THE EPIC OF POVERTY IN SABAH

Briefly let share my favorite topic, “The Epic Of Poverty “ as seen by a Medical Doctor from Ranau.
"During my 2 years in Ranau, I've heard and seen it all, patients with cerebral malaria, a condition unheard of in Peninsular Malaysia, coming in after 48 hours to the hospital from places like Kaingaran and Karagasan, with relatives having to push the 'pirate taxi' through the mud, spending RM50 on fare during the monsoon season, the equivalent of 2 months income, this too when petrol was only around RM1.20 a liter in Ranau.

Patients having to delay treatment for life threatening conditions because a bridge washed away along the trail (I won't even call it a road) to Tambunan. Emergency surgery such as caesarian sections, appendectomies and even ectopic pregnancies had to be performed in our little district hospitals by Medical Officers with little more than 4 months housemanship experience.Medical emergencies such as myocardial infarctions, which in Peninsular Malaysia would be managed in a Coronary Care Unit setting, had to be managed in the district hospital level.

I'm grateful however, that my staff in that hospital were the best I've ever had the pleasure of working with and were dedicated enough to want to make a difference in their patients' lives.But poor transportation does not only affect the access to healthcare. Having no roads to be able to transport their agricultural produce for sale means that these people are stuck in a never ending cycle of poverty.

At most, some of them get RM20 to RM50 by selling their produce to middlemen to be sold at the monthly tamu or market at prices that are perhaps only 10 percent of the value of the goods. These innocent people are also preyed upon by traveling cloth merchants, mostly foreigners, who offer them 'easy payment schemes' to buy cloth for clothes, and when they cannot pay for the cloth and the interest accumulates, they end up having to marry their daughters to these men, who often have wives back home in Pakistan.

One of the cases I could never forget was of the family who came to Ranau Hospital just as I was leaving, a family who had failed crops, were hungry and unable to get food. The father collected some toad eggs and fed them to the whole family in a desperate attempt to stave off hunger. When they arrived at our little emergency room, one of the children were dead and two passed away within 10 minutes of arrival in our casualty unit due to poisoning.

Major towns in Sabah have electricity courtesy of the Sabah Electricity Board, but smaller villages have either diesel generators or rely on candles or lamps when night falls.How can children study in these conditions? Like many doctors in the districts, I had to learn Dusun to communicate better with these patients who could speak little else.By all means, declare Sept 16th a public holiday, but remember it in its real context, where we made a promise to our brethren in Sabah and Sarawak to treat them as equals in Malaysia, and give them the development they've been long denied.”

GOVERNMENT TO REVIEW SOME PROJECTS : PRIME MINISTER

Recently, the Malaysian Government had decided to review several major projects due to uncertainty in the global economic environment, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said.

As for projects on which work have yet to start, it might even consider postponing the projects. But it will all be within reason and involve particularly projects that are large and require high cost, the Prime Minister said.

Projects that are viable would continue. All the projects in the country involve the economic corridors, he said."Where we can implement, we will. Where we need to pull-back a bit, we will pull-back. We will postpone."

He also said that the country had continued to receive investments from specific areas due to its vision for targeted investment and from areas with sufficient or excess funds for investment.Malaysia offers high incentives for investment. For investors keen on the targeted investment, the country can either receive the investment flow or export its products to the involved countries.

Abdullah also reiterated that Malaysia's economy would be able to withstand pressures from the downtrend in the global economy."Our economy has resilience. Our ringgit is stable and our reserves strong, and up to this point, our exports can be maintained and we also have a favourable trade balance," he said."

The important thing is the Government has not forgotten to come up with the measures to be taken so that whatever the effects that befall us, we hope it will not be continuous."He added that while Malaysia in the past depended on the US market, it has now diversified into other areas such as Asean and China.

This, will hopefully help shield the country, he said.Abdullah said he also hoped that Malaysians would be ready to invest and spend as domestic consumption would drive the country's economy.However, there is a need to convince the people of the measures that the Government has taken besides being just told that the country's economy has staying power due to strong fundamentals.

