity in Malaysian politics? Can we ever achieve it or just continue on listening to rhetoric and pranks of the deceiving politicians of the day?

Or is there any serious intention in the first place to arrive at a political tranquility by any of the ruling politicians, as many politicians of late survive through political tribulation and misfortune?

There are questionable actions taken by our top leader which outcries the people of late. The appointment of Omar Ong, the so-called young economic savvy in the 4th floor at JPM to the Board of PETRONAS is another issue under serious public watchfulness.

Now, there are rumors circulating that Syed Hamid Albar is going to chair the Board of PETRONAS and if the rumors turns real than there is another flaw that DS Najib commits…and it is an absolute crab.

PETRONAS has never been touched by politician and all the while that petroleum company has been growing up on its own independently under direct supervision of the reigning Prime Minister.

If there is any politician sitting on the Board, we are at risk of facing another round of political misadventure and would be a tough issue to mitigate.

I pray that the rumor is unsubstantiated. It abhors if it is the real finality that had been decided.

What does Tengku Razaleigh (TR), the architect of PETRONAS has to say about this?

If Mahathir interminably gives comments to leaders who succeeded him, TR should come up with opinion on this issue as he is the living founder of PETRONAS which he built for free of charge…no salary. No allowances…no car. No nothing.

TR should come up with his voice upright because he was the one who went through the pains sweat, tears and hell in getting PETRONAS in existence and subsequently becomes one of the giants of the world.

TR is duty bound to tell the people on the endurances that he had to go through in setting up PETRONAS with everyone in the world were going against the forms and the fundamental motives of setting up this National Petroleum Company.

It was purely for the sake of the needful Malaysian and the generation there after and if current leaders are all out to fulfill their personal advantages, the doors are wide ajar for them to leave us.

He (TR) must tell us why politicians were not welcomed to the Board and why the company was totally given to professionals to manage.

This is his inheritance for the people and he must help us to protect this astute organization from going through shambles and muddle.

Tun Razak’s Cabinet gave him (TR) the task to set up our own National Petroleum Company, and TR was given very wide parameter within which he decided on every little thing as to how PETRONAS should be organized.

Malaysian of younger generation do not know all the hind side stories as to why PETRONAS was set up the way we make out today.

The unpatriotic leaders of the day are not able to actualize all the reasoning behind much stuff surrounding PETRONAS existence.

It is obligatory on the part of TR to recount detailed history of PETRONAS; it is for the generation after to understand the significance of its existence that no element of personal greed creeps in it.

We are in defense of the few left for the people and we wish not to see any further sordid, distasteful and squalid decisions by current leaders as we don’t want to bear witness for our leader’s wrong doings any further. We have had enough of it.

I would advocate everyone who has the platform to express views over this matter, and be vigilant of what is there to come for PETRONAS.

Let us put up defense for PETRONAS till the end from encroachment of unreliable persons with mischievous intent.

I hope what we heard; as I have said in a line above is just an unfounded rumor. No one should be blaming us for being so protective of PETRONAS, as that is the only one of the few left for us to have pride and to rest our laurels on…the rest have gone to the backyard.

Lastly may I repeat, I hope it is just an unsubstantiated rumor. I am dreadful if it is real.

Thanks……………………………………………..Aspan Alias

'Judge Dredd' weapon may come to life

2009-05-29T23:01:00.000+01:00

Fri, 29 May 2009 | PressTV

The high-tech weapon does not require a soldier to visually follow his target.

The idea behind a weapon used in a Sylvester Stallone movie comes to realize as the US Army moves to test a new high-tech weapon used against targets out of line of sight.

The computerized, projectile launcher, the XM-25 Individual Air Burst Weapon nicknamed the "Judge Dredd" gun after a Stallone movie, is a shoulder-weapon that uses laser beams to precisely target and destroy objects and people.

"The way a soldier operates this is you basically find your target, then laze to it, which gives the range, then you get an adjusted aim point, adjust fire and pull the trigger," deputy program manager Richard Audette told Army News Service, according to a FOX News report on Thursday.

"Say you've lazed out to 543 meters ... when you pull the trigger it arms the round and fires it 543 meters plus or minus a one-, two- or three-meter increment, then it explodes over the target."

The lightweight XM-25 "smart weapon" would allow the soldier wielding it aim to a spot near the target and have a fused grenade explode exactly at the targeted area.

"For example, in Iraq we had many instances where there was a sniper firing from a rooftop and you have a squad trying to engage that target, but the soldiers couldn't get to him with the weapons they had, so they'd call in the Air Force to drop a JDAM (joint direct attack munition)," said Audette. "We can take out the target at $25 per XM round as opposed to a $20,000 to $50,000 JDAM."

German arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch and the US company Alliant Techsystems (ATK Corporation) have jointly developed the smart gun. The weapon comes with five-round magazine and weighs in at around 14 pounds (6.3kg) - about the same weight as an M-16. It is equipped with a 203 grenade launcher.

US, Koreas prepare for peninsula war

2009-05-28T07:22:00.000+01:00

Thu, 28 May 2009 | PressTV

South Korean and US troops go on higher alert amid Pyongyang's threats of 'a powerful strike' and growing fears of a full-scale war in the peninsula.

"As of 7:15 am Thursday (2215 GMT Wednesday), the US-South Korea Combined Forces Command upgraded Watch Conditions by a notch to Stage Two," Seoul's Defense Ministry said in a statement released on Thursday.

"Surveillance over the North will be stepped up, with more aircraft and personnel mobilized," AFP quoted spokesman Won Tae-Jae as saying.

The remarks come in response to North Korea's Wednesday announcement, saying it was withdrawing from the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.

The North also warned that it could launch a military offensive on the South as it faced further pressure over test-firing an atomic bomb for the second time on Monday.

Following the test fire, Seoul said it planned to join the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), which is aimed at halting shipments of weapons technology.

The decision enraged the North which said it would respond to "any tiny hostile acts…, including the stopping and searching of our peaceful vessels," with a strong military strike.

Responding to the threats, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned North Korea against "provocative and belligerent" and highlighted the US firm commitment to the armistice and defending South Korea and Japan -- both in easy range of North Korean missiles.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Pyongyang's angry rhetoric will only aggravate its isolation, and that the peace has held despite the North's repeated threats to end the truce.

Nearly 28,500 US troops remain stationed in South Korea in what Washington calls a deterrent force against Pyongyang.

Won said the surveillance step-up -- the fourth since 1982 -- to stage two would be focused along the borderline Demilitarized Zone, the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom village and the disputed Yellow Sea border of Northern Limit Line.

He added the tight defense measure was aimed at preventing the North's military provocations, vowing "the military will deal sternly with provocative acts."

Somalia blocks air, sea ports to curb rebels

2009-05-26T10:16:00.003+01:00

Tue, 26 May 2009 | PressTV

The Somali government has announced an immediate blockade on airstrips and seaports in the rebel controlled center and south of the war-torn Horn of Africa nation.

"Beginning today [May 25] sea ports and airports not under the government's control will be closed to any flights or shipments except for humanitarian purposes," Press TV correspondent quoted Information Minister Farhan Ali Mohamud as saying.
Al-Shabaab militants hold sway over large areas of
south central Somalia.

The announcement comes on the heels of a proposal put forward by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) calling for the imposition of an embargo on south-central Somali airports and seaports run by extremist al-Shabaab militias.

Speaking after a closed-door cabinet meeting in the capital Mogadishu, Mohamoud said the sanctions were aimed at curbing the flow of arms and foreign fighters into the country and would not extend to humanitarian flights or shipments.

The minister further called on the United Nations to adopt a similar measure to the one taken by the six-nation regional bloc -- comprising of Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and Somalia.

Earlier on Monday, Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, who has been facing the Herculean task of patching together the country's divided factions, called for international assistance in dealing with the fresh wave of insurgency.

He also blamed Iraqi and Afghan fighters for backing rebel forces in their latest tug-of-war with government forces over the control of Mogadishu.

The latest fighting has left more than 180 people dead and an estimated 60, 000 homeless since it broke out almost two weeks ago.

The militant group al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for the recent round of car bomb attacks which killed at least 10 people, including seven government forces, and has confirmed that the group has foreign fighters within its ranks.

The armed rebels control most of south-central Somalia where a number of airstrips and the two main ports of Kismayu and Marka are located.

The latest blockade comes as Somalia has been subject to a UN arms embargo for many years. However, weapons are still freely available in the Mogadishu weapons market.

Somalia has not had a functioning national government since 1991 and years of fighting in the country have left some three million people - a third of the population - in need of humanitarian aid.

RM12 billion PKFZ scandal - six times bigger than RM2.5 billion BMF scandal of Mahathir

2009-05-13T16:00:00.000+01:00

MCA President and Transport Minister, Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat should stop running from the question why he had failed to honour his repeated public undertakings to “tell all” and make public the full report of the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) audit into the mega-billion ringgit Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal. Malaysians want to know what he is hiding.

The PwC audit report into the PKFZ scandal has been described in the media as “a damning disclosure of mismanagement, clandestine deals, conflicts of interest and a total disregard for transparency and accountability” for a project which was supposed to cost RM1.845 billion in 2002 under the then MCA President and Transport Minister, Datuk Seri Dr. Ling Liong Sik but ended up at RM4.6 billion under MCA Deputy President and Transport Minister, Datuk Seri Chan Kong Choy.

Now, horror of horrors, it is reported that the final cost of the PKFZ scandal under MCA President and the third MCA Transport Minister, Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat is the frightening figure of RM12 billion, which would have to be borne by the Malaysian taxpayers although the Cabinet had been assured in 2002 that the PKFZ project was a feasible, self-financing project that would not require a single sen of government financing!

If the PKFZ scandal had ballooned from RM1.8 billion in 2002 to RM12 billion in seven years under three MCA Ministers, it will be six times bigger than the first Mahathir mega financial scandal – RM2.5 billion BMF scandal!

RM12 billion of public funds is no chicken feed – it could build three Penang Bridges at RM4 billion each, 120 hospitals at RM100 million each, 1,200 schools at RM10 million each or 300,000 low-cost houses at RM40,000 each!

The MCA national leadership must fully account as to how three MCA Ministers in the past seven years had presided over one of the biggest financial scandals in the nation’s 52-year history.

The latest excuse of a “technical issue” preventing the full publication of the PwC report – that the Port Klang Authority Chairman Datuk Lee Hwa Beng had only written to the PcW on April 30 to seek its consent to release the report – is most laughable and a terrible reflection of Ong’s Ministerial irresponsibility to honour his 14-month pledge to reveal the whole truth about the PKFZ scandal.

(LKS - Dinner speech in Sungai Lalang, Sungai Patani on Saturday, 9th May 2009 at 9 pm)

Drug lords have friends in high places

2009-05-11T20:00:00.001+01:00

May 10, 2009 - Tom Lasseter: Afghan drug trade thrives with help, and neglect, of officials

War on drugs and Mexico's potential demise

2009-05-11T19:23:00.004+01:00

May , 2009 - Collapse of traditional economy created the space for the cartels to grow

US-funded militarization didn't stop Colombian drug trade, and won't in Mexico either

Islamic World Today

2009-05-11T18:56:00.001+01:00

Afghan students condemn civilian deaths in US air strikes

2009-05-11T18:50:00.002+01:00

Fayez Khorshid, Press TV, Kabul

Sun, 10 May 2009 14:59:00 GMT

Fresh fighting rocks Somali capital

2009-05-10T22:30:00.002+01:00

May 10, 2009 - Fresh fighting has erupted in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, between fighters loyal to the government and their opponents from al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam.

At least 50 people have been killed and over 200 people have been hurt in fighting over the weekend.

The battles are another blow to the government of President Sharif Ahmed, which has little control over Mogadishu and large areas of the countrys south. Roza Ibragimova reports.

The Corporation

2009-05-10T06:37:00.000+01:00

You'd think that things like disasters, or the purity of childhood, or even milk, let alone water or air, would be sacred. But no. Corporations have no built-in limits on what, who, or how much they can exploit for profit. In the fifteenth century, the enclosure movement began to put fences around public grazing lands so that they might be privately owned and exploited. Today, every molecule on the planet is up for grabs. In a bid to own it all, corporations are patenting animals, plants, even your DNA. Around things too precious, vulnerable, sacred or important to the public interest, governments have, in the past, drawn protective boundaries against corporate exploitation. Today, governments are inviting corporations into domains from which they were previously barred

Swine flu rapidly spreading in Asia

2009-05-09T14:51:00.003+01:00

Sat, 09 May 2009 - PressTV

While officials believed that Asia had survived swine flu outbreak, the growing number of cases across the continent has raised concern.

