Archive for category Foreign
Is the failure of previous Najib government to make formal request to Hong Kong Government to arrest Jho Low the same reason why it did not stop the 1MDB scandal in all its four phases from 2009 – 2014?
Posted by Kit in Crime, Financial Scandals, Foreign, Najib Razak on Monday, 9 July 2018
Malaysians woke up to the shock news in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP) that 1MDB scandal mastermind, Penang billionaire Jho Low had stayed in an upscale Hong Kong apartment for months because Malaysia did not make a formal request to authorities there to arrest him.
The Hong Kong newspaper reported that Low and his entourage were “hiding in plain sight” by occupying multiple rooms at the upscale Pacific Place Apartments there.
Four days ago, the Inspector General of Police Tan Sri Mohamad Fuzi Harun said that Jho Low was in Macau, as the Malaysian police had searched for him in Hong Kong but he had left Hong Kong when the Malaysian police arrived.
Macao does not have extradition treaties with other countries.
Read the rest of this entry »
Instead of a meaningless “hero’s welcome home” in KLIA last night, is Najib prepared to convene a special Parliament on 1MDB scandal to clear and cleanse Malaysia of the infamy and ignominy of a global kleptocracy?
Posted by Kit in Corruption, Economics, Financial Scandals, Foreign, Najib Razak on Sunday, 17 September 2017
The Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak returned to “a hero’s welcome” at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) last night after his recent visit to White House and meeting with US President Trump.
What was the “hero’s welcome home” for?
Was it for representing Malaysia bearing gifts like a vassal state to the White House in the meeting with US President Donald Trump, with three “value propositions” to strengthen the US economy to make America great again – as stated in the White House transcript of the 5-minute 58-second exchange between Najib and Trump in their meeting?
Although the Finance Ministry Secretary-General Tan Sri Irwan Sregar has denied that Najib was bearing gifts to Washington to “strengthen the US economy”, the Prime Minister himself has not made any denial in the past four days.
I do not think Najib could deny what was clearly stated in the transcript of the Najib-Trump 5-minute 58-second exchange at the White House meeting, as the transcript was released by White House itself.
Read the rest of this entry »
Najib should give meaning to his Aidilfitri address to avoid slanderous statements by ensuring that his government and UMNO/BN do not become the father of lies, fake news and false information
Posted by Kit in Corruption, Financial Scandals, Foreign, Najib Razak on Monday, 26 June 2017
The Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, in his televised Aidilfitra address has warned against slanderous statements disseminated by “irresponsible parties” especially on social media.
I support Najib’s call and urge the Prime Minister to give meaning to his Aidilfitri address to avoid slanderous statements by ensuring that his government and the UMNO/Barisan Nasional coalition which he leads do not become the father of lies, fake news and false information.
Recently, there are more and more examples of the UMNO/BN government and coalition guilty of the heinous sin of hypocrisy, preaching the iniquity of fake news and false information on the one hand while at the same time concocting fake news and false information on the other.
Without going back to the past where UMNO/BN were guilty of the most heinous lies and falsehoods to demonise DAP and DAP leaders, like alleging that I had been responsible for the May 13,1969 riots and had led illegal processions through the streets of Kuala Lumpur resulting in the May 13 riots although I was never in Kuala Lumpur at the relevant period, I will cite three recent examples of such lies, falsehoods, fake news and false information.
The first recent lie and slander perpetrated by UMNO/BN government/coalition: Read the rest of this entry »
Who’s Had the Worst Year? How Asian Leaders Fared in 2016
Posted by Kit in Foreign, Najib Razak on Tuesday, 3 January 2017
And some of the headaches they face in 2017.
by David Tweed | Bloomberg
December 29, 2016, 7:07 AM GMT+8
In a year dominated by Brexit and Donald Trump’s surprise U.S. election win, Asia felt like a relatively stable part of the world. A closer look shows that the region endured its own seismic events in 2016, from a Philippine leader embracing China to massive street protests in Seoul to the elimination of 86 percent of India’s hard currency.
Here we look at how key leaders performed. They are listed in order of the size of their economy. Read the rest of this entry »
Call for international inquiries into both ethnic cleansing of Rohingyas in Myanmar and the international 1MDB money-laundering scandal resulting in Malaysia being stamped as a “global kleptocracy”
Posted by Kit in Corruption, Financial Scandals, Foreign, International, Najib Razak on Tuesday, 6 December 2016
Malaysians feel deeply hurt when the Prime Minister of Malaysia, whatever our political differences with him, is lampooned and made the butt of jokes internationally, as in the case of Sunday’s UMNO-PAS rally on Rohingyas where the Prime Minister called for foreign intervention to stop the “genocide” of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.
