A cartel of secular shamanists, love to stand with murderer Jihadis, anti-democracy and constitution burner Naxals, but through a control over media and money, they try to portray a different ideological stream members as sinners and pariahs.
When it comes to sex, it looks Prime Minister Najib Razak and his Umno party are insatiable. Right on cue, after the mega-flop of Najib’s Budget 2012, Umno bloggers have uploaded yet another sex snippet, this time implicating Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim in a new ‘hotel’ video.
“Umno-BN now tries to hide its economic mismanagement, abuse of power and corrupt practices by conniving at fabricated sex videos. These videos are released periodically by a sleazy website which is aligned to Umno and heaps vile abuse on the opposition,” PKR vice president N Surendran told Malaysia Chronicle.
“During the earlier ‘Datuk T’ sex video fiasco, it was shocking to see the synchronised way in which public statements were being issued by the ‘Datuk T trio, top Umno leaders and the police force leadership. It was nothing less than a carefully concerted effort to destroy the political career of Anwar Ibrahim and halt Pakatan Rakyat’s march to Putrajaya.”
According to the Star, a 2.25-minute video clip entitled One Night in Bangkok or Round Two was uploaded on Monday. The video was purportedly recorded in a hotel room in Bangkok on January 13 this year.
Umno’s Bangkok fetish
As Surendran said, the clips were found in the ususal Umno sites www.papagomo.com; stopthelies.my as well as www.parpukari.blogspot.com. The bloggers also queried Anwar’s whereabouts on January 12 and 13.
They also included details of KLIA-Bangkok MAS flights MH 782 that left KLIA at 3.15pm on Jan 12; and MH 785 that left Bangkok at 11.05am the following day. But unlike the the sensational February Datuk T video clip showing a man resembling Anwar having sex with a prostitute, the latest clip did not containf sex scenes.
However, one of the bloggers claimed that Round Two was coming soon. Nonetheless, there is unlikely to be much interest in the tapes other than in its pornographic details.
Most Malaysians have already made up their minds if Anwar is gulity or if Najib is guilty. The overkill of the Datuk T video had boomeranged in a nasty fashion against Najib, contributing to the recent plunge in his popularity rating to 59% in August versus 65% in May. After all, Najib is himself dogged by scandal over an alleged affair with murdered Mongolian translator Altantuya Shaariibuu.
Deep distrust that even a cash-studded Budget cannot overcome
Even in the ongoing Sodomy II trial that Najib and wife Rosmah Mansor have been accused of fabricating against Anwar to derail his political comeback, most Malaysians found the testimony of Dutch spine specialist Dr Thomas Hoogland credible. Thomas had said Anwar had limited mobility in his back and hip motion and it was “very unlikely” that he could have sodomised the complainant.
On the other hand, Najib and Rosmah stirred up huge public suspicion against themselves when they refused to take the witness stand against Anwar, throwing civic mindedness and responsibility to the winds as they fought to protect themselves against a grilling by Anwar’s lawyers. The upshot of that was that it gave the impression that both were guilty as Anwar had charged.
It was no wonder that when Najib unveiled his much-hyped Budget 2012 on Friday that it hardly stirred public enthusiasm despite a slew of cash incentives.
“It is surely no coincidence that this new video comes at a time when Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak and his government are desperately trying to defend the recently tabled Budget 2012. The government’s budget proposal has been convincingly exposed as dangerously weak and based on wildly optimistic growth projections,” said Surendran.
“The budget does nothing to address longstanding imbalances and distortions in the economy, and one-off handouts are irresponsibly promised in order to create a feel-good factor in the run-up to the 13th general election. Respected analysts and economists have slammed it, and the public is extremely disappointed. The government should withdraw and drastically amend their budget proposal, and not seek to distract the rakyat by condoning and conniving at the dissemination of more fabricated sex-videos.”
Whether it’s the bronze bull encountered by those occupying Wall Street, the fixation with a Chris Christie presidency not to be, or the ex post facto transformation of Ronald Reagan into Kratos by middle-aged Republican Congresspersons who practically start to giggle and spontaneously pulsate just upon hearing his name, there is one thing you can expect to encounter a lot of on the right side of the political spectrum these days: Golden Calves.
Sure, that Bible thing conservatives claim to have read and revere strictly admonishes those who take to idolatry. But then again, it also doesn’t wish death upon 30-year-olds because they lack health insurance or a poorly conceived bowl-cut by a former Speaker of the House who’s running just about even with the hantavirus in recent Republican presidential polling.
CHAI HO: DAP’S ASSURANCE ON HUDUD AS “INEFFECTIVE AND UNTRUSTWORTHY”
The words of DAP Secretary-General Lim Guan Eng claiming that hudud laws are not part of Pakatan’s election agenda are empty talk, and completely meaningless. This is because in the previous general elections, PAS said nothing about achieving an Islamic state and implementing Islamic laws, but today they are now publicly announcing their plans of establishing and implementing an Islamic theocratic state.