The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare on Saturday confirmed the country's first three swine flu cases, adding that all three had recently returned from Canada.

Japanese authorities, who have been screening travelers for flu symptoms over the past month, are now tracking passengers on the same flight as the three individuals diagnosed with the new flu.

The first confirmed swine flu case was also reported on Saturday in Australia. The patient is said to be the victim of a weak strain of the virus.

New Zealand, the first country in the Asia-Pacific region infected with the virus, also reported two more cases on Saturday, increasing its confirmed cases to seven.

The seventh H1N1 case was also reported in Israel; the patient however was reported to be recovering from the disease.

Despite the increasing number of swine flu cases, WHO officials have not increased the global pandemic alert level, indicating that the disease is not rapidly spreading outside North America.

12-year-old boy registers for Iran presidential election

2009-05-09T13:11:00.000+01:00

Sat, 09 May 2009 | PressTV

A 12-year-old Iranian boy, Kourosh Mozouni, has registered for the upcoming presidential election with a campaign promise of his own.

Speaking to reporters at the Interior Ministry's election headquarters in Tehran on Friday, Mozouni said he would ban computer games and raise wages of male parents so that mothers do not have to work.

"Mothers, children and young adults will vote for me," said the 12-year-old whose bid for presidency was rejected by Iran's Interior Ministry.

Mozouni has also promised to pass a law that lets women have jobs only if they have had babies for at least five years.

He said he would also negotiate with US President Barack Obama to buy Hawaii Islands and move Israelis there so that Palestinians can live peacefully in their lands.

When asked if he knew what yellow cake -- a substance used for nuclear fuel -- was, Mozouni said, "A president does not have to know everything."

The question came up as Iran's president would have to deal with a heated international debate regarding Iran's nuclear program.

"You all have refrigerators at home but do you know the different parts of it? All Iranians believe nuclear energy to be their legitimate right, but this does not mean that they should know everything about it," the 12-year-old explained.

He also said he would seek to stop the killing of the world's oppressed children, including Gazans, if he elected as president.

According to Iran's Interior Ministry, over one thousand candidates have so far registered for the country's June presidential election.

Following the official registration, the Guardians Council will evaluate the candidates and announce individuals meeting the council's approval on May 20th and 21st.

PERAK TURNING INTO A POLICE STATE

2009-05-07T18:23:00.003+01:00

May 07, 2009 - Arrests galore at SUK [ State Secretariat Perak ]

Dozens arrested, including 8 lawmakers

Police arrested dozens of protesters including several legislators today outside the Perak state assembly where the government and opposition are tussling for control.

Hundreds of police and riot squad were deployed at the state assembly, which was blocked off with barricades to prevent black-clad protesters from reaching the building.

Missile data found on hard drives

2009-05-07T16:16:00.000+01:00

Onslaught - The civilian slaughter

2009-05-06T15:51:00.000+01:00

BLACK MONEY

2009-04-25T13:00:00.000+01:00

In Black Money, FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman investigates this shadowy side of international business, shedding light on multinational companies that have routinely made secret payments -- often referred to as "black money" -- to win billions in business.

"The thing about black money is you can claim it's being used for all kinds of things," the British reporter David Leigh tells Bergman. "You get pots of black money that nobody sees, nobody has to account for, ... you can do anything you like with. Mostly what happens with black money is people steal it because they can."

Sri Lankan civilians trapped in 'no fire zone'

2009-04-25T09:59:00.001+01:00

April 25, 2009 - As the Sri Lankan government confronts the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), between 15,000 and 50,000 civilians are estimated to be trapped in the conflict zone - a four square kilometre pocket of land in the northeast.

Some civilians are now in about 40 overcrowded camps after fleeing LTTE-held areas. Thousands more have fled to the frontline coastal village of Puttumattalan, which until earlier this week, was in the so-called "no fire zone".

UMNO peralat undang-undang untuk kepentingan sendiri

2009-04-24T14:00:00.000+01:00

April 24, 2009 - UMNO peralat undang-undang untuk kepentingan sendiri

Family At War Over Slumdog Child-Sale Claims

2009-04-24T12:03:00.000+01:00

April 21, 2009 - Reports the father of a young girl who starred in the smash hit film Slumdog Millionaire tried to sell her have caused major rifts in the family.

Mumbai: Indian police are investigating claims and counterclaims by the parents of a child star in "Slumdog Millionaire" after a British tabloid alleged the father tried to sell the 9-year-old girl to an undercover reporter.

The accusations further complicated the lives of the families of the slum-dwelling child stars, who have come under intense scrutiny since the movie skyrocketed to Oscar-winning fame and grossed more than $300 million worldwide.

Khurshid Begum, the estranged mother of "Slumdog Millionaire" star Rubina Ali, filed a complaint with Mumbai police on Sunday after News of the World reported that the father planned to put her up for adoption. The British newspaper said the deal was allegedly offered to one of its reporters posing as a sheik from the Mideast.

The newspaper owned by News International Ltd., the main British subsidiary of News Corp., which also owns "Slumdog" distributor Fox Searchlight Pictures, said the father was demanding millions of rupees, worth the equivalent of $400,000.

"They should be punished," Begum said after getting into a physical confrontation with Rubina's stepmother. "No father should dare sell his daughter."

Police took the father, Rafiq Qureshi, and Rubina from their home in a Mumbai slum to a police station where he was briefly questioned.

Speaking to reporters outside the police station Sunday, Qureshi denied the report, saying he had been lured to a fancy Mumbai hotel by someone claiming they were moved by Rubina's story and wanted to help her.

"We had gone there to meet them in goodwill," he said. "But they have made false allegations about me and tried to frame me."

He said he was promised cash and "were talking of giving more too" if he gave up his daughter.

"But I refused," he said.

Qureshi said he told police he believed it could be a plot to regain custody by his ex-wife, who left several years ago, only to return and try to play a role in Rubina's life after the film's success.

"My children are with me, and I could give my life for them," Qureshi said. "I will never sell them to anybody, no matter how much money they offer me."

Police said they were investigating.

"There are claims and counterclaims made by the mothers and the father," police officer Nishar Tamboli told reporters. "We are probing the matter."

The newspaper quoted Qureshi as saying that Hollywood was to blame for forcing him to give her up for adoption.

"We've got nothing out of this film," Rafiq Qureshi was quoted as saying. "I have to consider what's best for me, my family and Rubina's future."

The children in "Slumdog Millionaire" were chosen with the local help of casting director Loveleen Tandan. To give the film a realistic view of the Mumbai slums, she and director Danny Boyle decided only weeks before shooting began to cast local kids who were not professional actors.

Decision shocks syariah lawyers

2009-04-24T04:10:00.001+01:00

Friday, 24 April 2009| Staronline

PETALING JAYA: Courts must be allowed to remain free from interference from any party including the Government, said Malaysian Syariah Lawyers Association (PGSM) deputy president Musa Awang.

“PGSM is shocked with the latest decision of the Cabinet. We view the decision as an interference of legislative matters. It threatens the freedom of the courts,” he said in a statement yesterday.

“PGSM demands that the decision be postponed and reviewed again with the input from all parties including NGOs, the public and academicians.”

He stressed the freedom of the court and the legislative institution must be defended.

Musa was commenting on the Cabinet’s decision on children of parents, where one of them opts to convert, must be raised in the common religion at the time of marriage.

The religious conversion issue came to the Cabinet’s attention on April 15 involving a specific case.

Indra Ghandhi had sought the help of the Hindu Sangam branch in Ipoh after her husband K. Patmanathan, now Mohd Ridzuan Abdullah, converted their three children without their presence and without informing her.

Common religion’ for children

2009-04-24T03:06:00.000+01:00

KUALA LUMPUR: The Cabinet has decided that children be raised in the “common religion at the time of marriage” should one of their parents convert.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Nazri Abd Aziz said a spouse who had converted into Islam would also have to fulfil his or her marriage responsibilities and sort out issues according to civil marriage laws.

“Religion should not be used as a tool to escape marriage responsibilities. Conversion is not grounds for automatic dissolution of a marriage,” he told a press conference at Parliament House yesterday.

Nazri said the principles would apply to any disputes resulting from conversion, not necessarily just for conversions to Islam.

He said the effects of conversion should apply from the day of conversion.

“It was decided that conversion is not retrospective. Past acts should be resolved under the relevant civil laws. They should come clean as a convert,” he said.

Nazri said religious conversion must come with the innocent party being protected from being victimised besides giving protection under the new religion to the convert.

“The Cabinet feels there is constructive contract between the husband and wife as parties to the marriage that the children should be brought up in common religion at the time of marriage,” he said.

Nazri said the Cabinet instructed the Attorney-General to look at all relevant laws which needed to be amended in line with the decision.

For Islamic enactments, he said they would have to be brought up with Rulers as heads of religion in their respective states.

Nazri said the Cabinet made the decision following Indra Ghandhi’s case where her three children aged one, 11 and 12 were allegedly converted to Islam by her husband K. Patmanathan, now known as Mohd Ridzuan Abdullah, without her consent.

He allegedly used the children’s birth certificates to get them converted. The youngest child is said to be in the father’s custody.

Nazri said the Minister in charge of Islamic Affairs Mej-Gen (R) Datuk Jamil Khir Baharom would be meeting Patmanathan to settle the matter amicably in accordance with the Cabinet’s decision.

“When the youngest child, who is still being breast-fed by the mother, is taken away from her, it is definitely traumatic for the mother.

“This is not about conversion but being humane,” he said, adding that the baby should be returned immediately to the mother.

“We can immediately do what we have decided to do in areas where we are in control. However, where it involves the Perak Islamic Affairs, it will be beyond us.

“It is our hope that common sense will prevail and the issue can end tomorrow if common sense prevails,” he said.

He said the Cabinet would deal with outstanding issues by coming out with long-term and not piece-meal solutions.

He said the Government was willing to listen to feedback over its decisions.

New Guantanamo abuse claim

2009-04-15T08:15:00.000+01:00

April 14, 2009 - A detainee at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay is claiming he was tear gassed and beaten by guards.

In a phone call to Al Jazeera, Mohammad al-Qaraani said the abuse continued this year, after Barack Obama, the US president, took power.

One of the first promises Obama had made was to close down the controversial prison within one year, and to stop the abuse of detainees

Monica Villamizar reports.

Jews used human skulls in Talmudic era

2009-04-14T19:11:00.002+01:00

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:10:26 GMT | PressTV

Babylon, present day Iraq

Archaeologists have found evidence suggesting that ancient Jews used human skulls in ceremonies, despite their religious beliefs.

Although there is a strict Halakhic prohibition on touching human remains, recently published findings suggest that ancient Jews might have ignored the rules.

Southampton University researchers said that human skulls were found in present-day Iraq (formerly Babylonia) that are believed to have been used during the Talmudic era.

According to researcher Dan Levene, some of the skulls bear Aramaic inscriptions and at least one of them seems to belong to a woman.

"When I presented these findings in Israel, people told me, 'It is not possible that this is Jewish,'" said Levene. "But it is certainly Jewish."

Levene says many desperate people used talisman in the past and skulls were also used to ward off ghosts or demons, Haaretz reported.

"The fact remains that belief in demons was widespread at this time among Jews as well as other peoples," writes Levene in a report published in Biblical Archaeological Review.

"Incantation bowls are known not only from Jewish communities but from other communities as well."

Real IRA's Chilling Warning to England

2009-04-13T19:52:00.001+01:00

April 13, 2009 - Republicans have warned that they'll kill British soldiers and members of N.Ireland's police service. Speaking at a rally in Londonderry a Real IRA spokesman denounced the Sinn Fein leadership as traitors. Sky's Alastair Bunkall reports.

DUBLIN (AP) - Irish Republican Army dissidents threatened Sunday to kill top Sinn Fein politician Martin McGuinness and resume attacks in England as part of their efforts to wreck the IRA cease-fire and Northern Ireland power-sharing.

