Anti-Lynas group aiming to whip up support Down Under

Tashny Sukumaran 

Save Malaysia Stop Lynas movement is taking its protest to Australia, hoping that the Australian people will support in stopping the rare earth plant from firing up.

KUALA LUMPUR: The government and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) may have given the Lynas Corp the go ahead to start their rare earth plant but the Save Malaysia Stop Lynas movement has not given up and is taking their fight to Australia.
Lynas Corp plans to ship the rare earth ore mined from Western Australia’s Mount Weld to the Gebeng plant in Kuantan.
The anti-Lynas movement will be in Australia from July 4 to 9. They will picketing in front of the Lynas headquarters, conduct a forum in Sydney to get the support of the Australians, and march to the Australian parliament in Canberra.
They are hoping to engage the locals there and convince them to apply pressure on the corporation.
“We are going to paint a big, clear picture about our concerns over the controversial Lynas plant in Kuantan and hopefully convince the Australians to back us,” said Steve Hang, head of communications for the movement.
“Together, people power can stop Lynas,” he said.
The Save Malaysia Stop Lynas movement has been strongly against the RM700-million rare earth refinery in Gebeng, voicing environmental and health concerns.
It has urged the government to halt the project before it irreparably harms the community and environment.
For a while, it looked like they had won when the government bowed to public pressure and called in a nine-man panel from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to prepare a report on the site’s safety.
However, the report came back saying that if Lynas Corp followed eleven recommendations, they could resume working on the plant, which is 40% complete.
Lynas Corp is confident it will be able to fire up its controversial rare earth refinery in Gebeng by year-end, in spite of the freshly imposed conditions.
Rare earth metals, crucial to high-technology products such as Boeing airplanes, smart bombs, Apple’s iPhone and hybrid cars, have become increasingly vital.
Reports say the plant may earn RM8 billion for Lynas, but critics have questioned the real economic benefit of the project, pointing to the 12-year tax break the Australian company will enjoy.
The government expects Lynas to spend RM4 million a year, in addition to the RM700 million it has already poured into plant.

Bangunan loji Lynas cacat teruk

FMT Staff  

Pendedahan The New York Times ini amat membimbangkan dan maklumat ini boleh dipercayai kerana ia datangnya daripada para jurutera dan kontraktor loji.

PETALING JAYA: Akhbar The New York Times baru-baru ini mendedahkan bahawa loji radioaktif Lynas yang kini mencapai tahap separuh siap pembinaannya di Gebeng, dekat Kuantan mengalami masalah kecacatan rekabentuk dan pembinaan yang serius kerana tidak mengikut spesifikasi.
Ketua Pembangkang, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, dalam satu kenyataan media hari ini berkata, pendedahan ini amat membimbangkan dan maklumat ini boleh dipercayai kerana ia datangnya daripada para jurutera dan kontraktor loji.
“Kerajaan Malaysia dan Lynas yang mempromosi projek ini mesti mendedahkan perkara sebenar kerana loji ini dijangka membawa kesan buruk radioaktif kepada alam sekitar dan kesihatan penduduk yang tinggal di kawasan sekitar,” desak beliau.
Ahli Parlimen Permatang Pauh itu berkata, sejak dari mula lagi, Ahli Parlimen Kuantan Fuziah Salleh telah menimbulkan rasa prihatin beliau terhadap projek ini.
“Fuziah bersama rakyat Kuantan dan aktivis-aktivis dari sebuah badan bukan kerajaan (NGO) ‘Save Malaysia’ telah sekian lama berjuang dalam isu ini.
“Nampaknya perjuangan mereka selama ini membuahkan hasil walaupun mereka diugut dan diberi gambaran salah oleh ahli-ahli politik yang berkepentingan bahawa loji itu selamat digunakan,” jelasnya.
Menurut Anwar, sudah acap kali kerajaan Malaysia cuba memihak kepada syarikat baru dari Australia itu, yang menerima insentif 12 tahun bebas cukai, apabila berdepan rakyat yang menyuarakan kebimbangan mereka.
Ujar beliau, “melindungi kesan buruk radioaktif tidak seharusnya dilayan sebagai ‘bola politik’ dan sepatutnya isu ini disifatkan sebagai berkecuali (tidak dipengaruhi oleh kepentingan politik).
“Dengan pendedahan laporan The New York Times itu, saya mengambil kesempatan ini untuk merakamkan penghargaan dan tahniah kepada mereka yang tidak kenal penat lelah dalam memperjuangkan hak mereka,” katanya.
Sementara itu, ‘Save Malaysia’ yang menentang pembinaan loji Lynas mendakwa laporan Agensi Tenaga Atom Antarabangsa (IAEA) tidak lengkap dan menyeluruh kerana ia mereka tidak mengkaji cici-ciri alam sekitar di tapak loji.
Ketua ‘Save Malaysia’ Tan Bun Teet berkata, laporan yang disediakan oleh sembilan ahli IAEA itu tidak mengambilkira kedudukan semula jadi tapak berkenaan.
“Kaji selidik oleh kilang-kilang lain yang menduduki kawasan itu mendapati paras air tidak sampai satu meter dari permukaannya,” katanya.

