US hypocrisy in international relations

US President Barack Obama deplanes upon his arrival at the Royal Malaysian Airforce base to attend the 27th Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Subang, outside Kuala Lumpur on November 20, 2015. - AFP

Issues of good governance, democracy and human rights will always be low on the agenda of any country when dealing in foreign affairs.

THE first American president to visit us was Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s. His reasons for visiting were probably the same as President Barack Obama’s: security (although in those days it was about the “threat” of Vietnam and the feared domino effect of nations falling under the thrall of Communism, whereas now it’s Islamic State) and economy (although then it was probably more about ensuring we keep on supplying tin and rubber whereas now it’s about keeping us from being too influenced by China).

Whenever the President of the United States visit another country, he is bound to make waves of some sort. According to oral history (i.e. my mum and dad), when LBJ came here all sorts of craziness ensued, like the inexplicable chopping-down of strategic trees; as though some renegade monkey was going to throw himself at the presidential convoy.

Our Prime Minister at the time, Tunku Abdul Rahman, wasn’t too fussed about the visit, saying that Johnson needn’t have come at all.

Obama’s visit wasn’t quite as colourful, with security measures being limited to thousands of guns and the closing of the Federal Highway (no more monkeys in KL) and all our leaders expectedly excited and giddy.

What I found interesting about Mr Obama’s trip is his consistent request to meet with “the youth” and civil society. He did it the last time he was here and he did it again this time.

This is all well and good; he’s quite a charming, intelligent fellow and he says soothing things. So what if he gave us a couple of hours of traffic hell (in this sense, the American Presidency is fair for he treats his citizens and foreigners alike: I have been reliably informed that whenever Obama visits his favourite restaurant in Malibu, the whole town is gridlocked by security measures. What, you can’t do take away, Barack?).

Anyway, I see no harm in all these meetings. But then neither do I see any good. At least not any real and lasting good, apart from perhaps the thrill of meeting one of the most powerful people on earth and having him say things that match your own world view.

The world of social media went a bit loopy when a young man at the “town hall meeting” with youths asked the President to raise issues of good governance with our Prime Minister, to which he replied that he would. And maybe he did, but at the end of the day, so what?

Frankly that’s all he will do, a bit of lip service, because issues of good governance, democracy and human rights will always be low on the agenda of any country when dealing in international affairs. They may make a big song and dance about it, but they don’t really care.

And before you accuse me of anti-Americanism, I believe this applies to most, if not all, countries. The Americans like us because we appear to be hard in the so-called “war on terror”.

They need us, not because we are such a huge trading partner, but because they want us on their side (by way of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement) in the economic battles that they have been, and will be, continuing to fight against China.

We see this behaviour of putting self-interest over any sort of serious stand on principle happening again and again. Why is it that the United Nations Security Council did nothing when Saddam Hussein massacred thousands of Kurds using chemical weapons, but took hurried military action when he invaded Kuwait?

Perhaps it is because at the time of the Kurdish genocide, Saddam was fighting Iran which was deemed by some, at least, as the great enemy. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, even if he is a genocidal butcher.

It is trite to mention the hypocrisies abound in international relations. Anyone with the vaguest interest in world affairs can see it. To expect any less is naïve.

Besides, there is another danger of having a big power like the US mess around with our national problems. If they do so, it will be all too easy for the rabid so-called nationalists amongst us to scream that foreign intervention is leading to loss of sovereignty and national pride. Their “patriotism” will muddy the waters, adding issues to confuse people when there need not be any added issues at all.

The point of this article is this – for those of us who want to create a nation with true democracy and respect for human rights, we’re on our own folks.

By Azman Sharom brave new world The Star/Asia News Network

Azmi Sharom (azmi.sharom@gmail.com) is a law teacher. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.

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Good infrastructure determines property value

Sound advice: Lee delivering his talk at the Star Property Fair 2015 in Queensbay Mall, Penang.

GOOD infrastructure plays an important role in determining the value of properties.

