Vote Out Corruption, Racism

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106871

http://anwaribrahimblog.com/2012/03/13/malaysians-must-vote-out-corruption-racism/

Malaysia’s charismatic opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim is tapping the spirit of the Arab Spring to end the 55-year unbroken rule of the United Malay National Organsiation (UMNO) and its allies in the Southeast Asian nation.

“Malaysia cannot be isolated from what is happening throughout the world, particularly the Muslim world,” said the 64-year-old head of the Parti Kedilan Rakyat (PKR), or People’s Justice Party. “For us in Malaysia these are very reassuring signs: this trend towards democracy, freedom and more accountability in the Arab world.”

His ongoing campaign for more freedom will be tested in Malaysia’s provincial and national legislatures, where the PKR made history in the 2008 polls, winning five state governments out of 13, and 82 seats out of 222 in the national parliament.

But Anwar admitted during an interview in the Thai capital that he faces a formidable challenge, given how UMNO where he was once a rising star has persecuted him since he was fired as the country’s deputy prime minister in 1998 on charges of corruption and sodomy.

He was freed after six years in jail after a court overturned the charges. But fresh allegations were made in 2008 that he had sodomised a former male aide, another case that was overturned by a court in January this year.

Excerpts from the interview follow:

Q: Has your January court victory boosted your political fortunes?

A: It does not make a difference among my supporters because they know the case was based on trumped up charges. But it does make a difference for those who are non-committal or ruling party supporters. They received a daily barrage of news from the media during the case that Anwar is guilty and the judiciary is independent.

Q: Would you prefer a general election early this year? Or when the current parliament’s term runs out in March 2013?

A: It is very likely the elections will be held this year. The massive campaign now by the government suggests that they may go for an election in late March or any time in June. So, we have to be prepared because elections in Malaysia are a mockery of the democratic system. The media is controlled and the campaign period is only seven to eight days – the shortest in the world.

Q: You have emerged as a symbol of a new Malaysia after decades of corrupt and authoritarian rule by the governing coalition. Do voters have a reason for optimism?

A: Although I am not that young (laughs) …, our policies are clear for Malaysia to mature as a democracy. What the Arab Spring people are talking about and the Occupy Wall Street movement is talking about in terms of justice and being opposed to unbridled capitalism that caters only to the very rich and the very few are what we have been articulating.

Q: Does that mean a break from the state-driven capitalism of UMNO?

A: Our economic agenda seeks to offer an alternative to this policy, which I consider obsolete. It only benefitted the rich families, members of the ruling clique and their cronies through contracts and shares. They became billionaires by using the Malay privileges. And they continue to defend this system tooth and nail because of their personal interest.

Q: UMNO’s other defining feature has been its race-based politics. But you head a coalition drawing on many ethnic groups. Is Malaysia ready for your politics seeking to transcend these deep divisions, particularly the Malay majority?

A: It is challenging. I don’t deny the fact that it will be difficult. I have been accused by the governing party of trying to sell the country to the Chinese, or under us the country will be Christianised, and if I attend Hindu functions it has also become an issue. So, they are using these racist lines to attack me.

To be discriminated because of race is something unthinkable and unacceptable in this day and age. I believe the majority of Malaysians can be convinced to accept this view.

Q: What about sodomy?

A: I have said that the law on sodomy is a crime. That does not mean I am pro-gay marriage. As a Muslim I and even the majority of non-Muslims in Malaysia believe in the sanctity of marriage.

Q: You are not the only opposition figure in Southeast Asia who has been harassed by their respective governments. Burma has Aung San Suu Kyi, Cambodia has Sam Rainsy and Singapore has Chee Soon Juan. Why do they fear a vibrant opposition?

A: We have been late in the process of understanding that our countries must mature as a democracy, to respect democratic institutions, respect the right to dissent and the right to freedom. The Arab Spring has been particularly useful for us in the Muslim world in this regard. It has had an impact about the meaning of democracy.

Q: So is it time to write a requiem for ‘Asian Values,’ which was asserted by strongmen like Singapore’s former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew and your former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad to justify authoritarian rule for decades?

A: The notion of ‘Asian Values’ is obsolete. It was never relevant in the first place. It was not even Asian values as we talk about Islamic values. It was a perverted excuse to benefit those in power.

Q: But you were part of the system and benefited from it before you fell out with former premier Mahathir?

A: I cannot absolve myself. But in my speeches I did talk about the condescending view leaders had towards their citizens. Such views have no place in politics today.

Surveillance Inc: How Western Tech Firms Are Helping Arab Dictators

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/surveillance-inc-how-western-tech-firms-are-helping-arab-dictators/254008/

http://anwaribrahimblog.com/2012/03/07/surveillance-inc-how-western-tech-firms-are-helping-arab-dictators/

As democratic movements spread in the Middle East, governments are cracking down, and that means big business for the companies who help them do it.