An Easter statement from the outlawed Real IRA distributed to Irish media branded McGuinness a traitor because he holds the top Irish Catholic post in Northern Ireland's power-sharing government with British Protestants.

The statement warned McGuinness _ a former IRA commander _ that "no traitor will escape justice regardless of time, rank or past actions. The republican movement has a long memory."

Supporters later read out the statement at small rallies beside the graves of IRA dead at cemeteries in Belfast and Dublin. Anti-terrorist detectives kept a discreet watch on both events.

McGuinness offered no response. He previously has appealed to the public to tell police about dissident IRA activities and says extremist threats won't deflect him from cooperating with Protestant past enemies.

The Real IRA also claimed responsibility Sunday for a long-disputed killing of a Sinn Fein official who was exposed in 2006 as a British spy. Denis Donaldson, Sinn Fein's former chief legislative official inside the power-sharing government, was shot to death at his rural hideaway in northwest Ireland four months after he confessed his duplicity at a Sinn Fein news conference.

An Irish weekly newspaper, the Sunday Tribune, published an interview with an unidentified Real IRA spokesman in which the official warned that the group intends to resume attacks in London. The group in the past has issued statements via the Sunday Tribune.

The Real IRA last launched attacks in the British capital in 2000, when it struck the headquarters of the MI6 spy agency with a rocket and detonated a car bomb outside a British Broadcasting Corp. office.

The Real IRA killed two unarmed British soldiers March 7 as they collected pizzas outside a Northern Ireland army base. They were the first killings of troops in the British territory since the IRA's 1997 cease-fire. Another splinter group, the Continuity IRA, killed a policeman March 9 in what was the first killing of a police officer since 1998, the year of Northern Ireland's Good Friday peace accord.

The dissidents oppose the IRA's 2005 decisions to renounce violence and disarm, and remain committed to the belief that Northern Ireland must be forced out of the Irish Republic. The Good Friday pact reinforced the right of Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom as long as most of its residents prefer this.

Easter for decades has been a special holiday for Irish republicans, who don white lilies on their lapels as they honor the rebel dead of past generations _ and offer conflicting claims about the lessons of Irish history.

The Republic of Ireland government and leaders of Sinn Fein, the major Catholic-backed party in Northern Ireland, also organized their own separate ceremonies Sunday to commemorate the Easter Rising, the 1916 insurrection in Dublin that inspired Ireland's later war of independence from Britain.

At midday, Irish President Mary McAleese laid a wreath in central Dublin as about 300 soldiers marched down O'Connell Street and its colonnaded General Post Office. It served as rebel headquarters during the weeklong rebellion, which left 450 dead and was a military failure _ but radicalized Irish opinion after Britain executed 15 rebel leaders.

Today's rival IRA factions and the two major Republic of Ireland political parties all claim direct descendance from the 1916 rebels.

Thailand civil disorder update

2009-04-13T15:00:00.000+01:00

Mother lodges police report; Parliamentarians want IPCMC

2009-04-13T02:57:00.001+01:00

April 12, 2009 - The mother of alleged police abuse victim lodges a police report against the police.

Parliamentarians and NGOs ask the new Home Minister, Hishammuddin Tun Hussein to implement the Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC). There have been too many case of police abuse of suspects and deaths whilst in police custody they say.

The Big Business of Piracy

2009-04-13T02:30:00.000+01:00

CNN's Don Lemon talks piracy with retired military officers after the U.S. Navy rescues ship Capt. Richard Phillips.

Piracy big boon to Somalia economy; hotels, restaurants sprout in port of Eyl in pirates' presence

Modern-day piracy is growing quickly into big business - just take a look at the booming Somali pirate port of Eyl.

Big villas and hotels are sprouting, former subsistence fishermen are driving Mercedes-Benzes and gold-digging women are showing up. So are accountants.

After Somalia's civil war began in 1991, the impoverished coastal people turned to buccaneering, with huge success.

"In 2008 alone, Somali pirates made $125 million," said Michael Lee of McRoberts Maritime Security. "These guys are the wealthiest in the country. A lot of the women in Somalia are flocking to the ports to get themselves a pirate."

More than 30% of the world's oil goes through the narrow Gulf of Aden off Somalia. Taking the longer, safer way around would add 20 days and $1 million in fuel costs.

The heavily insured cargo vessels make easy pickings.

In small, unlit boats, the pirates sneak up to hulking ships at night, fling grappling hooks over the side and swarm aboard. They have learned that if they treat their hostages well, they can ransom the boats for millions.

Indeed, the BBC reported there are special pirate restaurants in Eyl to feed the kidnapped crews.

To the Somalis, where the average family lives on less than $1 a day, the lure of the black flag is intoxicating.

These are not the rum-drunk, eccentric, peg-leg pirates of yesteryear: The modern corsair is well-organized, disciplined and toting a satellite phone. They even have publicists to handle media calls.

There were 293 incidents of piracy worldwide last year, up 11% over 2007, according to International Maritime Bureau.

Forty-nine ships were hijacked and 889 crewmen were taken hostage. Eleven sailors were killed, 32 were injured and 21 are missing and presumed dead.

A rollback by Obama & ACTA

2009-04-12T05:55:00.003+01:00

April 11, 2009 - Secret war on sharing! Obama embarked on policy laundering - copy write used to be a civil matter - now, Obama wants to criminalized it! This is digital rape! Will the world under the leadership of Obama be overtaken by surveillance.

An unexpected ending for Najib in Pattaya

2009-04-12T05:11:00.001+01:00

PATTAYA, April 11,2009 — Bernama

An unexpected ending — that was the description by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak over the postponement of the 14th Asean Summit and related summits when he walked into the press conference with the Malaysian media here today.

When asked how his day had been, he said: "It has been a frustrating day. I was absolutely prepared to meet them (the other leaders at the summits), I was looking forward to meeting them.

"Unfortunately, that couldn't take place. We were unsure what was going to happen next, so I was in a state of flux," he said.

Najib said he was told of the postponement at about noon.

As the drama was unfolding, Foreign Minister Datuk Anifah Aman and International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Mustapa Mohamed were having lunch opposite the Royal Cliff Beach Hotel. A Malaysian official who was also present said they saw an unusually large numbers of armed soldiers entering the dining hall.

"When asked what was happening, the Thais simply said reassuringly that the soldiers were taking their lunch break," she said, adding that they were actually sent to provide extra protection to the delegates.

Asked whether he saw the demonstrators, Najib, who was staying on the fifth floor of the Royal Cliff Grand Hotel and Spa, said he could not because of the angle of his hotel room.

At the same time, security officials of the various leaders were running helter-skelter around the hotel to look at alternative arrangements to evacuate them if the situation warranted.

"I was told that they managed to get into the hotel lobby and there was a high degree of mayhem down below. My security boys told me that I could not go down for I was quite keen to go down and see," Najib said.

Najib, when asked if he would be taking a helicopter or a boat out of the resort, he said no.

"I will be taking the normal route... going by car (to the airport)," said Najib, who looked very relaxed despite having to go through the ordeal of preparing for the summits and subsequently the unexpected cancellation.

April 11, 2009 - The latest news from Al Jazeera.

US budget deficit hits one trillion dollars

2009-04-11T04:08:00.001+01:00

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:07:12 GMT | PressTV

The US budget deficit hits almost one trillion dollars in the first half of the current fiscal year, according to figures released by the Treasury.

The deficit for the first six months of the fiscal year which began on October 1 was 956.80 billion dollars, said the Treasury's monthly statement of receipts and outlays.

Much of the increase in outlays in March came from extraordinary investments by the government in banks and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, loans to credit unions, and increased spending from the stimulus package for unemployment insurance and Medicaid. Some of those investments should be repaid over time, but the government is booking them as cash expenses for now.

In March, Fannie Mae received $15.2 billion, Freddie Mac received $30.8 billion, and unemployment benefits totaled $10.6 billion.

Receipts during the six-month period to March 2009 period was 989.83 billion dollars while outlays amounted to nearly 1.95 trillion dollars, the data showed.

US Envoy Writes of Israeli Threats

2009-04-10T11:37:00.000+01:00

07/04/2009 By Barbara Crossette -
The Nation April 05, 2009

In the wake of the accusation by Chas Freeman that his nomination to lead the National Intelligence Council was derailed by an "Israeli lobby," a forthcoming memoir by another distinguished ambassador adds stunning new charges to the debate. The ambassador, John Gunther Dean, writes that over the years he not only came under pressure from pro-Israeli groups and officials in Washington but also was the target of an Israeli-inspired assassination attempt in 1980 in Lebanon, where he had opened links to the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Dean's suspicions that Israeli agents may have also been involved in the mysterious plane crash in 1988 that killed Pakistan's president, General Mohammed Zia ul Haq, led finally to a decision in Washington to declare him mentally unfit, which forced his resignation from the foreign service after a thirty-year career. After he left public service, he was rehabilitated by the State Department, given a distinguished service medal and eventually encouraged to write his memoirs. Now 82, Dean sees the subsequent positive attention he has received as proof that the insanity charge (he calls it Stalinist) was phony, a supposition later confirmed by a former head of the department's medical service.

Dean, whose memoir is titled Danger Zones: A Diplomat's Fight for America's Interests, was American ambassador in Lebanon in August 1980 when a three-car convoy carrying him and his family was attacked near Beirut.

"I was the target of an assassination attempt by terrorists using automatic rifles and antitank weapons that had been made in the United States and shipped to Israel," he wrote. "Weapons financed and given by the United States to Israel were used in an attempt to kill an American diplomat!" After the event, conspiracy theories abounded in the Middle East about who could have planned the attack, and why. Lebanon was a dangerously factionalized country.

The State Department investigated, Dean said, but he was never told what the conclusion was. He wrote that he "worked the telephone for three weeks" and met only official silence in Washington. By then Dean had learned from weapons experts in the United States and Lebanon that the guns and ammunition used in the attack had been given by Israelis to a Christian militia allied with them.

"I know as surely as I know anything that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, was somehow involved in the attack," Dean wrote, describing how he had been under sharp criticism from Israeli politicians and media for his contacts with Palestinians. "Undoubtedly using a proxy, our ally Israel had tried to kill me."

Dean's memoir, to be published in May for the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Memoir Series by New Academia Publishing under its Vellum imprint, has been read and approved for publication by the State Department with only very minor changes, none affecting Dean's major points. Its underlying theme is that American diplomacy should be pursued in American interests, not those of another country, however friendly. A Jew whose family fled the Holocaust, Dean resented what he saw as an assumption, including by some in Congress, that he would promote Israel's interests in his ambassadorial work.

Dean, a fluent French speaker who began his long diplomatic career opening American missions in newly independent West African nations in the early 1960s, served later in Vietnam (where he described himself as a "loyal dissenter") and was ambassador in Cambodia (where he carried out the American flag as the Khmer Rouge advanced), Denmark, Lebanon, Thailand (where Chas Freeman was his deputy) and India. He takes credit for averting bloodshed in Laos in the 1970s by negotiating a coalition government shared by communist and noncommunist parties.

He was sometimes a disputatious diplomat not afraid to contradict superiors, and he often took--and still holds--contrarian views. He always believed, for example, that the United States should have attempted to negotiate with the Khmer Rouge rather than let the country be overrun by their brutal horror.

As ambassador in India in the 1980s he supported then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's policy of seeking some kind of neutral coalition in Afghanistan that would keep the American- and Pakistani-armed mujahedeen from establishing a fundamentalist Islamic state. For several years after the Soviet withdrawal, India continued to back Najibullah, a thuggish communist security chief whom the retreating Soviet troops left behind. After the mujahedeen moved toward Kabul, Najibullah refused a United Nations offer of safe passage to India. He was slaughtered and left hanging on a lamppost.

It was in the midst of this Soviet endgame in Afghanistan that Dean fell afoul of the State Department for the last time. After the death of General Zia in August 1988, in a plane crash that also killed the American ambassador in Pakistan, Arnold Raphel, Dean was told in New Delhi by high-ranking officials that Mossad was a possible instigator of the accident, in which the plane's pilot and co-pilot were apparently disabled or otherwise lost control. There was also some suspicion that elements of India's Research and Analysis Wing, its equivalent of the CIA, may have played a part. India and Israel were alarmed by Pakistan's work on a nuclear weapon--the "Islamic bomb."

