LYNCHING A GOVERNMENT

Blog Takes

One of the more intelligent bloggers around here on planet earth Gopal Raj Kumar has this piece that Malaysians ought to read to understand why the USA has adopted to take action in the 1MDB saga.

A LYNCH MOB OF BLACKS DRUNK WITH POWER

Loretta Lynch, a most unfortunate name for an African American in the position of Attorney General of the United States.

Lynch will live in infamy alongside other notorious African Americans like Colin Powell and Condolessa Rice who engaged in murderous campaigns of lies and brutality against defenceless people; and for all the wrong reasons they embedded themselves in continuing an oppression they themselves are victims of:

Lynch on the other hand will go down in history for her egregious, torrid vilification and defamation of the government of Malaysia and its Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

To best describe this situation a phrase from the English political satire, Black Adder would suffice:”Baldric, it is the way of the world, the oppressed always kick down”.

As an African American from the lynch mob state of North Carolina, which witnessed some of the most brutal anti black violence over 2 centuries, one would have expected that Loretta Lynch would tread a little more carefully and sensitively when attacking a smaller sovereign state, resisting her bullying big government’s aggressive attempts to spreading its hegemony in south east Asia.

It is this kind of betrayal of friends, by an ultra right wing unelected coterie of Neo Conservatives (Neo Cons) in Washington that will eventually catapult democratic developing countries like Malaysia into the orbit of a more friendly, responsible, reliable and powerful China .

What Loretta Lynch said at the press conference she conducted in 20 July 2016 at the Oval office is described by her Department of Justice (DOJ) in the following terms:

“Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at Press Conference Announcing Significant Kleptocracy Enforcement Action to Recover More Than $1 Billion Obtained from Corruption Involving Malaysian Sovereign Wealth Fund”

Loretta has become judge, jury and executioner all in one by declaring Malaysia’s government a “kleptocracy”. Sadly this is the tenor of US foreign policy all over again. Under the Obama presidency, the George Bush Jnr. policies of his Republican predecessor have not only found refuge but also effective continuity, fertile imagination and the willingess to implement.

A LITTLE BACKGROUND TO AN AMERICAN UNDERSTANDING OF KLEPTOCRACIES

The inconsistency of US foreign policy and in its morality is best gauged by its selective implementation and enforcement of its policies on the one hand over those who accept US domination over them and on the other on those who resist their heavy handedness and bullying like the Malaysian government has for over a decade now.

Interestingly the US never described their late Filipino ally Ferdinand Marcos a Kleptomaniac nor his government a kleptocracy which it was, till it was too late. It never described the late Indonesian dictator General Suharto as a murderer or a Kleptomaniac again till it was too late. The US has never described or charged any of its friends in any of the undemocratic , totalitarian Arab states as kleptocracies, kleptomaniacs or corrupt.

The current US administration works actively to destabilize the government of Malaysia for two reasons.

One because unlike Tun Dr. Mahathir who whilst preaching his pro Malay, anti Semitic, anti Western credentials, from one side of his mouth, was in fact a man whose wealth and security was very much a matter left in the very capable hands of Jewish Britons and Americans. But Dr. Mahathir also to his detriment never reciprocated the CIA’s goodwill towards him when it turned a blind eye to his kleptocracy in exchange for spying facilities in south east Asia.

A GROVELLING UNDIGNIFIED MAHATHIR TUGGING AT THE TAIL COATS OF NEOCONS

Dr. Mahathir was in fact a great admirer of Neo Con Paul Wolfowitz, the man credited with directing and orchestrating the genocidal war against Islam and the Arab world. It just happened that the Neo Cons did not like the prickly cantankerous Mahathir as much as he liked them. They preferred the more compliant and overly ambitious Anwar Ibrahim, even though Anwar was and remains as much someone who looks down on Malays and Muslims (except where they pave his way in politics).

Dr. Mahathir is also known to have approached the Neo Cons to allow him to ‘convince’ Saddam Hussein to step down from the presidency of Iraq to avoid the inevitable US invasion of Iraq. They turned him down. They mocked him privately. They were disparaging of him.

