Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News
Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News |
- The art of window-dressing (UPDATED)
- Najib serves old wine in new bottle
- Chasing the Dragon in Tehran
- The real winners in Air Asia-MAS deal
| The art of window-dressing (UPDATED) Posted: 21 Nov 2011 06:32 PM PST
Sarawak Report has investigated the UK headquarters of Oxford Business Group, which claims to have been publishing country reports since 1994. There is no relationship to Oxford the town nor Oxford the University. The London HQ advertised on the company's website is in fact an office rental centre, where rooms can be let on demand. We were informed that the Oxford Business Group no longer has office space in the building, although "they sometimes still come in and out" . (READ MORE HERE)
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| Najib serves old wine in new bottle Posted: 21 Nov 2011 06:01 PM PST Instead of allowing more space for public assembly, the new Peaceful Assembly Bill would further stifle lawful dissent and perpetuate a culture of fear. Bersih 2.0 steering committee member, Wong Chin Huat said the new Bill was a scam and bluntly called Najib a "moderate dictator". "Its just a cosmetic change, like you are changing the name of Official Secrets Act (OSA) to Freedom of Information Bill while the former's clauses are still intact," he said. G Vinod, Free Malaysia Today All street protests have been outlawed. Rally organisers have to give one month's notice to the police. And if you under 15, don't even be seen at any rally. And to drive the point home, Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak's government has come up with hefty fines for rally organisers and participants. In the new Bill, those found participating in an illegal assembly could be fined up to RM20,000 and the organisers who fail to give sufficient notice could be fined up to RM10,000. In a nutshell this is what the Peaceful Assembly Bill means. The Bill was tabled in Parliament today by Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Nazri Abdul Aziz. In September, Najib announced a slew of reforms including scrapping Section 27 of the Police Act that requires a permit before holding an assembly. And there was some hope that liberisation was finally taking place in the country. But today when the Peaceful Assembly Bill was tabled, it proved to be draconian than the previous Police Act. Several political parties and special interest groups were quick to point out that this was just old wine in a new bottle. Breach of the constitution Calling it a breach of the constitution, PKR vice-president N Surendran said it was obvious that the Barisan Nasional government is trying to make peaceful assembly difficult for the people. "Najib's promises of reforms is a farce. This law is a joke and will make our country the laughing-stock of the world," he said. He also said that there was no reason why street protests should be outlawed as such rallies were normal, harmless and an integral part of any functioning democracy. "It is the job of the police, upon notification, to manage traffic and other matters during rallies. However, in many cases, the police themselves cause traffic congestion by putting up unnecessary road-blocks," said Surendran. He added that it was absurd to have a 30 days notice period before anyone could hold a rally, saying even South Africa's authorities require only seven days notice. "Must we wait a month if we want to gather and hand over a memorandum to the government? The government is bent to make it difficult for the rakyat to convene any assembly," he said. Surendran also said that Section 8 of the new Bill granted wide discretionary powers to the police to stem public assembly and the high fine would serve to deter people from participating in rallies. Najib a 'liar', 'moderate dictator' Echoing Surendran's concerns, Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) secretary-general S Arutchelvan said the new Bill only proved that BN must be voted out as it will never be able to reform. "I think BN is paranoid of losing power like dictators in the Middle East. The bill is more draconian than Section 27 of the Police Act," he said. Calling Najib a liar, the PSM leader said the new Bill is unconstitutional as the Federal Constitution permits all Malaysians to assemble peacefully, irrespective of race, religion, gender and even age. "The age limit for organising a rally is ridiculous. What if students want to hold an assembly to show solidarity on some issues concerning their well-being? "In some countries, those aged 15 and 16 are even allowed to work," said Arutchelvan. He also alleged that the 30 days notice would be used by the government to get those opposed to the rally to lodge police reports against the organisers. "And the police will use the reports to stop the assembly, like what they did to Seksualiti Merdeka organisers," he said.