Myanmar media and NGOs are lampooning and accusing Najib of using Rohingya rally to divert attention from the 1MDB scandal which had caused Malaysia infamy and ignominy to be regarded world-wide as a “global kleptocracy”, attracting Myanmar reminders that “people living in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” and that Najib himself had recently told the world with regard to the 1MDB scandal that “the internal affairs of a country should be determined by the people themselves as the formula had been proven successful” and that “Malaysia did not need foreign interference to shape and determine the direction of the country”.
Both Najib and the Myanmese government are wrong, but Najib would not have opened himself as an easy target if Sunday’s Rohingya rally had NOT been organised as a UMNO-PAS rally to win Muslim points but as a humanitarian call by all Malaysians, regardless of race, religion or politics. Read the rest of this entry »
Singapore celebrates 50 years of statehood
Financial Times
August 9, 2015 5:35 am
Jennifer Hughes in Hong Kong and Andrew Whiffin in London
Happy 50th birthday Singapore.
Whatever is said about the Lion City — its nanny state tendencies, a seeming obsession with finicky rules, the challenges it faces sustaining its position — its economic achievements of the past 50 years are substantial.
The death of Lee Kuan Yew in March this year gave an outlet for a raft of reviews of Singapore’s performance.
Here we present a few charts to put the city state in a global context.
Gross domestic product per capita has risen at a 10 per cent compound annual growth rate for the past five decades in one of the world’s best performances, according to economists at Morgan Stanley.
Read the rest of this entry »
Somali Militants Kill 147 at Kenyan University
Posted by Kit in Foreign, Islamic state on Sunday, 5 April 2015
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN, ISMA’IL KUSHKUSH and RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
New York Times
APRIL 2, 2015
NAIROBI, Kenya — Somali militants burst into a university in eastern Kenya on Thursday and killed nearly 150 students in the worst terrorist attack since the 1998 bombing of the United States Embassy here, laying bare the nation’s continuing vulnerability after years of battling Islamist extremism.
A small group of militants, most likely between four and 10, roved from dorm to dorm, separating Christian from Muslim students and killing the Christians, the authorities said. Students described being awakened before dawn by the sound of gunfire and fleeing for their lives as masked attackers closed in.
Officials said that by the time Kenyan commandos cornered and killed the attackers on an upper floor, 147 people lay dead.
Despite new security laws, significant Western help and a heightened state of vigilance that has already put police officers on almost every major street corner in the capital, Nairobi, Kenya remains squarely in the cross hairs of the Shabab, the Somali terrorist group that immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on Thursday. Read the rest of this entry »
Lee Kuan Yew’s death – passing of an era
Lee Kuan Yew’s death on Monday at the age of 91 marks the passing of an era.
The tributes from world leaders in the past few days is testimony of the mark he had made not only in Singapore, ASEAN, Asia but in world politics in his transformation of Singapore in three decades from a backwater British colony into a first world country, or in World Bank statistics on GDP per capita PPP, into the fourth wealthiest nation in the world, after Macao, Qatar and Luxembourg.
Under Kuan Yew leadership, Singapore had punched above its weight in the international area in many areas of human endeavour.
This is something Malaysians should ponder long and hard, as to why we are losing out in the international stakes, as we are not only unable to punch above our weight in international affairs on many fronts, but even punching below our weight.
Singapore is set on many new challenges in the post-Lee Kuan Yew era, not least of which is how Singapore can continue to punch above its weight in many areas of human endeavour, but can also lead the way in upholding human rights and democratic freedoms.
(Media Statement after signing the condolence book on the passing of Lee Kuan Yew in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday, 25th March 2015)
ISIS Boasted Of These Christians’ Deaths. Here Are The Lives They Lived.
Sophia Jones
Posted: 02/18/2015 4:56 pm EST Updated: 02/19/2015 4:59 pm EST
The Huffington Post
AL AOUR, Egypt — Death is everywhere in Al Aour. When a video surfaced late Sunday showing Islamic State fighters beheading 21 men in Libya, it seemed no family here was spared. Thirteen of the victims hailed from this dusty Egyptian town, roughly three hours south of Cairo.
The men were laborers, gone for months on end, who sent home hard-earned money to feed entire families. They left their impoverished home in Egypt to work in Libya for a better future, despite the dangers. What they found instead was a militant group hell-bent on humiliating and harming them because they were Christian. While most of the people killed by the Islamic State have been Muslim, the group’s recent propaganda video made a point to threaten Christianity as a religion. The fact that the 21 men were Egyptian made them even more sought-out targets: citizens of a country cracking down on Islamists both within its own borders and inside Libya.