IN SPITE OF THE CHEATING...... BERSIHKAN!!!

Written by Admin

EVIDENCE….Bag of postal votes found in Tebobon river just after the 2008 elections. Until now there has been no word from the police about this. By : DANIEL JOHN JAMBUN THE BN has a strong reason to fear the coming Bersih rally. Never before has the BN been so frightened of a rally as this one, and for good reasons too. The first reason is the fact that the electoral roll is actually very dirty, soiled and polluted with a lot of creative handiworks of the BN. And everybody knows this. Even the Election Commission admits it, or else why would it want to open its doors for talks with Bersih? The proofs of the election system being manipulated are many, and election fraud and irregularities are general knowledge in Malaysia. Secondly, the 8-point list of demands by Bersih is causing the BN leaders to tremble because the prospect of having a clean electoral roll, a reformed postal ballot system, use of indelible ink, a minimum of 21 days campaign period, a free and fair access to media, a strengthened public institutions, a stoppage of corruption and dirty politics would cause the BN to spin out of control. BN knows it survives only through fraud and corruption. How ironic that the BN is now caught in its own trap; all these years it had been talking about clean administration, honesty, noble qualities, transparent governance and so forth, and out of the blue the masses are demanding exactly that, and it gets frightening because they have been lying and it is now caught with its pants down. BN knows it should be supporting Bersih, joining the rally in order to live up to its own claims. But no! The Bersih campaign is frightful because a clean and honest election system would spell the end of the BN rule. It would sound the death knell of half a century of license to bleed the people. For BN the stakes are too high, and the mere thought of Putrajaya going into the hands of the opposition is dreadfully unthinkable. The BN is, therefore, now on a psywar, using every trick in the book to demonise Bersih, including the ridiculous tactic of planting communist materials to try give the movement a negative image. But how many people are buying the lie? The BN is doing it because it knows it is running the high risk of losing support if it uses force because which leader can forget how much BN lost because of the way the government handled the peaceful Hindraf rally prior to the 2008 general election? And yet let us not discount the possibility of an Ops Lalang type of crackdown before July 9. In the meantime, some ridiculous rationales are being shoved down our throats at the moment. Datuk Herbert Timbun Lagadan is asking the opposition assemblymen and parliamentarians to resign if the election in which they won were dirty. Herbert’s logic is inverted, it should be the other way round! It is the BN reps who should resign because they won through cheating and manipulations! The Deputy Prime Minister is saying if the elections were dirty how come the opposition managed to win so many more seats and PAS had managed to retain power in Kelantan for 21 years? This is another nonsense which seems logical, but is actually a mental manipulation! The fact is, dear Tan Sri, the opposition won all those states ‘In Spite Of The Cheating’ by the BN. The fact is, the support for the opposition were so great in those areas that even excessive cheating and manipulations by BN couldn’t overcome the opposition votes! Without the cheating, the opposition would have taken over Putrajaya since a long time ago! And this is what the BN is really frightened of. How can the BN say that the country’s election process is clean and still keep a straight face, when we have so many instances of clear, daylight frauds even in the recent past? Have they forgotten about ballots boxes going astray? How about the ballot box for Bukit Bintang that turned out to be filled up with nothing but dry leaves? Wikipedia reports that the allegedly subservient Election Commission had been involved in gerrymandering, vote fraud, compliant media, misuse of government resources and massive vote buying [which] gave the National Front or Barisan Nasional an unfair advantage…. its electoral roll has been suspect, because of the discovery that it contains nearly 9,000 people aged more than 100. This raised suspicions that the books are contaminated with dead voters which leaves the election vulnerable to fraud. Further discoveries of people who have been born in the same year possessing different identity