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President Bush Wishes Muslims eid Mubarak

Labels: Bush, Islam Hadhari, Luar Negeri

Labels: Bush, Islam Hadhari, Malaysia, Tazkirah

Berucap pada Sidang Kemuncak Perniagaan Apec di sini semalam, Bush berkata pendekatan Malaysia adalah antara beberapa langkah pemimpin negara Asia Tenggara menangani ancaman kumpulan militan yang sudah meragut nyawa mereka yang tidak berdosa di Bali, Jakarta dan Manila.

"Negara di rantau ini memberi bantuan ekonomi kepada masyarakat susah di mana pengganas beroperasi supaya kita dapat membantu pemimpin sederhana agar masyarakatnya menolak keganasan dan politik radikal.

"Di Malaysia, Perdana Menteri mempromosikan apa yang beliau gelar Islam Hadhari kepada rakyat Malaysia untuk membuktikan bahawa sebuah negara Islam boleh menjadi moden, demokratik, toleransi dan berdaya saing dalam ekonomi,” katanya.

Dalam ucapan yang banyak menyentuh isu keselamatan daripada ekonomi itu, Bush turut memuji kerjasama Malaysia dan negara Asia Tenggara lain kepada Amerika dalam kempen memerangi keganasan antarabangsa.

Katanya, Malaysia dan Amerika sudah mewujudkan Pusat Serantau Asia Tenggara Bagi Memerangi Keganasan (SEARCCT) di Kuala Lumpur, manakala pusat latihan penguat kuasa undang-undang di Jakarta dan Bangkok pula sedang memantapkan keupayaan pasukan keselamatan di seluruh rantau itu.

"Perang terhadap pengganas di rantau ini adalah antara kejayaan perang terhadap keganasan yang tidak dihebahkan dan banyak yang boleh dipelajari masyarakat dunia daripada pendekatan menangani keganasan yang dilaksanakan di rantau ini," katanya.

Mengenai ekonomi, Bush meminta negara Apec lain menyertai Amerika dalam memastikan kejayaan Pusingan Doha kerana tiada satu negara pun yang mampu memastikan kejayaan rundingan perdagangan antarabangsa itu bersendirian.

Sambil menyatakan tekad Amerika untuk mencapai kejayaan itu, Bush berkata beliau percaya pembukaan pasaran akan memakmurkan ekonomi dunia dan matlamat itu hanya boleh dicapai menerusi rundingan itu.

"Apabila rundingan bersambung semula di Geneva, pemimpin setiap negara perlu membuat keputusan sukar bagi mengurangkan halangan terhadap perdagangan dan kita mesti menumpukan kepada apa yang kita akan peroleh berbanding apa yang kita mungkin hilang," katanya.

Labels: Bush, Islam Hadhari, Malaysia, Pak Lah

Another Bush man in Europe

By Amir Taheri, Special to Gulf News, Published on May 9, 2007

Are the French going to choose what the Americans don't want? Are we going to vote for a French George W. Bush?

These were the questions raised by Marianne, a left-wing Parisian daily in its cover story about the French presidential election.

On Sunday almost 38 million French voters provided the answers. Yes, they wanted Nicholas Sarkozy, the right-of-centre candidate vilified by his political enemies as l'Americain and le copain de George W Bush.

Being a friend and admirer of George W Bush did not seem to be handicap. Efforts by the left to portray Sarkozy as a "Bushiste" started last September when the candidate visited Washington for a 40-minute tete-a -tete with President Bush. Pictures of the Bush-Sarkozy handshake were printed in thousands and distributed throughout France by a shadow group calling itself "Tout Sauf Sarkozy (TSS)".

Sarkozy gave his opponents on the left more ammunition when, after meeting Bush, he spoke of France's " arrogance" during the debate on the liberation of Iraq in 2002.

At times during the campaign, the left gave the impression that the election was more of a referendum on relations with the United States rather than the future of France.

Segelone Royal attracted a string of anti-American figures from across Europe, starting with Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero, among other usual suspects, who spoke of his dream of a Socialist axis between Paris and Madrid.

German "Greens" and " "watermelons" (environmentalists who are green outside and red inside) also turned up en masse along with anti-war activists from Britain and Italy.

