Malaysia di Tempat ke -16 Dalam Senarai Ekonomi Dijangka Berkembang oleh UNCTAD

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia ditempatkan pada kedudukan ke-16 pada Senarai Ekonomi Yang dijangka Berkembang Pesat bagi tempoh 2013 hingga 2015, dengan peningkatan tiga kedudukan, demikian menurut Laporan Pelaburan Dunia 2013 yang diumumkan oleh Persidangan Perdagangan dan Pembangunan Pertubuhan Bangsa-Bangsa Bersatu (UNCTAD).

Kedudukan itu berasaskan peratusan dari responden yang memilih sesuatu ekonomi sebagai "ekonomi terbaik."

Laporan yang bertajuk "Global Value Chains: Investment and Trade for Development" itu dilancarkan oleh Menteri Perdagangan Antarabangsa dan Industri Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed.

Pada 2011, Malaysia ditempatkan pada kedudukan ke-11 di kalangan 20 ekonomi teratas yang mencatatkan kadar pulangan Pelaburan Langsung Asing (FDI) tertinggi atau keuntungan FDI 17 peratus, yang membuktikan Malaysia sebagai lokasi menguntungkan untuk melakukan perniagaan.

Malaysia turut mengekalkan kedudukannya sebagai penerima FDI ketiga terbesar di Asean, kata laporan itu, sambil menyatakan bahawa aliran masuk bersih FDI negara ini pada tahun lepas menyaksikan penurunan pelaburan 17.4 peratus kepada US$10.1 bilion berbanding US$12.2 bilion pada 2011.

Sebahagian besar aliran masuk FDI Malaysia dicatatkan di dalam sektor perkilangan, yang tidak sama di negara-negara Asean yang lain di mana pelaburan dicatatkan di dalam sektor infrastruktur, perkhidmatan dan utama, kata laporan itu.

"Penurunan aliran masuk FDI ke Malaysia adalah sejajar dengan penurunan global di dalam sektor perkilangan, di mana menurut UNCTAD ia disumbangkan sebahagian besar kerana penurunan di segi nilai projek baharu," kata laporan itu.

Katanya, sektor perkilangan di Malaysia kini mengalami satu tempoh transformasi dan penstrukturan semula, di mana pemain industri dijangka mengurangkan pelaburan pada sektor bernilai rendah dan meningkatkan aktiviti di dalam industri penyelidikan dan pembangunan, berpengetahuan tinggi, bernilai tambah tinggi dan berteknologi tinggi.

Sementara itu, Mustapa berkata kerajaan telah melaksanakan pelbagai langkah untuk menggalakkan aktiviti bernilai tambah, yang termasuk menerima pakai satu kaedah ekosistem untuk menggalakkan pelaburan swasta, menggalakkan aktiviti penyumberan luar dan memperkenalkan inisiatif pelaburan domestik.

Katanya banyak syarikat multinasional (MNC) terkemuka telah memilih Malaysia untuk mewujudkan operasi serantau dan global masing-masing.

"Kebanyakan MNC ini telah mewujudkan program latihan berstruktur bagi memindahkan kemahiran utama masing-masing kepada warga kerja Malaysia.

"Dalam tempoh jangka panjang, ia akan mewujudkan peluang pekerjaan berpendapatan tinggi bagi rakyat Malaysia di dalam sektor seperti perniagaan, perakaunan, kewangan, teknologi maklumat, kejuruteraan, teknikal dan perkhidmatan baharu yang lain," kata Mustapa.

Pada peringkat global, laporan itu menyatakan aliran masuk FDI global turun 18 peratus kepada US$1.35 trilion pada 2012 berbanding US$1.6 trilion pada 2011.

"Kedudukan global negara-negara penerima FDI terbesar mencerminkan bahawa negara-negara membangun mendahului di segi FDI pada tahun lepas, dengan catatan 52 peratus aliran FDI global meski pun aliran masuk FDI ke negara-negara membangun turun 4.0 peratus berbanding dengan 2011," kata leporan itu.

UNCTAD mengunjurkan aliran masuk FDI global tahun ini kekal pada paras 2012, dengan maksimum US$1.45 trilion dan mengunjurkan aliran masuk FDI 2013 dan 2014 meningkat secara sederhana, masing-masing kepada US$1.6 trilion dan US$1.8 trilion. - BERNAMA

Ibu Kugan Menang Saman Anak Mati Dalam Lokap

Kuala Lumpur: Ibu A Kugan, tahanan polis yang mati di lokap Balai Polis Taipan, Subang Jaya, berjaya dalam saman terhadap Timbalan Ketua Polis Negara dan empat lagi, yang cuai ketika menjaga keselamatan anak lelakinya. 

Hakim Mahkamah Tinggi, Datuk V T Singham yang membenarkan tuntutan saman N Indra (plaintif), memerintahkan lima defendan membayar ganti rugi serta kos RM851,700 kepada plaintif, selepas mendapati beliau berjaya membuktikan tuntutannya. 

Indra memfailkan saman itu pada 13 Januari tahun lalu dengan menuntut ganti rugi RM100 juta daripada Timbalan Ketua Polis Negara ketika itu, Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar; Konstabel V Navindran; Ketua Polis Daerah Subang Jaya, Asisten Komisioner Zainal Rashid Abu Bakar; Ketua Polis Negara ketika itu dan Kerajaan Malaysia. 

Zainal Rashid sudah meninggal dunia, manakala Navindran tidak lagi berkhidmat dengan pasukan polis. 

Babit kepentingan awam 

Dalam penghakimannya, Singham berkata, tuntutan saman itu membabitkan kepentingan awam iaitu kebimbangan masyarakat berikutan tuduhan dilemparkan terhadap pasukan polis apabila berlaku kematian dalam lokap. 

Katanya, kematian dalam lokap jenayah serius dan apabila dilaporkan, polis perlu bertindak dengan memastikan siasatan segera dijalankan agensi siasatan bebas atau dengan mengadakan inkues.

Katanya, mahkamah mendapati ada bukti mencukupi mengenai tuntutan dikemukakan plaintif bahawa anak lelakinya dipukul polis sehingga menyebabkan kecederaan teruk yang menyebabkan kematian mangsa. 

Dalam kes ini, mahkamah tidak boleh menerima hanya satu insiden berlaku sehingga menyebabkan kecederaan teruk pada si mati kerana keadaan kecederaan menunjukkan apa yang berlaku di antara 15 dan 20 Januari 2009 dilakukan polis yang bertanggungjawab menyoal siasat mangsa. 

Defendan lain tidak boleh mendakwa mereka tidak mengetahui apa yang berlaku kepada si mati sepanjang tempoh penahanannya, sebaliknya hanya meletakkan tanggungjawab kepada Navindran yang sudah didakwa dan disabitkan, seolah-olah hanya ada satu insiden, katanya. 

Singham berkata, skop kerja Navindran mendapatkan maklumat bagi faedah pegawai atasan ketika soal siasat dan mahkamah berpuas hati tindakannya itu dilakukan dalam bidang tugasnya. 

Sehubungan itu, katanya, defendan lain tidak boleh mengelakkan diri daripada menanggung liabiliti dengan menyatakan ia dilakukan atas tindakan defendan kedua sendiri yang melampaui bidang tugasnya.

(Sumber - http://www.bharian.com.my)

Adun Kuala Besut meninggal dunia

ADUN Kuala Besut, Terengganu, Dr Abdul Rahman Mokhtar, 55, dilaporkan telah meninggal dunia pagi ini kerana sakit paru-paru.

Allahyarhan dimasukkan ke Unit Rawatan Rapi (ICU) Hospital Sultanah Nur Zahirah (HSNZ) sejak minggu lalu.

Allahyarham yang juga Exco Kesihatan, Pembangunan Wanita, Keluarga dan Masyarakat dilaporkan menghembuskan nafas terakhir kira-kira jam 9.40 pagi ini.