Dean was so concerned about these reports, and the attempt by the State Department to block a full FBI investigation of the crash in Pakistan, that he decided to return to Washington for direct consultations. Instead of the meetings he was promised, he was told his service in India was over. He was sent into virtual house arrest in Switzerland at a home belonging to the family of his French wife, Martine Duphenieux. Six weeks later, he was allowed to return to New Delhi to pack his belongings and return to Washington, where he resigned

Suddenly his health record was cleared and his security clearance restored. He was presented with the Distinguished Service Award and received a warm letter of praise from Secretary of State George Shultz. "Years later," he wrote in his memoir, "I learned who had ordered the bogus diagnosis of mental incapacity against me. It was the same man who had so effusively praised me once I was gone--George Shultz."

Asked in a telephone conversation last week from his home in Paris why Shultz had done this to him, Dean would say only, "He was forced to."

About Barbara Crossette

Barbara Crossette, United Nations correspondent for The Nation, is a former New York Times correspondent and bureau chief in Asia and at the UN.

She is the author of So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1995 and in paperback by Random House/Vintage Destinations in 1996, and a collection of travel essays about colonial resort towns that are still attracting visitors more than a century after their creation, The Great Hill Stations of Asia, published by Westview Press in 1998 and in paperback by Basic Books in 1999. In 2000, she wrote a survey of India and Indian-American relations, India: Old Civilization in a New World, for the Foreign Policy Association in New York. She is also the author of India Facing the 21st Century, published by Indiana University Press in 1993

India's sold children

2009-04-10T00:23:00.002+01:00

April 09, 2009 - For some families living in extreme poverty, children are seen as a commodity. Some are kidnapped, and there are syndicates that will sell the children elsewhere in other parts of the world.In this edition of 101 East, we look at how trafficking, adoption and surrogacy affect India's struggling families

Flu shot ingredients

2009-04-09T22:13:00.000+01:00

April 07, 2009

GAZA: Behind the scenes

2009-04-09T09:27:00.001+01:00

Following the outbreak of the recent conflict in Gaza and southern Israel on December 27, 2008 and then Israel's ground invasion of Gaza on Jan 3, Amnesty International delegates traveled to the region on Jan 8th. There, they began to research allegations of war crimes and others serious violations of international law by Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.

This video is about the preliminary findings of our fact-finding team in Gaza.

Is he going to war?

2009-04-09T01:05:00.002+01:00

April 09, 2009 - While media plays up program cuts, total defense budget surpasses Bush by $20B

G20: day of rage rocks system

2009-04-08T02:23:00.002+01:00

Tuesday 7 April 2009 © Socialist Worker

A range of protests against the G20 summit captured the public’s anger over the economic crisis. Socialist Worker was on hand to record the events

The City financial district in the heart of London was brought to a standstill on Wednesday of last week as thousands of protesters converged on the Bank of England to demonstrate against the recession, banks, war and climate change.

The “Financial Fools Day” event was part of a series of protests taking place around the G20 summit.

The Stop the War Coalition helped organise a march and rally in Trafalgar Square, while environmental campaigners held a “climate camp” on Bishopsgate, one of the main roads running through the City.

There were also protests the next day outside the summit’s venue, the Excel Centre in east London.

The mood of the protests was for the most part defiant and carnivalesque. But there was also anger – directed at the banks whose profiteering had helped bring on the recession, and at the police whose thuggish tactics were designed to intimidate and harass demonstrators. » G20 policing: Intimidation is their intention

The City protests in the morning started with four “horsemen of the apocalypse” setting off from separate central London tube stations, each followed by a train of protesters.

The horses, symbolising the four evils of war, financial chaos, climate change and homelessness, converged on the centre of the financial district.

The protesters were a diverse group, including many students and young unemployed workers, as well as peace activists and climate change campaigners.

One group of around 250 people followed the red horse from Moorgate station to protest against war. Stop the War delegations from Glasgow, Strathclyde and Aberdeen universities ensured the protest was loud and lively.

The green horse march against climate change started from Liverpool Street and attracted some 300 people. Jake, a student from south London, was one of them.

“The economic crisis is just the latest sign of capitalism tearing our world apart. People here have lots of different views, but we have to start coming together,” he told Socialist Worker.

Jasmine brought her children to the demonstration. “What’s happening to the climate is very scary,” she said. “It’s great to see so many young people here. We have to have a new generation of people who will defend our planet.”

The police turned up in absurdly large numbers in an attempt to overwhelm the demonstrators. Protesters were penned in – or “kettled” as the media have dubbed it – by lines of riot cops separating different groups of demonstrators.

Despite the police lockdown, some did manage to physically express their anger at an economic system that is creating havoc across the globe. They smashed the windows of a Royal Bank of Scotland branch in the City and briefly occupied the building.

Lurid

But the levels of violence were nowhere near those predicted by police and quoted in the lurid press coverage that marked the run-up to the demonstration.

Later in the afternoon around 5,000 anti-war protesters gathered to demonstrate outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square. They marched to a rally in Trafalgar Square, which was addressed by Arthur Scargill and Tony Benn, among others.

“The government is giving billions to banks to give golden handshakes to bankers – I’d put them all in brass handcuffs and take them away,” said Scargill, the president of the National Union of Mineworkers who led the Miners’ Strike of 1984-5. “We need a change in the system – capitalism has demonstrated its inability to deal with the issues at stake.”

The march called for an end to the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, freedom for Palestine and the abolition of nuclear weapons. It was organised jointly by Stop the War, CND, the British Muslim Initiative and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

The crackdown on opposition to the G20 summit continued as the evening went on. A counter-summit planned at the University of East London (UEL) on Wednesday was refused permission to take place by university authorities.

Attendees held a rally outside instead, which was addressed by speakers including Alex Callinicos and Mark Thomas. They expressed their solidarity with UEL professor Chris Knight, who was suspended for his role in organising the protests.

The following day riot police raided two squats in east London that were being used as “social centres” to coordinate the protests. The targeted venues included a building in Earl Street that had been occupied on Tuesday night, along with a long‑established centre on Rampart Street in Whitechapel.

But the repression did not deter large numbers of people from expressing their anger at the G20. Alpesh, a young worker, was one of those protesting later outside the Excel Centre venue.

“People are looking much more critically at capitalism,” he told Socialist Worker. “The system is bankrupt – it has nothing to offer us. I hope the protests over the past few days will raise people’s class consciousness and get working people seriously fighting back.”

The following should be read alongside this article:
» G20 policing: Intimidation is their intention
» G20: Photos of the London protests
» Will the G20 bailout work?

Same people protecting same interest responsible for reforms?

2009-04-06T12:00:00.003+01:00

August 01, 2008 - What will real economic change look like?

Downturn and record high deficit mean next uS President must protect Americans from 'vagaries of the market'.

Will that happens - or the worrries of others in reaction to the G 20 submit - the like of Evo Morales of Bolivia or the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic?

Debt-fueled rat race drives economic crisis

2009-04-06T12:00:00.001+01:00

Sunday May 4th, 2008 - Leo Panitch part 1: Truly democratic institutions are needed to direct investment.

As the US Federal Reserve once again cut interest rates on Wednesday in the hopes of stanching the economic bleeding in the US, The Real News Network senior editor Paul Jay sat down with economist Leo Panitch to discuss the causes of--and solutions to--the current economic crisis. Panitch says that the increase in the standard of living since the Reagan era has largely been fueled by growing debt and longer working hours, and suggests that the solution is to democratize economic institutions.

Public rage over perks for new Zimbabwe ministers

2009-04-05T00:37:00.000+01:00

HARARE, April 4,2009 | Guardian

Zimbabwe's new unity government has sparked public outcry by accepting a succession of perks including a "retreat" to a luxury resort at Victoria Falls this weekend and a fleet of US$50,000 (RM185,000) Mercedes vehicles for ministers while the vast majority struggles to afford basic commodities.

The perception of officials feathering their nests is particularly awkward for former opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his allies in the unity government, who spent years championing the lot of ordinary Zimbabweans during the economic collapse presided over by Robert Mugabe. It is also likely to raise questions about the government's spending priorities, coming just days after it issued an appeal for billions of dollars.

Officially billed as a brainstorming session on how to take the country forward, the weekend retreat will take place at a tourist resort famed for its five-star safari lodges and the spectacular "Mosi-I-Tunya" waterfalls, the "smoke that thunders" in the local Shona language. Many Zimbabweans see the trip as another junket for the politically privileged.

"It's just spitting in peoples' faces at a time when the cities are suffering and much of the countryside is starving," said Dumisani Moyo, 39, an office worker in the capital Harare.

The government has been quoted as saying the retreat will promote tourism, particularly as most foreign visitors have forsaken Zimbabwe for Zambia's side of the falls. But criticism came from the most unlikely of sources: the slavishly pro-president Mugabe state-owned Herald daily newspaper. In a rare show of dissent its political editor Mabasa Sasa wrote a column earlier this week asking why politicians needed to spend "untold sums" of precious foreign exchange to wine, dine and talk on the peoples' behalf when they could stay in the capital Harare.

Satirising the bon viveur politicians' new taste for luxury in a rebuke all the more stinging for its unexpectedness, Sasa said: "It would be interesting to find out how high the bar tab will be considering the penchant for Chivas Regal and other exotically named whiskies and cognacs that people acquire when someone starts addressing them as Shefu [chief]".

Barely seven weeks ago many of the ministers expected to attend were in opposition fighting for their political lives or facing the truncheons of President Robert Mugabe's security services.

But the excursion is the culmination of a series of perks. These include the new government's self-award of one Mercedes-Benz E-class for every minister at a time when most Zimbabweans are struggling to afford basic commodities such as cooking oil and the national maize staple mealie-meal.

Only one politician, MDC MP and Minister for Education David Coltart, refused the Benz. He said a Mercedes was not practical for negotiating the potholed roads of rural constituencies.

Zimbabwe's economic and financial needs meanwhile remain critical. The regional Southern African Development Community announced this week that it would assist Zimbabwe in trying to raise up to US$8.3 billion to rebuild its shattered economy.

The reforming MDC Finance Minister Tendai Biti said the country urgently needed US$2 billion in aid inflows within the next two weeks to meet its debt obligations and pay civil servants.

Important, if modest, economic and political reforms have already taken place under the combined auspices of Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and their one-time enemies the Movement for Democratic change. But there are also deep misgivings.

Christopher Goche, 35, a taxi driver and MDC supporter, said he was worried that politicians were "feathering their nests when there is a long way to go".

Despite the national outpouring of sympathy for Prime Minister Tsvangirai, whose wife died in a car accident last month, there are fears that the former trade unionist is becoming co-opted by Mugabe much like one-time opposition leader Joshua Nkomo was in the 1980s.

Nkomo, once the president's most popular rival, was incorporated into a Mugabe-led government under Zimbabwe's "unity accord" in 1987.

"For the moment things are stable but one can't mistake growing disenchantment with the new unity government barely a month after its inception ... Tsvangirai is operating under a shadow of Nkomo," said Dr Ibbo Mandaza, a former Zanu-PF politician and Harare-based analyst.

'US economic plan, road to hell'

2009-04-03T22:34:00.001+01:00

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:58:53 GMT | PressTV

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek says that Washington's plans to fight the global economic crisis are "the way to hell."

"The path the United States has chosen is historically discredited," the head of the European Union told the European Parliament on Wednesday, advising Americans to "read dusty history books" so as to avoid repeating "the errors of the 1930s" and the Great Depression.

"Americans will need liquidity to finance all their measures and they will balance this with the sale of their bonds but this will undermine the liquidity of the global financial market," Topolanek said.

Topolanek's remarks came a day after he was ousted by the Czech Republic's Parliament.

The Czech Republic currently holds the six-month rotating EU presidency but its leadership is in question, with Topolanek hanging on to a caretaker government at home after losing a "no confidence" vote on Tuesday.

The comments by Topolanek to the European Parliament on Wednesday highlighted Europe's simmering differences with Washington ahead of a key summit next week on fixing the world economy.

European leaders hope the new US administration will agree with them on tightening oversight over the global financial system - which they see as crucial to fixing the global economy.