On Jan. 3 at around 2:30 a.m. in the coastal Libyan city of Sirte, masked gunmen began knocking on doors, according to survivors. They were looking for Christians marked with traditional tattoos on their hands that identified them as Copts, an ancient Christian sect in Egypt. Some men were pulled from their beds at gunpoint. Others hid and prayed, only to later see their captured friends and family members decapitated in a widely circulated and highly produced Islamic State video. Read the rest of this entry »
Why Saudis Are Holding Strong on Oil
By Meghan L. O’Sullivan
Bloomberg
JAN 26, 2015
A consensus has emerged since the death of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia that the kingdom will not change course on oil policy. This consensus is probably right, at least for the short term. It is, however, correct for reasons other than the ones that most observers have invoked.
Moreover, while it looks unlikely that the kingdom will alter oil production in the coming months, barring a major change of heart of non-OPEC producers, interesting changes to Saudia Arabia’s cabinet roster and other energy policies and could be closer than most realize.
The basis of the conventional wisdom is rooted in personalities. New King Salman bin Abdulaziz has pledged continuity, stating he will adhere to the “correct policies” of his predecessors. He also said that oil minister Ali Al-Naimi will stay in his post. Read the rest of this entry »
Greece shows what can happen when the young revolt against corrupt elites
Paul Mason
The Guardian
25 January 2015
The rise of Syriza can’t just be explained by the crisis in the eurozone: a youthful generation of professionals has had enough of tax-evading oligarchs
At Syriza’s HQ, the cigarette smoke in the cafe swirls into shapes. If those could reflect the images in the minds of the men hunched over their black coffees, they would probably be the faces of Che Guevara, or Aris Velouchiotis, the second world war Greek resistance fighter. These are veteran leftists who expected to end their days as professors of such esoteric subjects as development economics, human rights law and who killed who in the civil war. Instead, they are on the brink of power.
Black coffee and hard pretzels are all the cafe provides, together with the possibility of contracting lung cancer. But on the eve of the vote, I found its occupants confident, if bemused.
However, Syriza HQ is not the place to learn about radicalisation. The fact that a party with a “central committee” even got close to power has nothing to do with a sudden swing to Marxism in the Greek psyche. It is, instead, testimony to three things: the strategic crisis of the eurozone, the determination of the Greek elite to cling to systemic corruption, and a new way of thinking among the young.
Of these, the eurozone’s crisis is easiest to understand – because its consequences can be read so easily in the macroeconomic figures. The IMF predicted Greece would grow as the result of its aid package in 2010. Instead, the economy has shrunk by 25%. Wages are down by the same amount. Youth unemployment stands at 60% – and that is among those who are still in the country. Read the rest of this entry »
Business leaders fret over ‘cocktail of political risks’ as UK election nears
Larry Elliott and Jill Treanor in Davos
The Guardian
25 January 2015
Davos delegates fear possibility of minority government and second poll, as well as uncertainty over EU membership
The general election risks exposing the UK to a “cocktail of political risks” that could threaten growth and force the country out of the European Union, according to business leaders.
The growth of minority parties such as Ukip and the Greens and the fall in popularity of the Liberal Democrats are forcing bosses to prepare for the possibility that a second poll may have to be called months after the one scheduled for 7 May.
The Conservatives’ pledge to call an EU referendum in 2017 if they are in government is also causing anxiety. Doubts over Britain’s political future were voiced openly by executives at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Speaking on the sidelines at the gathering of political and business leaders in the Swiss Alps, John Cridland, director general of the CBI, said: “Britain is no longer a two-party system, it is a six-party system, and it looks like it won’t be until 5am on the morning after the election until we know what the result is going to be. The UK could end up with a minority government and a repeat of 1974, when there were two elections in swift succession. Read the rest of this entry »
Why We Know So Little About The Horror In Northeast Nigeria
The Huffington Post | By Charlotte Alfred
01/20/2015
Fighters from the extremist group Boko Haram laid waste to a cluster of towns in northeast Nigeria earlier this month, inflicting a massacre that Amnesty International said may be the bloodiest in the Islamic militants’ history.
The assault on the fishing town Baga and 16 surrounding communities in Borno state began on Jan. 3. Two weeks later, crucial details about what took place remain unclear.