Wolfowitz who is both Jewish and an extreme Zionist earned his reputation in infamy as the architect of that US foreign policy driving it to literally annex a sovereign state, murder its citizens and appropriate its assets without legal or moral authority or justification.That sovereign state is Iraq.

Wolfowitz was also the principal author of that lie about the mythical ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq in order to justify the US attack on Iraq subduing it then forcing regime change in in that country.

The only reason Dr. Mahathir publicly espoused his dislike for Paul Wolfowitz is because Wolfowitz shunned the man he disliked in preference for a more compliant and obedient servant in Anwar Ibrahim. The Neo Cons cultivated Anwar Ibrahim at the world bank right an unsuspecting under Dr. Mahathir’s nose.

The Neo Cons cultivated Anwar to help Wolfowitz and the Neo Cons, to execute their plans for destabilizing Malaysia with Anwar’s Reformasi campaign and to strengthen their ‘pro Muslim credentials’ where Southeast Asia was concerned.

It was like all other “springs”, an attempt at a civilian coup by the Neo Cons in Southeast Asia through their agents in Malaysia. Dr. Mahathir’s dislike of Wolfowitz had nothing to do with Wolfowitz being Jewish.

Wolfowitz and the Neo Cons have since re connected with Mahathir following Mahathir’s recent fall from grace. Dr. Mahathir has been aggressively lobbying behind the scenes for Neo Con intervention in Malaysia to unseat the government of Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

What Dr. Mahathir fails to learn from history is that the Americans don’t keep their assets like him for longer than they need them. They dispose of them in the ugliest possible way betraying them when these assets need them the most. But thats for Dr. Mahathir to work out for himself.

Dr. Mahathir, his daughter Marina and elements of Bersih are now undoubtedly  identified as the parties who conspired with civil societies, the NED and other individuals in Malaysia to file that outrage in the complaint, the subject of the DOJ’s ‘judgment’. In it are threats to confiscate Malaysian owned property currently held in the US.

Oddly enough whilst Loretta Lynch alleges that the property of 1MDB constitutes inappropriate investing of Malaysia’s sovereign wealth ( a matter she has no legal authority to decide or adjudicate on),she fails to say what her government plans to do with those properties they plan to confiscate. She fails to say by what legal authority or justification these properties will be confiscated and who the rightful owners will be, if they succeed in confiscating those properties they have identified for the purpose in the US.

Lynch does not say whether these assets will be returned to the Malaysians she appears to care so much for. And she fails to say who in Malaysia she or her government will recognize as a lawful authority to whom they would return those properties to if she does succeed in confiscating them.

Bells begin to ring. Is this the sound of another attempt at a coup in Malaysia? will it be Anwar Ibrahim,the Neo Con’s blue eyed traitor ? or will it be the unseen hand of that other betrayer and pain in their proverbial butts, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohammed? Two sides of the same coin. Whatever the result, whatever the truth, Tun Dr. Mahathir has unwittingly let out the genie from his bottle. The consequences are now for him to face. And face it alone he will.

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY-ITS IDEAS OF JUSTICE AND ITS TRAIL OF LIES

American foreign policy is recognized not for its successes. They are far and few. US foreign policy is more often than not recognized in its breach. It is only recognized for its very predictable and consistent failures . Whether this be the Vietnam war ( precipitated by another infamous lie “the Gulf of Tonkin incident”), the failures in Korea, Nicaragua, Argentina and Chile, in south central America and northern Africa and all of all in the middle east, it doesn’t end there.

In the context of the 1MDB DOJ threats a case in point: the Saudi Royal Family for instance have not broken any Saudi law in the US or in their own kingdom by appropriating all of the wealth of the desert kingdom to the themselves in much the same way the DOJ alleges the Najib government has done with 1MDB funds.

The Saudi Royal Family holds most of their nation’s assets appropriated in more unaccountable and oppressive circumstances than what is alleged against Malaysia and its government. And that too, the Saudi appropriation of national wealth is without the consent of the Saudi people. Yet that same ‘anti kleptocracy laws’ and high the morality of Loretta Lynch and her DOJ appear not to care much about Saudi Arabia or its people in this regard. Saudi assets in the US or the excesses of the Saudi Royal Family by any universal or even US standards remain unchecked. So why the double standards?