Zeon Properties chief executive officer Leon Lee said even US president Barrack Obama stressed the link between infrastructure and a healthy economy.

“According to Obama, a sound infrastructure helps create new jobs, increase business opportunities and facilitating the movement of business,” he said during his talk on ‘Market Outlook 2015: Investing in Uncertain Times’.



“When the second link connecting Johor and Singapore was ready in 1998, the value of properties in the surrounding areas rose 100 times from RM2 psf in 1994 to RM211.

“Similarly when the Shenzhen Bay Bridge was ready in 2008, the value of the properties in Hong Kong and New Territories increased to RM2,870 psf in 2013 from RM470 psf in 1988,” he said.

In Penang, when the second link connecting Batu Maung and Batu Kawan was ready in 2014, the terraced properties in Batu Kawan increased to RM430,000 in 2014 from RM180,000 in 2008.

“In 2007, a terrace house in Batu Maung was worth about RM700,000. But now, a similar unit is priced at RM1.4mil,” he said.

Homebuyers also got an insight on how to get their housing loan approved by Miichael Yeoh.

“One must understand how the process works and if it’s done systematically, it will not get rejected,” he said in his ‘How to Get Your Loan Approved’ talk.

Property investor-cum-author B.K. Khoo said property was an appreciating asset and such investment could generate passive income.

He said effective time management, money and building the right knowledge were keys in sound property investment.

“Don’t wait to buy a property. Buy a property and then wait.

“And remember, your network is your net worth. Try to look around and you will get people to contribute to your success and net worth,” he said in his talk ‘How You Can Be The Next 9 to 5 Property Millionaire?’

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US under Obama reluctant to stop making messes all over the world ; ISIS massacre in Iraq shames Washington

US President Barack Obama has been in office for more than five years, but his diplomatic practice has so far ended with misery.

The Iraq War that lasted for seven years and five months brought about radical anti-government forces that have relations with Al Qaeda and have seized northern provinces. It also brought about a more pro-Iran government.

The 13-year-long Afghan War led to a US that has to engage in negotiations with the Taliban and an Afghanistan hostile to the US.

Bashar al-Assad, whom the US has been trying to defame in every possible way, was reelected as Syrian president. The Arab Spring brought about an anti-US wave across the Middle East.

While isolating Russia due to the Ukrainian crisis, the US also finds Russia and Europe are getting closer.

While unscrupulously supporting Japan led by right-wing forces, its "pivot to Asia" strategy has become a tool to vitalize Japan's militarism. The US' "mess-making" image is hard to change.

Such an eye-watering diplomatic sheet reflects the decline of US power and the rigidness of its strategic mentality. The two time-consuming and costly wars and the financial crisis that swept the whole world have corroded the strength of the US, which corresponds to the conclusion of Paul Kennedy in his book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers that military overstretching leads to the decline of empires.

Meanwhile, the increasingly severe partisan struggles in US domestic politics serve as a negative democratic model.

The US' torture of prisoners overseas and the PRISM-gate scandal have weakened Washington's soft power. It is time for the US to reflect upon its failed global diplomacy and reform its political and economic systems.

Against the backdrop that the security of all countries are interrelated, the US still insists on alliances. In the past two decades, NATO has expanded three times and strengthened the military alliance as the US advocated the "Russia threat," which has led to the split of European security.

When Asian countries progressed into regional integration, the US advocated the "China threat" to strengthen the Asian alliance system, with the US-Japan alliance at the core, which will surely lead to the split of Asian security.

The old mentality of "alliance" has not only worsened the international environment in which the US' own domestic economic plight is to be solved, but also brought about criticism of other countries.

The US has been obstinate in pursuing its dream of hegemony. It not only excludes others in the traditional security field, but also tries to define the boundaries in new security areas, such as information warfare and cyber space.

Experts from US think tanks who remain cool-headed have reminded those in power that the driving force of the US diplomacy is a revitalized economy. The urgent task is to solve domestic problems, rather than fan up the flames of troubles around the world.