WHAT IS NEEDED TO BE DONE MUST BE DONE

If the reasons for shelving some of the projects is the global economic environment uncertainty, then by all means do it. Hoping it is not amounting to a major blundering national catastrophe . Like tsunami or hurricane Katrina or something.

I guess some thinkers or economists would readily like to rebuff the statements made by our PM. Possibly with some smart ideas . However as it is , the result would be the same. It could be a blessing in disguise to some.

On the same token, I would like to take the opportunity to propose to government to seriously consider reviewing the status of Sabah Development Corridors. As it is, the present SDC initiated by our CM, Datuk Seri Musa Aman (DSMA), does not seems to meet the vision dreamed by the people of Sabah. The proposed Development areas identified by DSMA earlier, would only benefited to some.
According to DSMA “ The SDC covers the western, central and eastern region of Sabah. SDC's key economic drivers are services (tourism and logistics), agriculture and manufacturing. A key target of the SDC is to make Sabah one of the most likeable places in Asia by 2025, given the state's diverse cultural offerings, heritage, quality of life and a clean environment.

SDC will also help to position Sabah as a major trade and logistics regional hub of this region".

In real sense, the SDC mentioned aloud by DSMA sometimes ago, is only a rhetoric. Sadly to some, reflecting a political planning's failure.

A make believed story tale , orchestrated by him and geng to cloud the eyes of this planet, that Sabah is now better off under his governance. Actually, to me, it is not.In fact, it is like a one way journey through a tunnel along a long and winding roads.

Six Held at Guantanamo After Plot Claim Is Dropped

In the dying days of the Bush administration, yet another presidential claim in the “war on terror” has been proved false by the withdrawal of the main charge against six Algerians held without trial for nearly seven years at Guantanamo prison camp.
George Bush’s assertion in his 2002 State of the Union address – the same speech in which he wrongly claimed that Saddam Hussein had tried to import aluminium tubes from Niger – was that “our soldiers, working with the Bosnian government, seized terrorists who were plotting to bomb our embassy [in Sarajevo].”

Not only has the US government withdrawn that charge against the six Algerians, all of whom had taken citizenship or residence in Bosnia, but lawyers defending the Arabs – who had already been acquitted of such a plot in a Sarajevo court – have found that the US threatened to pull its troops out of the Nato peacekeeping force in Bosnia if the men were not handed over.

According to testimony presented by the Bosnian Prime Minister, Alija Behman, the deputy US ambassador to Bosnia in 2001, Christopher Hoh, told him that if he did not hand the men to the Americans, “then let God protect Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
That such a threat should be made – and the international High Representative to Bosnia at the time, Wolfgang Petritsch, has also told lawyers it was – shows for the first time just how ruthless and unprincipled US foreign policy had become in Mr Bush’s “war on terror”. By withdrawing their military and diplomatic support for the Bosnian peace process, the Americans would have backed out of the Dayton accord which they themselves had negotiated. Then the Bosnian government would have lost its legitimacy and the country might have collapsed back into a civil war which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of civilians and involved mass rape as well as massacre. The people of Bosnia might then have endured “terror” on a scale far greater than the attacks of al-Qa’ida against the United States.
When the Bosnian court was preparing to release their six prisoners, Prime Minister Behman was informed that Mr Bush, Vice-President Richard Cheney and the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, had been personally briefed and the White House had decided that, if they were freed, US troops in the Nato Stabilisation Force in Bosnia would seize them, using “whatever force is necessary”. So, despite a three-month investigation by the Bosnian police, their clearance and a specific demand by the Dayton-established Bosnian Human Rights Chamber that they should not be forced to leave Bosnia, US forces seized all six, shackled and blindfolded them and put them on a plane to Guantanamo.
Mustafa Idir, Mohamed Nechla, Hadj Boudella, Lakhdar Boumedienne, Belkacem Bensayah and Saber Lahmar have remained there since, the only European citizens still in Guantanamo. Five of their wives are still waiting for them in Bosnia along with 20 of their children, two of whom their fathers have never seen. Their case will be put to a habeas corpus district court hearing in Washington next week – the six will appear in a live transmission from Guantanamo – where their lawyers will point out that another critical charge has also been withdrawn by the US government.
The administration has withdrawn evidence given by a federal prisoner, Enaam Arnaout, against Boudella – that he trained at an al-Qa’ida camp in Afghanistan – when lawyers were about to discover that the US Justice Department had said five years earlier that an FBI interview with the man was “not reliable”.
Even stranger is that the six prisoners are claimed by the US to be “enemy combatants” when – with the dropping of the embassy bomb-plot charge – there is no evidence they have ever fought US troops or planned to attack US interests anywhere in the world. Part of the case against Bensayah involved the alleged discovery of a piece of paper at his home, bearing a telephone number for an al-Qa’ida operative, Abu Zubayder. “The Bosnian police couldn’t get this number to work in Afghanistan or Pakistan,” one of the prisoners’ lawyers, Stephen Oleskey, says. “Now we believe an announcement that the paper had been discovered was made before it was ‘found’.”
Mr Oleskey says Clint Williamson, the US war crimes ambassador, met Bosnia’s Prime Minister, Nicola Spiric, this week. “There’s only one reason he makes these visits,” he said. “To negotiate the return of people in Guantanamo.” The White House may intend to save itself further embarrassment by ending the torment of six more apparently innocent young men.