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| Posted: 21 Nov 2011 04:56 PM PST
Behind its façade of Muslim piety, Iran is one of the most drug-addled countries in the world. Today's Islamic Republic offers premonitions of a narcodystopia. Take a car ride through Tehran at night, and your driver may tell you that the underage girls in chadors who offer esfand -- seeds that are burned to ward off the evil eye -- along the highways are really selling sex to enable addicted fathers. Ride the metro, and you will see battered children pitching trinkets and fortunes to sustain their parents' habits. BY ROLAND ELLIOTT BROWN, Foreign Policy TEHRAN – On June 26, Iranian state media reported that 20,000 former drug addicts had assembled at Tehran's Azadi Stadium to mark the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attended, and used the podium to portray narcotics as an implement of Western predation. "Today," he said, Western countries "have begun harming nations, especially the Iranian nation, by drugs. Arrogant states masquerade themselves behind the so-called humanitarian masks and they want to stir a sense of inability in other nations. They put on masks of freedom-seeking, human rights, and protecting people but in fact they are the biggest criminals in the world." Tehran is one the higher capitals on the earth's surface, and not only in terms of altitude. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reports that Iran has 1.2 million "drug-dependent users," and that 2.26 percent of the population aged 15-64 is addicted to opiates. The organization's director, Yuri Fedotov, has praised Iran for having "the world's highest rate of seizures of opium and heroin," and for developing effective treatment and prevention programs. Human Rights Watch, by contrast, has criticized Fedotov for glossing over the country's inadequate legal proceedings and executions of drug offenders. Most alarmingly, people arrested during opposition demonstrations, such as the Dutch-Iranian Sahra Bahrami, have occasionally been hanged as "drug smugglers." Today's Islamic Republic offers premonitions of a narcodystopia. Take a car ride through Tehran at night, and your driver may tell you that the underage girls in chadors who offer esfand -- seeds that are burned to ward off the evil eye -- along the highways are really selling sex to enable addicted fathers. Ride the metro, and you will see battered children pitching trinkets and fortunes to sustain their parents' habits. Visit a poor southern suburb like Shahr-e Rey, and you might see a cigarette vendor in the bazaar with a sideline in used needles. Walk through Khaju Kermani Park on the capital's southeastern outskirts, and you might witness young girls smoking crystal meth in full view of park authorities, while in the background a tall, badly sunburned man with track marks on his arms staggers around in an ill-fitting, woman's blouse. Yet the Iranian drug scene is not an exclusive feature of the country's decadent capital, or solely of its abject underclass. Its roots run deep and wide: For example, when I was visiting the tomb of the 12th-century poet Saadi, a tourist attraction in the southern city of Shiraz, Azad, a local literary critic who was showing me around, gestured beyond the garden walls to the adjacent neighborhood, named Saadieh after the poet. This he identified as a hub for the region's thieves, traffickers, and drug addicts. "Would you like to visit? It's very easy to visit, but you might not come back alive," he joked. I had seen enough Iranian skid rows to demur, but, intrigued by the apparent intersection of drugs and high culture, I pressed him for insights. In a display of Persian hospitality, he invited me to the home of a learned opium enthusiast to witness a display. Opium, Azad told me, is Iran's oldest and most entrenched drug, and was used medically in the region by Avicenna, the great Persian philosopher-scientist, 1,000 years ago. In ensuing centuries, it was extolled by the poets of the Persian canon. The best-loved of these, Hafez, measured his ecstasies against it, writing, in the genre of love: "A wound from you is worthier than salve from others/Your poison, sweeter than the opium they render." When we entered the front room of a large house on the city's periphery -- shielded from the street by high walls -- there lay arranged on the floor a metal brazier full of coals, an opium pipe, and other paraphernalia, along with plates of watermelon (your reliable narrator partook only of the fruit). "We love it and we hate it," remarked Mani, Azad's friend, a soft-spoken and serious academic in his sixties, as he began to light up. "It has so many problems, difficulties, but also attractions. In my family, my father used it, but he would always say, 'Don't touch it.' He was against it because he used it himself, but later we smoked it together. I used it because it seemed romantic, poetic." "When you first use it," Azad added, "it makes you relaxed. It makes you have good sleep, or it can give you nightmares and make your imagination work. Especially when you do [creative] work, it gives you the concentration you need. Mowlana, the poet, used it 800 years ago and mentioned it in his work. Hafez mentioned it. But in Iran today, artists and writers have no role, and they are suffering from their own nothingness, so they become disappointed, and look for something to make them calm." "Socially it's looked at very negatively," Mani added slowly as he recovered from a long hit. "It's often criticized in government