When Obama first took office in 2009, the US public expected him to take their country out of the economic downturn like former president Franklin Roosevelt did before. Five years have passed, the economy hasn't got rid of sluggishness, political extremism remains, and the gap between different social classes has widened.

The tragedy of the US diplomacy is that decision-makers habitually refuse reflection.

Last month, when Obama delivered a speech at the US Military Academy at West Point, he articulated his vision of the US' leading role in the world for the century to come.

But if the declining US that brought about numerous tragedies to the world still wants to dominate the world, the world will come to the edge of a cliff. It seems just too difficult for the US to learn to be a normal country.

By Li Haidong Source:Global Times Published
The author is a professor at the Institute of International Relations of China Foreign Affairs University. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

ISIS massacre in Iraq shames Washington

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants boasted on Twitter Saturday that they had executed more than 1,700 Iraqi government soldiers and posted grisly on-the-spot photos. The claim of the Sunni Islamist militants shocked media outlets the world over as this latest Iraq massacre might be the largest since 2003.

ISIS already appalled the whole international community by suddenly taking over Mosul days ago, the second-largest city of Iraq. Their mass murder of thousands of war prisoners this time reveals their atrocity as well as the unpredictable abyss of the Iraq crisis. The US has sent the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush and two guided missile ships into the Persian Gulf and is hesitating about whether to launch air strikes against ISIS in northern Iraq. It seems the Iraq tragedy is caused by a continuously regenerative power that can never be eliminated by external forces.

Washington waged the Iraq War in 2003 without UN authorization and regardless of objections from major countries including China, Russia, Germany and France. US public opinion has recently been reflecting that the Bush administration might have started a wrong war, although authorized by Congress and a majority of the US public back when the US elite was confident about remolding the Middle East. The democratic system failed to broaden the limited vision of US society on the Middle East.

Thousands of US soldiers were killed at the battlefields of Iraq and tens of thousands of Iraqis lost their lives, for which then president George W. Bush and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld would not assume any responsibility. This is indeed an error by Uncle Sam. Nevertheless it will be of positive significance to a certain degree if the Western world led by Washington can draw from the brutal war profound lessons that are expected to help change the US' way of "leading the world."

The biggest lesson is that the US is not omnipotent in reforming smaller countries it detests. The West needs to hold in awe the torn and tattered societies of Iraq and Afghanistan, which will release incredible power once their internal structures are disrupted and devour all efforts at peaceful reconstruction. There is no denying that Washington has injected power into globalization by bringing the clout of Western values to every corner of the world. However, many people may have overestimated the political meaning of US cultural communication and mistaken it for a prelude to world domination for the Western political model.

Now the White House is keen on its "pivot to Asia" strategy. History will not simply repeat itself. If the US attempts to scourge East Asia, it will probably adopt different means from those in the Middle East. East Asians should give full play to their wisdom to avoid falling into the trap of Washington.

Source:Global Times

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American hegemony cannot bring security to Asia 

What’s the intention of Obama’s visit to Asia?

From Nov. 18 to Nov. 20, U.S. President Barack Obama visited Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia, and attended the 4th ASEAN-U.S. Leader’s Meeting and 7th East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It is his first diplomatic visit after the reelection, and he has become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Myanmar.

A woman takes a photo of a wall painting created by Myanmar graffiti artists to welcome President Obama in Yangon, Myanmar on Saturda(Photo: AP)

The three-day visit reflects Asian strategies of the Obama administration in the second term, which can be summarized into one focus, dual purposes and three pillars.

One focus refers to that Obama will promote the “rebalance” strategy in Asia during his second term. Southeast Asia is the focus of the Obama administration’s “rebalance” strategy. In other words, the U.S. will devote more political, economic, military, security and strategic resources to Southeast Asia in the course of shifting its strategic focus back to Asia Pacific.

Dual purposes mean that the United States, on the one hand, maintains dominance in Asia Pacific and, on the other hand, benefits from rapid economic development in Asia Pacific. The U.S. has for long been worried that the rise of emerging powers like China will squeeze its strategic room in Asia Pacific, its allies in the region might be alienated and it might be excluded from economic integration of Asia Pacific. Obama’s visit to Asia is designed to achieve the dual purposes mentioned above.