Too rich for Bukit Gantang

2009-04-03T18:04:00.000+01:00

Friday, 03 April 2009 - By Zainal Epi - The Malay Mail

IF you have it, flaunt it. But no, sirs. Not in Bukit Gantang, Perak.

Several Umno members who had just returned to Kuala Lumpur from the durian land, are cheesed off that Barisan Nasional members are making their rounds there in luxury cars and expensive attire.

The group said these campaigners had not learnt from past by-elections.

“Moving around in big luxury cars, wearing expensive attire but talking about daily survival of
kampung folks in a semi-urban surrounding doesn’t quite give the right impression about BN,” one of them said.

There is nothing wrong in having wealth and looking good, but who would be convinced when they talk about defending the kampung people’s rights?

The voters would be wondering how these campaigners would know what they are going through when they strut around in fancy cars and clothes; and have probably never lived in a village.

“Bukit Gantang’s predominantly Malay voters are still living in the kampung, some in dilapidated
houses.

These are simple people with simple needs. They cannot possibly identify with people with
luxury, even if these campaigners do not mean to project a high and mighty outlook.”

The Umno members also claimed that there seemed to be factions among Umno Youth followers
aligned to either new chief Khairy Jamaluddin, Datuk Mukhriz Mahathir or Datuk Seri Dr Mohd Khir Toyo.

They claimed that factions loyal to Mukhriz and Dr Khir were carrying out their own campaign, despite the norm being to follow the chief’s itinerary.

The members also noted that other than the Perak takeover issues, the Opposition was using the three month suspension on Harakah and Suara Keadilan as an issue.

On the positive side, the group said the Wanita team were doing a good job.

It seems that the Wanita members are well received in their house-to-house rounds.

Water for Life not for Profit!

2009-04-03T12:58:00.003+01:00

Water Rights Activists Blast Istanbul World Water Forum.

March 23, 2009 - Sunday was World Water Day and marked the close of a week-long gathering held in Istanbul, Turkey to discuss water policy at a time when over a billion people lack access to clean water and 2.5 billion people lack water for proper sanitation.

Activists from the Peoples Water Forum, an alternative formation representing the rural poor, the environment and organized labor, slammed the official event as a non-inclusive, corporate-driven fraud pushing for water privatization and called for a more open, democratic and transparent forum.

Border mayors debate drug war

2009-04-01T23:55:00.000+01:00

April 01, 2009 - Al Jazeera's Shihab Rattansi speaks to the mayors of El Paso in the US and Ciudad Juarez in Mexico, just a few miles across the border.

He began by asking both men how the drug trade could look so different in cities that are separated by mere metres.

Newstopia explains the Reserve Bank

2009-04-01T11:30:00.001+01:00

UPDATE 2009-01-13: 50,000 views! Thanks to everyone for their contributions.

UPDATE: The day this video got picked up by a couple of left-wing blogs in the USA and Canada was, coincidentally enough, my birthday. I can't give enough thanks to everyone who has enjoyed the video so far. Spread the word!

"Shaun Micallef" (Shaun Micallef) and "Tony Froth" (Nicholas Bell) explain the role of the Reserve Bank of Australia and how to control inflation.

This was taken from the TV show "Newstopia" (Season 2, Episode 3, aired 12 March 2008). I'm uploading this to celebrate the launch of the third season of the show. This is one of my favourite moments from the second season.

I don't own the copyright to this - it belongs to the Australian TV channel, SBS. That said, there is plenty of Newstopia material on YouTube already, including an incomplete version of this material. In any case, I personally think the show deserves all the publicity it can get.

Visit the show's official website: http://www.sbs.com.au/newstopia.

Newstopia Explains the Reserve Bank - Funny blooper videos are here

Mexico vows to win drug fight

2009-03-31T20:49:00.001+01:00

March 31, 2009 - Eduardo Medina Mora, the Mexican attorney general tells Al Jazeera's Shihab Rattansi how the country will win the battle against the drug cartels.

US feels impact of Mexico drug war "spillover"

2009-03-30T23:58:00.002+01:00

March 31, 2009 - US officials and politicians, particularly those in states that border Mexico have repeatedly warned of a "spillover" of violence from Mexico's drug violence.

And both the Texan and Arizona governors have gone as far as calling for the deployment of the US national guard to the US-Mexico border.

But others have disputed the concept of Mexican violence bleeding over the border.
Al Jazeera's Monica Villamizar went to Phoenix, Arizona, to try and separate fact from fiction

US illegal drugs - demand fuels supply

2009-03-30T21:52:00.001+01:00

FBI and American Muslims at Odds

2009-03-30T11:00:00.003+01:00

27/03/2009 | reported in Almanar
(exclusively author's view)
source : Alexandra Marks - CSM | March 25, 2009

An informant at a California mosque has hampered efforts to find home-grown terrorists.

Law enforcement efforts to root out home-grown terrorists are jeopardized by deteriorating relations between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Muslim and Arab-American communities.

The situation began last fall when the FBI quietly withdrew formal relations with all local chapters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), one of the largest Muslim American civil rights organizations. The FBI cited "a number of distinct narrow issues" that it has refused to make public.

The situation worsened in February, when it became public that the FBI had planted an informant at a California mosque who, a coalition of more than a dozen Muslim American groups charges, actively tried to recruit terrorists.

Last week, the coalition accused the FBI of engaging in "McCarthy-era tactics" and announced it was considering suspending all ties with the FBI unless it made public its concerns with CAIR and "reassessed its use of agent provocateurs in Muslim communities."

The FBI would not comment, except to issue a statement saying: "Limiting honest dialogue, especially when complex issues are on the table, is generally not an effective advocacy strategy."

That has not satisfied many in the Muslim and Arab-American communities, including some who have not joined the coalition threatening to terminate FBI ties.

"We believe that we have to keep our place at the table in this discourse. We believe it's too important for our community's interest and America's interest to leave the table," says Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles. "But the damage was done [when the FBI planted the agent].... The way the FBI handled the case stigmatized the whole mosque community, and the disengagement from CAIR field offices was a mistake because people don't understand it – there's no explanation."

In the aftermath of 9/11, the FBI made an aggressive effort to reach out to Muslim and Arab-American organizations throughout the country. In general, the effort was viewed as a success by all parties.

Relations had been good

On its website, CAIR lists dozens of laudatory quotes from FBI officials they cooperated with since the attacks. FBI officials regularly attended their banquets, mosques and community outreach efforts.

CAIR officials said the FBI's decision to sever formal ties with its 30 field offices in 19 states came as a shock.

"Historically, we've had very good relations with the FBI at the local, state, and federal levels," says CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper.

The FBI declined to say what "distinct narrow issues" had prompted it to suddenly sever ties with CAIR. But in a statement, FBI spokesman John Miller said, "We have made CAIR's national leadership aware of these issues."

CAIR's Mr. Hooper says that is not the case.

"They have not communicated specific issues to us, and when we ask, they say, 'Well, let's have some future conversation about it'," says Hooper. "And we say, 'No, we'd like to know now.'"

CAIR believes the decision goes back to May 2007, when it was named along with 300 other Muslim American groups and individuals as an "unindicted coconspirator" in the controversial terrorist funding trial of the Holy Land Foundation, which was once the largest Muslim charity in the United States.

After a mistrial in 2007, the charity and some of its officials were found guilty in 2008 for ties to Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist organization.

In a letter to the FBI, CAIR argues that the "unindicted coconspirator" designation should never have been made or made public.

"Making this unjust designation public violates the Justice Department's own guidelines and wrongly implies that those listed are somehow involved in criminal activity," the CAIR letter states.

A source within the FBI confirmed that the alleged ties to the Holy Land Foundation were the basis for the FBI's actions. He also said, that as a result of the final conviction in the Holy Land case, "there was a public policy problem with us going forward" in formal relations with CAIR.

Muslim and Arab American groups are also upset with the FBI's decision to allegedly place an ex-convict as an informant in the Muslim American Community in Orange County, California.

The informant posed as a new convert to Islam and reportedly espoused terrorist ideology to several members of the Islamic Center of Irvine. That prompted two members of the mosque, including a man named Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, to report the informant's inflammatory statements to the FBI and ask for a restraining order against him.

FBI officials then began investigating Mr. Niazi and asked him to become an informant, according to the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections, which has formally filed a complaint with the FBI. When Niazi refused, an agent told him he'd make his life "a living hell." Niazi has since been arrested and charged with making false statements to gain his citizenship and failing to disclose that his sister is married to an Al Qaeda operative, according to court documents.

At his bail hearing, an FBI Agent also said Niazi had allegedly been recorded discussing terrorist ideology, jihad and plans to blow up abandoned buildings. Niazi pleaded innocent."

An 'agent provocateur?'

Members of the Muslim American community say they're incensed by the FBI's use of what they call an "agent provocateur" within its community.

"It's pretty devastating, it came as a shock," says Kareem Shora – executive director of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

"What this has done is undermine what was a 10-year relationship of trust, or what we thought was trust," says Mr. Shora.

The FBI insists it is not targeting mosques or the community, but individuals.

"We do not target places, we don't investigate mosques. We identify individuals who merit investigation under a set of laws and guidelines," says the FBI's Mr. Miller.

"In the course of those investigations sometimes those people will take us to the places they go," Miller said.

But the FBI informant, a man named Craig Monteilh, told reporters last week that he was sent to several mosques and that he had alerted the FBI about Niazi's alleged terrorist sympathies.

Lebanon's Independence gift: MiG 29s

2009-03-30T07:33:00.001+01:00

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 23:58:12 GMT | PressTV

The Russian built MiG-29

Russia has promised to deliver two of the ten MiG-29 fighters it has donated to Beirut on Lebanon's Independence Day on Nov. 22.

The An-Nahar daily reported Sunday that during a visit by Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr to Moscow on December 2008, Russia promised to deliver the first two fighter planes to Lebanon on November 2009, to show 'new military relationship' between the two countries.

The daily failed to mention the name of the Russian official.

However, the Lebanese government was advised in February to 'wait' before accepting the fighters that are 'possibly unsafe', according to a report by An-Nahar.

A pilot was killed in a MiG-29 crash in southern Siberia of Russia on Dec. 5 2008, and another MiG-29 had crashed in October that year, the report said.

Lebanese military sources said the donated MiG-29s would be checked by the Lebanese army before they are shipped to Lebanon.

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman had announced earlier that Lebanon welcomes any arms donation on condition that no political concession is wanted from Beirut.

The MiG-29 jet fighter was designed in 1970s to challenge the United States' F-15 fighter.

Gore Vidal on "The Emperor"

2009-03-29T16:57:00.001+01:00

"He smiled benignly at the oil wells"
The great message of Roosevelt: End all the empires -- save one.

Gore Vidal on the Democrats and religion

2009-03-29T16:42:00.002+01:00

August 05, 2007 - How different would a Democratic Party administration be? "The Democratic Party is a machine to get votes for its people. None of whom should probably be elected to the high offices of state.The Republican Party is fundamentally crooked."

Russian rocket sends US tourist into space 26 March 09

2009-03-28T20:32:00.000Z

Komodo dragons maul man to death

2009-03-25T08:00:00.000Z

JAKARTA, March 25 — reported by : malaysianinsider — source : Guardian

Two Komodo dragons have mauled a fruit picker to death after he fell out of a tree in an orchard in eastern Indonesia, in a rare attack on humans by the world’s largest lizard.

The man, Muhamad Anwar, 31, was found bleeding from bites to his hands, body, legs and neck within minutes of falling out of a sugar-apple tree on the island of Komodo and died later at a clinic on neighbouring Flores. The giant lizards had been waiting for him under the tree, according to a neighbour, Theresia Tawa.

The carnivorous Komodos, which live for up to 50 years, can grow to 3m in length and weigh up to 90kg. Though they rarely attack humans — and had not previously killed an adult for more than 30 years — an eight-year-old boy died after being mauled in 2007 and attacks are said to be increasing as their habitat becomes restricted. Their diet usually consists of smaller animals, including other members of their own species.

There are thought to be only about 4,000 left in the wild on the five Indonesian islands they inhabit, Komodo, Rinca, Flores, Gili Dasami and Gili Motang, although there are more than 50 in captivity, including 13 in European zoos. Indonesians, who are said to believe the dragons are reincarnations of their ancestors, have in the past propitiated them by sacrificing goats.