Reliance means vulnerability, and the activists and citizen journalists of the Arab uprisings rely heavily on the Internet and mobile technology. They use text messaging to coordinate protests, for example, or social media sites to upload the photos and videos that then make it into mainstream global media. In the first protests in Tunisia, because traditional journalists could not get access, citizen journalists filled in, using YouTube and the live-streaming platform UStream to give the world — including, for example, the Egyptians and Syrians who later began revolts of their own — a window into the events there.

For all of the good this technology has done, activists are also beginning to understand the harm it can do. As Evgeny Morozov wrote in The Net Delusion, his book on the Internet’s darker sides, “Denying that greater information flows, combined with advanced technologies … can result in the overall strengthening of authoritarian regimes is a dangerous path to take, if only because it numbs us to potential regulatory interventions and the need to rein in our own Western corporate excesses.”

The communications devices activists use are not as safe as they might believe, and dozens of companies — many of them based in North America and Europe — are selling technology to authoritarian governments that can be used against democratic movements. Such tools can exploit security flaws in the activists’ technology, intercept a user’s communications, or even pinpoint their location. In many cases, this technology has led to the arrest, torture, and even death of individuals whose only “crime” was exercising their universal right to free speech. And, in most of these cases, the public knew nothing about it.

“The Chinese could come here and learn from you.”

Recent investigations by the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News have revealed just how expansively these technologies are already being used. Intelligence agencies throughout the Middle East can today scan, catalogue, and read virtually every email in their country. The technology even allows them to change emails while en route to their recipient, as Tunisian authorities sometimes did before the revolution.

These technologies turn activists’ phones against them, allowing governments to listen in on phone calls, read text messages, even scan cell networks and pinpoint callers with voice recognition. They allow intelligence agents to monitor movements of activists via a GPS locator updated every fifteen seconds. And by tricking users into installing malware on their devices — as is currently happening in Syria – government agents can remotely turn on a laptop webcam or a cell phone microphone without its user knowing.

In Syria recently, American journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Rémi Ochlik were killed by a mortar attack that may have been targeted to the locations of their satellite phones. We don’t know for sure how the Syrian army tracked them, but Lebanese intelligence had recorded Syrian officials as planning to target Western journalists, and following satellite phone signals is just one of the tech-aided ways they could have done it.

Syria and other abusive Middle Eastern regimes rely on technology companies such as Area SpA, the Italian firm that contracted with the regime there to build a surveillance center, and that pulled out only after exposure by Bloomberg News prompted protests at their Italian headquarters. There’s also the American company Bluecoat Systems. When it was reported that their Internet-monitoring equipment had been re-sold to the Syrian government, a senior VP told the Wall Street Journal, “We don’t want our products to be used by the government of Syria or any other country embargoed by the United States.”

For all the evil of Syria’s regime, it’s hard to ignore the role and often the complicity of Western technology companies that can sometimes act as dictator’s little helper. While Syria’s use of surveillance has been particularly egregious and well-documented, this problem goes far beyond just one country. For years, Western firms have been selling surveillance equipment to the most brutal regimes. And while sales to Syria often violate sanctions policy, such companies can sell to many other authoritarian countries — many of them U.S. and E.U. allies — without repercussions.

In pre-revolutionary Tunisia, surveillance firms gave discounts to a government agency because the firms wanted to use the country for testing and bug-tracking. The technology was so advanced that it prompted the post-revolutionary head of the Tunisian government’s Internet agency to remark, “I had a group of international experts from a group here lately, who looked at the equipment and said: ‘The Chinese could come here and learn from you.’”

In Bahrain, dozens of political activists have testified that the security officers who detained and beat them also read transcripts of their text messages and emails likely gathered from technology purchased from Germany-based Trovicor, a former Nokia Siemens subsidiary. According to Bloomberg News, a spokesman for the latter confirmed the sale and maintenance of this equipment to the Bahraini government.

“The bulk of this digital arms trade happens under the radar.

Qaddafi’s regime was later found to have spied on Al Jazeera journalist Khaled Mehiri by monitoring his emails and Facebook messages using technology made by French company Amesys. Mehiri was later interrogated and threatened by the head of Libya’s intelligence service. The reporters who found Mehiri’s surveillance file in Tripoli’s abandoned Internet monitoring center discovered similar files on many other journalists, human rights advocates, and democratic activists.

The mass surveillance industry is a large one — estimates now put the global market at $5 billion per year. The businesspeople getting rich from the crackdown industry don’t often talk to the media, but some of the few who do can seem less than concerned about their potential role in their clients’ violence.

Jerry Lucas is the president of Telestragies Inc, the company that runs ISS World, the trade show circuit (also known as the “Wiretapper’s Ball”) that brings these companies and their clients together. Asked by the Guardian in November if he would be comfortable knowing that regimes in Zimbabwe and North Korea were purchasing the technology from his trade shows, he responded, “That’s just not my job to determine who’s a bad country and who’s a good country.” He added, “That’s not our business, we’re not politicians … we’re a for-profit company. Our business is bringing governments together who want to buy this technology.”

This is the crux of the problem: These companies seem fully aware of what they’re doing – after all, the better they understand how to help secret police find and terrorize dissidents, the better their products will do on the market — but far less concerned about the implications. As Dutch member of the E.U. Parliament Marietje Schaake told us last week, “The bulk of this digital arms trade happens under the radar; through spin-offs of well-known companies, but mostly by players without a reputation to lose with consumers.”