By Robert Fisk
Editor’s note: This article was originally posted at The Independent

WHAT IS MALAYSIAN INTERNAL SECURITY ACT (ISA)

The Internal Security Act 1960 (ISA) is a preventive detention law in force in Malaysia. Any person may be detained by the police for up to 60 days without trial for an act which allegedly prejudices the security of the country or any part thereof. After 60 days, one may be further detained for a period of two years each, to be approved by the Minister of Home Affairs, thus making indefinite detention without trial. In 1989, the powers of the Minister under the legislation was made immune to judicial review by virtue of amendments to the Act. Now, only the courts are ‘allowed’ to examine and review technical matters pertaining to the ISA arrest.
Since 1960 when the Act was enacted, thousands of people including trade unionists, student leaders, labour activists, political activists, religious groups, academicians, NGO activists have been arrested under the ISA. Many political activists in the past have been detained for more than a decade.
The ISA has been consistently used against people who criticise the government and defend human rights. Known as the ‘white terror’, it has been the most feared and despised, yet convenient tool for the state to suppress opposition and open debate. The Act is an instrument maintained by the ruling government to control public life and civil society.
The ISA goes against the right of a person to defend himself in an open and fair trial. The person can be incarcerated up to 60 days of interrogation without access to lawyers.
The first 60 days
A person detained under the ISA during the first 60 days is held incommunicado, with no access to the outside world. Furthermore, lawyers and family members are not allowed access to the detainee during this initial period. Only after a two-year detention order is signed, the detainee is carted off to the Kamunting Detention Centre to serve his or her two-year term, in which family members are allowed to visit.

Torture
Torture goes concurrently with ISA detention. Former detainees have testified to being subjected to severe physical and psychological torture. This may include one or more of the following: physical assault, forced nudity, sleep deprivation, round-the-clock interrogation, death threats, threats of bodily harm to family members, including threats of rape and bodily harm to their children. Also, detainees are confined in individual and acutely small cells with no light and air, in what is believed to be secret holding cells. These interrogation techniques and acts of torture are designed to humiliate and frighten detainees into revealing their weaknesses and breaking down their defences.
Prolonged torture and deprivation have led to detainees signing state-manufactured ‘confessions’ under severe duress. During the first trial of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, police told the courts that the process of ‘extracting confessions’ under duress was called “turning over” and suggested it was a standard practice of the police.