Komodo dragons, first identified by western explorers only 99 years ago, are meat-eaters and can move at up to 19kph in pursuit of prey. They can climb trees, though they mainly lurk in scrubland waiting for passing potential victims, and have been known to eat up to 80 per cent of their own body weight in a single meal.

They use sharply serrated teeth to tear meat and their saliva is particularly poisonous, containing more than 50 strains of bacteria, which means that even if victims escape, without treatment they are likely to die of infection: the dragons trot after them, or use their strong sense of smell – reputedly able to sniff out decaying flesh at 8-km’s range – to track their prey.

French professor sacked over 9/11 conspiracy theory

2009-03-24T19:21:00.002Z

An academic in France has been sacked by the Ministry of Defence after questioning the official version of events surrounding the 9/11 attacks. He now reportedly plans to sue the government.

Aymeric Chauprade lost his job allegedly over the introduction to his latest book about political crises around the world, and more specifically, that the 9/11 attacks in New York City and Washington D.C. were an orchestrated "American-Israeli conspiracy". The Defence Minister had strong objections to the material, so Aymeric had to go.

Jean Dominique Merchet, a French journalist, was the first to report on the sacking.The Ministry of Defence has reacted too brutally. They have transformed Chauprade into a victim, and not an intellectual opponent even if what he defends is not good, Merchet said.

Chauprade explained his firing by the Ministry of Defence as the result of him speaking about a subject that was considered off limits. I touched upon a taboo the theory of a conspiracy plot. Apparently there is only one possibility in an accidental world. And all the wars have sprung from this Afghanistan and so on.The book's introduction highlights a theory that the twin towers were blown up as part of an American-Israeli pact. He did scientific work see it's written here, the theories included here are contesting the official theory of Muslim responsibility. That's an opinion! says Chauprades lawyer Antoine Beauquier.

Defence Minister Herve Morin was reportedly outraged by the suggestions and demanded the academic's sacking from his job at the French Military College in Paris, where Chauprade was teaching geopolitics.

The Ministry has refused to comment on the affair.

G20 plan will leave Africa in poverty

2009-03-24T17:08:00.002Z

Socialistworker UK | 23 March 2009

Teachers won a major strike in Nigeria last year

World leaders claim they can save the global economy from recession. But, as Mani Tanoh tells Ken Olende, people will be left behind.

he G20 will do little to help Africa escape the cycle of debt and misery, according to studies by leading NGOs and aid agencies working in the continent.

The reports from the World Development Movement (WDM), Actionaid and Christian Aid state that far from helping countries in the Global South, the policies advocated by the G20 are keeping them poor.

This is one of the many reasons for people to protest against the G20 meeting in London, say activists from the Global South.

Mani Tanoh, a leading socialist and anti-privatisation campaigner in Ghana, spoke to Socialist Worker.

He said, “The G20 constitutes the political leadership of the main countries in the world – the people who relate to the big financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

“It is amazing how little clue they have about what is happening. The G20 leaders are still recommending ‘liberalisation’ – solutions that are the opposite of what African countries need.

“So the IMF insists that African governments should pass on higher food and fuel costs to the general population as a precondition for new loans.”

The WDM report shows how Western banks have made matters worse for poorer countries.

It states that the “liberalisation agenda” being pushed by the leading powers “seems especially remarkable in the context of 2009, where the fragile nature of the liberalised bank sectors of the US and Europe has been exposed and almost universally criticised”.

Mani said, “The conventional wisdom has been that as Africa is marginal to the global economy, it will escape the crisis by‘decoupling’ from the rest of the world. But now they are having to go back on their words.

“In recent years the restructuring of global production has meant that Africa has fallen behind, apart from a small number of enclaves.”

Neoliberal

Meanwhile Actionaid has produced a report which shows how the neoliberalism being pushed by the banking sector affects foreign trade.

Free market policies failed to benefit the Global South, even before the recession.

The report takes South Africa as an example: “Since 1994, the South African government has adopted a strategy of extreme openness to the global economy, but this has not been particularly effective in stimulating economic growth.”

As Demba Moussa Dembele of the Forum for African Alternatives in Senegal has pointed out, the experience of the credit crunch has been that state intervention is vital to lessen the impact of the crisis.

But this hasn’t stopped the WTO pushing for a reduction in state intervention in poorer countries.

The free market insistence on growing cash crops has left African countries increasingly vulnerable to fluctuations in the world market.

Mani explained, “In general agriculture is collapsing. Much of this is due to the way Africa is forced to rely on exporting products to make money.

“But we are told that governments must maintain foreign trade and foreign revenue, and that they must fight inflation and cut public sector wages.”

In its report Death and Taxes, the charity Christian Aid shows how Africa is losing nearly £110 billion each year as a result of lack of enforcement of agreements with foreign companies investing in various sectors, especially in the mining industry.

Mani said, “The rich Western governments operate with double standards. Some get to print more money, the so called ‘quantitative easing’, while others are tightly squeezed. And it’s the African poor getting squeezed.

“Look at Ghana. Between August 2007 and August 2008 the number of families that could afford one nourishing meal a day fell from 65 percent of the population to 41 percent.

“African economies are hit again because many are reliant on one or two commodities. For instance Zambia is suffering because of the falling copper price on the world markets. But the rule applies across the continent.

“The key thing is how ordinary people respond. The recession is already sparking political unrest.

“In Ghana we have seen an increase in public sector wages, but now the government is trying to renege on the deal. This is what the G20 leaders want.

“Instability is on the increase, as with the power struggles in countries such as Guinea or Madagascar. But anger can go in different directions.

“That is why we need socialists who can offer critical thinking and organisational effort.”

Abortion, premature births surge in Gaza after war

2009-03-20T23:16:00.000Z

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 11:42:51
Yousef Al-Helou, Press TV, Gaza

Two US Navy Vessels Collide in Strait of Hormuz

2009-03-20T14:54:00.001Z

20/03/2009 | almanarTV

A US Navy submarine and a US amphibious vessel collided in the Strait of Hormuz on Friday slightly injuring 15 sailors and creating a fuel spill of around 25,000 gallons, the US Navy said.

"The collision between USS Hartford (SSN 768) and USS New Orleans (LPD 18) occurred at approximately 1:00 am local time (2030 GMT on Thursday)," the Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet said. "Fifteen sailors aboard the Hartford were slightly injured and returned to duty. No personnel aboard New Orleans were injured," it added. A US Navy submarine and a US amphibious vessel collided in the Strait of Hormuz on Friday slightly injuring 15 sailors and creating a fuel spill of around 25,000 gallons, the US Navy said.

"The collision between USS Hartford (SSN 768) and USS New Orleans (LPD 18) occurred at approximately 1:00 am local time (2030 GMT on Thursday)," the Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet said. "Fifteen sailors aboard the Hartford were slightly injured and returned to duty. No personnel aboard New Orleans were injured," it added.

The New Orleans' fuel tank ruptured, causing the spill of diesel fuel. Both ships are operating under their own power, and the overall damage to both vessels is being evaluated, the statement added.

The Strait of Hormuz separates Oman from Iran and is the gateway into the oil-rich Gulf. An estimated 40 percent of the world's crude oil passes through the strait on the way to market. Both the submarine and the ship are on regularly scheduled deployments to the US Navy Central Command area of responsibility, the navy said.

Ships from the Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, patrol a 7.5 million square mile (19.4 million square kilometer) area of eastern Africa, the Middle East and Southwest Asia.

The New Orleans' fuel tank ruptured, causing the spill of diesel fuel. Both ships are operating under their own power, and the overall damage to both vessels is being evaluated, the statement added.

The Strait of Hormuz separates Oman from Iran and is the gateway into the oil-rich Gulf. An estimated 40 percent of the world's crude oil passes through the strait on the way to market. Both the submarine and the ship are on regularly scheduled deployments to the US Navy Central Command area of responsibility, the navy said.

Ships from the Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, patrol a 7.5 million square mile (19.4 million square kilometer) area of eastern Africa, the Middle East and Southwest Asia.

Brunei denies Limbang story

2009-03-19T13:37:00.003Z

Borneo Bulletin | By Azlan Othman | March 18,2009

YB Pehin Orang Kaya Pekerma Dewa Dato Seri Setia Awg Lim Jock Seng, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade II, yesterday said claims on Limbang were never discussed during Monday's deliberations between Brunei and Malaysia.

He was responding to YB Dato Paduka Hj Puasa bin Orang Kaya Seri Pahlawan Tudin's query on the contents of the "Letter of Exchange" signed between Brunei and Malaysia, which also touched on Brunei's claims over Limbang at the Legislative Council meeting yesterday.

Pehin Lim said there were certain press reports yesterday claiming that Brunei has dropped claims over Limbang.

"In actual fact, the claim on Limbang was never discussed. What was discussed was the demarcation of land boundaries on the whole," he said.

"The joint press statement issued yesterday mentioned that the demarcation of the land boundaries between the two countries will be resolved on the basis of five existing historical agreements between the Government of Brunei and the State of Sarawak, and, as appropriate, the watershed principle.

"After that a working group comprising general surveyors of the two countries will follow with the technical aspect to solve the land border issue," Pehin Lim added.

His Majesty the Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam and Malaysian Prime Minister Dato' Seri Abdullah Haji Ahmad Badawi held a four-eye meeting at the Istana Nurul Iman on Monday and signed the Exchange of Letters to mark the successful conclusion of negotiations.

The negotiations have been ongoing for many years on outstanding bilateral issues between the two countries with regard to historical, legal and other relevant criteria involving both sides.

Both noted the agreement of their respective governments on the key elements contained in the Exchange of Letters, which included the final delimitation of maritime boundaries between Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia, the establishment of Commercial Agreement Area (CAA) on oil and gas, the modalities for the final demarcation of the land boundary between Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia and unsuspendable rights of maritime access for nationals and residents of Malaysia across Brunei's maritime zones en route to and from their destination in Sarawak, Malaysia provided that Brunei's laws and regulations are observed.

Meanwhile, YB Pehin Orang Kaya Johan Pahlawan Dato Seri Setia Awg Hj Adanan, the Minister of Home Affairs, said an allocation has been made in the budget to upgrade the Kuala Lurah Control Post.

After the border issue between Brunei and Malaysia is resolved, work will be carried out to identify the site.

He was responding to a query by YB Dato Paduka Hj Puasa on the long queues that border hoppers normally experience during school holidays, Hari Raya and other public holidays and the need to upgrade Pandaruan ferry services and Puni Control Post in Temburong.

YB Dato Paduka Hj Puasa added that the opening of a new bridge soon in Trusan, Lawas will further aggravate the situation should these control post projects are not carried out.

Initial >>>>>>>>>>> news from Malaysia

Staronline | Tuesday March 17, 2009 | By LEONG SHEN LI

Brunei drops claim over Limbang District, says Abdullah

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN: Brunei has officially dropped its long-standing claim over Sarawak’s Limbang district after the two countries resolved various land and maritime territory disputes.

“Brunei has decided to drop the Limbang issue and as a result, Limbang is part of Malaysian territory,” Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced to Malaysian media.

The resolution of the disputes were sealed via the signing of the Letters of Exchange by Abdullah and the Sultan of Brunei Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah at Istana Nurul Iman here yesterday.

A new era: Abdullah (second from left) and Sultan Hassanal exchanging the Letters of Exchange that mark the end of the territorial dispute. Looking on is Dr Rais (left) and Brunei Foreign Minister Pengiran Muda Mohamed Bolkiah. — Bernama

The other disputes include over where the maritime boundary between the two countries in the South China Sea should run, the rights to exploit potentially rich oil deposits in the disputed maritime territory, the right of movement by Malaysian vessels over Brunei waters and the demarcation of the common boundary of the two countries.

The dispute over Limbang can be traced back to the cession of the territory by Brunei to Sarawak’s White Rajahs in 1890. The cession had been strongly disputed by the Sultanate which regarded the transfer as annexation by Sara-wak.

Yesterday, Abdullah thanked the Sultan for the resolution of the various disputes, especially that of Limbang.

He said bilateral relations between the two countries would now enter a new era.