cards (IC) and living in many different localities, were uncovered by Malaysians for Free and Fair Elections (Mafrel). These people are registered to vote in various places throughout the country. These issues led to questions regarding the fairness of the elections. It was also highlighted by the Opposition that certain postal voters were issued with two ballot sheets. Activists from BERSIH say each ballot was also attached to a letter identifying the voter along with the voting slip serial number, so it would be easy to trace who voted for the opposition. Electoral reform activists said that a number of seats that the opposition could win could be decided by postal votes and that those casting postal votes do not have the freedom to choose the candidate they want. Human Rights Watch, which had been monitoring the election process, stated that government restraints on expression, assembly and access to state media would deny Malaysians a fair vote. Calling the electoral process ‘Grossly Unfair’, Human Rights Watch called on the government to address concerns with fraud in the electoral rolls, and to provide opposition parties access to state media.” They have been cases of votes counted not tallying with the available votes. The case for the polling centre of Siong Tengah in Tamin is a perfect example. The polling centre had 236 registered voters, and on counting, the BN candidate garnered 251 voters while the PKR candidate received 53, giving a total vote of 304, which was 68 more than the registered voters. If it was true that there was a turnout of 73% of voters, as the Election Commissions announced, there should have only been 172 voters that day! This was a clear case in which phantom voters played a part and this is not an isolated case. And note that the recent Sarawak state general election was considered the toughest ever for the BN because of only one thing – the sentiments against the BN was so strong that they BN was forced to spend a reported RM1.5 billion and during the election campaign the whole of Sarawak ran out of beer and stout! The longhouse residents had merrymakings the likes of which they had never seen before, with free food and drinks – and cash. The sad thing about the whole affair was that the RM10,000 cheques issued as enticement to the Penghulus bounced at the banks after the elections and were recollected! During election campaigns we see a sudden rise in government project allocations and announcements, a slew of handouts in the forms of water tanks, zinc sheets, scholarships for students, hampers for the poor and senior citizens, etc. which are clear cases of political corruption. There would be loads of buses of phantom voters from outside the district. There is also that famous trick of someone turning the electricity off during vote counting, and in the darkness, the vote-count trays are switched and the voting slips ‘automatically’ multiply like runaway virus. Or at the last minute another sack of ‘forgotten’ postal votes, which cannot be verified, are brought in! It is unfortunate that many people have forgotten that in July 2008, a high-security bag containing a sizable number of voting slips was discovered near the Tobobon river in the constituency of Sepangar. A similar case also happened in Tawau in 2004. These were highlighted in the newspapers, and reported to the police, but until now nothing has been heard about them again. It’s no use resorting to the courts for remedy in cases of electoral injustices and abuse of electoral process because all know what the courts’ decisions will be. And who doesn’t know about the intimidation and fear used in the campaigns, such as threatening parents about losing their children’s scholarships and jobs? And what clean elections are we talking about when the government has absolute monopoly of the people’s community halls (which should be for free use by every Malaysian), and the abuse of government machineries and vehicles? There has also been cases of armies arriving by the truckloads, or unnecessary roadblocks before or on polling day as ways to alarm the people into voting for the BN. Fraud, manipulation, intimidation, vote buying, and all other sorts of criminal ways to win elections have been used by the BN. It is high time for such a rally planned by Bersih to be held to express our frustration, especially for Sabah which has become a breeding ground for phantom voters in the form of illegal immigrants who were purposefully given the ICs to vote. So clean electoral rolls, clean election process? My foot!(sabahkini)