What the Saudis do is constitutional and lawful in Saudi Arabia in as much as what 1MDB does is lawful and constitutional in Malaysia. So why is it that what the Saudis do with the monies from their treasuries investing in the US  including spending millions at casinos in Las Vegas is not a crime?

Why is the conduct of the Saudi Royal Family not subject to the same colourful language used by the DOJ or subject to threats of seizure under the same act? Is it because the US actively supports an undemocratic totalitarian theocracy in Saudi Arabia for its own strategic and expedient geo political purposes? or is it because there is another agenda at play here?

The Saudis have more leverage presently than the US can counter, at least at this point in US Saudi relations. That equation will change when US dependency on the Saudis, their oil and their military alliance in the middle east will cease to be of any benefit to US foreign policy in the region. Rooster today, feather duster tomorrow.

1 MDB WHOSE MONEY IS IT? WHAT LEGAL AUTHORITY DOES THE US HAVE TO DECIDE WHAT MALAYSIAN LAW OUGHT TO BE AND WHO OUGHT TO BE INVESTIGATED?

Getting back to Lynch and the DOJ, they have condemned any and everyone they believe ‘conspired’ to do whatever it is they claim these people did with 1MDB funds. Lynch fails to identify any law broken in Malaysia or the US by either Jho Lo or Prime Minister Najib’s children who by implication of her remarks are suspected of breaking. She fails to identify any law broken in the US by the people she identifies.

Inspite of there being no valid finding by any court or tribunal in Malaysia or in the US against Jho Lo or Najib’s children or anyone else, in respect of 1MDB, Loretta Lynch has gone on record accusing certain  Malaysian officials of being Kleptocrats.

The government of Malaysia she indirectly refers to as a kleptocracy and certain unnamed people, who by implication of her language could only be Datuk Seri Najib, Prime Minister of Malaysia, she apportions criminal liability to over 1MDB.

The language and temperament of the DOJ in this matter is unprecedented in recent US history and by any civilized standards of inter governmental behaviour. Even if there is a case to answer by any of the people named or identified by the DOJ’s language, they will not now be able to receive a fair hearing, if the matter should go to trial after what Loretta Lynch and her FBI wingman has had to say about the matter.

There is nothing in either Malaysia’s constitution or by any known treaty in international law whereby Malaysia is known to have surrendered its sovereignty to the US at any time (unless Dr. Mahathir who during his term in office signed off allowing |the many covert defence and clandestine activities of the US on Malaysian soil during his time in office). The US DOJ appears to think otherwise.

How and where 1MDB invests is a matter for those responsible for 1MDB to decide. And any failures or breaches of law are for the Malaysian parliament and its courts to decide on and not for Loretta Lynch, the US DOJ or any court in the US to deal with.

What assets 1MDB may have purchased  for itself is for 1MDB to decide. How much it pays in commissions to middlemen is a classified matter for it and it alone to determine.

There is no legal power, no authority or mandate in the hands of the US or its executive to validly exercise over Malaysia on behalf of Malaysians on any complaint in respect of 1MDB or any other matter that is internal and domestic in nature.

If US laws on what it calls anti kleptocracy laws were fairly and consistently applied, the DOJ would have arrested Hank Paulsen and other bankers in the US who caused the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. No US or foreign banker has been  tried or jailed over that trillion dollar disaster till today. And the evidence is compelling. The silence of the US DOJ is an indictment of the US system of justice and that of its government.

If such powers as the kleptocracy laws were fairly applied, the US would have confiscated the assets of the murderous regime of General Suharto gained from Suharto’s plundering of Indonesia’s economy, in cahoots with the father in law of Dr. Mahathir’s son, a man by the name of Liem Soei Liong.

