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The dream of a Penang People’s Park lives on. But Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng seems concerned that if he rezones the Penang Turf Club land back from “development” status to “recreational”, it could expose the state government to claims of compensation. But he needn’t have to worry too much. For the Penang state government holds [...]
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Sometimes the easiest solution is just a stone throw away. I strongly suggest the Penang State Government not to see the Batu Kawan land to the developers of Abad Naluri. I think it's a good solution can be used for other purpose -expanding new industrial area, housing of shipyard building, etc. I think this will stop all nonsense about the Penang Turf Club saga. So who will suffer? No one really. Penang Turf Club will definitely have to worry about their own political saga which is fast brewing. Anil's article is so true to the bone.
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Two terrible tragedies in the space of a little more than a week - the cyclone Nargis that hit Burma and the 7.9 earthquake that rocked Sichuan, China has shattered the lives of millions living in the two countries, causing massive damage - physical, economical, social and untold others. While one country is scrambling to save lives using every means available, the other seems determined to condemn its own people to a genocide, owing to a paranoia over its own inabilities and its suspicions to foreign aid. Two tragedies, two different reactions. Two sets of rulers, two sets of solutions.

It speaks a lot for the kind of people we elect (or are coerced, as in Burma's case) into power. Sometimes, the very act of electing the wrong person into Office is in itself a tragedy. A closer look at the Malaysian situation here will show the same result. Look at who's in power now. A soundly trashed BN coalition, with no real leader on board. Worse, with seemingly no one with the right credentials required, waiting in the wings.

And so we witness a tragicomedy being played out in the local political arena. A "wayang kulit" - shadow play, to put it bluntly. It's everybody for himself (and herself). The gravy train has derailed, taking away much of the fat that has for so long fed its patrons. For these, its now just plain rice without the "curry". Tasteless. And what do desperate people do in desperate situations? They create a diversion. Stage a "wayang kulit" - a shadow play with equally shadowy figures! - with all the props, half truths, the wannabee actors, stooges and of course, an unwitting victim or victims. And, while in the process, Use the legal system, Use the media, Use the bystander, Use anyone and anything. Use and Abuse - religion, race, royalty, commoner, political parties, national unity, the Constitution, etc. etc. The classic Machiavellian principle - in the arena of power the end justifies the means. This is the tragedy.

The real tragedy is that this comedy of errors is not going to end anytime soon. This is not a one night only show. This may yet turn into a soap opera. Forget the Hindi dramas on Astro. Forget the South American telenovelas on TV 3. The real action is here. There's a power vacuum out there. There's a power struggle going on within the ruling coalition. There are factions within themselves. While on the outside, there's the Anwar factor and the Pakatan Rakyat, the Sabah voices making enough noises, the Altantuya case hanging over certain heads, the misnomer that the National Service program seems to have become, the continuing ISA detention and withholding of medical treatment for detainees. These are just the tip of the iceberg that surround the players now. The wayang continues, day after day, as long as the actors are willing to play their roles. Until the director calls Cut!

The end will come as indeed any play would. The curtain will have to come down. And when it does, I'll be glad to see these "actors and actresses" not just go - but go the way of the dodo. And, the sooner the better. Good riddance to bad rubbish. This country deserves better.
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KUALA LUMPUR, 16 Mei - Sekretariat Kebangsaan Memperingati Nakbah 60 Tahun Palestin menyatakan bantahan dan kekesalan mereka terhadap sikap Speaker Dewan Rakyat yang menolak usul mengenai perkara tersebut di Parlimen semalam.
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Such methods will ensure that the trainees are prepared to face the worst. They are trained to be strong, not sissies, says Abdul Rahim Dahalan.
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The revocation of the passport of the Hindraf Chairman P. Waytha Moorthy by the Malaysian government is most undemocratic and deplorable. The Home Minister, Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar should make a ministerial statement for the government’s high-handed action when Parliament reconvenes next Tuesday. The following is Waytha Moorth’s statement on the revocation of his [...]
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PARLIMEN, 5 Mei (SK) – Ahli Parlimen Gombak, Azmin Ali hari ini menegaskan bahawa Ketua Umum Parti Keadilan Rakyat, Anwar Ibrahim telah lama memerangi rasuah sejak pemimpin ulung itu masih berada dalam kerajaan lagi. Beliau berkata demikian ketika mencelah ucapan Ahli Parlimen Batu Pahat, Mohd Puad Zarkashi.

