Obama Administration Breaks Another Phony Pledge for Transparenc. Whether it was promising repeatedly to put all healthcare negotiations on C-SPAN or to not hire lobbyists, President Obama has now shown several times his willingness to break his word. The latest example comes from the president’s Department of Interior, which has refused to release its own tabulations showing Americans support offshore drilling by a 2-to-1 margin, which was recently confirmed thanks to two requests made by American Solutions under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
In April last year at a forum on offshore drilling, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that President Obama directed him “to make sure that we have an open and transparent government” and that “these are not decisions that are going to be made behind closed doors.” Salazar went on to say that President Obama wanted to make sure that the Department of the Interior was “maximizing the opportunity for the public to give us guidance on what it is that they want to do.” » Drillgate: Internal Emails Shows Obama Team Lying to Public - Grand Theft Malaysia. Many snouts in the public trough The Port Klang Free Zone scandal may be big, but it is only the latest in a long line of Malaysian scandals going back to the early 1980s. Time Magazine quoted Daniel Lian, a Southeast Asia economist at Morgan Stanley in Singapore, saying that the country might have lost as much as U$100 billion since the early 1980s to corruption.
" The scandals listed below are only a small sample of the looting of the country's coffers: In July of 1983, what was then the biggest banking scandal in world history erupted in Hong Kong, when it was discovered that Bumiputra Malaysia Finance (BMF), a unit of Bank Bumiputra Malaysia Bhd, had lost as much as US$1 billion which had been siphoned off by prominent public figures into private bank accounts. The story involved murder, suicide and the involvement of officials at the very top of the Malaysian government. Ultimately it involved a bailout by the Malaysian government amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. Veteran Hong Kong Journalist, Once Jailed, Calls. Arrested on false charges of spying, Ching Cheong served three years in a Chinese prison Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong journalist who became an international cause célèbre when he was lured over the border and arrested on dubious charges of spying in China in 2005 and sentenced to five years in prison, has retired to write a book giving his observations on 35 years in journalism.
Ching was freed in January 2008 and returned to his job as China bureau chief for the Straits Times of Singapore. The arrest was the first of a Hong Kong journalist after the handover of the former British colony in 1997. Given the unwillingness or inability of the Hong Kong government to intervene, the case was deeply unsettling to the territory's press establishment. Tsang was criticized during his election campaign for refusing to see Ching's wife when she requested a meeting to ask for his help. Ching was kept in a cell with 12 other inmates, most of them criminals serving long sentences. Mahathir Book Too Hot for Malaysian Authorities.
Malaysia’s political parties take new hues. The Nut Graph | Najib’s options with Allah. (Corrected at 7:25pm, 15 Jan 2010) How will Najib put out the fires? (Fire pic by straymuse / sxc.hu) COMMENTATOR Manjit Bhathia is right to say that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak “is starting to look every bit as useless as his predecessor, (Tun) Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.” After the divisive rule of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohammad, Abdullah started his premiership with similar appeals as Najib: ethno-religious moderation and governmental reform.
Beginning his term by winning the highest parliamentary majority since Independence, Abdullah soon became the first Barisan Nasional (BN) prime minister to lose the coalition’s customary two-thirds control of Parliament. By starting reforms, Abdullah alienated his predecessor and the warlords within his party, the civil service and the police. In every measure, Najib is now weaker than Abdullah. Najib’s headache So here’s what could happen if Najib makes the wrong move. The PM must decide Read other Uncommon Sense columns. The Nut Graph | PMs assured Christians of use of "Allah" PETALING JAYA, 13 Jan 2010: Even though the government banned the use of “Allah” by non-Muslims in 1986, the churches refrained from court action for more than 20 years because of assurances from two prime ministers.
ShastriCouncil of Churches of Malaysia general secretary Rev Dr Hermen Shastri told The Nut Graph that Christian leaders were assured that “Allah” could be used, as long as it was limited to within the Christian community. This was in spite of a 1986 government gazette and 1988 state enactments that declared the words “Allah“, “solat”, “ka’abah” and “Baitullah” as exclusive to Islam. “(Former Prime Minister Tun Dr) Mahathir (Mohamad’s) position was if Christians use the word ‘Allah’ among ourselves, sell our bibles in Christian bookshops, and indicate it’s a Christian publication, then that was fine,” said Shastri. “Mahathir and [Tun Abdullah Ahmad] Badawi both assured the Christian community that it would not be an issue [using 'Allah'] within our community.” Issue not new. Op-Ed Columnist - Some Frank Talk About Haiti.