Pada Pilihan Raya Umum ke-13 (PRU13) 5 Mei lalu, allahyarham menang terhadap calon PAS, Napisah Ismail dengan majoriti 2,434 undi.

Allahyarham mendapat 8,809 manakala Napisah mendapat 6,375 undi.

Kuala Besut mempunyai jumlah pengundi berdaftar seramai 17,713 orang dengan peratusan 97.9 peratus adalah Melayu, 1.6 Peratus Cina dan 0.1 peratus India.

Pelajar #UiTM Sertai Misi Zon Bergolak

Dungun: Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) cawangan Dungun memeterai memorandum persefahaman (MoU) dengan badan bukan kerajaan (NGO) antarabangsa, Aman Palestin bagi menghantar pelajarnya menyertai misi kesukarelawanan ke negara bergolak itu.

Rektornya, Prof Madya Dr Abdol Samad Nawi, berkata kerjasama itu yang pertama seumpamanya membabitkan universiti di negara ini, bertujuan memupuk kesedaran mahasiswa terhadap penderitaan umat Islam di Palestin yang menjadi mangsa kekejaman Zionis Israel.
Hantar ke Gaza

Katanya, melalui MOU itu, kira-kira 100 mahasiswa akan dihantar ke Gaza untuk merasai sendiri pengalaman berada di bumi Palestin, termasuk lawatan ke Universiti Islam di Gaza dan Universiti Al Quds yang amat daif keadaannya berbanding universiti di Malaysia.

Beliau berkata, perjanjian berkenaan dimeterai atas rasa keinsafan terhadap kesengsaraan saudara sesama Islam di negara berkenaan.

“Tujuan kita menghantar pelajar ke sana (Palestin) adalah lebih kepada kesukarelawanan yang juga satu jihad untuk membantu membebaskan umat Islam kerana ia adalah tanggungjawab kita semua.

“Setiap inci bumi Palestin adalah milik umat Islam dan kita harap suatu hari nanti bumi berkat itu kembali menjadi milik kita (Islam),” katanya selepas majlis menandatangani MoU dengan Aman Palestin di Hotel UiTM, di sini kelmarin.
MoU itu ditandatangani Abdol Samad yang mewakili UiTM, manakala Aman Palestin diwakili oleh Ahli Lembaga Pengarahnya, Hasimah Salleh.

Sementara itu, Hasimah berkata pihaknya amat terharu dengan kesungguhan yang ditunjukkan oleh UiTM Dungun dengan menyokong melaksanakan misi Aman Palestin membantu umat Islam di sana.

Katanya, usaha itu menunjukkan kesedaran masyarakat Islam terhadap isu Palestin semakin mendapat perhatian, lebih-lebih lagi di kalangan mahasiswa yang mewakili golongan muda.

(Sumber - http://www.bharian.com.my)

Datuk Seri Noh Omar Diberikan Mandat Menerajui UMNO Selangor

Shah Alam: Ahli Parlimen Tanjong Karang, Datuk Seri Noh Omar akan dilantik sebagai Pengerusi Badan Perhubungan UMNO Selangor, sekali gus diberi kepercayaan memimpin parti sehingga Pilihan Raya Umum ke-14 (PRU-14).

Noh yang juga bekas Menteri Pertanian dan Industri Asas Tani sebelum ini bertanggungjawab sebagai timbalan ketika UMNO Selangor diterajui Perdana Menteri, Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

Dengan pelantikan Ketua UMNO Tanjong Karang itu, jawatan lamanya akan diisi Ketua Penerangan UMNO negeri yang juga ADUN Kuang, Abdul Shukor Idrus. Difahamkan pelantikan kedua-dua pemimpin itu dicadangkan majoriti ketua UMNO bahagian di Selangor dan dipersetujui Najib yang dijangka membuat pengumuman rasmi dalam masa terdekat.

Menurut sumber, Najib yang juga Presiden UMNO turut bersetuju melantik ADUN Semenyih, Datuk Johan Abdul Aziz sebagai Setiausaha UMNO negeri, menggantikan Datuk Seri Mohd Zin Mohamed, manakala ADUN Jeram, Datuk Amiruddin Setro pula Ketua Penerangan.

“Dalam pada itu, UMNO akan melakukan bedah siasat dalam masa terdekat bagi mengenal pasti punca prestasi buruk parti pada PRU-13 dan bersedia lebih awal untuk PRU-14. Banyak pengajaran kita peroleh daripada kekalahan ini, terutama dari aspek komunikasi sesama ketua UMNO bahagian sendiri,” katanya.

Pada PRU-13, BN hanya menang 12 kerusi DUN di Selangor, jauh ketinggalan berbanding pakatan pembangkang yang menguasai 44 kerusi, manakala bagi kerusi Parlimen pula, BN hanya menguasai lima daripada 22 kerusi. Pada PRU 2008, BN menang 20 daripada 56 kerusi DUN dan lima daripada 22 kerusi Parlimen di negeri ini.

Edward Snowden missing after failing to catch flight he booked to Cuba

• By Chris Bucktin
• Comments

24 Jun 2013 23:00

The 30-year-old fugitive had been booked to leave Moscow but a photo of his empty plane seat emerged.

Missing: Edward Snowden

CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden was missing tonight after failing to make a flight to Cuba.

The 30-year-old fugitive had been booked to leave Moscow but a photo of his empty plane seat emerged.

It sparked rumours that Russia had stopped him and was preparing to send him home after the US said it “expects” his extradition.

The former technician, who faces up to 30 years in jail if convicted of theft and espionage in the US, has applied to Ecuador for asylum.

Today Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said his government was analysing the request “with responsibility”.

He also read excerpts from the application where Snowden said it was “unlikely I will have a fair trial or humane treatment” in America.

Reports in the US said the former CIA man had checked in for his flight and had been seen in Moscow airport with an activist from the WikiLeaks website.

While Snowden’s passport had been revoked, WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange said that Ecuador had given the whistleblower a refugee travel document.

It came as US Secretary of State John Kerry blasted China and Russia for giving Snowden refuge.

Mr Kerry said it would be disappointing if they helped him evade extradition – and warned of “consequences” if either country had.

Snowden has left behind ballerina girlfriend Lindsay Mills, who wrote on her blog of her heartbreak.

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Lsjourney: Pictures on Lindsay Mills' blog

Check out all the latest News, Sport & Celeb gossip at mirror.co.uk http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/edward-snowden-missing-after-failing-1989661#ixzz2XAvAl1We
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(Source - http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/edward-snowden-missing-after-failing-1989661)

Tiada Ahli-Ahli Biasa Yang 'unimportant' Itu, Tiada Pimpinan Parti - oleh Aspan Alias

Dalam entry terbaru pada 20 Jun 2013 Sdr Aspan Alias di dalam blog beliau, Aspan Alias menegur Anthony Loke (beliau tidak menyebut nama sesiapa dalam blog beliau tapi orang yang dimaksudkan ialah Anthony Loke) kerana membuat kenyataan bahawa beliau (Aspan Alias) adalah ahli DAP biasa dan beliau keberadaan dalam DAP tidak penting. Berikut adalah tulisan Aspan Alias yang saya 'cut and paste' ke blog saya.

Dalam sesebuah parti kekuatannya dari ahli biasa yang ramai-ramai. Ahli-ahli biasa inilah yang membentuk kepimpinan parti itu. Ahli-ahli biasa inilah yang menentukan arah tujuan dan bentuk dan rupa parti itu. Ia melibatkan pembentukan sikap dan budaya parti itu sendiri. Kekuatan pemimpin itu bergantung kepada sejauh mana atau seramai mana ahli-ahli biasa ini memberikan sokongan kepada seseorang pemimpin itu.