Abdullah and the Sultan said in a joint statement that they had reached agreement over the maritime boundaries between the two countries in the South China Sea.

They also agreed to establish a “commercial arrangement area” where oil and gas revenue in the disputed area would be shared between the two nations. How much each country would get was not disclosed.

The two sides also agreed to the existence of “unsuspendable rights of maritime access” which guaranteed the right of movement by Malaysian vessels through Brunei territorial waters provided Brunei’s laws and regulations are obser-ved.

Lastly, the Letters of Exchange also established the methods to demarcate the land boundary between the two countries.

The negotiations over the agreements, which began in 1995, took 39 rounds of talks to reach the resolution.

The dispute over maritime territory arose out of a 1979 map published by Malaysia which indicated that all deep-sea territorial waters off the coast of Brunei belonged to Malaysia.

The latest dispute over maritime territory occurred in 2003 when Malaysia and Brunei awarded petroleum production-sharing contracts for four exploration blocks to different companies in the disputed area, close to where a 440 million-barrel discovery had been made the year before.

Following the dispute, both countries agreed to stop drilling activities in the area.

Halabja remembers chemical weapons attack

2009-03-18T03:19:00.001Z

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 02:40:18 GMT | PressTV

The colors of the Kurdish flag reflect off a memorial wall inscribed with the names of each victim of the 1988 Halabja chemical attack.

Halabja has commemorated the 21st anniversary of the chemical weapons attack that killed between 5,000 and 6,000 people, mostly Kurds and mostly civilians.

On March 16, 1988, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's military helicopters swooped down into Halabja and the surrounding towns in Iraqi Kurdistan's Sulaymaniyah province and unleashed first bombs, then a combination of deadly gases.

Bodies of civilians were littered on the streets with children in their parents' arms.

The Halabja massacre took place at the end of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq.

The city still lacks adequate schools, medical care, and housing, residents say.

A new monument, depicting two clasped hands reaching skywards, a symbol for those who were killed, was unveiled on Tuesday and an attached museum was opened .

This year was the first time that the United Nations commemorated the 1988 tragedy. Ambassadors, members of the Iraqi parliament, human rights acivists, and massacre survivors decried the world's silence at the time and urged that steps be taken to ensure that such acts of genocide never occur again.

Leaving So Soon?

2009-03-15T07:33:00.000Z

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 23:33:12 GMT | PressTV

By Kian Mokhtari

Given the CIA's long line of total cock-ups in its reports leading up to the Iraq War, we can all be excused should we choose to take the agency's latest crystal ball predictions with a pinch of salt. The Central Intelligence Agency now says it has serious doubts about Israel's survival beyond 2030.

The people in the Middle East have always had their doubts about the viability of a state made up of European refugees formed on Palestinian land. But polite Arab society has always chosen 'subtle' gestures over words in the past to get its point across!

Arab etiquette obviously has a lot to answer for.

The CIA report predicts the return of all Palestinian refugees to the occupied territories, and the exodus of two million Israelis who would move to the US in the next fifteen years. It adds "There is over 500,000 Israelis with American passports and more than 300,000 living in the area of just California," with those who do not have American or Western passports, having already applied for them.

Over in California, unknown to the CIA, a resistance movement is already being formed but there are some minor disagreements in its leadership over the name for the movement. Should it be called the People's Front for Liberation of California or the Front of the People for the Liberation of California?

But seriously, population studies demonstrate beyond any doubt that if Israel does not settle for a two-state solution soon, the disparity in the growing Arab population and shrinking Jewish population will see to the entity called Israel whether the Jews likes it or not.

Using the examples of the unexpected quick fall of the apartheid government in South Africa and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the CIA suggests the end to the dream of a Jewish homeland is about to happen.

The CIA study is likely to go down like a lead balloon in Tel-Aviv, coming hot on the heels of an award winning book by Jewish history professor Shlomo Sand's, "When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?"

The book calls into question the modern day Jews' genetic lineage and argues that the mythical perception of the Jews as an ancient people is in fact little more than racism revisited.

There have been many factors at work against the long-term survival of a Jewish state in the Middle East ever since its conception just over sixty years ago. But the most prominent obstacle to the success of Israel has been a long line of extremist, militaristic zealots in its leadership. Israel's behavior in its treatment of the native Palestinian population, its attacks against Egypt, Jordan and Syria, its invasion of Lebanon and atrocities committed against civilian Arab populations can not be perceived as particularly endearing it to the locals throughout its existence.

Demographics has been given particular attention and prominence in the CIA forecast, one cannot help but wonder whether it has been used to paint over all the other factors that may indeed make their presence felt in the CIA's predicted final demise of Israel.

Oh, and there's another thing: at a time when many people worldwide have serious doubts about the United States' own survival, wouldn't CIA resources be better spent in concentrating on matters closer to home?

Protest against UK troops : Has everyone gone mad?

2009-03-13T13:47:00.000Z

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:46:40 GMT | PressTV

A group of about 20 Muslims in Luton protested against British soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, The Royal Anglian Regiment, who were parading in the town after coming back from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, Tuesday March 10.

The world must have gone crazy while I looked the other way.

In recent days the British establishment, media and public have roundly condemned a group of about 20 Muslims who peacefully (if provocatively) protested against British soldiers who were parading in the town of Luton.

Yet the British army - which has invaded and occupied two sovereign nations in the last decade, killed and tortured innocent civilians, and has been complicit in secret rendition - was hailed as heroic.

The Muslim protestors outraged the nation when they carried placards with slogans including "Butchers of Basra", "cowards, killers, extremists" and "British government terrorist government."

Gordon Brown and MPs from all parties spoke out against the protest. The prime minister summed up the national mood when he said, “The whole country is proud of our brave servicemen and women who serve their country with great distinction and courage.”

Radio phone-in shows were deluged with outraged callers who labeled the protestors unpatriotic traitors who wanted to create a medieval Islamic state. References were made to their “menacing” Islamic dress, and the general consensus was they were the enemy within and should be booted out of the country.

Escorted by police, British soldiers from the 2nd Battalion parade through the town of Watford, England, Wednesday March 11, 2009.

Mainstream Islamic groups feebly indulged in damage limitation, saying the protestors were inciting Islamophobia and did not represent ordinary Muslims. They said anger over the war on terror should be directed against politicians, not soldiers who were only obeying orders. Others with more forthright views have been cowed into silence.

Although I admit mine is a minority view in the UK, all of this strikes me as illogical and highly hypocritical.

A majority of British people, of all religions and none, think the war on terror has been a disaster and has unleashed the gates of hell in Iraq and Afghanistan. They also believe that far from protecting the British public against their enemies, the war on terror has incited terrorism and made the British mainland a target.

And while it is true that the politicians are primarily to blame for taking the country into these wars, surely the soldiers cannot be completely absolved of responsibility. After all, they are the ones who pull the triggers, or in the case of British soldiers in Basra, kick innocent Iraqis to death.

Moreover, soldiers are not robots. They are human beings with critical faculties who can refuse to fight if they believe they are involved in an unjust war. We know that many British soldiers don't believe what they're doing is right, yet they continue to pull the triggers nevertheless. Surely that makes them unscrupulous killers.

Don't forget the Nazis argued at the Nuremberg Trials that they were “only obeying orders.” That lame excuse has been rightly discredited forever.

So perhaps it's time for those Britons who opposed the Iraq and Afghan wars to face up to their own hypocrisy.

And perhaps it's time the British establishment, media and public reserved their righteous indignation for the right target - those who start illegal wars as well as those who carry them out.

The truth is the Muslim protestors offered an easy target - a weak minority who think and dress differently. Yet let's get things in proportion - all they did was wave a few banners around. They harmed nobody.

I wish I could say the same about the British army.

China military 'copy' machine irks Russia

2009-03-10T10:06:00.000Z

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:32:07 GMT | PressTV

SU-33 aircraft

Moscow shrinks from selling Beijing the warplanes it needs for its future aircraft carriers after China manufactures 'fake' Russian fighters.

Alarmed at probable leakage of military information, Russia has canceled its plans to provide China with seaborne SU-33 fighter planes, Russia Today reported quoting a report by the Canada-based Kanwa Defense Review.

Russian refusal followed China's insistence on 'trying' the aircraft before purchasing them and after findings that Beijing had been illegally copying equipment for Su-27SK fighters.

China had ordered two SU-33's for the trial period but its request was rejected by Russia even after the quantity was increased to 14, on the basis that at least 24 units of the aircraft should be sold to recoup the production.

In February, Russian defense official Mikhail Pogosyan said the Chinese defense manufacturers had done so in breach of intellectual property agreements, DefenseNews reported.

The Chinese had apparently earned the license to build the Su-27SK but then developed their own version outfitting it with their own avionics and system against the provisions, the source added.

Cargo ship sinks in Red Sea off Egypt

2009-03-10T10:03:00.002Z

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 09:02:53 GMT | PressTV

Safaga port

At least three people have been killed and seventeen others remain missing after a cargo ship sank off the Red Sea coast of Egypt.

The Cypriot-flagged Ibn al-Battuta with 26 crew members onboard sank Monday shortly after leaving the port of Safaga.

Six sailors were saved and rescue workers are still searching for the missing crewmembers, who are of Indian, Pakistani, Bengali, Somali, Iraqi and Sudanese nationalities.

Although the cause of the incident is yet unknown, some reports suggest that the 5,600-ton ship had experienced bad weather with low visibility and high waves.

The cargo ship carrying a shipment of silicon was on its way to the United Arab Emirates.

Egypt experienced one of its deadliest disasters in modern maritime history in 2006 when an Egyptian ferry traveling to Safaga from Saudi Arabia sank in the Red Sea, killing more than 1,000 passengers.

Katsav to be indicted over rape

2009-03-10T09:59:00.000Z

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:58:35 GMT | PressTV

Moshe Katsav will be indicted on several charges.

Former Israeli President Moshe Katsav will be indicted on several charges including rape and sexual offenses, the Justice Ministry says.

"Following the completion of the investigation... the Attorney General and the state prosecutor decided to indict Mr. Moshe Katsav over sexual offences against several of his employees when he acted as tourism minister and president, including charges of rape and sexual assault," said a justice ministry statement.

"The decision was made after the attorney general and state prosecutor reached the conclusion that the complainants' testimony was reliable and that there is sufficient evidence for an indictment," read the statement.

The local media reported that the official indictment would be filed within days.

The case against Katsav was opened in 2006 when the then president alleged that a former female employee was trying to blackmail him.

After an investigation was launched, however, the female employee accused Katsav of raping her while she was his secretary in the late 1990s. Katsav was forced to leave office following the scandal.

Outdoing Abu Gharib

2009-03-07T03:05:00.000Z

Khalid Samad is MP for Shah Alam. He is also Head of Shah Alam PAS Division and also member of the PAS political bureau which is the most powerful bureau in the party. His website is www.khalidsamad.com

MARCH 7 — The second autopsy report carried out on the body of A. Kugan was released on Thursday. It confirms without a shadow of a doubt that he was tortured and died as a result of this torture. The torture sustained by him was mind-boggling and only a sick mind can even begin to understand the reasons why it was done. How anyone can do something as terrible as this to another human being is beyond comprehension.

He was tortured continuously for six days, starved, beaten and branded like a cow. We do not treat even animals this way where pain is inflicted purely for the pleasure of it. How could this be carried out in the premises of the police itself? How could it happen without the knowledge of the other police personnel, especially the officers and the OCPD themselves? Are prisoners or detainees handed over to the interrogators and no supervision is undertaken whatsoever?

I was really upset on reading the report. We can only imagine the pain which Kugan suffered. The way the incident was handled seems to indicate that it is not necessarily an exception to the rule. There may have been other similar cases, and had it not been for the tenacity of Kugan’s family insisting on a second autopsy, this case would have been closed. How many similar cases have gone by unnoticed is anyone’s guess.

The first autopsy report was misleading to say the least. It is quite obvious that the doctor had no personal interest in this case and as such had no reason to hide the facts. Either he was completely incompetent, which is unlikely, or very slip-shod in undertaking his duties. This is also unlikely. The only other possibility is that he was instructed to provide the kind of report which he did. I believe the majority of people following this case are convinced that this is the case.