The TSS, which included many anti-Bush militant volunteers from the United States, even tried to link Sarkozy to the war in Iraq that more than 80 per cent of the French oppose.

Strong pressure

By last January, Sarkozy was coming under strong pressure from his friends and advisors to distance himself from the US, especially Bush, to cash on what they believed was a deep-rooted anti-American sentiments.

To his credit, Sarkozy refused. Instead, in his only major speech on foreign policy he insisted that repairing relations with Washington, wrecked by the outgoing president Jacques Chirac and his sidekick, prime minister Dominique de Villepin, would be a priority of a Sarkozy administration.

On Sunday night, moments after it had become clear that Sarkozy had won, Bush was the first foreign leader to telephone the new French leader to congratulate him.

An hour later, Sarkozy used his first post-victory speech to send a message to the Americans: We are on your side! Our separation during the debate over the liberation of Iraq was a tragedy!

But that was not all. Sarkozy buried Chirac's hare-brained quest for a multi-polar global system and, instead, called for the major democracies to unite against forces that threaten their security and their way of life.

Chirac saw the war on global terrorism as a figment of Bush's imagination and instead perpetuated the myth of moral equivalence between the West and its enemies.

Not surprisingly, on Sunday night Sarkozy did not mention Chirac once. The French president who had split the democratic camp in the hope of saving the Iraqi despot Saddam Hussain in 2002 had become a fading phantom.

It is not only on such issues as the global war on terrorism, and preventing the Islamic Republic in Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal that Sarkozy is close to Bush.

He has also promised a major tax cut, the first of its kind in modern French politics, the abolition of inheritance tax and more flexible labour laws.

Even the educational reform scheme that Sarko has proposed is partly inspired by Bush's "no child left behind" programme in the United States.

It is in the realm of values that Sarkozy, affectionately called "Sarko" by his supporters, is close to Bush. During the campaign he used a vocabulary that had all but disappeared from the French political lexicon.

He spoke of work, merit, authority, respect, patriotism, and national identity. He said he would fight against self-loathing, multiculturalism, political correctness and moral equivalence between the forces of good and those of evil.

Sarko has warned Islamists inside and outside France that he would no longer grant them the benefit of a doubt in the name of passed misdeeds supposedly committed by the West. He would not allow the hijab and burqa in French official buildings, including places of education.

Served notice

On Sunday night Sarko also served notice on Iran, Syria and Libya that his France will not be a pushover as it had been under Chirac.

Dismissing the so-called "realists" in international affairs as "men struck by illusions", Sarko has promised to develop a values-based foreign policy, even if that means a clash with Vladimir Putin's Russia over such issues as the continued tragedy in Chechnya.

Sarko has promised a smaller government - starting with reducing the number of ministries by almost 50 per cent and committed himself to a thorough reform of the French welfare system that is pushing the nation to the edge of bankruptcy.

Promising to "liquidate" the heritage of the 1968 "revolution" of free love and individual revolt, Sarko says he would pass legislation to restore some of the traditional values and practices destroyed by the so-called "68 generation".

Two issues divide Sarko from Bush. The first concerns Turkey's hopes of becoming a full member of the European Union. Bush is strongly for; Sarko is as strongly against.

The second issue is global warming. Sarko has called on Bush to commit the US to a modified version of the Kyoto accords and assume global leadership in an international effort to protect the environment.

With Sarkozy at the helm in France, the US now enjoys the support of all three major EU powers - the others being Britain and Germany - for the fist time in almost a decade.

And that should enable the Bush administration to undertake major foreign policy initiatives without fear of risking another split among the major democracies.

Iranian author Amir Taheri is based in Europe. Gulfnews

Labels: Bush, France, Luar Negeri

KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 5, 2007): About 2,000 peace activists applauded today as the leaders of the United States and Britain were branded "fascist war criminals" in a conference featuring gruesome exhibits of their alleged crimes.

Outspoken former Malaysian premier Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who hosted the conference here, won a standing ovation after opening it with a call for George W. Bush and Tony Blair to be tried by an unofficial tribunal for war crimes in Iraq.