Witnesses described the mass slaughter of men, women and children, and many estimated that hundreds of people had been killed. A senior official in the Borno state government told the BBC that some 2,000 people were dead. The Nigerian military has fiercely disputed this figure, saying on Monday that 150 people, including Boko Haram fighters, had been killed.
How Boko Haram was able to take control of the area is also subject to dispute. Read the rest of this entry »
Joko Widodo must not waste his mandate in Indonesia
Financial Times
July 23, 2014
The new leader has the chance to take the country to the next level
After an extended count lasting the best part of a fortnight, Joko Widodo, governor of Jakarta, has narrowly won the race to become president of this nation of 250m people. Initial fears that Indonesia’s second truly democratic passage of power might end in violence and chaos have proved exaggerated; the presidential baton has been transferred relatively smoothly. Opportunistic attempts by Mr Widodo’s opponent, former general Prabowo Subianto, to question the fairness of the process have fallen on deaf ears. Given the definitive nature of the result, Mr Subianto should do the graceful thing and concede in a way that confers legitimacy on the victor.
Mr Widodo, universally known as Jokowi, has much to prove when he takes office in October. One reason the result was so close was that he turned out to be a lacklustre candidate, far less organised and politically astute than his more ruthless and better-funded opponent. Things are unlikely to become any easier now the count is over.
Having campaigned against the old elites that have dominated Indonesian politics for so long, Mr Widodo must show that he can govern effectively without their patronage. In particular he must redeem his promise to avoid traditional horse-trading and appoint to his cabinet only those with the character and capacity to hold their offices. Given the new president’s lack of a reliable majority in parliament, this will require political skills of a high order – ones he has yet to demonstrate he possesses on the national stage. Read the rest of this entry »
Election dispute emerges as serious test for Indonesia
By Ben Bland in Jakarta
Financial Times
July 14, 2014
After 16 years of peaceful democracy, the dispute over who won Indonesia’s presidential election is turning into a serious test for both the country and outgoing President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, whose legacy will depend on how he handles the clash.
Both Joko Widodo, the reformist Jakarta governor, and Prabowo Subianto, a self-styled military strongman, have claimed victory in the July 9 election, although most polling agencies and independent political analysts suggest Mr Widodo has won.
The official vote count will not be completed until July 22, but both sides have already accused each other of trying to rig the process. If neither side accepts the outcome of the official count, it will be left to the national election commission (KPU), the Constitutional Court and President Yudhoyono to find a solution.
“Without question, the vote-count will be the major test for Indonesia’s democracy and, in particular, President Yudhoyono’s presidency,” says Tom Lembong, managing partner of Quvat, an Indonesia-focused private equity fund manager. “People only remember the beginning and the end.” Read the rest of this entry »
Have The Islamist Militants Overreached In Iraq And Syria?
Posted by Kit in Foreign, Islamic state on Sunday, 6 July 2014
by Deborah Amos
NPR
July 05, 2014
The Islamist radicals who have declared an Islamic caliphate on land they control straddling Iraq and Syria are waging an audacious publicity stunt, according to some analysts.
While it may bring them even greater attention, it’s also likely to be an overreach that will open riffs with its current partners, the Sunni Muslims in Iraq who welcomed the militant group in early June. They all share the goal of overthrowing Iraq’s Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his sectarian rule, but the more secular parts of the Sunni coalition didn’t sign up for an Islamic state.
“By announcing the caliphate, they are picking a fight with everybody,” says David Kilcullen, a guerrilla warfare expert and former chief counter-terrorism strategist for the U.S. State Department.
The militants were known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. But in announcing a caliphate, which is a single, unified Islamic state, they are now simply calling themselves the Islamic State. Read the rest of this entry »
Militant Leader in Rare Appearance in Iraq
Posted by Kit in Foreign, Islam, Islamic state on Sunday, 6 July 2014
by Alissa J. Rubin
New York Times
July 5, 2014
BAGHDAD — Wearing a black turban and black robes, the leader of the self-proclaimed Islamic state that stretches across eastern Syria and much of northern and western Iraq made a startling public appearance, his first in many years, at a well-known mosque in the Iraqi city of Mosul, according to a video released on Saturday whose contents were confirmed by experts and witnesses.
Until then, there had been very few photographs on the Internet of the insurgent known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. But on Friday he delivered a public sermon in a city once under American control with an audacity that even Osama bin Laden never tried.
Previously he had been all but invisible, seemingly reluctant to risk a public appearance as his group grew in strength and he became the United States’ second-most sought-after terrorist, after Ayman al-Zawahri, the leader of Al Qaeda. The United States government has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture.
