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Posted: 28 Sep 2011 04:12 PM PDT

The correspondence, published as an appendix to an earlier Assange statement complaining bitterly about Canongate's release last week of "Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography", offers rare disclosures by Assange about his personal finances and well-being, and those of WikiLeaks.

Reuters

He laid bare the secrets of governments and corporations. But until now, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fiercely fought demands for more transparency in his own personal and financial affairs.

But a bizarre dispute between Assange and a Scottish publisher who last week released an "unauthorised" version of Assange's autobiography has prompted the WikiLeaks frontman to make public some of his own secrets.

Late on Tuesday, WikiLeaks published a sheaf of e-mail correspondence and transcripts of phone conversations between Assange, his literary agent and lawyers, and Canongate, an independent publisher based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The publisher signed a book deal with Assange shortly after he was released last December from the London prison where he was briefly held following a Swedish request for his extradition for questioning in a sexual misconduct case.

"At least until the Swedish case ends that's how my life is — full of constant struggles and interventions," Assange complained to a Canongate executive in a phone call in early June. "I can't not respond to these things that put me and the organisation in jeopardy."

The financial picture presented by Assange's disclosures is ambiguous and confusing. It surfaces as Assange awaits a court ruling on his long legal fight against extradition.

According to figures published by Assange, the financial deal that he signed with Canongate ought to have brought him a level of financial reward commensurate with what he and his supporters regard as his status as an anti-secrecy crusader and international celebrity.

US$1 million (RM3.16 million) deal

In a transcript of a June 16, 2011 phone call he had with a Canongate representative, Assange talks of how £250,000 (RM1.2 million) he got as a book advance were under the control of Finers Stephens Innocent, a London law firm which represented him in the extradition case.

Assange claims that the advance was transferred to the lawyers "wholly without my consent," and that the law firm was refusing to release it due to a billing dispute.

Mark Stephens, the lawyer who principally represented Assange, declined comment.

It's unclear why Assange chose to publish details of his personal affairs at this juncture. He did not respond to requests for further comment.

In other newly-published correspondence, Assange discloses for the first time what he says Canongate agreed to pay him if his book was completed as planned. Assange's lawyers claimed in a September 12 letter to Canongate that the publisher owed Assange £225,000 on delivery of a completed manuscript and another £175,000 on the book's release in Britain.

Together with the advance, this meant the book deal was apparently worth at least £650,000 to Assange — more than US$1 million at current exchange rates.

It is not clear whether this figure included an advance payment to Assange from US publisher Knopf, or whether it included payments intended for Andrew O'Hagan, a British author who agreed to be Assange's ghost-writer.

A former member of Assange's inner circle said that, with additional revenues anticipated from deals Canongate struck with foreign-language publishers, the total received by Assange could have run as high as £2 million — one of the biggest such deals since former US president Bill Clinton's memoirs.

However, Nick Davies, Canongate's publishing director, told Reuters that while his company at one point had lined up 38 international publishers to put out local editions of the book (as well as Knopf), these publishers walked away when it became clear the book was in trouble.

Davies said that in March, when a first draft of the book was due to be delivered, Assange began to show disaffection with the project. "He felt it was and is too personal," Davies said, adding that Assange later declared: "All memoir is prostitution."

Computer glitch

Davies said Canongate made various efforts to resurrect the deal and draw Assange back into it, including a proposal that Assange would get another six months to fix the book. However, Assange failed to deliver, at one point informing the publisher that he had lost all of the work he had done to fix it through a computer glitch — an explanation which Davies said "rang alarm bells" given Assange's reputation as a computer wizard.

Earlier this month, Davies said, the publisher gave Assange a final opportunity to serve up a "new vision and timeline" for the book. But Canongate warned Assange it would go ahead and publish a draft which had been finished by O'Hagan in March with or without Assange's assent if he didn't cooperate.

In reply, Assange threatened Canongate with an injunction to stop publication. The injunction has not materialised.

Canongate then went ahead with a well-publicised launch of Assange's "unauthorised" memoir. Davies said the publisher had to "mitigate our losses" because when they asked Assange for their advance back, he admitted he had signed a paper instructing his agent to turn the money over to his lawyers. The publisher concluded Assange was "never" going to be able to repay the advance, Davies said.

After the publisher went ahead with publication, Assange complained, "This book was meant to be about my life's struggle for justice through knowledge."

"It has turned into something else. The events surrounding its unauthorised publication by Canongate are not about freedom of information — they are about old-fashioned opportunism and duplicity — screwing people over to make a buck," Assange said in a statement posted on WikiLeaks.

