Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has trotted out the simplistic notion that his long-discredited “Look East” Policy, obviously in its original form, is the best way forward for the country to cope with “the anticipated uncertain economic times ahead”.
Malaysian-born Chinese and Indians would be naive if they think Mahathir's "Look East" would include without question the booming economies of China and India - if his original plan is anything to go by. It was Japan that Mahathir targeted in the 80s in his misguided 'vision' to nullify the Chinese role in the Malaysian economy by repleacing them with the Japanese.
Mahathir equals Japan with success and the West with failed models, clearly in a reference to the debt crisis plaguing European economies and the burgeoning national debt burden of the United States.
Singapore pushes ahead due to wiser policies
But he should look at Singapore, south of the causeway and paced by his nemesis Lee Kuan Yew, which by 2010 had a economy larger than Malaysia’s by US$5 billion – US$ 210 billion v US$ 205 billion -- and has a national debt burden equivalent to 98 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product.
Unlike Malaysia however, Singapore puts its borrowings to good use and maintains a high level of national reserves and investments in the form of Sovereign Funds invested worldwide. Not only did it court Japan, but also India and China, where most of its trade now comes from.
Malaysia is more into splurging its borrowings and revenues on the politics of patronage through the dishing out of government projects to a favoured few at grossly inflated prices i.e. at least double to triple what it should actually cost the tax-payer.
No western economy – the failed models referred to by Mahathir – allows this kind of outright pillage of the National Treasury to take place in broad daylight. They do not dip either into Pension Funds to fund even more hare-brained schemes dreamed up by the fat cats and their political masters.
The bakery test
Mahathir’s gushing admiration of the Japanese is grossly misplaced.
Obviously, he still hopes that the Japanese will play a greater role in Malaysia’s economy, to the detriment of the Chinese, and to the benefit of the Umno elite. More on that shortly!
So far, Mahathir has only been able to persuade a Japanese baker to team up with him in a venture called The Loaf. It was failing at the beginning and now while it can pack in hungry shoppers and tourists, the improvement took off only after it offered 50% discounts and other promotional items. The complaint is that the breads and pastry products turned out are too expensive but Mahathir plods on nevertheless.
The thing is, if Mahathir can’t run even a simple bakery, no one should take his various pronouncements on the economy too seriously. He’s too proud to admit that he was been wrong, get rid of his Japanese partner, and bring in a local Chinese or Indian or East Malaysian one.
But is the Japanese economy doing so well?
Suffice it to say that Japan Incorporated is a creation of US General Douglas McArthur after the Japanese surrendered unconditionally to the Americans to end World War II in Asia and the Pacific. The so-called Japanese Miracle was purely due to America opening its market to that country. The reverse was the reason why Japan bombed Pearl Harbour in Hawaii on 7th Dec 1941 to spark off World War II in Asia and the Pacific.
Ever since the end of World War II, until the recent emergence of China, both Japan and the US have been like two drunk men, clinging on to each other, lest one of them fall into the nearest ditch. In the end, it was Japan which fell into the ditch over the undervalued Yen vis-a-vis the US dollar, the burgeoning Japanese reserves of US dollars which were promptly invested in US Treasury Bills and the trade imbalance between the two countries in favour of the former.
Japan went into a 15-year long deflation and had just come out of it when it went into yet another deflationary period in the wake of the local bad debts ridden banking industry.
Now, no one is sure where the Japanese economy stands except for its inroads into the Chinese economy to reduce its dependency on the US market. This is the failing economic model that Mahathir wants Malaysia to emulate.
Sidelined by China because of his racist agenda
China has since replaced Japan in the US market. The country is plagued by the same problems that Japan faced with Washington i.e. an undervalued Yuan vis-a-vis the US dollar, the burgeoning Chinese reserves of US dollars which are promptly being invested in US Treasury Bills and growing trade imbalance between the two countries in favour of the former.
China and the US today are like two drunken men, clinging on to each other, fearful lest one of them fall into the nearest ditch. Deja Vu!
Tiny Singapore meanwhile replaced China last year as Malaysia biggest trading partner. This factor, more than anything else, indicates just how far Malaysia has fallen out of favour in the Chinese market.