Mohd Puad ketika menyampaikan ucapannya telah berkata bahawa, ‘Anwar ketika sedang berkuasa (di dalam kerajaan) tidak menjalankan usaha untuk membenteras rasuah tetapi hanya ketika sudah tidak berkuasa barulah beliau bersungguh-sungguh berjuang untuk menghapuskan rasuah’. Begitu juga dari segi menghapuskan ISA yang menurut Mohd Puad tidak dilakukan ketika pemimpin itu masih di dalam kerajaan.

Menurut Azmin, dengan merujuk kepada usaha Anwar semasa memangku jawatan Perdana Menteri, dimana bakal Perdana Menteri itu ketika waktu itu sedang berusaha membawa kepada Parlimen bagi menggubal dan meminda suatu rang undang-undang yang boleh mendakwa sesiapa yang melakukan rasuah walaupun telah bersara dari jawatan yang disadang oleh seseorang penjawat awam ataupun pemimpin politik. Namun usaha tersebut dihalang oleh Perdana Menteri pada masa itu.

Kata Ahli Parlimen itu yang juga merupakan bekas Setiausaha Sulit kepada Anwar ketika menjawat jawatan selaku Pemangku Perdana Menteri, usaha memerangi rasuah dan penyalahgunaan kuasa telah lama dilakukan oleh pemimpin berpengaruh itu khususnya ketika Perdana Menteri, Tun Dr. Mahathir sedang bercuti selama 2 bulan di Eropah.

Selain itu, ujarnya lagi, Pakatan Rakyat sebelum ini telah banyak memperjuangkan isu-isu berhubung rasuah dan penyalahgunaan kuasa di Dewan Rakyat dan Dewan Undangan Negeri bahkan sehingga Perdana Menteri, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi sendiri sebelum ini telah mengambilkira desakan pembangkang itu di samping berjanji akan memerangi rasuah melalui gagasan Islam Hadharinya.

Isu Air Percuma Di Selangor

Sementara itu, Mohd Puad turut membangkitkan isu air percuma di Selangor dengan menyifatkannya sebagai suatu pembaziran oleh kerajaan negeri. Dakwaan ini berasaskan kepada kadar penggunaan air yang sangat tinggi di negeri berkenaan di samping kemungkinan berlakunya krisis air di negeri yang paling maju itu.

Walaubagaimanapun, dakwaan Mohd Puad disangkal oleh beberapa Ahli Parlimen Pakatan Rakyat antaranya Ahli Parlimen Shah Alam, Khalid Abd Samad yang menjelaskan bahawa tawaran air percuma itu dibuat atas sifat kebajikan kepada rakyat khususnya kepada golongan bawahan dan bukannya untuk tujuan pembaziran.

Di samping itu jelas Khalid lagi bahawa bekalan air yang ditawarkan itu bukanlah diberikan secara percuma tanpa had. Ianya melibatkan sekitar 20 meter padu bagi setiap penggunaan semasa. - Nor Zuwairi Zakwa

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Watching Durham miners, defeated but unbowed by hunger and debt, march back to the pit in 1985, led by their women, was a glimpse of Britain at its best When I first came to live in Britain, much of ordinary life was premised on a sense of community. ...
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Sometimes one can feel overwhelmed by the sheer insanity and insatiable greed of global capitalism. As reports multiply of dire food shortages, riots and civil despair across the globe, America and Europe proceed, ever-selfishly, with biofuel production policies to 'alleviate' global warming.

The US and Europe have been strongly urged to cut back on biofuel crops due to the devastating misuse of farming land for non-food production. Among those criticising the policy is US academic Jeffrey Sachs, an adviser to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Sachs told EU officials in Brussels this week:

"We need to cut back significantly on our biofuels programs...[They] were understandable at a time of much lower food prices and larger food stocks but do not make sense now in a global food scarcity condition...In the United States as much as one third of maize crop this year will go to gas tank. This is a huge blow to the world food supply".

But while Sachs's intervention is laudable, it appears to be a rearguard response to the food crisis rather than a holistic appraisal of why the market for biofuel is being touted by governments and big business as a route to environmental salvation.