So far, the book is turning out to be a bonanza for nobody, with UK sales for the first three days of publication totaling 644 copies. Davies said Canongate hopes sales will pick up steam, and says some of his firm's erstwhile foreign-language partners have expressed interest in returning to the fold.

For the moment, however, the publisher said, "The only person who has made any money out of this is Julian. He's got our advance money."

Is Petronas Dr M’s next target?

Posted: 28 Sep 2011 03:32 PM PDT

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad 'moves' from one extreme to another without any feeling of guilt.

Mohd Ariff Sabri Aziz, Free Malaysia Today

The real Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is emerging. Former prime minister Mahathir looks out for the welfare of the corporate world – the big businesses, the crony capitalists.

He wants to ensure subsidies go to Independent Power Producers, juiciest of deals go to highway toll operators, big business continue to get bigger businesses.

He will support the Gamuda-isation of Malaysia. Yes sirree folks, Mahathir is the champion of corporate welfarism.

Under this version of welfare, the power of the state is used to protect the rich and powerful rather than the poor and the society in general.

Mahathir is now the spokesman of welfarism.

Contradictory Mahathir

Mahathir continues to be the embodiment of contradictions. He moves from one extreme to another without being burdened with the feelings of guilt.

He is generally seen as the man responsible for breeding the culture of corruption, yet he can also be the spokesman for a clean government.

Ex-ministers who listened to his solemn intonation that the government is corrupt from the top to bottom, could have puked all over the place in one of those gatherings of ex-ministers.

He quits Umno when he thinks Umno is rotten to the core. Each level of the Umno leadership is corrupt, he has said.

And this, he had told a social gathering of ex-minister, would include premier Najib Tun Razak. And when Umno was led by Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, he left Umno.

Posted: 27 Sep 2011 08:58 PM PDT

Historic and culturally important landmarks are being destroyed to make way for luxury hotels and malls, reports Jerome Taylor

In the eyes of Wahabis, historical sites and shrines encourage "shirq" – the sin of idolatry or polytheism – and should be destroyed. When the al-Saud tribes swept through Mecca in the 1920s, the first thing they did was lay waste to cemeteries holding many of Islam's important figures. They have been destroying the country's heritage ever since. Of the three sites the Saudis have allowed the UN to designate World Heritage Sites, none are related to Islam.

Independent UK

Click HERE to download graphic: Mecca For The Rich (430.39kB)

Behind closed doors – in places where the religious police cannot listen in – residents of Mecca are beginning to refer to their city as Las Vegas, and the moniker is not a compliment.

Over the past 10 years the holiest site in Islam has undergone a huge transformation, one that has divided opinion among Muslims all over the world.

Once a dusty desert town struggling to cope with the ever-increasing number of pilgrims arriving for the annual Hajj, the city now soars above its surroundings with a glittering array of skyscrapers, shopping malls and luxury hotels.

To the al-Saud monarchy, Mecca is their vision of the future – a steel and concrete metropolis built on the proceeds of enormous oil wealth that showcases their national pride.

Yet growing numbers of citizens, particularly those living in the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, have looked on aghast as the nation's archaeological heritage is trampled under a construction mania backed by hardline clerics who preach against the preservation of their own heritage. Mecca, once a place where the Prophet Mohamed insisted all Muslims would be equal, has become a playground for the rich, critics say, where naked capitalism has usurped spirituality as the city's raison d'être.

Few are willing to discuss their fears openly because of the risks associated with criticising official policy in the authoritarian kingdom. And, with the exceptions of Turkey and Iran, fellow Muslim nations have largely held their tongues for fear of of a diplomatic fallout and restrictions on their citizens' pilgrimage visas. Western archaeologists are silent out of fear that the few sites they are allowed access to will be closed to them.

But a number of prominent Saudi archaeologists and historians are speaking up in the belief that the opportunity to save Saudi Arabia's remaining historical sites is closing fast.

"No one has the balls to stand up and condemn this cultural vandalism," says Dr Irfan al-Alawi who, as executive director of the Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, has fought in vain to protect his country's historical sites. "We have already lost 400-500 sites. I just hope it's not too late to turn things around."

Sami Angawi, a renowned Saudi expert on the region's Islamic architecture, is equally concerned. "This is an absolute contradiction to the nature of Mecca and the sacredness of the house of God," he told the Reuters news agency earlier this year. "Both [Mecca and Medina] are historically almost finished. You do not find anything except skyscrapers."