I do not see the point of their announcement that hudud laws are not a part of the Pakatan agenda in the coming general elections as PAS has already declared their determination to implement hudud, ignoring Karpal Singh’s opposition to their plans. Therefore, even if hudud laws are not part of the Pakatan agenda now, PAS or even PKR, can still continue with its implementation later on. Thus, Guan Eng’s words are merely meant to soothe his party and himself.
BY HARUN YAHYA In the Quran, Jews and Christians, the members of the religions who abide by the Divine Books revealed by God, are called the “People of the Book.” There are many nations in the world with different colors, creeds, and languages. These differences have been a cause of enmity throughout history in societies that …
Read moreSo even the Bible is fallible.
These Golden Calf conservatives have taken impulses that have been long ascendant on the Right, and way-too-present in American culture overall, and transformed their entire belief system into the Cirque de Soleil of idol worship.These days their leaders worship personality, mythology, ideology, theology and an unregulated market economy. These are hailed in much the manner a dog does a bone, or Kelsey Grammar does divorce court.
The posturing that anti-Shariah legislation, such as the bills introduced in February by Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, and Rep. Judd Matheny, R-Tullahoma, is needed inTennessee to combat terrorism is flawed in many ways. (While the authors have proposed an amendment to remove religious references, the intention of the bill remains the same.) One, Shariah laws themselves …
Read moreIf you think I exaggerate, think about what has brought them to public ecstasy over the last few months, and the right’s obsessions in general, and tell me core members of the tea-party brigade aren’t addicted to symbol over substance. Think about it … Rick Perry. Paul Ryan’s unworkable budget plan. Chris Christie. Guns. The Constitution (at least their mistaken reading of it). Socialism. Bigger guns. Wall Street. American Exceptionalism. Really, really big guns.
This tendency to idolise people and objects makes it all the more amusing when loudmouth right-wing preachers start in with all the “cult” talk about Mitt Romney’s Mormonism. So let me get this straight, Romney’s version of Christianity is cultish, while those who handle snakes, speak in tongues and ask their arena-based parishioners for their very last dime, so they can erect Mammon-on-Earth, are not?
When one lacks practical, reasonable answers to the myriad problems this country is facing, from a continued economic debacle to ongoing civil liberties abuses at home and abroad to who Carly Simon’s singing about in “You’re So Vain”, the only thing left to do is turn to symbolism. For those on the Right that means trusting Jesus will just work things out for them, or Reagan needs to be on the $10 bill, or obsessing over the Founding Fathers, you know, such as John Quincy Adams, Alan Cumming and Darth Plagueis The Wise.
This is not to say some Democrats have not fallen into this same trap. Again, grasping at symbols, especially charismatic individuals, is encoded in human DNA. There are those who would stick with President Obama were he to break every campaign promise he made during the 2008 election (so far he’s only at about 82 per cent). But overall, education and civic engagement tend to lessen this tendency. Hence, it is not only a much more interesting, but foreboding phenomenon on the right.
The danger this poses to a functioning democracy are clear – it turns policy into public relations. Back in the late 1970s, neo-conservative godfather Irving Kristol admitted as much about supply-side economics. It was just a symbolic ploy to win over voters, or as he put it in Public Interest in 1995, “The task, as I saw it, was to create a new majority, which evidently would mean a conservative majority, which came to mean, in turn, a Republican majority – so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government.”
Today, even with evidence abound that their budgetary math is like Gary Busey’s driving, conservatives still adhere to this “voodoo economics,” as George HW Bush called it before embracing it, pretending tax cuts continually showered on our oligarchic overlords will somehow “trickle down” through the floors of their penthouses to the rest of the population.
The real-world consequences can be seen in President Obama’s not-big enough jobs bill the GOPers in the Senate (and reliable Democratic turncoat Senator Ben Nelson, as well as Sen. Jon Tester) have already rejected. Just when a report released by CG/LA – run by passionate infrastructure-improvement guru and colleague Norman Anderson – reveals a study conducted in nations spanning the globe that explains why US roads and bridges are literally crumbling before our eyes, with the United States ranked last in “leadership” and “vision” in infrastructure project development – the most potent short term job creator and long term economic stimulus.
Good news though, even though we’ve fallen way behind Brazil and India, we still hanging tough with Peru! And I’m just positive we’re totally schooling Botswana.
Meanwhile, Anderson’s firm has “recently identified 10 ready-to-go projects worth $90 billion, which would create nearly 1.5 million direct jobs.”
So what are we waiting for, a good logo for these projects?
Taib Mahmud’s $5million dollar a year ‘Cyber-war Campaign’ has conceded a humiliating defeat, with the final demise of the site ‘Sarawak Reports’.
Sarawak Reports was part of a vicious network of internet sites, set up by the crooked UK-based production FBC Media, in a hired attempt to undermine this blog and to attack the opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim.