Maka amatlah menyedihkan jika didapati seorang pemimpin parti menganggap seorang ahli parti biasa tidak penting atau istilah yag popular terbentuk sehari dua ini sebagai ‘unimportant’. Menganggap sesorang ahli biasa dalam parti sebagai ‘unimportant’ itu adalah terlalu ‘uncalled for’. Ia memberi pengertian yang semua ahli biasa tidak penting bagi orang yang mengeluarkan kenyataan itu. Ia bemakna hanya seorang dua pemimpin sahaja yang penting dalam parti itu.

Tetapi ini adalah sikap biasa dalam politik dunia ketiga kerana pemimpin  itu jarang-jarang sedar yang mereka dibesarkan dan diangkat oleh ahli-ahli biasa terutamanya parti yang melaksanakan sistem demokrasi. Walaupun ahli-ahli biasa itu kadangkala bertindak mengikut apa yang dicaturkan oleh pemimpin mereka secara sistematik, yang pentingnya ahli biasa itu adalah penting dalam sesebuah parti yang demokratik.

Ramai pemimpin terlupa yang mereka bukannya menjadi orang besar dengan sendirinya seperti Tuhan yang terdiri dan wujud dengan sendirinya. Mereka menjadi pemimpin bukan terjadi begitu sahaja. Ahli-ahli biasa inilah yang membuatkan mereka itu menjadi pemimpin.

Saya menyebut ini kerana saya telah mengalami isu ini dalam sehari dua yang lepas kerana ada pemimpin besar parti yang saya anggotai menganggap saya itu ‘unimportant’ kerana saya hanyalah seorang ahli biasa. Justeru saya tulislah sedikit tentang isu ini kerana ia amat penting bagi mengingatkan pemimpin yang sedang berada di ‘aras yang tinggi’ dalam parti itu supaya tidak menjadi angkuh.

Kita mahukan mereka sedar bahawa ahli-ahli biasa inilah yang telah membuatkan mereka berdiri dan duduk ditempat yang tinggi itu. Kita mahu pemimpin yang telah diangkat tinggi oleh ahli-ahli biasa ini sedar akan dirinya dan kembali mengingati dari mana mereka berasal dan sejauh mana mereka boleh maju sendirian tanpa ahli-ahli biasa ini.

Hidup ini perlu berseni sedikit sebanyak dan kita tidak boleh melambangkan diri kita sebagai pemimpin yang kasar atau ‘crude’ dalam berinteraksi dengan pihak yang ramai terutamanya kepada ahli-ahli parti mereka jika mereka itu pemimpin politik. Kelebihan orang melayu disini. Mereka lebih berseni dan lembut dalam mengupas isu dan bertindak.

Hanya sekarang nampak sedikit sebanyak kelemahan orang Melayu yang kini sudah berkurangan dari seni politik mereka kerana budaya yang sudah dialih dan dianjak oleh pimpinan pada hari ini. Itu sebab kita terdengar ramai yang sudah begitu fasih mencarut dan bercakap kasar seolah-olah mereka itu bukan Melayu lagi.

Berbalik kepada isu ahli biasa yang ‘unimportant’ tadi saya suka menyeru kepada pimpinan mana-mana parti terutamanya kepada parti yang saya anggotai, supaya lebihkan seni perhubungan diantara mereka dengan ahli. Adab dan sopan itu merupakan budaya timur tidak kira ia berbangsa Melayu, Cina atau India dan apa-apa bangsa sekali pun.

Hak individu mesti kita hormati termasuklah hak untuk tidak dihormati sebagai manusia yang mempunyai pemikiran sendiri. Yang pimpinan berinteraksi itu ialah dengan manusia, bukannya haiwan peliharaan. Maka adalah wajar seorang pemimpin itu tidak berkasar dan sombong terhadap ahli dan rakyat yang dipimpim mereka.

Kesenian dan kelembutan dalam berinteraksi itu adalah lambang sejauh mana ketamadun kita dalam kontek masyarakat timur ini.

Itulah yang membezakan diantara seorang manusia dengan manusia yang lain, atau diantara seorang pemimpin dengan pemimpin yang lain. Kita tidak boleh menganggap manusia yang kita pimpin itu sebagai haiwan peliharaan sahaja. Kalau dirasakan hendak dikurung dikurungnya, kalau hendak menyuruh kerja diarah-arahkan saja dan jika hendak memaki hamun tidak ada halangan langsung dan tiada batasan adab dan adat.

Kita tidak mahu melihat pemimpin kepada manusia bersikap seperti pengembala lembu yang boleh memukul dan mengurung haiwan peliharaan mengikut hati dan rasa sendiri sahaja.

Kita perlukan pemimpin yang layak memimpin manusia dan bukannya pengembala lembu yang hanya layak untuk mengembala haiwan peliharaan sahaja, lebih-lebih lagi di zaman dunia yang moden yang tidak bersempadan ini.

(Sumber - http://aspanaliasnet.blogspot.com/)

Pelatih PLKN Lahirkan Bayi Dalam Tandas Kem

Seorang pelatih yang sedang menjalani Program Latihan Khidmat Negara (PLKN) di Kem Sri Ledang, Jementah, Segamat melahirkan seorang bayi lelaki dalam tandas kem tersebut semalam.

Pengurusan kem tersebut yang menyedari remaja berkenaan melahirkan bayi dalam tandas pada kira-kira pukul 3 pagi segera mengejarkan ibu berusia 18 tahun itu bersama bayi seberat 2.7 kilogram ke Hospital Pakar Sultanah Fatimah di Muar.

Bagaimanapun, bayi lelaki tersebut meninggal dunia tidak lama selepas itu, manakala keadaan ibu muda terbabit dalam yang sedang dirawat tidak membimbangkan.

Pengarah hospital Dr Selahudeen Abdul Aziz ketika dihubungi mengesahkan ada menerima seorang pesakit remaja bersama bayi lelaki.

"Kita akan menjalankan bedah siasat ke atas bayi itu esok untuk mengenalpasti punca kematiannya," katanya.

Sementara itu, Ketua Polis Daerah Ledang, Supt Harun Idris ketika dihubungi mengesahkan ada menerima laporan berhubung kejadian tersebut.

- Bernama

Sejarah Perlu Ditulis Semula - Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad

KUALA LUMPUR - Buku-buku sejarah Malaysia perlu ditulis semula agar mengandungi masalah yang dihadapi negara pada masa lampau dan langkah diambil kerajaan bagi menyelesaikan isu seumpama itu, supaya sejarah negara lebih difahami generasi muda. 

Bekas perdana menteri Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad berkata langkah ini akan juga membantu Malaysia membentuk masyarakat yang lebih terdidik, dan 'dengan itu melahirkan lebih ramai pemimpin yang lantang'.

Ia akan juga membantu menyatukan rakyat Malaysia, menyediakan pendidikan yang lengkap untuk golongan muda, katanya dalam ucaptama bertajuk "Masa depan yang lebih baik bagi Politik Malaysia, Pasca Pilihan Raya Umum ke-13" di Forum CEO Yayasan Kepimpinan Perdana di sini hari ini.

"Kita perlu melakukan banyak perkara. Kita juga perlu belajar dari sejarah negara lain seperti mengapa berlaku Arab Spring (Kebangkitan Rakyat Arab).

Kemudian, kita perlu bertanya diri, apakah kita mahu ini berlaku di negara kita?

"Ada orang berkata mereka mahu melihat Arab Spring di Malaysia. Mereka lebih rela tidak menghiraukan kestabilan, keamanan dan menggulingkan pemimpin.

"Jadi kita perlu duduk dan memahami apa itu demokrasi dan beritahu mereka supaya mempercayai kerajaan," tambah beliau. 

Menyentuh isu pelajaran, Dr Mahathir berkata kewujudan sebuah sekolah kebangsaan di bawah satu bumbung bagi semua kaum, dapat menjamin Malaysia yang aman, bersatu dan akan menjamin masa depan lebih baik untuk warganya.