By right, Malaysia should be tapping into both the Indian and Chinese markets. That’s where all the economic action can be found, and to a lesser extent in Brazil, Russia, Mexico, South Africa, Eastern Europe and the Gulf Co-operation Countries.
Offered to let the Japanese replace the Chinese in Malaysia
Few know that the Look East Policy, as it was implemented, was a Japanese variation of Mahathir’s original hare-brained scheme. Insider accounts suggest that the racist ex-Prime Minister, in his version, had the nerve to suggest to Japan that he was willing to allow its citizens to migrate to Malaysia in droves to replace the Chinese role in the economy.
He also acted unilaterally and decreed that Japan’s horrible World War II record in Malaysia should be omitted mention in local school textbooks.
In return, he wanted the Japanese to bring his “Malays” (read Umno elite and selected warlords) into their businesses as genuine partners. The Chinese were not willing to do this, he complained to the Japanese.
The Japanese were shocked and would have none of Mahathir’s sick schemes to reduce the Chinese business community in Malaysia to irrelevance.
Instead, Tokyo was willing to give scholarships to Mahathir’s “Malays” and train them in various skills. Japan was also willing to send Japanese instructors over to Malaysia to teach at various technical schools in the country and help set up new ones.
Japanese gave him back his own medicine
In order to soften the blow, the Japanese came up with a hare-brained scheme of their own to feed Mahathir’s bloated ego viz. the Proton Saga as the National Car “to prove that his kind can be world-beaters”.
The engineering drawings of a Mitsubishi Lancer model which failed in the Singapore and Malaysian markets were quickly dusted and recycled to Malaysia for an undisclosed, but reportedly steep, sum. The Japanese, along with the engineering drawings, sold Malaysia some old jigs as new ones to turn out the Proton Saga. This was to add insult to injury.
Proton, even since its inception in the 1980s, has been the bane of the Malaysian motoring public, thanks to Mahathir and the Japanese.
Every Proton model since the very first one has been a cosmetic variation of the first since the company lacks the resources to come up with new engines. Ten years ago, Proton itself estimated that it would cost at least RM 500 million to develop a new engine. The amount can only be recouped after three years in the market. By that time, a brand new model would have to be introduced to the market. Besides, any sales less than one million units a year for a particular model was not a viable proposition.
Taxpayers pay the price of Dr M's racism
Malaysians and Petronas continue to subsidize Proton cars in keeping with the Look East Policy but not before Mitsubishi was unceremoniously given the boot.
It’s unlikely that Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak would ever consider giving Mahathir’s Look East Policy even a cursory glance. This is a policy which has not only failed spectacularly but alienated Malaysia from the west and kept the country in the economic doldrums and the backwaters.
The Japanese do not have two horns on their heads and will have nothing to do with any racist Hidden Agenda – read the Look East Policy -- against the Chinese business community in Malaysia.
What is apartheid?
Although the crime derives its name from the South African experience that ended in 1994, it has now been generalised to refer to any condition that imposes any oppressive regime based on group identity and designed for the benefit of a dominating collectivity that imposes its will on a subjugated collectivity. Although "race" is the usual understanding of the collectivity involved, the legal definition is clear beyond reasonable doubt that the practice of apartheid can be properly associated with any form of group antagonism that is translated into a legal regime incorporating inequality as its core feature, including those that base a human classification of belonging to a group by reference to national and ethnic identity.
The overwhelming evidence of systematic discrimination is impossible to overlook in any objective description of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and to a lesser degree East Jerusalem. The pattern of establishing settlements for Israelis throughout the West Bank not only violates the prohibition in international humanitarian law against transferring members of the occupying population to an occupied territory. It also creates the operational justifications for the establishment of a legal regime of separation and subjugation.
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| Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu does not believe Israel is an apartheid state [Reuters] |
From this settlement phenomenon follows an Israeli community protected by Israeli security forces, provided at great expense with a network of settler-only roads, enjoying Israeli constitutional protection, and given direct unregulated access to Israel. What also follows is a Palestinian community subject to often abusive military administration without the protection of effective rights, living with great daily difficulty due to many burdensome restrictions on mobility, and subject to an array of humiliating and dangerous conditions that include frequent Israeli use of arbitrary and excessive force, house demolitions, nighttime arrests and detentions that subjects Palestinians as a whole to a lifetime of acute human insecurity.