Memalukan:PM Silap Maklumat

Husam: Saya malu Najib diberi info silap isu stesen teksi Pasir Puteh

KUALA LUMPUR, 2 Julai – Exco Kerajaan Negeri Kelantan Datuk Husam Musa menegaskan Perbadanan Kemajuan Iktisad Negeri Kelantan (PKINK) tidak pernah menjual tapak perhentian teksi di bandar Pasir Puteh, bahkan disediakan percuma untuk perkhidmatan teksi di bandar berkenaan.
Walaupun sebelum ini, PKINK mengenakan sedikit bayaran ke atas persatuan pemandu teksi Pasir Puteh, tetapi kini, bagi tujuan kebajikan ahli persatuan tersebut, PKINK tidak mengenakan sebarang bayaran.
Kata beliau, perdana menteri atau sesiapa sahaja boleh menunjukkan bukti atas dakwaan mereka.
“Sudah tentu perdana menteri tidak mampu berbuat demikian kerana isu ini adalah modal atas angin semata-mata,” katanya dalam satu kenyataan dikeluarkan hari ini.
Selaku rakyat Malaysia, kata Husam, beliau merasa malu atas salah maklumat yang disampaikan kepada pemimpin terpenting negara ini sehingga Najib menyebut sesuatu yang tidak berasas dalam ucapannya.
“Saya menggesa agar perdana menteri menyemak pihak yang telah memberikan maklumat tidak bertapis seperti itu bagi mengelakkan kenyataan yang sama berulang, yang boleh menjejaskan kredibiliti beliau,” katanya lagi.
Dalam ucapan pagi tadi di Pasir Putih,  Najib yang mengadakan lawatan kerja ke Kelantan berjanji akan menyediakan pejabat baru kepada Persatuan Pemandu Teksi Jajahan Pasir Puteh setelah kerajaan PAS Kelantan merampas tapak perhentian teksi di bandar Pasir Puteh itu dan menjualnya kepada sebuah syarikat swasta.
Beliau berkata kerajaan pusat akan mencari lokasi baru yang sesuai untuk dijadikan tapak perhentian teksi di dalam bandar Pasir Puteh.
Beliau juga meluahkan rasa kesal terhadap tindakan kerajaan negeri melalui PKINK yang memutuskan untuk menjual tapak perhentian teksi di Pasar Lama Pasir Puteh setelah lebih 20 tahun perhentian itu beroperasi.
“Insya-Allah kita akan bantu dirikan pejabat baru,” katanya.
Selain itu, kata Husam, perkembangan pagi tadi juga menunjukkan Barisan Nasional tidak mempunyai isu besar yang boleh dibangkitkan sehingga maklumat tidak berasas pun terpaksa dijadikan modal.
“Saya yakin, jika perdana menteri sanggup menggunakan maklumat atas angin seperti itu, tentulah dalam isu yang lain juga beliau mudah membeli maklumat bakul sampah, termasuk dalam isu himpunan menuntut pilihan raya yang bersih dan adil pada 9 julai ini.
“Isu yang lebih besar seperti rampasan wang royalti minyak Kelantan tidak pula disebut. Isu-isu janji pilihan raya Pengkalan Pasir, Manek Urai dan Galas yang belum selesai juga tidak disebutkan,” katanya lagi.
Husam yang juga Naib Presiden PAS berkata, beliau yakin kerajaan negeri bersedia memberikan tapak berkenaan untuk dimajukan dengan kemudahan yang lebih baik jika kerajaan pusat serius untuk memajukannya.
Katanya, apa yang berlaku ialah ada pihak tertentu pernah memohon untuk membeli tapak berkenaan bagi kemudiannya diserahkan kepada pihak lain untuk dimajukan tetapi permohonan tersebut telah ditolak oleh PKINK bagi mengekalkan kedudukan tapak teksi tersebut.
“Saya selaku anggota Kerajaan Negeri terkejut dengan dakwaan perdana menteri bahawa tapak stesyen teksi Pasir Puteh yang beroperasi sekarang telah dijual oleh PKINK. Selain itu, kenyataan beliau juga menyebut tapak itu telah dirampas oleh Kerajaan Negeri melalui PKINK,” katanya lagi sambil menambah, kenyataan Najib tidak berasas sama sekali.