"Masalah yang kita hadapi hari ini ialah kita tidak berkumpul bersama, dan jarang bercakap atau menggunakan bahasa kebangsaan. Kita patut menggunakannya lebih kerap. Kita harus kurangkan keadaan berpuak-puak di sekolah misalnya, dan wajibkan penggunaan dan pembelajaran bahasa kebangsaan," kata beliau.

Mengenai pembelajaran bahasa kebangsaan, Dr Mahathir kagum melihat sesetengah diplomat asing yang bertugas di negara lain seperti Indonesia boleh menguasai bahasa negara itu, tetapi tidak di Malaysia.

Beliau berkata ini kerana rakyat Malaysia berkomunikasi dalam bahasa Inggeris dan bukan bahasa kebangsaan mereka, dengan itu lupa bahawa bahasa adalah satu daripada faktor yang menyatukan masyarakat. - Bernama

Pintu 2 (Bertentangan Dengan Jakel) #UiTM Shah Alam Ditutup Sementara Waktu

Adalah dimaklumkan bahawa Pintu 2 UiTM Shah Alam akan ditutup sementara waktu untuk kerja-kerja pembaikan sebagaimana maklumat dibawah :-

PERHATIAN KEPADA SEMUA WARGA KAMPUS

BERMULA 22 JUN 2013 (SABTU) JAM 1730 PETANG SEHINGGA 23 JUN 2013 (AHAD) JAM 0930 PAGI PINTU 2 (BERHAMPIRAN JAKEL) AKAN DITUTUP UNTUK KERJA PEMBAIKAN.

SEHUBUNGAN DENGAN ITU, SEMUA WARGA KAMPUS BOLEH MENGGUNAKAN LALUAN PINTU 4 (BERHAMPIRAN SUSUR KE LEBUHRAYA PERSEKUTUAN) SEPANJANG TEMPOH TERSEBUT.

KESULITAN AMAT DIKESALI

SEKIAN TERIMA KASIH.

Mahkamah Arah Pemaju Pulang Wang Penyelenggaraan RM1.8 Juta

KUALA LUMPUR: Mahkamah Tinggi di sini pada Isnin memerintahkan sebuah syarikat pemaju memulangkan yuran pengurusan dan penyelenggaraan berjumlah RM1.8 juta kepada perbadanan pengurusan sembilan blok pangsapuri di Port Dickson, Negeri Sembilan.

Hakim Datuk V.T.Singham juga mengarahkan Pengkalen Holiday Resort Sdn Bhd (PHR), selaku defendan, membayar kos RM50,000 kepada dua plaintif iaitu perbadanan pengurusan Paradise Lagoon Apartment (North) dan Paradise Lagoon Apartment (South).

Dalam penghakiman setebal 32 halaman itu, Singham berkata mahkamah tidak dapat membezakan apa-apa prinsip undang-undang yang membenarkan pemaju untuk menyimpan, memindah atau menukar jumlah RM1,803,972.63 yang telah dibayar ke akaun Pangsapuri PHR untuk manfaat dan kegunaan sendiri.

"Mengikut hukum alam, tiada siapa boleh memperkayakan dirinya secara tidak adil...dalam kes ini, pemaju mengambil kesempatan ke atas pemilik," katanya.

Beliau juga berpendapat bahawa keadilan menuntut pemaju dikehendaki memulangkan jumlah dana lebihan yang dikutip dari pemilik blok pangsapuri untuk khidmat penyelenggaraan seperti termaktub di bawah Akta Hakmilik Strata 1985.

Singham berkata hakikat bahawa ia mungkin menjadi amalan biasa bagi pemaju untuk menyimpan semua caj pengurusan dan penyelenggaraan yang dikutip dari pemilik unit kondominium dalam tempoh pra penubuhan perbadanan pengurusan dan penubuhan majlis di bawah Akta Hakmilik Strata tetapi ia tidak semestinya bermakna wang dalam akaun Pangsapuri PHR menjadi milik pemaju.

Beliau berkataan ciptaan jangkaan atau amalan semata-mata tidak mencukupi dalam undang-undang melainkan jika ia adalah jangkaan hak undang-undang dan dalam kes ini, ia tidak ada hak undang-undang.

"Mahkamah ini mendapati bahawa ia akan menjadi tak saksama melampau dan tidak adil untuk membenarkan pemaju memindahkan aset unit pemilik ke dalam akaun peribadi," katanya.

Singham menegaskan bahawa ia juga tidak adil secara nyata untuk membenarkan pemaju menyimpan atau memindahkan lebihan wang ke dalam akaunnya selepas menghentikan khidmat mengurus pangsapuri itu.

Pada 2012, perbadanan pengurusan melibatkan pemilik Blok A, B dan C Paradise Lagoon Apartment (North) dan enam blok di Paradise Lagoon Apartment (South) telah memfailkan saman terhadap pemaju itu dengan menuntut caj penyelenggaraan yang dikutip antara September 1994 dan Mei 2006 adalah milik mereka dan pemaju perlu memulangkan jumlah tersebut kepada mereka. - BERNAMA

Obama and Putin Continue to Disagree on Syria

Rebels clash with Syrian government forces

AFP file

U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday agreed that they disagree about the situation in Syria.

At the same time, reported the AFPnews agency, the two leaders pledged to at least try to keep alive a frail and much-delayed effort to hold a Geneva peace conference.

The U.S. and Russian presidents faced off on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Northern Ireland, days after the White House signaled it would begin arming rebels battling Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

Putin and Obama did not try to disguise the fact they are estranged on Syria and cannot agree on Assad's fate -- but appeared keen to keep flagrant differences on the vicious civil war from sinking wider U.S.-Russia relations.

They announced Obama would go to Moscow on September 3-4 for a full-scale summit, expanding a previously announced trip that includes the G20 summit in St. Petersburg, according to AFP.

They spoke of cooperation on terrorism and economics, with Russia now in the World Trade Organization, and agreed to revive a frozen agreement which secures loose nuclear and radioactive materials in the former Soviet Union.

On Syria, however, the differences remain deep.

"Of course our opinions do not converge, but all of us have the intention to stop the violence in Syria and stop the growth in the number of victims," said Putin, who has scoffed at U.S. plans to begin arming selected rebels.

He said he and Obama agreed that the vicious civil war that has killed at least 90,000 people must end "peacefully" and through talks.

"We agreed to push the parties to the negotiating table," he said, according to AFP.

Obama acknowledged that they had "different perspectives" on Syria.

Washington and Moscow have agreed in principle to host a conference in Geneva on ending the violence in Syria, but the timetable for the meeting has continually slipped over disagreements on who should attend.

Still, Obama said he and Putin would instruct their teams to keep at it.

"We share an interest in reducing the violence, securing chemical weapons and ensuring that they are neither used nor are they subject to proliferation," Obama said, according to AFP.

"We want to try to resolve the issue through political means if possible, so we will instruct our teams to continue to work on the potential of a Geneva follow-up."

The U.S. government announced last week that the Syrian army used chemical weapons against rebel forces on multiple occasions, adding that America will increase the “scope and scale” of its assistance to rebels in Syria in response.

An aide to Putin said on Friday that Russia is not convinced by the evidence which the U.S. provided alleging that the Assad government used chemical weapons against rebel forces.

Putin himself on Sunday said that the Syrian rebels are “cannibals” and should not be given arms, referring to video footage posted on the Internet last month of a rebel fighter eating the heart of a government soldier.

Both leaders said they hoped Iran's election would unfreeze the currently stalled talks between Tehran and world powers over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

Obama said he and Putin had expressed "cautious optimism" that the election of the next Iranian president Hassan Rowhani, who is seen as a comparative moderate, could change the dynamics of the effort.

Putin said he hoped that the vote would reveal "new opportunities to solve the Iranian nuclear problem."

Explosions Shake Damascus Military Airport

blast in the central Damascus - AFP file

Two bombs struck a large military airport outside the Syrian capital of Damascus on Sunday night, the main rebel army said, according to CNN.