propaganda. And there's the impact it has on families. But it is still accepted in some parts of Iran, like in [the south-eastern province of] Kerman. Traditionally, when a girl gets married there, among the things she's expected to take to her husband is an elaborate set for preparing opium, even though it's illegal." "In the shah's time," he continued, "there was even a certain prestige attached to it. His brothers used it. His father was an opium addict, and everyone knew it. In Islam, the attitude towards opium is not completely negative; in fact, it's not mentioned." Before the revolution, he added, "there was a brand of opium known as 'senator.' Now, they should call it 'ayatollah.'" Despite his insinuation of the drug's appeal to Iran's rulers past and present, Mani sees opium as a drug in decline. "There is a lot of pressure from outside, because most of the heroin and opium that gets into Europe goes through Iran. [The international community] gives the government money to respond," he said, referring to financial support Western countries give UNODC. The result, he said, is that opium has become expensive. "Mostly rich people use it now, but the quality is much worse. It might be quite dangerous. Chemical drugs are much cheaper and more accessible to the youth, and they require less paraphernalia." Before I left, Azad asked me to be careful with the pictures I had taken of their session because "the government is after just such a thing, especially when it involves intellectual people." Back in Tehran, I sought a more clinical take on the subject, and met Ali, a gentle 32-year-old social worker at an addiction treatment facility in the city's eastern Tehranpars neighbourhood. "The problem of drugs in Iran does not belong to any particular class or educational background," he emphasized. He sees more than 100 regular patients, from a range of economic spheres. Some are poor Afghan workers with no legal status or family support, while others are -- or have been -- wealthy. "One [of my patients] is a dentist who worked in the United States," he said, aiming to surprise. "He had a car accident there, and was injected with morphine. After he was released from hospital, he started injecting himself, and eventually lost everything he had and moved back to Iran." Ali described two main classes of drugs with which he deals. There are opiates, such as opium, morphine, and "crack" (which in Iran describes not the most addictive form of cocaine, but the most impure form of heroin) -- and synthetics, which includes ecstasy, psychedelics, and "shisha" -- crystal meth. Shisha and crack habits, Ali told me, are the most common forms of addiction. He explained that drug treatment has come a long way since the revolution. "There was a time when if someone was using drugs, it was viewed as a disaster by families. The treatment was locking up, even chaining up, those who were addicted. Politics aside, drug addiction is a horrible problem for any government to face, and attitudes have changed. Rehab centres keep opening. The hopes of families really increase when they see treatment working." But successes in treatment for opiate habits, he added, have been countered by mafias introducing synthetics, with which treatment centers have less experience. Improbably for a country where lawbreakers and ideological renegades are regularly hanged in public, Iran can be uncharacteristically lenient where addicts are concerned. The center where Ali works dispenses government-subsidized methadone to opiate users and conducts "self-awareness therapy" for those on methamphetamines. Some patients even visit the center from prisons, where they undergo treatment programs. Ali spends much of his time counseling youths, families, and spouses, and conducting group support sessions. He invited me to one of his sessions, which bore likenesses to Western 12-step programs, with its heavy emphasis on personal responsibility. The meeting even concluded with a non-denominational group prayer. In light of what I'd heard and witnessed, I tried to think my way into Ahmadinejad's Azadi Stadium remarks. The president failed to point out that Western markets have made Iran a conduit for narcotics, or that Iran can only resent that its police face danger, in part, for the benefit of authorities in decadent Europe. Nor did he suggest that international demand for opiate interdiction might be contributing to the spread of crystal meth in Iran, thereby exacerbating drug harm. He dismissed the language of human rights, perhaps insinuating that calls for leniency toward drug pushers are ill-intentioned, and so it's just as probable that his logic is unabashedly conspiratorial. If so, his view is echoed by Hamidreza Hosseinabadi, head of Iran's anti-drug task force, who last year accused British forces in Afghanistan of actually guiding traffickers into Iran. Following Ali's support session, I ran Ahmadinejad's statements by Rahim, a bazaar merchant and recovering opium addict in his fifties who had led the group prayer. He was having none of it. "The way I see it," he said, "We can't blame other people for our mistakes. You could pile up all the drugs in the world in a square in Tehran, but only those who want to use them will take them. You can't say, 'because there are drugs, I became addicted.' Some people say, 'it's my parents' fault, it's my friends' fault, it's my country's fault, it's the regime's fault,' but after going through this program, I believe that [my addiction] was my fault, not the fault of my government or of the United States."