The contrast of these two sets of conditions, translated into operative legal regimes, for two peoples living side-by-side makes the allegations of apartheid seem persuasive, and if a slander is present then it is attributed to those who, like Goldstone, seek to defame and discredit the Russell Tribunal’s heroic attempt to challenge the scandal of silence that has allowed Israel to perpetrate injustice without accountability.
Goldstone’s preemptive strike against the Russell Tribunal is hard to take seriously. It is formulated in such a way as to mislead and confuse a generally uninformed public. For instance, he devotes much space in the column to paint a generally rosy (and false) picture of recent conditions of life experienced by the Palestinian minority in Israel, without even taking note of their historic experience of expulsion, the nakba. He dramatically understates the deplorable status of Palestinian Israelis who live as a discriminated minority, despite enjoying some of the prerogatives of Israeli citizenship.
His main diversionary contention is that apartheid cannot be credibly alleged in such a constitutional setting where Palestinians are currently accorded citizenship rights, and he never dares to raise the question of what it means to ask Palestinian Muslims and Christians to pledge allegiance to "a Jewish state", by its nature as a fracturing of community-based on racially-based inequality. Few would argue that this pattern of unacceptable inequality adds up to an apartheid structure within Israel, and the Russell Tribunal allegation does not so argue. It is likely to forego making the apartheid charge associated with the events surrounding the founding of Israel in the late 1940s, because from an international law perspective they took place before apartheid was criminalised in the mid-1970s.
The Russell Tribunal is focussing its attention on the situation existing in the West Bank that has been occupied since 1967. John Dugard has issued a statement to clear the air, indicating that his testimony will be devoted exclusively to the existence of conditions of apartheid obtaining in the occupied territories. That Dugard had to issue such a statement is a kind of backhanded tribute to the success of the Goldstone hasbara effort to divert and distort. For Goldstone to refute the apartheid contention by turning to the situation within Israel itself, while at the same time virtually ignoring the allegation principally concerned with the occupation, is a stunning display of bad faith. He knows better.
With shameless abandon, Goldstone's diatribe relies on another debater’s trick by insisting that apartheid is a narrowly circumscribed racial crime of the exact sort that existed in South Africa is certainly disingenuous. Goldstone takes no account of the explicit legal intent, as embodied in the authoritative Rome Statute and in the International Convention on the Crime of Apartheid, to understand race in a much broader sense that applies to the Israeli/Palestine interaction if its systematic and legally encoded discriminatory character can be convincingly established, as I believe is the case.
Fall from grace
The sad saga of Richard Goldstone’s descent from pinnacles of respect and trust to this shabby role as legal gladiator recklessly jousting on behalf of Israel is as unbecoming as it is unpersuasive. It is undoubtedly a process more complex than caving in to Zionist pressures, which were even more nasty and overt than usual, as well as being clearly defamatory, but what exactly has led to his radical shift in position remains a mystery. As yet, there is neither an autobiographical account nor a convincing third-party interpretation. Goldstone himself has been silent, seeming to want us to believe that he is now as much a man of the law as ever, but only persisting in his impartial and lifelong attempt to allow the chips to fall where they may. The polemical manipulation of the facts and arguments makes us doubt any such self-serving explanation based on the alleged continuities of professionalism. It is my judgment that enough is known to acknowledge Goldstone’s justifiable fall from grace.
The Palestinians' long ordeal is sufficiently grounded in reality that the defection of such an influential witness amounts to a further assault not only on Palestinian wellbeing but also on the wider struggle to achieve justice, peace, and security for both peoples. Contrary to Goldstone's protestations that the Russell Tribunal will hinder a resolution to the conflict, it is the Goldstones of this world that are producing the smokescreens behind which the very possibility of a two-state solution has been deliberately destroyed by Israel’s tactics of delay and programmes of expansion.
In the end, if there is ever to emerge a just and sustainable peace, it will be thanks to many forms of Palestinian resistance and a related campaign of global solidarity, of which the Russell Tribunal promises to make a notable contribution. We should all remember that it is hard to render the truth until we see the truth - ugly as it may be!