The first of a series of explosions was near a checkpoint near the main door of the al-Mazzeh airport, and the second was near an exterior wall, said Louay Mikdad, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army.

It wasn't immediately clear who was behind the blasts.

It was not known how many people were hurt, but Mikdad said witnesses told of "many ambulances" taking away the wounded, CNN reported.

After the explosions, mortar bombs were fired from inside the airport into surrounding neighborhoods, Mikdad said. The targets weren't known.

In addition to being the site of the military airport, the al-Mazzeh area is home to embassies, security buildings and the homes of some members of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's inner circle, according to opposition activists.

Kereta terbabas: Tiga mahasiswa maut, seorang cedera

Oleh HELMI MOHD. FOAD pengarang@utusan.com.my

 

KERETA Perodua Viva yang dinaiki oleh empat mahasiswa terbabas di Kilometer 14.5, Lebuh Raya Persekutuan di Shah Alam, Selangor, semalam. - UTUSAN/ Saharuddin Abdullah 

 

SHAH ALAM 16 Jun - Tiga daripada empat pelajar universiti maut selepas sebuah kereta Perodua Viva yang dinaiki mereka hilang kawalan sebelum terbabas dan merempuh pembahagi jalan di Kilometer 14.5, Lebuh Raya Persekutuan di sini awal pagi ini. 

Dalam kemalangan pada pukul 5.15 pagi itu, pemandu, Adam Ab. Rahman bersama Ameer Asyraf Sulaiman dan Nurul Maizura Maidan yang duduk di bahagian penumpang belakang mati di tempat kejadian.

Seorang lagi mangsa, Nurfarina Mokhtar yang duduk di sebelah pemandu bernasib baik apabila hanya mengalami cedera ringan.

Kesemua mangsa berusia 18 tahun dan mereka baharu mendaftar masuk ke universiti dua minggu lalu.

Adam merupakan pelajar Diploma Pengajian Sukan di Kampus Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) Jengka, Pahang; Ameer (pelajar asasi jurusan perakaunan di UiTM Shah Alam), Nurul Maizura (pelajar asasi Sains Pertanian, Universiti Putra Malaysia) dan Nurfarina (pelajar asasi Pengajaran Bahasa Inggeris Sebagai Bahasa Kedua, UiTM Shah Alam)

Pemangku Ketua Polis Daerah Shah Alam, Deputi Superintendnn Ruslan Abdullah berkata, ketika kejadian, empat sahabat tersebut dalam perjalanan menuju ke Kuala Lumpur dari Shah Alam dipercayai selepas mengunjungi taman tema i-City di sini.

Menurutnya, setiba di lokasi, kereta berwarna kuning itu dipercayai hilang kawalan sebelum terbabas dan merempuh pembahagi jalan.

"Akibat daripada rempuhan kuat, bonet kereta yang terperosok di bawah pembahagi jalan rosak teruk dan dinding kereta sebelah kanan terkopak menyebabkan pemandu dan seorang penumpang wanita yang duduk di belakang tercampak keluar.

"Dua mangsa lagi ditemui dalam kenderaan tersebut namun seorang daripada mereka telah meninggal dunia kerana cedera parah," katanya kepada pemberita di sini hari ini. 

Ruslan memberitahu, kesemua mangsa yang maut akibat cedera parah di kepala dan anggota badan manakala mangsa yang cedera ringan hanya luka serta lebam di muka.

Katanya, tiga pelajar yang maut kemudian dibawa ke Hospital Tengku Ampuan Rahimah (HTAR), Klang untuk bedah siasat manakala seorang lagi yang cedera dirawat di hospital sama.

"Setakat ini, pihak kami sedang berusaha mengenal pasti punca sebenar kemalangan tersebut sama ada kereta itu dipandu laju atau pemandunya mengantuk atau cuba mengelak sesuatu objek di lokasi kejadian," katanya. 

Difahamkan, kira-kira sehari sebelum kejadian, Adam dari kampus UiTM, Jengka Pahang datang ke Selangor menaiki kereta terbabit untuk berjumpa dengan rakan-rakannya itu yang berjaya melanjutkan pengajian di universiti. 

Empat sahabat tersebut kemudian dikatakan bersiar-siar di sekitar Shah Alam dan selepas mengunjungi i-City di sini, mereka dipercayai mahu ke ibu kota untuk membeli barang keperluan namun tidak kesampaian apabila terlibat dalam kemalangan.

Adam berasal dari Muar, Johor; Ameer (Jasin, Melaka), Nurul Maizura (Wilayah Persekutuan Labuan) dan Nurfarina (Tanah Merah, Kelantan).

Artikel Penuh: http://www.utusan.com.my/utusan/Dalam_Negeri/20130617/dn_05/Kereta-terbabas-Tiga-mahasiswa-maut-seorang-cedera#ixzz2WSlp3taN
© Utusan Melayu (M) Bhd

“DOOMSDAY SEED VAULT” IN THE ARCTIC

By F. William Engdahl 

Bill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don’t

One thing Microsoft founder Bill Gates can’t be accused of is sloth. He was already programming at 14, founded Microsoft at age 20 while still a student at Harvard. By 1995 he had been listed by Forbes as the world’s richest man from being the largest shareholder in his Microsoft, a company which his relentless drive built into a de facto monopoly in software systems for personal computers.

In 2006 when most people in such a situation might think of retiring to a quiet Pacific island, Bill Gates decided to devote his energies to his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest ‘transparent’ private foundation as it says, with a whopping $34.6 billion endowment and a legal necessity to spend $1.5 billion a year on charitable projects around the world to maintain its tax free charitable status. A gift from friend and business associate, mega-investor Warren Buffett in 2006, of some $30 billion worth of shares in Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway put the Gates’ foundation into the league where it spends almost the amount of the entire annual budget of the United Nations’ World Health Organization.

So when Bill Gates decides through the Gates Foundation to invest some $30 million of their hard earned money in a project, it is worth looking at.

No project is more interesting at the moment than a curious project in one of the world’s most remote spots, Svalbard. Bill Gates is investing millions in a seed bank on the Barents Sea near the Arctic Ocean, some 1,100 kilometers from the North Pole. Svalbard is a barren piece of rock claimed by Norway and ceded in 1925 by international treaty (see map).

On this God-forsaken island Bill Gates is investing tens of his millions along with the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto Corporation, Syngenta Foundation and the Government of Norway, among others, in what is called the ‘doomsday seed bank.’ Officially the project is named the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, part of the Svalbard island group.

The seed bank is being built inside a mountain on Spitsbergen Island near the small village of Longyearbyen. It’s almost ready for ‘business’ according to their releases. The bank will have dual blast-proof doors with motion sensors, two airlocks, and walls of steel-reinforced concrete one meter thick. It will contain up to three million different varieties of seeds from the entire world, ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future,’ according to the Norwegian government. Seeds will be specially wrapped to exclude moisture. There will be no full-time staff, but the vault’s relative inaccessibility will facilitate monitoring any possible human activity.

Did we miss something here? Their press release stated, ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future.’ What future do the seed bank’s sponsors foresee, that would threaten the global availability of current seeds, almost all of which are already well protected in designated seed banks around the world?

Anytime Bill Gates, the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto and Syngenta get together on a common project, it’s worth digging a bit deeper behind the rocks on Spitsbergen. When we do we find some fascinating things.

The first notable point is who is sponsoring the doomsday seed vault. Here joining the Norwegians are, as noted, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the US agribusiness giant DuPont/Pioneer Hi-Bred, one of the world’s largest owners of patented genetically-modified (GMO) plant seeds and related agrichemicals; Syngenta, the Swiss-based major GMO seed and agrichemicals company through its Syngenta Foundation; the Rockefeller Foundation, the private group who created the “gene revolution with over $100 million of seed money since the 1970’s; CGIAR, the global network created by the Rockefeller Foundation to promote its ideal of genetic purity through agriculture change.