Liem Soei Liong and Suharto by US and world bank estimates plundered Indonesia’s banks and its financial system to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Till today assets stolen by the Suharto and Liem families remain safe and protected in the US. No DOJ action has been ever been effectively mounted against either of them.

OH HOW THE MIGHTY FALL-ANOTHER OF HILLARY’S WOMEN OF COURAGE FALLS

Today it was announced in France that IMF chief Christine Lagarde was ordered Friday to stand trial in France over a massive state payout to a controversial tycoon when she was French economy minister, dealing a setback to her stellar career.

France’s highest appeals court dismissed Lagarde’s challenge against the decision to try her for negligence in her handling of a dispute between a state-owned bank and businessman Bernard Tapie.

Tapie walked away with a staggering 404 million euros ($445 million) in compensation in 2008 after Lagarde ordered the long-running row over the sale of sports gear giant Adidas to be resolved by arbitration.

France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy arrested in France two years ago after his presidency ended on grounds he had accepted bribes from the late Libyan leader Muamar Gaddafi.

Hillary and Bill Clinton accepted tens of millions of dollars from Liem Soie Liem and Mochtar Riyadi another Indonesian Chinese kleptomaniac who backed Clinton’s presidential campaigns. Each of the above have assets in the US capable of confiscation by the DOJ.

Sarkozy uses his wife (former model and former girlfriend of Rock Star Eric Clapton) to hold his assets in the US which incidentally includes two mansions in Beverley Hills in California, works of art by Claude Monet, Manet, one by Edvard Munch and other assets in New York.

THE US SUHARTO MAHATHIR CONNECTION

Liem Soei Liem’s son Anthony Salim has a number of nominee companies out of Singapore, the BVI and other tax and secrecy havens which hold numerous assets of Suharto and Anthony’s late father in the US.

There are assets belonging to the Mahathir family that are also held by nominees in Europe and the US which have never been the subject of proceedings or investigation publicly at least. How it is the DOJ is unaware of the existence of these investments and illicit assets held by a Chinese nominee of the Mahathir clan and others is quite extraordinary and perplexing.

The question is, why does the US selectively attack the government of Prime Minister Najib Razak?  The answer to this question lies somewhere between Dr. Mahathir Mohammad’s secret deals with the US government under that innocuous Bilateral Training and Consultation Agreement he signed with the Americans in order that they would not topple him.

If indeed Najib Razak is as guilty as his opponents claim he is, why is there no legal action against Datuk Seri Najib and anyone else the opposition and now the Americans claim are corrupt ? There is after all legislation in Malaysia to deal with such matters on a proper complaint with the admissible evidence in an open court where such complaints rightfully belong.

Loretta Lynch has already been called to resign for her numerous embarrassing and questionable actions and omissions, which recently have surfaced, been the subject of discussion but little attention in the US. This being election year and the end of her tenure anyway it is unlikely she will be a centre of focus for her duplicity and incompetence in high office.

It won’t be long before the Malaysian government takes to task the Mahathirs and Ambigas of this world and put them on trial as it did with Anwar Ibrahim. After all the Malaysian Bar, the opposition’s partner in crime, inspite of claiming the courts and judges are unfair and controlled by government are happy to continue to use these courts ‘for a fee’ of course at the expense of their clients.

If Malaysia’s government is reluctant to take on Dr. Mahathir for his complicity in offences of a more serious nature than that alleged against Najib Razak, the Americans just might do so themselves. And this may just be the smokescreen that have been waiting for all along.

BERSIH FIVE

The sudden and extreme involvement of the DOJ in the US injecting their precipitous language and strong arm tactics in the 1 MDB affair is without doubt the pre cursor to what we warned of earlier.

Ambiga Srinivasan, the Malaysian Bar and the opposition parties supported by American and European funded NGOs have all been planning a riotous and dangerous parade which will if unchecked turn Malaysia into another Syria. There will be bloodshed, There will be destruction of property and there will be running street battles.

Dr. Mahathir has volunteered to run with the crowds in demanding the government of Datuk Seri Najib Razak  resign. It is his belief the police will not touch him and that Bersih 5 will bring down the Najib Razak government this time.

We live in interesting times.