Similar is the case with the 11 police personnel involved in the incident. I do not believe that they would have done this, in the premises of the police station itself, if they did not believe that they could get away with this. In fact, I cannot conceive of a situation where they would be willing to do this without the consent or instruction from their leaders. The level of torture was such that there was no way for it to be hidden or concealed. It can therefore be safely deduced that the they were not planning to hide anything from their superiors nor did they think they had anything to hide.

This situation is obviously very worrying. The fact that their actions are condoned by the system which also provides for a cover up necessitates the revamping of the police system as a whole. This should start by the resignation of the Inspector-General of Police. It is unacceptable that the IGP can carry on with his job knowing full well that he has completely failed in the carrying out of his duties by ensuring high standards of justice and fair treatment of those detained by his personnel. The “lackadaisical” attitude shown by the IGP when shown the findings of the second autopsy is a clear indication that this is something which is not new.

For the institution of the police to be cleaned up, it requires leaders who have the vision and the desire to see it cleaned. This is obviously not something which the current IGP and the current administration can do. We are, as always, left with the conclusion that the longer this administration stays, the worse will it be for the nation as a whole.

Umno Palsukan Fakta dan Nafikan Ibrahim Yaakob

2009-03-06T20:16:00.000Z

Oleh Tarmizi Mohd Jam

NAMPAKNYA kerajaan begitu giat berkempen bagi menjayakan sambutan '50 Tahun Kemerdekaan Negara' tahun lalu. Kini kempen itu kian suram. Tiada gerakkan yang menyanggah atau membetulkan fakta palsu yang disogokkan kononnya Tunku dan Umnolah yang menggerakkan usaha kemerdekaan. Bagaimanakah laungan 'Merdeka' oleh Ibrahim Yaakob? Dan apa kaitannya dengan gerakkan merdeka yang diperjuangkan oleh PKMM, KMM, API dan AWAS sebelum diharamkan penjajah? Ikuti pandangan Pengarah Jabatan Pilihan Raya PAS Wilayah Persekutuan, CIKGU ISHAK SURIN yang juga antara aktivis yang terlibat diperingkat awal gerakan kemerdekaan, ketika aktif bersama API bersama Pengarang Berita, TARMIZI MOHD JAM.

Harakah: Saban tahun, menjelang Ogos nampaknya kerajaan giat berkempen melalui media cetak dan televisyen sambutan hari kemerdekaan. Tujuannya untuk tanamkan kepercayaan bahawa Umnolah yang mempelopori kemerdekaan. Walhal faktanya palsu...

CIKGU ISHAK SURIN: Memanglah itu yang sedang berlaku. Usaha ini giat dijalankan untuk menafikan gerakkan awal kemerdekaan negara. Pada masa yang sama, kerajaan cuba menonjolkan Umnolah yang mempelopori kemerdekaan.

Bagi saya, usaha terancang begini amat dayus dilakukan oleh kerajaan semata-mata untuk mempengaruhi genarasi muda kini akur bahawa Umno dan pemimpin hari ini adalah kesinambungan pejuang kemerdekaan. Umno cuba menafikan fakta sejarah yang sebenar. Siapa Tunku pada waktu merdeka dulu? Siapa Umno? Macam mana Umno itu ditubuhkan?

Semuanya ini perlu dikaji semula oleh kita supaya fakta sejarah yang sebenar dapat diketahui oleh genarasi akan datang dan seterusya. Pada saya, Umno begitu takut untuk membongkar rahsia sejarah sebenar berhubung gerakan kemerdekaan ini. Pejuang-pejuang terdahulu seperti Ibrahim Yaakob, Ahmad Boeastamam, Dr. Burhanuddi Helmy dan lain-lain cuba dihapuskan dalam buku-buku dan dokumentasi sejarah.

Gerakan KMM, PKMM, API dan AWAS juga tidak disebut sebagai pelopor kemerdekaan sedangkan hakikatnya, kumpulan inilah yang mula-mula melaung dan membakar api kemerdekaan.

Maknanya kita ada pandangan kedua dalam isu ini. Umno bukan pelopor kemerdekaan. Tunku Abdul Rahman bukan Bapa Kemerdekaan. Begitu...

Ya. Ini patut di ketengahkan. Ia bukan idea atau sanggahan membabi buta tetapi ia adalah fakta sejarah. Ia tak boleh ditipu. Sejarah tetap sejarah. Dengan adanya kempen-kempen media cetak dan televisyen ini, kita amat bimbang genarasi muda sekarang dibohongi kerajaan dan Umno khususnya. Mereka mahu fakta sejarah dipesongkan, diseleweng!

Dalam hal ini, saya amat bertegas bahawa Umno bukan pelopor kemerdekaan. Umno ditubuhkan untuk menentang pembentukan Malayan Union. Tidak langsung disebut pada masa itu soal kemerdekaan.

Sebelum itu, telah ada kumpulan tertentu yang bergerak secara tersusun, selepas sahaja tamat Perang Dunia Kedua. Umpamanya penubuhan Kesatuan Melayu Muda (KMM) yang dipimpin oleh Ibrahim Yaakob. Diikuti penubuhan Parti Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya (PKMM) yang dipimpin oleh Dr. Burhanuddin Al-Helmy dan Ishak Haji Muhamad. Angkatan Pemuda Insaf (API) dipimpin oleh Ahmad Boestamam.

Merekalah yang memulakan gerakan tersusun untuk menentang penjajahan Inggeris di tanahair kita. Inilah golongan yang sebenarnya patut diketahui oleh rakyat dan genarasi kini.

Bukannya seperti yag diwar-warkan, Umno atau Tunku Abdul Rahman. Sebaliknya, orang-orang ini dilupakan langsung. Akibat laungan kemerdekaan mereka dan keberanian mereka menentang penjajah, maka mereka akhirnya disumbat dalam penjara dan KMM, PKMM, API dan AWAS diharamkan oleh penjajah.

Jadi, bila Umno muncul dalam catatan sejarah sebagai pejuang kemerdekaan?

Selepas pejuang kemerdekaan tulin macam Ibrahim Yaakob, Dr. Burhanuddin, Ishak Haji Muhamad, Ahmad Boestaman dan lain-lain dipenjarakan. Selepas KMM, PKMM, API dan AWAS diharamkan. Barulah mereka muncul. Seolah-olah pemimpin-pemimpin Umno inilah yang beriya-iya mahukan kemerdekaan setelah ruang kosong yang ditinggalkan oleh KMM, PKMM, API dan AWAS. Kita kena tahu, Umno ketika ini adalah anak didik penjajah dan bukan penentang penjajah.

Tadi disebut kumpulan awal macam KMM, PKMM, API dan AWAS adalah pejuang tulin kemerdekaan. Kemudian ditahan dan pertubuhan mereka diharamkan. Penjajah pula mengetengahkan Umno hasil kekosongan ini sebab hanya Umno yang boleh meneruskan dasar-dasar penjajah. Soalnya, mengapa penjajah menentang atau tidak bersengkongkol dengan kumpulan pejuang gerakan kemerdekaan tulin yang awal?

Inggeris tahu, mereka yang menggerakkan KMM, PKMM, API dan AWAS terdiri dari pejuang kemerdekaan tulin yag tidak mahu bersengkongkol dengan penjajah. Mereka ini tidak dapat diperkotak-katikkan oleh Inggeris.

Jika ditakdirkan mereka ini berjaya memerdekakan tanahair kita, tentu sekali lanskap politik negara kita tidak seperti hari ini. Selepas diberikan kemerdekaan pada 1957, kita masih dibelenggu dengan pemikiran penjajah, dasar-dasar penjajah diteruskan, pendidikan penjajah dijalankan, ekonomi penjajah diperkenalkan dan macam-macam lagi.

Kita diikat oleh penjajah. Dan yang sanggup menjalankan dasar-dasar penjajah ini ialah Umno. Inggeris percaya, jika kemerdekaan diberi kepada pejuang tulin macam Ibrahim Yaakob, dasar-dasar Inggeris tak dapat berjalan.

Sekarang jelas, sejarah dipalsukan dari segi gerakan menuntut kemerdekaan. Ini kerana Umno yang diberi kemerdekaan oleh Inggeris telah menggunakan kesempatannya sebagai kerajaan untuk memalsukan sejarah dalam semua aspek. Dokumentasi, buku sejarah dan seumpamanya. Bagaimana Cikgu melihat, 'jenayah' ini boleh dibetulkan?

Perkara ini harus ditangani secara serius. Lihat balik pemalsuan sejarah dan sejarah sebenar. Betulkan fakta dalam buku sejarah yang jadi rujukan sebagai teks bacaan pelajar kita di sekolah-sekolah. Ini penting.

Kerana melalui paparan dari buku-buku sejarah inilah, pemalsuan berjalan secara rasmi dan terancang. Pelajar-pelajar kita adalah genarasi akan datang yang bakal mentadbir negara.

Tetapi, fakta sejarah yang melekat dalam kepala mereka hanyalah fakta palsu. Mereka tak kenal siapa itu Ibrahim Yaakob, iaitu orang yang mula-mula melaungkan kalimah ?merdeka? kepada rakyat untuk mengnyahkan penjajah ketika itu.

Mengapa Cikgu kata Ibrahim Yaakob yang mempelopori kemerdekaan bukan Tunku Abdul Rahman?

Saya setuju dengan satu kajian yang dibukukan oleh Umno Johor. Buku itu dakwa orang yang mula mempelopori gerakan kemerdekaan tanahair ialah Ibrahim Yaakob. Berpusat gerakanya di Maktab Perguruan Idris, Tanjung Malim.

Bagaimana kita lihat, dia membentuk jaringan dari sini hingga idea kemerdekaan bertaburan ke seluruh tanahair hingga ke Brunei, Singapura, Sabah dan Sarawak. Ibrahim aktif menanamkan api kemerdekaan dalam kesatuan pelajar di Maktab.

Dari sini, pelajar Brunei, Singapura, Sabah dan Sarawak yang tamat pengajian mereka, bawa balik idea dan perjuangan kemerdekaan ini. Jadi menyeluruh. Di sinilah mula bibit kemerdekaan tercetus. Fakta ini dinafikan oleh Umno yang cuba meletakkan Tunku sebagai Bapa Kemerdekaan. Bagi saya, Ibrahim Yaakoblah patut dinabatkan Bapa Kemerdekaan sebenar bukan Tunku yang tak tahu apa-apa.

Jika begitu realitinya, apakah terdapat usaha dari pihak PAS untuk membetulkan senario ini atau menggerakkan suatu penulisan semula sejarah kemerdekaan Malaysia?

Kita kena betulkan fakta palsu Umno itu. Gembelingkan tenaga. Kumpulkan pejuang-pejuang yang terlibat diawal gerakan kemerdekaan tulin. Kumpulkan kajian-kajian ilmiah yang dilakukan oleh universiti-universiti.

Bagi saya, penulisan semula sejarah kemerdekaan wajib dibuat. Kita jangan asyik menyanggah soal kemerdekaan ini dalam tulisan-tulisan picisan ketika menjelang setiap kali sambutan hari kemerdekaan. Kita mesti sedarkan rakyat bahawa Umno bukan parti yang mempelopori gerakan kemerdekaan di tanahair kita. Tunku bukan Bapa Kemerdekaan.

Semuanya ini kita mesti persoalkan semula secara serius. Bukan main-main. Kita kena buat satu jawatankuasa khusus untuk tujuan ini. Saya percaya, semua tokoh-tokoh sejarah dalam negara kita akan bersama dengan kita jika usaha terancang dibuat untuk membetulkan fakta sejarah ini.

Tidak mengikut acuan sejarah yang disediakan oleh Inggeris dan dipekik-pekikkan oleh Umno. Saya yakin, fakta yang ada adalah fakta orientalis Barat yang mahu dilihat sebagai tiadanya penentangan serius dari rakyat terhadap penjajahan mereka.

Pemerintahan diberi secara aman kepada Umno bagi menunjukkan baik dan bijaknya Inggeris pada mata dunia. Saya setuju, PAS mesti mempelopori usaha ini kerana ia penting untuk genarasi akan datang. Ia tak boleh tunggu lebih lama lagi. Kalau lebih lama, maka banyaklah penyelewengan sejarah akan dilakukan oleh Umno.