CGIAR and ‘The Project’

As I detailled in the book, Seeds of Destruction1, in 1960 the Rockefeller Foundation, John D. Rockefeller III’s Agriculture Development Council and the Ford Foundation joined forces to create the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, the Philippines. By 1971, the Rockefeller Foundation’s IRRI, along with their Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center and two other Rockefeller and Ford Foundation-created international research centers, the IITA for tropical agriculture, Nigeria, and IRRI for rice, Philippines, combined to form a global Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR).

CGIAR was shaped at a series of private conferences held at the Rockefeller Foundation’s conference center in Bellagio, Italy. Key participants at the Bellagio talks were the Rockefeller Foundation’s George Harrar, Ford Foundation’s Forrest Hill, Robert McNamara of the World Bank and Maurice Strong, the Rockefeller family’s international environmental organizer, who, as a Rockefeller Foundation Trustee, organized the UN Earth Summit in Stockholm in 1972. It was part of the foundation’s decades long focus to turn science to the service of eugenics, a hideous version of racial purity, what has been called The Project.

To ensure maximum impact, CGIAR drew in the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN Development Program and the World Bank. Thus, through a carefully-planned leverage of its initial funds, the Rockefeller Foundation by the beginning of the 1970’s was in a position to shape global agriculture policy. And shape it did.

Financed by generous Rockefeller and Ford Foundation study grants, CGIAR saw to it that leading Third World agriculture scientists and agronomists were brought to the US to ‘master’ the concepts of modern agribusiness production, in order to carry it back to their homeland. In the process they created an invaluable network of influence for US agribusiness promotion in those countries, most especially promotion of the GMO ‘Gene Revolution’ in developing countries, all in the name of science and efficient, free market agriculture.

Genetically engineering a master race?

Now the Svalbard Seed Bank begins to become interesting. But it gets better. ‘The Project’ I referred to is the project of the Rockefeller Foundation and powerful financial interests since the 1920’s to use eugenics, later renamed genetics, to justify creation of a genetically-engineered Master Race. Hitler and the Nazis called it the Ayran Master Race.

The eugenics of Hitler were financed to a major extent by the same Rockefeller Foundation which today is building a doomsday seed vault to preserve samples of every seed on our planet. Now this is getting really intriguing. The same Rockefeller Foundation created the pseudo-science discipline of molecular biology in their relentless pursuit of reducing human life down to the ‘defining gene sequence’ which, they hoped, could then be modified in order to change human traits at will. Hitler’s eugenics scientists, many of whom were quietly brought to the United States after the War to continue their biological eugenics research, laid much of the groundwork of genetic engineering of various life forms, much of it supported openly until well into the Third Reich by Rockefeller Foundation generous grants.2

The same Rockefeller Foundation created the so-called Green Revolution, out of a trip to Mexico in 1946 by Nelson Rockefeller and former New Deal Secretary of Agriculture and founder of the Pioneer Hi-Bred Seed Company, Henry Wallace.

The Green Revolution purported to solve the world hunger problem to a major degree in Mexico, India and other select countries where Rockefeller worked. Rockefeller Foundation agronomist, Norman Borlaug, won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work, hardly something to boast about with the likes of Henry Kissinger sharing the same.

In reality, as it years later emerged, the Green Revolution was a brilliant Rockefeller family scheme to develop a globalized agribusiness which they then could monopolize just as they had done in the world oil industry beginning a half century before. As Henry Kissinger declared in the 1970’s, ‘If you control the oil you control the country; if you control food, you control the population.’

Agribusiness and the Rockefeller Green Revolution went hand-in-hand. They were part of a grand strategy which included Rockefeller Foundation financing of research for the development of genetic engineering of plants and animals a few years later.

John H. Davis had been Assistant Agriculture Secretary under President Dwight Eisenhower in the early 1950’s. He left Washington in 1955 and went to the Harvard Graduate School of Business, an unusual place for an agriculture expert in those days. He had a clear strategy. In 1956, Davis wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review in which he declared that “the only way to solve the so-called farm problem once and for all, and avoid cumbersome government programs, is to progress from agriculture to agribusiness.” He knew precisely what he had in mind, though few others had a clue back then— a revolution in agriculture production that would concentrate control of the food chain in corporate multinational hands, away from the traditional family farmer. 3

A crucial aspect driving the interest of the Rockefeller Foundation and US agribusiness companies was the fact that the Green Revolution was based on proliferation of new hybrid seeds in developing markets. One vital aspect of hybrid seeds was their lack of reproductive capacity. Hybrids had a built in protection against multiplication. Unlike normal open pollinated species whose seed gave yields similar to its parents, the yield of the seed borne by hybrid plants was significantly lower than that of the first generation.

That declining yield characteristic of hybrids meant farmers must normally buy seed every year in order to obtain high yields. Moreover, the lower yield of the second generation eliminated the trade in seed that was often done by seed producers without the breeder’s authorization. It prevented the redistribution of the commercial crop seed by middlemen. If the large multinational seed.

Companies were able to control the parental seed lines in house, no competitor or farmer would be able to produce the hybrid. The global concentration of hybrid seed patents into a handful of giant seed companies, led by DuPont’s Pioneer Hi-Bred and Monsanto’s Dekalb laid the ground for the later GMO seed revolution. 4

In effect, the introduction of modern American agricultural technology, chemical fertilizers and commercial hybrid seeds all made local farmers in developing countries, particularly the larger more established ones, dependent on foreign, mostly US agribusiness and petro-chemical company inputs. It was a first step in what was to be a decades-long, carefully planned process.

Under the Green Revolution Agribusiness was making major inroads into markets which were previously of limited access to US exporters. The trend was later dubbed “market-oriented agriculture.” In reality it was agribusiness-controlled agriculture.

Through the Green Revolution, the Rockefeller Foundation and later Ford Foundation worked hand-in-hand shaping and supporting the foreign policy goals of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and of the CIA.

One major effect of the Green Revolution was to depopulate the countryside of peasants who were forced to flee into shantytown slums around the cities in desperate search for work. That was no accident; it was part of the plan to create cheap labor pools for forthcoming US multinational manufactures, the ‘globalization’ of recent years.

When the self-promotion around the Green Revolution died down, the results were quite different from what had been promised. Problems had arisen from indiscriminate use of the new chemical pesticides, often with serious health consequences. The mono-culture cultivation of new hybrid seed varieties decreased soil fertility and yields over time. The first results were impressive: double or even triple yields for some crops such as wheat and later corn in Mexico. That soon faded.

The Green Revolution was typically accompanied by large irrigation projects which often included World Bank loans to construct huge new dams, and flood previously settled areas and fertile farmland in the process. Also, super-wheat produced greater yields by saturating the soil with huge amounts of fertilizer per acre, the fertilizer being the product of nitrates and petroleum, commodities controlled by the Rockefeller-dominated Seven Sisters major oil companies.

Huge quantities of herbicides and pesticides were also used, creating additional markets for the oil and chemical giants. As one analyst put it, in effect, the Green Revolution was merely a chemical revolution. At no point could developing nations pay for the huge amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. They would get the credit courtesy of the World Bank and special loans by Chase Bank and other large New York banks, backed by US Government guarantees.

Applied in a large number of developing countries, those loans went mostly to the large landowners. For the smaller peasants the situation worked differently. Small peasant farmers could not afford the chemical and other modern inputs and had to borrow money.

Initially various government programs tried to provide some loans to farmers so that they could purchase seeds and fertilizers. Farmers who could not participate in this kind of program had to borrow from the private sector. Because of the exorbitant interest rates for informal loans, many small farmers did not even get the benefits of the initial higher yields. After harvest, they had to sell most if not all of their produce to pay off loans and interest. They became dependent on money-lenders and traders and often lost their land. Even with soft loans from government agencies, growing subsistence crops gave way to the production of cash crops.5

Since decades the same interests including the Rockefeller Foundation which backed the initial Green Revolution, have worked to promote a second ‘Gene Revolution’ as Rockefeller Foundation President Gordon Conway termed it several years ago, the spread of industrial agriculture and commercial inputs including GMO patented seeds.