The victories gained by the militant group calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria were built on months of maneuvering along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which define a region known as the cradle of civilization.
But on Friday at the pulpit of Mosul’s Great Mosque, Mr. Baghdadi appeared confident, calm and measured as he urged the faithful to fast during Ramadan and undertake jihad. He also asserted his position as caliph, or spiritual leader, of the Muslim faithful, calling himself “Khalifa Ibrahim,” or caliph Abraham, a reference to the prophet Abraham, who appears in the Quran. Mr. Baghdadi’s militant group declared its territory in Iraq and Syria a caliphate, or Islamic state, on June 29. Read the rest of this entry »
Under Isis, Iraqi women again face an old nightmare: violence and repression
Posted by Kit in Foreign, Islamic state on Friday, 4 July 2014
Yifat Susskind
Guardian
3 July 2014
The militants are using rape and brutality to control women who have not stopped mobilising since the US occupation
In a PBS NewsHour video report in June, Isis extremist militants parade through Mosul, Iraq, one of the first cities to fall to their onslaught in early June. The armed men are hanging off the back of trucks, as the crowd films them. One fighter leans out a car window, wagging his finger. The footage provides a translation. The fighter has spotted a woman, and he is ordering her to cover up.
This is how an extremist agenda is imposed: on women’s bodies. That fighter had barely arrived in Mosul yet his first order of business gives us a chilling glimpse of a broader strategy, one that targets women with repression and violence. In recent weeks, women living under Isis control have been seized from their homes and raped. They have been ordered to cover themselves fully and stay in the house.
As Iraq descends into war, women are not only on the frontlines: they are the battlefield. But here is the part that too many media reports have missed: they are not just victims; they are critical first responders. Read the rest of this entry »
Arab Spring, Jihad Summer
Posted by Kit in Foreign, Islam, Islamic state on Thursday, 3 July 2014
By Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
2 July 2014
Welcome to IS. No typo; the final goal may be (indiscriminate) regime change, but for the moment name change will do. With PR flair, at the start of Ramadan, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS, or ISIL – the Islamic State of the Levant – to some) solemnly declared, from now on, it will be known as Islamic State (IS).
“To be or not to be” is so … metaphysically outdated. IS is – and here it is – in full audio glory. And we’re talking about the full package – Caliph included: “the slave of Allah, Ibrahim Ibn ‘Awwad Ibn Ibrahim Ibn ‘Ali Ibn Muhammad al-Badrial-Hashimi al-Husayni al-Qurashi by lineage, as-Samurra’i by birth and upbringing, al-Baghdadi by residence and scholarship”. Or, to put it more simply, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
IS has virtually ordered “historic” al-Qaeda – yes, that 9/11-related (or not) plaything of one Osama bin Laden – as well as every other jihadi outfit on the planet, to pledge allegiance to the new imam, in theological theory the new lord over every Muslim. There’s no evidence Osama’s former sidekick, Ayman “the doctor” al-Zawahiri will obey, not to mention 1.5 billion Muslims across the world. Most probably al-Qaeda will say “we are the real deal” and a major theological catfight will be on. Read the rest of this entry »
The Caliphate Fantasy
Posted by Kit in Foreign, Islam, Islamic state on Thursday, 3 July 2014
by Khaled Diab
New York Times
July 2, 2014
The jihadist insurgent group ISIS, or as it now prefers to be called, the Islamic State, appears well on the road to achieving its stated goal: the restoration of the caliphate. The concept, which refers to an Islamic state presided over by a leader with both political and religious authority, dates from the various Muslim empires that followed the time of the Prophet Muhammad. From the seventh century onward, the caliph was, literally, his “successor.”
The problem with this new caliphate, which, an ISIS spokesman claimed on Sunday, had been established under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an Islamist militant leader since the early days of the American occupation of Iraq, is that it is ahistorical, to say the least.
The Abbasid caliphate, for example, which ruled from 750 to 1258, was an impressively dynamic and diverse empire. Centered in Baghdad, just down the road from where ISIS is occupying large areas of Iraq, the Abbasid caliphate was centuries ahead of Mr. Baghdadi’s backward-looking cohorts. Abbasid society during its heyday thrived on multiculturalism, science, innovation, learning and culture — in sharp contrast to ISIS’ violent puritanism. The irreverent court poet of the legendary Caliph Harun al-Rashid (circa 763-809), Abu Nuwas, not only penned odes to wine, but also wrote erotic gay verse that would make a modern imam blush. Read the rest of this entry »
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