Dr Alawi's most pressing concern is the planned £690m expansion of the Grand Mosque, the most sacred site in Islam which contains the Kaaba – the black stone cube built by Ibrahim (Abraham) that Muslims face when they pray.

Construction officially began earlier this month with the country's Justice Minister, Mohammed al-Eissa, exclaiming that the project would respect "the sacredness and glory of the location, which calls for the highest care and attention of the servants or Islam and Muslims".

The 400,000 square metre development is being built to accommodate an extra 1.2 million pilgrims each year and will turn the Grand Mosque into the largest religious structure in the world. But the Islamic Heritage Foundation has compiled a list of key historical sites that they believe are now at risk from the ongoing development of Mecca, including the old Ottoman and Abbasi sections of the Grand Mosque, the house where the Prophet Mohamed was born and the house where his paternal uncle Hamza grew up.

There is little argument that Mecca and Medina desperately need infrastructure development. Twelve million pilgrims visit the cities every year with the numbers expected to increase to 17 million by 2025.

But critics fear that the desire to expand the pilgrimage sites has allowed the authorities to ride roughshod over the area's cultural heritage. The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 per cent of Mecca's millennium-old buildings have been demolished in the past two decades alone.

The destruction has been aided by Wahabism, the austere interpretation of Islam that has served as the kingdom's official religion ever since the al-Sauds rose to power across the Arabian Peninsula in the 19th century.

Those circling the Kaaba only need to look skywards to see the latest example of the Saudi monarchy's insatiable appetite for architectural bling. At 1,972ft, the Royal Mecca Clock Tower, opened earlier this year, soars over the surrounding Grand Mosque, part of an enormous development of skyscrapers that will house five-star hotels for the minority of pilgrims rich enough to afford them.

To build the skyscraper city, the authorities dynamited an entire mountain and the Ottoman era Ajyad Fortress that lay on top of it. At the other end of the Grand Mosque complex, the house of the Prophet's first wife Khadijah has been turned into a toilet block. The fate of the house he was born in is uncertain. Also planned for demolition are the Grand Mosque's Ottoman columns which dare to contain the names of the Prophet's companions, something hardline Wahabis detest.

For ordinary Meccans living in the mainly Ottoman-era town houses that make up much of what remains of the old city, development often means the loss of their family home.

Non-Muslims cannot visit Mecca and Medina, but The Independent was able to interview a number of citizens who expressed discontent over the way their town was changing. One young woman whose father recently had his house bulldozed described how her family was still waiting for compensation. "There was very little warning; they just came and told him that the house had to be bulldozed," she said.

Another Meccan added: "If a prince of a member of the royal family wants to extend his palace he just does it. No one talks about it in public though. There's such a climate of fear."

Dr Alawi hopes the international community will finally begin to wake up to what is happening in the cradle of Islam. "We would never allow someone to destroy the Pyramids, so why are we letting Islam's history disappear?"

Under Threat

Bayt al-Mawlid

When the Wahabis took Mecca in the 1920s they destroyed the dome on top of the house where the Prophet Mohammed was born. It was thenused as a cattle market before being turned into a library after a campaign by Meccans. There are concerns that the expansion of the Grand Mosque will destroy it once more. The site has never been excavated by archaeologists.

Ottoman and Abasi columns of the Grand Mosque

Slated for demolition as part of the Grand Mosque expansion, these intricately carved columns date back to the 17th century and are the oldest surviving sections of Islam's holiest site. Much to the chagrin of Wahabis, they are inscribed with the names of the Prophet's companions. Ottomon Mecca is now rapidly disappearing

Al-Masjid al-Nawabi

For many years, hardline Wahabi clerics have had their sites set on the 15th century green dome that rests above the tomb holding the Prophet, Abu Bakr and Umar in Medina. The mosque is regarded as the second holiest site in Islam. Wahabis, however, believe marked graves are idolatrous. A pamphlet published in 2007 by the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs, endorsed by Abdulaziz Al Sheikh, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, stated that "the green dome shall be demolished and the three graves flattened in the Prophet's Masjid".

Jabal al-Nour

A mountain outside Mecca where Mohammed received his first Koranic revelations. The Prophet used to spend long spells in a cave called Hira. The cave is particularly popular among South Asian pilgrims who have carved steps up to its entrance and adorned the walls with graffiti. Religious hardliners are keen to dissuade pilgrims from congregating there and have mooted the idea of removing the steps and even destroying the mountain altogether.

Kredit: www.malaysia-today.net

Jumaat, 30 September 2011

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News

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