Gates, Rockefeller and a Green Revolution in Africa

With the true background of the 1950’s Rockefeller Foundation Green Revolution clear in mind, it becomes especially curious that the same Rockefeller Foundation along with the Gates Foundation which are now investing millions of dollars in preserving every seed against a possible “doomsday” scenario are also investing millions in a project called The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

AGRA, as it calls itself, is an alliance again with the same Rockefeller Foundation which created the “Gene Revolution.” A look at the AGRA Board of Directors confirms this.

It includes none other than former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as chairman. In his acceptance speech in a World Economic Forum event in Cape Town South Africa in June 2007, Kofi Annan stated, ‘I accept this challenge with gratitude to the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and all others who support our African campaign.’

In addition the AGRA board numbers a South African, Strive Masiyiwa who is a Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation. It includes Sylvia M. Mathews of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Mamphela Ramphele, former Managing Director of the World Bank (2000 – 2006); Rajiv J. Shah of the Gates Foundation; Nadya K. Shmavonian of the Rockefeller Foundation; Roy Steiner of the Gates Foundation. In addition, an Alliance for AGRA includes Gary Toenniessen the Managing Director of the Rockefeller Foundation and Akinwumi Adesina, Associate Director, Rockefeller Foundation.

To fill out the lineup, the Programmes for AGRA includes Peter Matlon, Managing Director, Rockefeller Foundation; Joseph De Vries, Director of the Programme for Africa’s Seed Systems and Associate Director, Rockefeller foundation; Akinwumi Adesina, Associate Director, Rockefeller Foundation. Like the old failed Green Revolution in India and Mexico, the new Africa Green Revolution is clearly a high priority of the Rockefeller Foundation.

While to date they are keeping a low profile, Monsanto and the major GMO agribusiness giants are believed at the heart of using Kofi Annan’s AGRA to spread their patented GMO seeds across Africa under the deceptive label, ‘bio-technology,’ the new euphemism for genetically engineered patented seeds. To date South Africa is the only African country permitting legal planting of GMO crops. In 2003 Burkina Faso authorized GMO trials. In 2005 Kofi Annan’s Ghana drafted bio-safety legislation and key officials expressed their intentions to pursue research into GMO crops.

Africa is the next target in the US-government campaign to spread GMO worldwide. Its rich soils make it an ideal candidate. Not surprisingly many African governments suspect the worst from the GMO sponsors as a multitude of genetic engineering and biosafety projects have been initiated in Africa, with the aim of introducing GMOs into Africa’s agricultural systems. These include sponsorships offered by the US government to train African scientists in genetic engineering in the US, biosafety projects funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank; GMO research involving African indigenous food crops.

The Rockefeller Foundation has been working for years to promote, largely without success, projects to introduce GMOs into the fields of Africa. They have backed research that supports the applicability of GMO cotton in the Makhathini Flats in South Africa.

Monsanto, who has a strong foothold in South Africa’s seed industry, both GMO and hybrid, has conceived of an ingenious smallholders’ programme known as the ‘Seeds of  Hope’ Campaign, which is introducing a green revolution package to small scale poor farmers, followed, of course, by Monsanto’s patented GMO seeds. 6

Syngenta AG of Switzerland, one of the ‘Four Horsemen of the GMO Apocalypse’ is pouring millions of dollars into a new greenhouse facility in Nairobi, to develop GMO insect resistant maize. Syngenta is a part of CGIAR as well.7

Move on to Svalbard

Now is it simply philosophical sloppiness? What leads the Gates and Rockefeller foundations to at one and the same time to back proliferation of patented and soon-to-be Terminator patented seeds across Africa, a process which, as it has in every other place on earth, destroys the plant seed varieties as monoculture industrialized agribusiness is introduced? At the same time they invest tens of millions of dollars to preserve every seed variety known in a bomb-proof doomsday vault near the remote Arctic Circle ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future’ to restate their official release?

It is no accident that the Rockefeller and Gates foundations are teaming up to push a GMO-style Green Revolution in Africa at the same time they are quietly financing the ‘doomsday seed vault’ on Svalbard. The GMO agribusiness giants are up to their ears in the Svalbard project.

Indeed, the entire Svalbard enterprise and the people involved call up the worst catastrophe images of the Michael Crichton bestseller, Andromeda Strain, a sci-fi thriller where a deadly disease of extraterrestrial origin causes rapid, fatal clotting of the blood threatening the entire human species. In Svalbard, the future world’s most secure seed repository will be guarded by the policemen of the GMO Green Revolution–the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations, Syngenta, DuPont and CGIAR.

The Svalbard project will be run by an organization called the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT). Who are they to hold such an awesome trust over the planet’s entire seed varieties? The GCDT was founded by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Bioversity International (formerly the International Plant Genetic Research Institute), an offshoot of the CGIAR.

The Global Crop Diversity Trust is based in Rome. Its Board is chaired by Margaret Catley-Carlson a Canadian also on the advisory board of Group Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux, one of the world’s largest private water companies. Catley-Carlson was also president until 1998 of the New York-based Population Council, John D. Rockefeller’s population reduction organization, set up in 1952 to advance the Rockefeller family’s eugenics program under the cover of promoting “family planning,” birth control devices, sterilization and “population control” in developing countries.

Other GCDT board members include former Bank of America executive presently head of the Hollywood DreamWorks Animation, Lewis Coleman. Coleman is also the lead Board Director of Northrup Grumman Corporation, one of America’s largest military industry Pentagon contractors.

Jorio Dauster (Brazil) is also Board Chairman of Brasil Ecodiesel. He is a former Ambassador of Brazil to the European Union, and Chief Negotiator of Brazil’s foreign debt for the Ministry of Finance. Dauster has also served as President of the Brazilian Coffee Institute and as Coordinator of the Project for the Modernization of Brazil’s Patent System, which involves legalizing patents on seeds which are genetically modified, something until recently forbidden by Brazil’s laws.

Cary Fowler is the Trust’s Executive Director. Fowler was Professor and Director of Research in the Department for International Environment & Development Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. He was also a Senior Advisor to the Director General of Bioversity International. There he represented the Future Harvest Centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in negotiations on the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources. In the 1990s, he headed the International Program on Plant Genetic Resources at the FAO. He drafted and supervised negotiations of FAO’s Global Plan of Action for Plant Genetic Resources, adopted by 150 countries in 1996. He is a past-member of the National Plant Genetic Resources Board of the US and the Board of Trustees of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, another Rockefeller Foundation and CGIAR project.

GCDT board member Dr. Mangala Rai of India is the Secretary of India’s Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), and Director General of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR). He is also a Board Member of the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), which promoted the world’s first major GMO experiment, the much-hyped ‘Golden Rice’ which proved a failure. Rai has served as Board Member for CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center), and a Member of the Executive Council of the CGIAR.

Global Crop Diversity Trust Donors or financial angels include as well, in the words of the Humphrey Bogart Casablanca classic, ‘all the usual suspects.’ As well as the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations, the Donors include GMO giants DuPont-Pioneer Hi-Bred, Syngenta of Basle Switzerland, CGIAR and the State Department’s energetically pro-GMO agency for development aid, USAID. Indeed it seems we have the GMO and population reduction foxes guarding the hen-house of mankind, the global seed diversity store in Svalbard. 8

Why now Svalbard?

We can legitimately ask why Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation along with the major genetic engineering agribusiness giants such as DuPont and Syngenta, along with CGIAR are building the Doomsday Seed Vault in the Arctic.

