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Live – Anti-GST Workers’ Day rally in Butterworth

A Workers’ Day gathering is scheduled to begin at 10.00am in Butterworth. Workers are expected to register their opposition to the impending Goods and Services Tax. I hope to bring you some live updates.


Seri Tanjung Pinang Phase 2 detailed EIA passes socio-environmental costs to public

This is the concluding part of a media statement issued by the Penang Forum Steering Committee on 3 April 2014.

Why is 1MDB’s RM18bn parked abroad?

Anwar Ibrahim has highlighted an Edge report that raised the question as to why 1MDB has parked RM18bn in the Cayman Islands and not brought it back to Malaysia?

Without a land revaluation surplus of RM2.7bn, 1MDB would have posted a loss of RM1.8bn in 2013, pointed out Anwar, citing the Edge report.

Anwar’s statement follows:

Obama: ‘Malaysia won’t succeed if non-Muslims don’t have opportunity’

Don’t discriminate. Instead, treat people as you would like to be treated, says Obama, in a message to youth that strikes close to home.

Journalist asks Obama why he won’t meet with Anwar

Forward the video to 36:30, when a CBS journalist questions Obama, whose response is somewhat wishy washy. Najib is also asked if he has made any effort towards political reforms.

When another US president visited Malaysia …

I came across this eye-witness account of the scene around KL during then US president Lyndon Johnson’s visit to Malaysia on 30 October 1966. His visit to Malaysia took place a year after the United States deployed regular combat troops to Vietnam, following its stepped up involvement after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964. Apart from Malaysia, his tour of South-East Asia took him to Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines. In next-door Indonesia, in the transition to US-backed Suharto’s New Order regime, a massive anti-communist purge that killed over 500000 people had subsided by March 1966.

Obama, poster boy of Corporate America?

There is increasing speculation that President Barack Obama who is visiting Malaysia this weekend is on a charm offensive (or will there be some arm-twisting?) to seal the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. If he succeeds, the TPPA will open the floodgates to domination of the region’s economies by large multinational corporations at the expense of national sovereignty via an investor-state dispute settlement mechanism.

Pepper Estate residents receive eviction notices

Dark clouds of uncertainty have descended on another established community in Penang that is set to be displaced – this time by a 30-acre project in Pepper Estate to be undertaken by a “lifestyle property developer”.

Penang Port: Outrageous privatisation by stealth

Penang Port was quietly privatised to Sea Port Terminal on 23 Novemeber 2013 – and it was carried out by restricted tender. Another strategic national asset falls into the clutches of Syed Mokhtar Albukhary’s business empire, rather than into the hands of the people of Penang.