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| The real winners in Air Asia-MAS deal Posted: 21 Nov 2011 03:43 PM PST
It looks like the little Napoleons in Khazanah are the ones who will benefit most from the controversial share swap. Here, the truth of the matter is that Tony has had it up to his eyeballs with the little Napoleons at Malaysian Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) for virtually extorting him over the years through excessive fees. He sees the badly-managed MAHB as a leech, sucking Air Asia's blood for all it is worth. Joe Fernandez, Free Malaysia Today Who are the real beneficiaries in the controversial Air Asia-Malaysia Airlines share swap? The answer should not be as confusing as has been made out to be in media statements from all and sundry. Air Asia Chief Tony Fernandes isn't being very helpful, and for obvious reasons. He fears that millions of his doting fans will abandon him and, in consequence, he will lose his throne as the God of Marketing in Malaysia and the region, if not the world. We are told that Khazanah Nasional will have a 10% stake in Air Asia in return for the latter having a 20% state in Malaysia Airlines. Khazanah Nasional has a 17.33% stake directly in Malaysia Airlines. Indirectly, it has a 52% stake through Penerbangan Malaysia Sdn Bhd, its wholly-owned subsidiary. There's more than meets the eye in this cloak-and-dagger deal. Tune Air Sdn Bhd, a private limited company which has a 20% controlling stake in Air Asia, is owned 50:50 by Tony and his partner Kamarudin Meranun. This means that each has a 10% stake in Air Asia through Tune Air. Khazanah, for all practical purposes, did not enter Air Asia directly. But like Tony and Kamarudin, it went in through Tune Air. The 20% that Tune Air has in Air Asia is now owned 50% by Khazanah and 50% by Tony and Kamarudin. Khazanah, in reality, now owns half of Tune Air. Tony and Kamarudin both hold the rest in equal measure. In return, Tony and Kamarudin accepted a 20% stake collectively in the virtually bankrupt Malaysia Airlines. Many will say that the two need to have their heads examined. The bottom line is that buddies Tony and Kamarudin have both lost their once controlling stake in Air Asia via Tune Air. The little Napoleons at Khazanah can go on to pick up Air Asia shares in the open market and build up its ownership of the airline outside Tune Air. The revenue from Air Asia is expected to help feed the war chest of the little Napoleons at Khazanah. This is part of the real story that Tony isn't telling anyone. Instead, like Kamarudin, he deliberately keeps mum on the deal while the media goes on a wild goose chase. Both men must have laughed their heads off recently when several MPs attacked Tony in Parliament over the share swap. It's a bit of a mystery why Tony and his partner gave up their controlling stake in Air Asia. Under Tony, Air Asia had bragged from its inception that Now Everyone Can Fly. We can only guess at what his real motives are in accepting a deal with Khazanah so that Not Everyone Can Now Fly. There was that story not so long ago that Air Asia would shift its headquarters to Jakarta. This was shortly after Tony started singing praises of the Indonesian capital. The Air Asia chief saw Indonesia as El Dorado and the Promised Land all rolled into one as Air Asia Indonesia was poised for as much success as Air Asia in Malaysia. Genius plan When caught with his pants down over the headquarters announcement, he quickly claimed that Air Asia would still keep its headquarters in Malaysia. Jakarta, he said, would be Air Asia's Asean headquarters since that's where the Asean Secretariat was located. Apparently, he wanted to have a "closer working relationship" with the Asean Secretariat since Air Asia was in fact THE Asean Airline. If that's the case, what role would the so-called Air Asia headquarters in Malaysia still play? Air Asia would end up with two headquarters under Tony's genius plan. Since the share swap deal, we have not heard anything about Air Asia's Asean headquarters in Jakarta. Instead, we are told that Tony will set up a new airline—Caterham Jet—ostensibly to compete with, among others, Qantas in its plans for a new airline for the super rich in the region. Not Everyone Should Fly? God alone knows. Here, the truth of the matter is that Tony has had it up to his eyeballs with the little Napoleons at Malaysian Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) for virtually extorting him over the years through excessive fees. He sees the badly-managed MAHB as a leech, sucking Air Asia's blood for all it is worth. The way he reckons it, he works hard only to see MAHB robbing him of the fruits of his labour and constantly blackmailing him. He is still sore that it denied him the right to build a new low cost airport near the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Instead, MAHB decided to build its own—for the lucrative private contracts that the little Napoleons could take for themselves—and confine him to using their new airport. MAHB even enlisted the support of former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the omnipresent, to lobby public opinion against the new airport planned by Air Asia. Many stories in the Malay media on the issue bordered on the personal, were highly offensive and even downright racist. That Air Asia has been a runaway success in Malaysia from the word "go" is in no doubt whatsoever. It has replicated and duplicated this success through subsidiaries in Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, besides Indonesia.
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