Who uses such a seed bank in the first place? Plant breeders and researchers are the major users of gene banks. Today’s largest plant breeders are Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta and Dow Chemical, the global plant-patenting GMO giants. Since early in 2007 Monsanto holds world patent rights together with the United States Government for plant so-called ‘Terminator’ or Genetic Use Restriction Technology (GURT). Terminator is an ominous technology by which a patented commercial seed commits ‘suicide’ after one harvest. Control by private seed companies is total. Such control and power over the food chain has never before in the history of mankind existed.

This clever genetically engineered terminator trait forces farmers to return every year to Monsanto or other GMO seed suppliers to get new seeds for rice, soybeans, corn, wheat whatever major crops they need to feed their population. If broadly introduced around the world, it could within perhaps a decade or so make the world’s majority of food producers new feudal serfs in bondage to three or four giant seed companies such as Monsanto or DuPont or Dow Chemical.

That, of course, could also open the door to have those private companies, perhaps under orders from their host government, Washington, deny seeds to one or another developing country whose politics happened to go against Washington’s. Those who say ‘It can’t happen here’ should look more closely at current global events. The mere existence of that concentration of power in three or four private US-based agribusiness giants is grounds for legally banning all GMO crops even were their harvest gains real, which they manifestly are not.

These private companies, Monsanto, DuPont, Dow Chemical hardly have an unsullied record in terms of stewardship of human life. They developed and proliferated such innovations as dioxin, PCBs, Agent Orange. They covered up for decades clear evidence of carcinogenic and other severe human health consequences of use of the toxic chemicals. They have buried serious scientific reports that the world’s most widespread herbicide, glyphosate, the essential ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide that is tied to purchase of most Monsanto genetically engineered seeds, is toxic when it seeps into drinking water.9 Denmark banned glyphosate in 2003 when it confirmed it has contaminated the country’s groundwater.10

The diversity stored in seed gene banks is the raw material for plant breeding and for a great deal of basic biological research. Several hundred thousand samples are distributed annually for such purposes. The UN’s FAO lists some 1400 seed banks around the world, the largest being held by the United States Government. Other large banks are held by China, Russia, Japan, India, South Korea, Germany and Canada in descending order of size. In addition, CGIAR operates a chain of seed banks in select centers around the world.

CGIAR, set up in 1972 by the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation to spread their Green Revolution agribusiness model, controls most of the private seed banks from the Philippines to Syria to Kenya. In all these present seed banks hold more than six and a half million seed varieties, almost two million of which are ‘distinct.’ Svalbard’s Doomsday Vault will have a capacity to house four and a half million different seeds.

GMO as a weapon of biowarfare?

Now we come to the heart of the danger and the potential for misuse inherent in the Svalbard project of Bill Gates and the Rockefeller foundation. Can the development of patented seeds for most of the world’s major sustenance crops such as rice, corn, wheat, and feed grains such as soybeans ultimately be used in a horrible form of biological warfare?

The explicit aim of the eugenics lobby funded by wealthy elite families such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harriman and others since the 1920’s, has embodied what they termed ‘negative eugenics,’ the systematic killing off of undesired bloodlines. Margaret Sanger, a rapid eugenicist, the founder of Planned Parenthood International and an intimate of the Rockefeller family, created something called The Negro Project in 1939, based in Harlem, which as she confided in a letter to a friend, was all about the fact that, as she put it, ‘we want to exterminate the Negro population.’ 11

A small California biotech company, Epicyte, in 2001 announced the development of genetically engineered corn which contained a spermicide which made the semen of men who ate it sterile. At the time Epicyte had a joint venture agreement to spread its technology with DuPont and Syngenta, two of the sponsors of the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Vault. Epicyte was since acquired by a North Carolina biotech company. Astonishing to learn was that Epicyte had developed its spermicidal GMO corn with research funds from the US Department of Agriculture, the same USDA which, despite worldwide opposition, continued to finance the development of Terminator technology, now held by Monsanto.

In the 1990’s the UN’s World Health Organization launched a campaign to vaccinate millions of women in Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines between the ages of 15 and 45, allegedly against Tentanus, a sickness arising from such things as stepping on a rusty nail. The vaccine was not given to men or boys, despite the fact they are presumably equally liable to step on rusty nails as women.

Because of that curious anomaly, Comite Pro Vida de Mexico, a Roman Catholic lay organization became suspicious and had vaccine samples tested. The tests revealed that the Tetanus vaccine being spread by the WHO only to women of child-bearing age contained human Chorionic Gonadotrophin or hCG, a natural hormone which when combined with a tetanus toxoid carrier stimulated antibodies rendering a woman incapable of maintaining a pregnancy. None of the women vaccinated were told.

It later came out that the Rockefeller Foundation along with the Rockefeller’s Population Council, the World Bank (home to CGIAR), and the United States’ National Institutes of Health had been involved in a 20-year-long project begun in 1972 to develop the concealed abortion vaccine with a tetanus carrier for WHO. In addition, the Government of Norway, the host to the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Vault, donated $41 million to develop the special abortive Tetanus vaccine. 12

Is it a coincidence that these same organizations, from Norway to the Rockefeller Foundation to the World Bank are also involved in the Svalbard seed bank project? According to Prof. Francis Boyle who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by the US Congress, the Pentagon is ‘now gearing up to fight and win biological warfare’ as part of two Bush national strategy directives adopted, he notes, ‘without public knowledge and review’ in 2002. Boyle adds that in 2001-2004 alone the US Federal Government spent $14.5 billion for civilian bio-warfare-related work, a staggering sum.

Rutgers University biologist Richard Ebright estimates that over 300 scientific institutions and some 12,000 individuals in the USA today have access to pathogens suitable for biowarfare. Alone there are 497 US Government NIH grants for research into infectious diseases with biowarfare potential. Of course this is being justified under the rubric of defending against possible terror attack as so much is today.

Many of the US Government dollars spent on biowarfare research involve genetic engineering. MIT biology professor Jonathan King says that the ‘growing bio-terror programs represent a significant emerging danger to our own population.’ King adds, ‘while such programs are always called defensive, with biological weapons, defensive and offensive programs overlap almost completely.’ 13

Time will tell whether, God Forbid, the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Bank of Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation is part of another Final Solution, this involving the extinction of the Late, Great Planet Earth.

Notes

1 F. William Engdahl, Seeds of Destruction, Montreal, (Global Research, 2007).
2 Ibid, pp.72-90.
3 John H. Davis, Harvard Business Review, 1956, cited in Geoffrey Lawrence, Agribusiness, Capitalism and the Countryside, Pluto Press, Sydney, 1987. See also Harvard Business School, The Evolution of an Industry and a Seminar: Agribusiness Seminar,http://www.exed.hbs.edu/programs/agb/seminar.html.
4 Engdahl, op cit., p. 130.
5 Ibid. P. 123-30.
6 Myriam Mayet, The New Green Revolution in Africa: Trojan Horse for GMOs?, May, 2007, African Centre for Biosafety, www.biosafetyafrica.net.
7 ETC Group, Green Revolution 2.0 for Africa?, Communique Issue #94, March/April 2007.
8 Global Crop Diversity Trust website, in http://www.croptrust.org/main/donors.php.
9 Engdahl, op. cit., pp.227-236.
10 Anders Legarth Smith, Denmark Bans Glyphosates, the Active Ingredient in Roundup, Politiken, September 15, 2003, in organic.com.au/news/2003.09.15.
11 Tanya L. Green, The Negro Project: Margaret Sanger’s Genocide Project for Black American’s, inwww.blackgenocide.org/negro.html.
12 Engdahl, op. cit., pp. 273-275; J.A. Miller, Are New Vaccines Laced With Birth-Control Drugs?, HLI Reports, Human Life International, Gaithersburg, Maryland; June/July 1995, Volume 13, Number 8.
13 Sherwood Ross, Bush Developing Illegal Bioterror Weapons for Offensive Use,’ December 20, 2006, in www.truthout.org.

Sources:

Global Research

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