It was bound to happen sooner or later. At some point, both the president and Congress would be faced with a clear choice between U.S. national interests and the demands made by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his powerful Washington lobby.
In the larger sense, it happens all the time. U.S. policy toward the Palestinians endangers our interests throughout the Muslim world, including — first and foremost — our civilian and military personnel in the Middle East, as well as our strategic and economic interests.
But usually, as is the case with some Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights like the Gaza blockade, the situation is not completely clear-cut. The Palestinians charge illegality under international law; the Israelis cite a different law.
And the U.S. can (and invariably does) say nothing, or it takes the side of the Israelis. The entire world expects that from the United States by now and understands precisely why we operate that way. It understands that Israel is an important friend whose security we would never jeopardize.
It understands quite clearly that it is our absurd system of campaign funding that dictates that we follow Israel's lead on defending the occupation and preventing Palestinians from achieving any kind of recognition or sovereignty. The U.S. always chooses Netanyahu's interests over the rights of the Palestinians.
However, today's United Nations vote to admit Palestine into the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) presents U.S. policymakers with a watershed choice. U.S. interests and the Israeli government's desires are directly pitted against each other.
To put it simply, Israel expects the United States to quit UNESCO and any other international agency that admits Palestine to membership. Hard U.S. interests dictate that we not even consider such a move.
This is not a question of U.S. interests vs. Israeli interests, which is why I refer to the Israeli government's desires. Israel opposes UNESCO membership for Palestine as part and parcel of its policy to deny recognition of Palestine in any forum until Israel grants permission. It's pure symbolism.
But for the United States, the implication of the policy of withdrawing from an important U.N. agency because its members recognize Palestine affects our national security in very direct ways.
So why is this happening?
It is happening because, under pressure from Israel and its lobby, the United States Congress in the 1990s passed legislation requiring the United States to not contribute to any U.N. entity that admits Palestine as a member.
According to former Sen. Tim Wirth (D-CO):
At issue are two laws from the early 1990s that prohibit the United States from providing financial contributions to any United Nations entity that admits Palestine as a member. The laws are strict: if Palestine is admitted to a UN agency, the United States must stop paying its membership dues. The restrictions provide no authority for the president to waive these prohibitions even if it is in the national interest to do so.With a clear majority of countries around the world prepared to back Palestinian ambitions at the United Nations, the United States is poised to lose its leverage over several UN bodies that advance American interests and promote our ideal.
As Wirth explains, UNESCO "leads global efforts to bring clean water to the poor, promotes educational and curriculum building in the developing world, and manages a tsunami early warning system in the Pacific, among other important tasks. This critical work would be jeopardized if UNESCO's top funder stops paying its bills."
But it goes farther than that.
According to Politico's Jonathan Allen, the funding cut would have a damaging effect on "American tech companies — such as Apple, Google and Microsoft — and movie studios that use UNESCO to open markets in the developing world and rely upon an associated entity, the World Intellectual Property Organization, to police international disputes over music, movies and software."
Potentially, the damage can be much, much worse if Palestine seeks and gains recognition from such other critical U.N. entities as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
The IAEA is the agency that the U.S. government has relied on to restrain nuclear weapon development (and proliferation) by Iran, North Korea, and others. The WHO works with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to protect us from potential pandemics like the Avian flu.
No matter. Pursuant to the congressional ban, if the Palestinians join any of these entities, the U.S. stops its funding and is, essentially, out.
Thanks to a powerful lobby, the United States would not have a seat at the table when critical matters of life and death are discussed.
Unfortunately, at this point, it appears that both the White House and Congress will put Israel's demands above U.S. interests of the most fundamental kind.
In fact, within hours of the vote today, the Obama administration announced that it is cutting off funding to UNESCO — cutoffs that, no doubt, will be followed if other U.N. agencies follow suit.
Truth be told, the Obama administration has no choice. The law gives the president no discretion about withdrawing aid if a U.N. agency recognizes Palestine. In fact, AIPAC made sure that the traditional "national security" waiver was not included in the law.
That means that President Obama is in a box, although Congress could, if it chooses, vote to waive the provisions of the law.
But that would mean putting U.S. national interests above pleasing campaign donors. When was the last time that happened?
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