By adopting a virtually identical name to our own, FBC clearly hoped they could confuse web-surfers into reading their pro-Taib propaganda, instead of our research into Taib’s 30 years of corrupt government.
However, there is little evidence that readers were in fact fooled but this costly exercise. The site never dared to publish the handful of comments it received for its stories, which were little more than dreary ‘puff pieces’ praising Taib’s ‘progress and development’ policies.
The site also carried a permanent section devoted to attacking the Editor of Sarawak Report and family members.
- Black propaganda – who did they think they were kidding?
Collapse of Cyber-war campaign follows exposure of FBC Media
After Sarawak Report started to investigate, the whole truth behind the scandal came out. We showed how FBC Media had commissioned a team of Republican bloggers in the States to write a series of attacking articles in a supposedly non-sponsored website called
New Ledger.
- First put it on the USA’s New Ledger to give it credibility – then place it in Sarawak Reports!
These articles, by unheard of Americans, were then reproduced in Sarawak Reports as if they represented influential thinking in the US.
Worse, we discovered a similar campaign was being carried out by the very same people against the opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, and this time the person who commissioned the attacks was the PM himself, Najib Razak!
The scurrilous articles about Anwar, written for New Ledger by non-entities in the States, were being reproduced in a separate blog called Malaysia Watcher. Just this week the PM was forced to admit that his office has spent
RM 84 million on such campaigns with FBC Media in just three years!
We can now report that Malaysia Watcher is likewise no longer accessible.
Who is Rachel Motte? She stopped writing for New Ledger after we exposed the FBC-lined campaign
Furthermore, since our exposes in late July, New Ledger has ceased publishing any stories about Malaysia, Sarawak Report or Anwar Ibrahim. In June approximately half of all the articles written for this supposedly US-focused website had consisted of attacks on Anwar and SR, which were then being reproduced in Malaysia Watcher and Sarawak Reports!
Illegal TV programmes commissioned by Taib and Najib
- TV lies – Taib bought the slot as advertising!
Of course, the most sensational part of the whole affair has been the revelation that FBC also did deals with both Najib and Taib to place promotional TV films about them and about BN’s policies on some of the world’s most respected news channels, including the BBC and CNBC.
FBC held production contracts for a number of supposedly objective news shows and documentary series and the company was illegally selling the airtime as advertising space for high-spending politicians and companies, including Malaysia and the palm oil industry.
Sarawak Report even gained copies of the contract between FBC’s Chairman, Alan Friedman and Taib, in which the Chief Minister was promised a series of opportunities to improve his bad reputation on human rights and the environment.
“Let’s shake hands on it” – Najib has paid Alan Friedman’s FBC Media RM 84 million to break broadcasting rules in a series of TV “puff pieces” and interviews.
One of these films, aired on CNBC’s World Business (a show produced by FBC Media), claimed that 80% of Sarawak’s forests have been left undamaged and untouched by Taib’s logging and oil palm plantations!
After Sarawak Report broke the scandal, both BBC World and CNBC terminated all contracts with FBC Media, pending investigations.
The UK regulatory authority Ofcom is also conducting a full-scale investigation into how politicians like Taib and Najib were able to spend millions of their own taxpayers’ money on such vanity TV projects, which was against broadcasting laws.
So, the FBC Media expose has meant a set-back not just for Taib’s ‘Cyber Campaign’, but for his whole ‘Global Media Strategy’, into which he has poured millions of taxpayers’ hard earned money.
Najib has likewise been exposed for the same misjudgement and complicity in the corruption of respected international TV stations, all at the enormous expense of public funds!
What about CNN?
- Back reporting Malaysia for CNN – did John Defterios mention to CNN bosses back in 2010 that he was President of FBC, which had received RM 84 million to promote Malayisa? CNN so far says it isn’t relevant!
Sarawak Report and other news media in the UK and US are awaiting the final reports of Ofcom, The BBC and CNBC into these scandals.
Meanwhile, the position of CNN still remains highly questionable. Because this station was also carrying programmes featuring Najib and other FBC clients at a time when FBC’s President, John Defterios was anchoring the relevant CNN shows and programmes.
CNN has so far claimed that it is not prepared to investigate such placement of FBC clients on their shows or the connection with Mr Defterios, because it says John Defterios had already resigned from FBC when he became a staff presenter in March of this year.
In fact the records show that Mr Defterios did not resign until 4 days AFTER our expose on FBC in Sarawak Report! Indeed, just three weeks previously he had aired a much-criticised interview with Najib Razak for CNN, letting him off far too lightly over the treatment of the Bersih rally, according to many commentators.
Under US broadcasting laws any such conflicts of interest should be openly declared, whether or not the interested members of the production team are on contract or staff. For this reason Sarawak Reports is reporting CNN to Ofcom for its refusal to examine the potential corruption of its content by a current senior member of its staff.