Schaake, who has been leading an effort in Europe to halt the sale of surveillance technologies to repressive regimes, helped pass E.U. export restrictions to some government actors in Syria. In the U.S., Rep. Chris Smith introduced a bill in the House that would require American companies listed on the stock exchange to report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on how they conduct due diligence on human rights issues.

Unfortunately, apart from the work of a few individuals, this problem has gone mostly ignored by Western governments, and the digital surveillance trade still seems to be flourishing. Congress, the E.U., and the U.N. all have the ability act — by requiring the relevant companies to at least transparently evaluate whether or not their technology is aiding in human rights abuses, if not banning those sales outright — but so far, even as dozens of Syrians die every day, they haven’t.

Anwar Ibrahim Among Key Speakers at World PR Meet

From Khaleej times

Malaysia’s former Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, will be among a line-up of eminent speakers addressing the 20th biennial Public Relations World Congress (PRWC) in Dubai next month.

Others in the panel of 35 speakers from the worlds of politics, public relations and the media at the event highlighting a core theme “From the Arab Street to Wall Street, Communications in the Age of Dialogue,” include British public relations guru Lord Bell and the former head of Al Jazeera, Wadah Khanfar, said Sunil John, Chairman of the Organising Committee of PRWC Dubai, and Chief Executive Officer of Asda’a Burson-Marsteller, organisers of the congress said at a Press conference on Thursday.

PRWC, being organised by the International Public Relations Association-Gulf Chapter (IPRA-GC) in partnership with the National Media Council of the UAE, will take place at the Grand Hyatt Dubai over three days from March 13 to 15.

John said politics, business and media in the Middle East are undergoing significant upheavals in the wake of the Arab Spring. “As PR professionals, it is up to us to help manage that change. The PRWC offers us the opportunity to hear first hand the ideas, trends and concepts that will form the basis of successful communications strategies in the years ahead.”

Faisal Al Zahrani, President of IPRA-GC, said: “We are delighted that the first Congress to be held in the Middle East can boast not only an impressive list of speakers, but also a hugely exciting programme.

“Given the events of the past year, these themes are especially relevant to those of us who practice public relations in the Middle East, and we are sure that industry professionals will be extremely keen to hear these diverse voices debate the real issues facing PR today.”

Other high profile speakers include Lord Bell, who played a key role in former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s three successful election campaigns and now the Chairman of Chime Communications; and Wadah Khanfar, Lord Chadlington, Chairman of the Huntsworth group and Mohamed Abu Hamed, Vice President, Free Egyptians Party and Member of Parliament in Egypt.

Abdullah Jum’ah, the former President and CEO of Saudi Aramco, will deliver the welcome keynote for the Congress,.

The PRWC Organising Committee will shortly announce the second line of speakers. At least 500 PR professionals are expected to attend the PRWC, where they will have the opportunity to participate in Master Classes and Training Workshops, creating a compelling platform for information sharing and knowledge transfer.

The last Public Relations World Congress was held in 2010 in Lima, Peru, and attended by industry representatives from 39 countries, while the 2008 Public Relations World Congress was held in Beijing, China. In both instances, the event brought significant media and industry attention to the host country with the world’s foremost communications professionals and media experts attending the sessions. The first ever Congress was held in Brussels, Belgium in 1955.

http://anwaribrahimblog.com/2012/02/17/anwar-ibrahim-among-key-speakers-at-world-pr-meet/

Devotion to the Religion of Islam

From Ka'b ibn Maalik al-Ansaaree (radhiyallahu 'anhu) who said that Allah's Messenger, Muhammad SAW (pbuh) said:

"Two hungry wolves let loose amongst sheep will not cause more harm to them than a person's craving after wealth and status will do to his Religion"

(Hadith reported by Ahmad, al-Bukhari and others and its chain of narration is sahih)

So this is a very greta example struck by the Prophet SAW (pbuh) showing how the Muslim's Religion is destroyed by craving after wealth and worldly status. It shows that the corruption to one's Religion caused by this is no less than the destruction caused if two ravenous wolves were left to spend the night amongst a flock of sheep whose shephers was absent, and they were free to slaughter and feed at will. So as is clear in such a state none of the sheep, except perhaps a few would survive the carnage caused by the two wolves. So Allah's Messenger SAW (pbuh) informed that a person's craving after wealth and status will not cause less damage than the damage caused to the sheep by the two wolves. Rather the damage caused will either be the same, or greater. This shows that when a person craves after wealth and status not much of the Muslim's Religion will remain unharmed, just as only a few of the sheep would escape the destruction caused by the two wolves.

So flee, may Allah have mercy upon you, from this mad craving after this world and its finery, and there is no salvation from that which has been destined for a person.

So he who wishes for salvation then let it be the case that his desire for his Religion is his foundation and guiding principle, if this is so then Allah will protect him and protect his Religion. Then from the comprehensive matters that should be known is How the Muslim Deals with People.