"We shouldn't hang Blair if the tribunal finds him guilty," said Mahathir, who seemed to save his strongest venom for the British prime minister in an hour-long speech illustrated by pictures of wounded children, deformed babies and tortured men.

"He should always carry the label war criminal, killer of children and liar."

Mahathir, a controversial figure whose own government was accused of human rights abuses bordering on torture, has been leading a campaign to highlight what he calls the human-rights abuses and hypocrisy of U.S.-led forces fighting for democracy in the Middle East.

That campaign reached new heights of graphic intensity today, with an exhibit of alleged war crimes by U.S. forces and their allies over the decades, from Hiroshima to Iraq.

As Mahathir spoke in the main conference room, packed with students and legions of his supporters, tape-recorded screams of tortured men and orphaned babies echoed around the War Crimes Exhibition, a house of horrors on the floor below.

Visitors to the exhibition start by walking through a mock spray of white phosphorus, a chemical agent that burns flesh, before entering a torture chamber labelled "Torture methods used here were used on prisoners of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib".

Here, figures of naked men were gagged and strapped upside down to a metal-framed bed. Another was strapped to a chair, his legs and arms bristling with nails driven into his flesh, while another was bombarded with loud, incessant disco music.

"Who would have imagined the cheerful music of Boney M. could be used as an instrument of pain and torture?" a label said.

The exhibit also took visitors through the Vietnam War, including the My Lai massacre of civilians by U.S. troops, then along a trail of mock blood through a scene representing the civilian casualties of Israel's offensive in Lebanon last year.

Speakers in the conference include former U.S. lawmaker Cynthia McKinney, a Democrat who has branded the U.S.-led war in Iraq as illegal, and former U.N. assistant secretary-general Hans von Sponeck, who took part in a similar attempt to set up an unofficial war-crimes tribunal at a conference in Turkey in 2005.

It also features Ali Shalah, billed as the man famously pictured in a hood with electrodes attached to his fingers at Abu Ghraib, a U.S.-run prison in Iraq, though the New York Times recently reported that he was not the man in the photo.

"Anyone who has looked at the (conference) programme knows what this is all about," a U.S. embassy official said, declining to add any further comment.

A British embassy spokesman could not be reached for comment. - Reuters

Labels: Berita, Blair, Bush, Mahathir, Malaysia

PETALING JAYA: There is a good reason why the scholarly-looking Ali Shalah keeps his left hand close to his chest and tucked under the flowing robe he wears over his shirt and trousers.

His hand is badly deformed, scarred and twisted like the root of a tree. His last two fingers are blunt stumps.

He is quite self-conscious of the deformed hand and only shows it when asked. Then he pulls the cloak over it again.

It is a glaring reminder of the six months he spent in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Ali is the man in the hood. He is just 46, but looks much older.

Ali said he was the torture victim whom his American tormentors draped in a dark hood and cloak and forced to stand atop a concrete block with his arms spread out, crucifixion-like. Electrical wires hanging from both hands were attached to an electrical point.

Photographs of the degrading and brutal abuse in Abu Ghraib two years ago stunned and outraged the world.

It was not just a pose because Ali was electrocuted by American soldiers five times, often until he passed out.

“It feels like fire passing through your veins and you are blinded by flashes and your eyes feel like they are going to explode,” he said, speaking through translator Dr Mahmoud Khalid, the former Iraqi ambassador to Malaysia.

Once when blood flowed from his mouth, a doctor was called in. But when it was found that the blood was from a bleeding tongue, the doctor said: “Continue with the torture.”

Ali was a university lecturer in Baghdad when he was arrested due to his vocal criticism of the American invasion.

The electrocutions and his deformed hand, which was the result of soldiers stamping on it with their heavy boots, were just a small part of the torture that he went through.

Sexual abuse was a prevalent part of the prison torture. Ali speaks reticently about guns and broomsticks being thrust into “parts of my body.”

“Men or women, they don't care. They do it to them,” he said.

Men were stripped naked and made to serve meals to women detainees. If the women detainees averted their eyes, the men were beaten up.

His body is riddled with scars as a result of being kicked, stamped on and beaten with metal rods.