Bahasa Terbalik!

Mahathir dakwa perkauman buruk selepas Pakatan lahir

Oleh Clara Chooi

SEREMBAN, 2 Julai – Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad mendakwa perkauman di Malaysia menjadi lebih buruk selepas kelahiran Pakatan Rakyat (PR) susulan pilihan raya umum 2008, menyebabkan begitu banyak kenyataan berbaur perkauman muncul.
Sebaliknya menurut bekas perdana menteri (gambar), sistem integrasi unik di kalangan pelbagai kaum yang dibawa kerajaan pusat memerintah telah membawa kepada kejayaan Malaysia.
“Saya telah memantau dan kita kena ingat bahawa sekarang hubungan antara kaum menjadi semakin buruk, lebih teruk daripada dulu. Pakatan Rakyat lahir, tetapi pada umumnya, lebih banyak kenyataan perkauman wujud,” kata Dr Mahathir.
Gesaan pembangkang agar dibawa perubahan, kebebasan dan mematahkan sempadan perkauman di kalangan parti-parti politik, kata beliau, tidak semestinya melahirkan hasil yang dihasratkan dan diterima oleh pelbagai komuniti.
“Perubahan tidak semestinya menjamin kita manfaat. Jika kita berubah dan cuba untuk bekerjasama tanpa mengiktiraf kaum, dan kita ada parti-parti politik yang bergabung, yang tidak mengiktiraf kaum, adakah kita akan berjaya?” soal beliau.
Dr Mahathir, yang memegang jawatan perdana menteri selama 22 tahun menekankan bahawa formula BN merupakan cara terbaik untuk ke depan kerana ia membolehkan setiap kaum mengekalkan identiti-identiti unik sementara pada masa yang sama menghormati hak orang lain.
Katanya, asimilasi kaum tidak akan berjalan dengan baik di Malaysia jika dibandingkan dengan negara-negara lain seperti Amerika Syarikat.
“Ada sedikit asimilasi di sini, seperti orang Arab, India dan Indonesia yang datang ke sini dan menyesuaikan diri mereka dengan komuniti Melayu. Tetapi kaum-kaum lain, mereka hendak mengekalkan identiti mereka dan kita membenarkan hak untuk berbuat demikian,” katanya lagi.
Kata beliau, kurangnya asimilasi telah mencetuskan sikap cemburu dan konfrontasi tetapi ini diselesaikan menerusi kerjasama unik BN.
Dr Mahathir juga berkata masalah-masalah perkauman tidak seharusnya dibincangkan secara terbuka dan mahu rakyat menolak pemimpin-pemimpin yang menggunakan soal perkauman sebagai alat politik mereka.
Kemudian pada sidang media yang diadakan, Dr Mahathir mempertahankan isu-isu berbaur perkauman yang seringkali dibangkitkan oleh Presiden Perkasa Datuk Ibrahim Ali.
Jelas Dr Mahathir,  Ibrahim menggunakan retorik seumpama itu untuk membawa perjuangannya kerana adanya gesaan daripada pembangkang untuk menghapuskan keistimewaan Bumiputera.
“Disebabkan sikap liberal ini ramai mula membangkitkan isu-isu perkauman. Antara tuntutan pertama ialah Dasar Ekonomi Baru dimansuhkan dan kita tidak harus memberikan layanan khas kepada orang Melayu,” katanya.
Katanya orang Melayu mula rasa tergugat dengan gesaan-gesaan sedemikian, menyebabkan pemimpin seperti Ibrahim bangkit untuk mempertahankan hak-hak yang mula terhakis.