The Legislation

Relevant sections of the legislation are as follows:
Section 73(1) Internal Security Act 1960:“Any police officer may without warrant arrest and detain pending enquiries any person in respect of whom he has reason to believe-
that there are grounds which would justify his detention under section 8; and
that he has acted or is about to act or is likely to act in any manner prejudicial to the security of Malaysia or any part thereof or to maintenance of essential services therein or to the economic life thereof.”
Sect 8. Power to order detention or restriction of persons.“(i) If the Minister is satisfied that the detention of any person is necessary with a view to preventing him from acting in any manner prejudicial to the security of Malaysia or any part thereof or to the maintenance of essential services therein or the economic life thereof, he may make an order (hereinafter referred to as a detention order) directing that that person be detained for any period not exceeding two years.”

US PRESIDENCY COMICS HIGHLIGHT

Iranian "quake" was a nuclear bomb test

A weekend 5.0 Richter earthquake in Iran was actually a nuclear bomb test, says an Iranian nuclear scientist claiming to be working on the project. The report is an Israel Insider exclusive. This past Saturday night, southern Iran experienced what was reported as a significant earthquake - a seismic event measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale.

Its epicenter was just north of the strategic Straits of Hormuz, which separates Iran from Abu Dhabi and Oman and which is the gateway to the Persian Gulf. The report quotes an Iranian nuclear scientist who claims to be working in uranium enrichment for the project, and who said that the "quake" was actually an undergound nuclear bomb test.
Israel Insider adds that the test/quake was actually the second in a series. Nine days ago, a 4.8 Richter scale event occurred, with its epicenter only five kilometers away from the weekend tremor. The Israel Insider source reports that two nuclear rockets are currently ready - and are intended for use against Israel in the coming months.
If the report is correct, it would belie previous speculation that Iran would not begin nuclear testing until it had more nuclear-bomb production capability.
The geographical location of the test has several advantages. It is exposed to significant seismic activity, which could serve to mask nuclear tests; it is believed to be close to Iran's nuclear development facility; delivery and transport of material and personnel can be effected easily through the Hormuz Strait; and Iranian enemies would hesitate to bomb the area because that would threaten the flow of a substantial percentage of the world's oil.
Reuters reports Thursday morning that Iran has begun building a line of naval bases along its southern coast and up to the Straits of Hormuz

Australia: Last Hope for the Bees

All of the world's wild honeybees have vanished on every single continent in the world - except Australia. This means that the only honey bees left in the entire world are those produced by the commercial bee industry, and those that are still wild in Australia.
One of the contributing reasons to the death of the world's honeybees is the Varroa Destructor mite which has spread to every continent in the world. Aside from Colony Collapse Disorder, this mite has single handedly wiped out the wild bees. The United States crops have only been able to survive due to the importation of honey bees from Australia.
Winter is now coming to America and Europe and winter is very bad for the bees, every country will again suffer bee loss, and again turn to Australia for supply.
Being an island, Australia has been spared the mite so far, but unfortunately is currently experiencing one of the worst droughts ever and, if it continues, the environmental stress will impact on Australia's ability to maintain large enough bee stock to export. Australia will therefore struggle to maintain it's bee-supply, and the world's dependence on bees will again increase after the winter.
To make matters worse, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, both very close neighbours of Australia, report that the Mite has arrived on their shores,
If and when the varroa mite arrives in Australia, bee exportation will cease. Australia would no longer be able to afford to lose any more of the bees that pollinate its own food supply. If the mites make it here, the rest of the world loses its food supply first - virtually immediately, but definitely within the space of a few years. One possible impact would be that almost half the food supply of the US could be gone within one winter.

Razak Baginda: No Prima Facie Case

Blogging live from Shah Alam Court:
I have to make this brief as I am typing from the blackberry’s pathetically small keyboard.
The trial of Altantuya Shaaribu took an interesting turn today when Judge Mohd Zaki ruled that the prosecution team failed to establish a prima facie case against Razak Baginda.
It means that Razak Baginda won’t be called to enter his defence on the charge of abetting the murder of Altantuya, pressed against him almost two years ago.
Bizarrely, the other accused Shirul and Azilah, have been ordered to enter defence.
Razak was mobbed by the reporters but he refused to make any official statement to the press, just yet. He left the court complex in a chauffeured driven XC 90.
If you ask me, the prosecution team has no other choice but the seek the appeal avenue to save whatever credibility they have left.
Written by elviza