“They poked a rod into one of my bleeding wounds and twisted it around. Once they beat me until I was semi-conscious. I can still remember the song they were playing – By the Rivers of Babylon.”

The worst were the screams of those being tortured around him.

“Men raped in front of women and women raped in front of men. Have you heard of the 'Black and Decker torture'? They used the power drill to make holes in your leg, arms, stomach and even in your eye.

Throughout his imprisonment, they demanded from him names of people who were a threat to the invasion forces.

One day, they piled him into a truck with others. He had no idea where they were heading until the truck stopped and he was pushed off onto the road. Only then did he realise he had been freed.

The 1.8m-tall Ali looked like a skeleton. He weighed only 40kg, less than half of the 95kg when he was taken in.

Ali is today the founder and co-ordinator of the Association of Victims of American Occupation Prisons.

He will be one of the speakers at an international conference-cum-exhibition entitled Expose War Crimes: Criminalise War to be held at the Putra World Trade Centre from Feb 5 to Feb 7. This report was published by the StarOnline on January 8, 2007

Labels: Abu Gharib, Berita, Bush, Iraq, Luar Negeri

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 5 (Bernama) - Proving that he is still a firebrand, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad Monday lashed out at United States (US) President George W. Bush and British Premier Tony Blair saying that the world should remember them as "the killers of children" or as "the lying Prime Minister or President".

"What Blair and Bush had done is worse than what Saddam (Hussein) had done," the former Malaysian Prime Minister said.

Delivering this message in his keynote address at the three-day War Crimes Conference and Exhibition, here, Dr Mahathir said these leaders who used war as a means to gain support should be accorded the names they deserved for the evil deeds they committed.

The conference, dubbed the Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalise War, is organised by Perdana Global Peace Organisation, which Dr Mahathir chairs.

The conference will also work towards the setting up of a permanent tribunal, recognised by the victims of aggression, to hear charges levelled at the warmongers, leaders and governments of aggressor nations, to determine their innocence or guilt and to prescribe punishment.

"We should not hang Blair if the tribunal finds him guilty but he should always carry the label as a war criminal, killer of children, liar. And so should Bush and the pocket Bush of the bushlands of Australia (referring to Australian PM John Howard)," said Dr Mahathir.

He said while the world might not be able to get governments of countries to enact laws to label these leaders as "war criminals," non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the sympathetic media could append the label whenever their names were mentioned.

The people and NGOs for peace, he said, should make these war criminals feel unwelcome wherever they went and that "they should be literally hounded."

"They should have full frontal and profile pictures put up everywhere as war criminals. And historians should always refer to them as war criminals in history books," said Malaysia's fourth Prime Minister.

He said the first move in the struggle for peace was to ensure that people of the world knew the truth about war and its dangers as "the media is owned and controlled by warmongers."

"We have to build a base for spreading the word, the idea that wars are crimes against humanity, that those who resort to wars in furtherance of their ideology or agenda are common criminals and must be labelled as such and punished," said Dr Mahathir.

He said there was now a need for the establishment of a worldwide network of NGOs for peace, to encourage peace activists everywhere to talk peace and criminalisation of war, to physically obstruct war, stop the preparations for war and do everything possible to gain support for the movement to make war a crime in the statute books of the international community.

On another note, he said the permanent tribunal mooted by the conference must be made up of respected international jurists, who would have no personal or national interest in matters referred to them, whose judgement must be based on evidence and not sentiment.

He said while the tribunal would have no power of enforcing its punishment as "the people tried may be too powerful," the international network should not be daunted by this but find ways and forms of punishment that were within their capacity until such time the international community respects and upholds the jurisdiction of the tribunal.

"We are seeing today examples of the form of punishment that can be meted out. Bush and Blair are now totally reviled and condemned by the world and by their own people.

"The tribunal that we set up can conduct a proper trial even if the accused is not present. A respectable and totally impartial tribunal applying recognised laws will surely find its findings respected by the world just as the world respects the Nobel laureates, for example," said Dr Mahathir.

Labels: Berita, Bush, Mahathir, Malaysia

Bush seeks record $245bn for war

George Bush, the US president, is to ask congress for $245bn to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - while proposing curbs in spending on the US health care system.

