Rebutting Jabu’s claims about the Penan

 Agrobusiness/GM food, Civil society, Development issues, Environment, Malaysian finance/business, Marginalised groups, Poverty  9 Responses »
Sep 162009
 

Sarawak Deputy Chief Minister Alfred Jabu made some claims about the Penan while lashing out at NGOs. He said the NGOs were taking advantage of the plight of the less than three per cent of the Penan population who were still nomadic. This excerpt from the Borneo Post: “They (negative NGOs) are living off the misery of the few, and manufactured lies. This is what we must fight. “I have known the Penan community for more than 40 years. They are striving for advancement. Only less than three per cent are still nomadic. “And it is this three per cent that the negative NGOs speak up for. Is this a fair representation when we have another 97 per cent of Penans who have settled down?” he asked. He said most of the Penans were successful people after they had followed government programmes to get them out of poverty. He said [Read more]

Samy’s men win, but MIC faces uncertain future

 Ethnic and inter-religious relations, M'sian politics, Neo-liberal economics, Poverty, Workers' rights  15 Responses »
Sep 122009
 

Samy Vellu’s men might have swept the top posts in the MIC party elections, but the future of race-based politics and parties remains distinctly bleak. Leaving aside the lack of renewal in the party’s top leadership, the reality is that race-based parties are catering to a shrinking “market”, despite the best attempts of politicians to whip up ethnic sentiment. Thus, we now see attempts to use religion for political mileage. All this at great cost to unity.

Beware the perils of health care “liberalisation”

 Health care, M'sian politics, Neo-liberal economics  14 Responses »
Sep 092009
 

Michael Moore’s must-see documentary, Sicko And then came the expose of a PR campaign by the private health care industry to discredit Moore’s documentary… I was reading the latest edition of The Edge – I am interested to see how the business folks think and what motivates them – when I came across a report that private hospitals are full because of the H1N1 alert. You would think that this would keep these private hospitals busy. But folks in the private hospital industry are actually worried – not because of the H1N1 outbreak – but because these flu patients do not bring high enough revenue yield! “Flu patients could occupy the beds for up to five to six days and yet make less money [for the hospitals] than those that come in for higher-yield procedures such as minor surgeries but who would only occupy the beds for about three days,” [Read more]

IMF’s call for GST is part of neo-liberal agenda

 Economy, Health care, IMF/World Bank, Neo-liberal economics  14 Responses »
Aug 192009
 

The IMF’s call for Malaysia to expedite a goods and services tax (GST) and slash subsidies is part of its larger – and now widely discredited – neo-liberal agenda. The IMF itself is struggling for relevance now as many developing countries especially in Latin America have shunned its advice after seeing the damage done to the national economies of that continent. The neo-liberal agenda, part of the “Washington Concensus”, is to cut taxes for the rich and the corporations, slash subsidies on social spending, and promote privatisation of essential services or “user-pay” models that benefit large corporations, including MNCs. The GST is a regressive tax that will hurt the poor, who are now outside the income tax bracket. If a tax on spending is introduced, the poor will bear a disproportionately higher tax burden (in terms of their spending compared to their income) than the rich.

Indonesia: 40 years of silence

 Accountability, Asean, Corporate agenda, Human rights  3 Responses »
Jun 232009
 

Here’s a haunting documentary to look out for. Some 500,000 to 1 million Indonesians were butchered in the mid-1960s. The synopsis from the official website: Directed by anthropologist Robert Lemelson and edited by two-time Academy Award winner Pietro Scalia, “40 years of silence: An Indonesian tragedy” is a moving feature length documentary film about one of the most horrific chapters in Indonesia’s history.

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