The EU has proposed a target of 5.75 per cent biofuel for transport use by the end of 2008. The US want 15 per cent of all transport fuels to come from biofuels by 2020.

But the massive subsidies to promote the industry hide this rather more inhuman equation: the poor go hungry so that cars can keep running - even running 'ethically'. It's the political version of Milo Minderbinder's mad 'syndicate enterprise' in Catch 22. Eco-solutions, corporate style. Was there ever a more graphic illustration of the market's blanket blindness to human suffering and environmental destruction?

The 'case' for ethanol and other biofuel production comes in 'ethical response' to rising carbon emissions. In crude reality, the agri-corporations see it as a lucrative market opportunity; a rush to 'match' the 'new awakenings' of government on the problem of carbon output.

In synchronised form, the fat-cat grocery imperialists are raking in vast profits from the food hikes.

As Joanna Blythman put it in a fine Sunday Herald piece:

"The sums just don't add up. There's a world food supply crisis, the cost of a basket of groceries has shot up by between 10% and 12.5%, yet our supermarkets are recording healthy profits - Tesco's profits last year, for instance, showed a 11.8% rise."

"It seems our retailers are doing very nicely out of the global food crisis, thank you very much, and so are the global agri-business firms, traders and speculators currently raking in fabulous profits. Hungry people are out on the streets from Egypt to Haiti to protest at the rocketing cost of staples, yet Cargill, the world's biggest grain trader, has achieved an 86% increase in profits from commodity trading in the first quarter of this year alone. Meanwhile Bunge, another huge food trader, reported a 77% increase in profits during the last quarter of last year. ADM, the second largest grain trader in the world, registered a 67% increase in profits in 2007."

"The IMF and the World Bank pushed countries to dismantle all forms of protection for their local farmers and to open up their markets to global agribusiness and subsidised food from rich countries. Like chiselling snake oil salesmen, they said that a liberalised market would provide the most efficient system for producing and distributing food."

It's a double-whammy for the impoverished and the planet. While compliant Western governments and the IMF mandarins proclaim open food markets for poor countries, with all the debilitating consequences that entails for the latter, biofuel crop production in the affluent West is driving-up prices to those poorer markets, while still encouraging all the standard forms of carbon-based consumption.

Intrinsic to this lies the myth of biofuel as a 'post-carbon' saviour. The short-sightedness of this policy is matched only by the blind-eye greed of the profiteers. And the warnings were all there. As George Monbiot, among others, show, one didn't need the powers of a seer to understand the disastrous implications of biofuel production for food economics and the environment:

"So what's wrong with these programmes? Only that they are a formula for environmental and humanitarian disaster. In 2004 I warned, on these pages, that biofuels would set up a competition for food between cars and people. The people would necessarily lose: those who can afford to drive are richer than those who are in danger of starvation. It would also lead to the destruction of rainforests and other important habitats. I received more abuse than I've had for any other column - except for when I attacked the 9/11 conspiracists. I was told my claims were ridiculous, laughable, impossible. Well in one respect I was wrong. I thought these effects wouldn't materialise for many years. They are happening already."

Farmers, chemical corporations, governments and errant environmentalists are all now tied-into this false consensus on the market and eco-benefits of biofuels produced from wheat, maize and other staple crops. The impact of deforestation for biofuel palm oil planting is treated with similar myopic indifference. As Monbiot notes:

"But it gets worse. As the forests are burned, both the trees and the peat they sit on are turned into carbon dioxide. A report by the Dutch consultancy Delft Hydraulics shows that every tonne of palm oil results in 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, or 10 times as much as petroleum produces. I feel I need to say that again. Biodiesel from palm oil causes 10 times as much climate change as ordinary diesel."

More recent studies offer conclusive evidence that biofuel is not just an eco-palliative, it's a completely false economy, contributing to even more greenhouse gases after land clearance and other wasteful variables are factored in:

"“When you take this into account, most of the biofuel that people are using or planning to use would probably increase greenhouse gasses substantially,” said Timothy Searchinger, lead author of one of the studies and a researcher in environment and economics at Princeton University."

Encouragingly, both Cuba and Venezuela have come out in vociferous opposition to US-led biofuel production, pointing to the catastrophic impact of misused land, food shortages and global starvation.

If only the US and EU shared these same human and environmental concerns. As usual, it's profit and greed which comes before pollution of the atmosphere and starving children.

John

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