Bush, speaking in his weekly radio address on Saturday, said Monday's budget proposal would emphasise restraint on domestic spending and make military funding the top priority.

Bush is to request $100bn for the rest of the current fiscal year and $145bn for next year, an administration official told Reuters news agency.

His budget also proposes squeezing about $70bn in savings from the US Medicare and Medicaid health programmes over the next five years.

Record spending

But the New York Times said budget documents show the actual figure is more than $100bn.

The budget proposal totals $170bn for the current fiscal year, including $70bn that congress has already approved, making it the highest spending level to date for the military campaigns.

Under the proposal, wealthier senior citizens would have to pay more for prescription drugs and the services of doctors under the Medicare system, The Washington Post and New York Times reported, citing a senior administration official and budget documents.

Bush's proposed cuts in Medicare and Medicaid far surpass what he or any other US president have sought before, the New York Times reports.

The Washington Post said the president would seek an increase of more than 10 per cent for Pentagon spending, increasing its budget to $481bn.

Non-military areas would receive a one per cent increase in spending for the fiscal year in 2008, an administration official told Reuters.

The sum amounts to a decrease in many US domestic programmes after accounting for inflation, which is running at about 2.5 per cent.

'Fiscally reckless'

Bush said: "Controlling spending also requires us to address the unsustainable growth of entitlement programmes such as social security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

"Spending for these programmes is growing faster than inflation, faster than our economy, and faster than our ability to pay for it."

The proposal will be the first budget that Bush has submitted to a congress controlled by rival Democrats.

Many Democrats have called Bush "fiscally reckless" and say his huge domestic tax cuts are unaffordable and favour the wealthy. Agencies

Labels: Afghanistan, Berita, Bush, Iraq, Luar Negeri, U.S.

Although the throng appeared to fall short of the overwhelming turnout sought by rally organizers, it did draw out actress Jane Fonda, who said she hadn't attended an anti-war rally in 34 years. Fonda said she had worried that her words would hurt the effort to end the war.

"But silence is no longer an option," said Fonda, who waged a highly controversial campaign against the Vietnam War.

The rally was organized by United for Peace and Justice, which aimed to bring protesters from 30 states across the country. Simultaneously, anti-war rallies were staged at scores of other U.S. cities.

High-profile speakers such as Fonda, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and actors Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon called for an end to the war. Also taking the stage were war veterans and members of Congress, including Democratic Reps. Maxine Waters and Lynn Woolsey of California, Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and John Conyers of Michigan.

On Monday, hundreds are expected to remain in Washington to blitz Capitol Hill, lobbying their representatives in Congress during a week in which the Senate is scheduled to take up a resolution rejecting President Bush's decision to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq.

Iraq war veterans are also scheduled to begin a two-day, seven-state tour Monday, targeting senators who voted against the resolution passed last week by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Many of the speakers Saturday wanted Congress to do far more than pass a resolution of displeasure.

Kucinich, who plans to run for president again in 2008, said it's time for Congress not only to cut off funding for the war and bring the troops home, but to close all bases in Iraq.

Moriah Arnold, a 12-year-old sixth grader from Harvard, Mass., said Bush and other leaders lied to Americans when the country went to war in Iraq.

"We want to end the war now," said Arnold, who started a petition drive at her school.

Raed Jarrar, Iraq project director at Global Exchange, said the only way to stop Iraqi violence is to withdraw U.S. troops.

"We want this occupation to end now," said Jarrar, an Iraqi. "We know how to run our country by ourselves."

In the crowd, a protester dressed as the grim reaper held a sign: "Death thanks George Bush for all the overtime."

David Bednarczuk, 56, said he traveled for 24 hours from Minnesota to hold Congress accountable.

"We put them in office to deal with the war," he said. "If this Bush isn't going to listen to the people, then this Congress is going to have to make him listen."

Eighteen-year-old Megan Lytle of Maine said she hoped her voice, combined with thousands of others, would make a difference and that lawmakers would listen.

"If the people rise up, the government can't stand up against us," she said. Mercury News

Labels: Berita, Bush, Luar Negeri, U.S.