Three pillars are strengthening existing alliance, expanding new partnership and benefiting from the multilateral mechanisms. In Thailand, Obama highlighted the significance of traditional allies. Under the disguise of democracy, human rights and freedom, Obama tried to develop new partnership to expand the U.S. presence and influence on Southeast Asia in Myanmar. To achieve the end, the U.S. phased out political, military and economic sanctions against Myanmar, and claimed to provide an aid of 170 million U.S. dollars. In Cambodia, the U.S. attended the East Asia Summit, 4th ASEAN-U.S. Leader’s Meeting and Trans-Pacific Partnership Summit to secure a foothold in the Asian multilateral mechanisms.

Furthermore, the Obama administration is making slight adjustments to the “rebalance” strategy. He attached proper importance to economy and culture during his visit since the United States has received criticism for overplaying the military and security issues, as well as ill-disguised hostility against China.

The Obama administration is playing trick in the “rebalance” strategy. But, Man proposes, God disposes. The “God” refers to the regional and global trends. Those who bow before it survive and those who resist perish.

Read the Chinese version: 奥巴马亚洲之行的小九九, source: Jinghua Times, author: Jia Xiudong

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How Barack Obama became a hardliner?

He was once a liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war. Now, according to revelations last week, the US president personally oversees a 'kill list' for drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. Then there's the CIA renditions, increased surveillance and a crackdown on whistleblowers. No wonder Washington insiders are likening him to 'George W Bush on steroids'

The revelation that Barack Obama keeps a 'kill list' of people to be targeted by drones has led to criticism from former supporters. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP



Amos Guiora knows all about the pitfalls of targeted assassinations, both in terms of legal process and the risk of killing the wrong people or causing civilian casualties. The University of Utah law professor spent many years in the Israel Defence Forces, including time as a legal adviser in the Gaza Strip where such killing strikes are common. He knows what it feels like when people weigh life-and-death decisions.

Yet Guiora – no dove on such matters – confessed he was "deeply concerned" about President Barack Obama's own "kill list" of terrorists and the way they are eliminated by missiles fired from robot drones around the world. He believes US policy has not tightly defined how people get on the list, leaving it open to legal and moral problems when the order to kill leaves Obama's desk. "He is making a decision largely devoid of external review," Guiroa told the Observer, saying the US's apparent methodology for deciding who is a terrorist is "loosey goosey".

Indeed, newspaper revelations last week about the "kill list" showed the Obama administration defines a militant as any military-age male in the strike zone when its drone attacks. That has raised the hackles of many who saw Obama as somehow more sophisticated on terrorism issues than his predecessor, George W Bush. But Guiora does not view it that way. He sees Obama as the same as Bush, just much more enthusiastic when it comes to waging drone war. "If Bush did what Obama has been doing, then journalists would have been all over it," he said.

But the "kill list" and rapidly expanded drone programme are just two of many aspects of Obama's national security policy that seem at odds with the expectations of many supporters in 2008. Having come to office on a powerful message of breaking with Bush, Obama has in fact built on his predecessor's national security tactics.

Obama has presided over a massive expansion of secret surveillance of American citizens by the National Security Agency. He has launched a ferocious and unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers. He has made more government documents classified than any previous president. He has broken his promise to close down the controversial Guantánamo Bay prison and pressed on with prosecutions via secretive military tribunals, rather than civilian courts. He has preserved CIA renditions. He has tried to grab broad new powers on what defines a terrorist or a terrorist supporter and what can be done with them, often without recourse to legal process.

The sheer scope and breadth of Obama's national security policy has stunned even fervent Bush supporters and members of the Washington DC establishment. In last week's New York Times article that detailed the "kill list", Bush's last CIA director, Michael Hayden, said Obama should open the process to more public scrutiny. "Democracies do not make war on the basis of legal memos locked in a [Department of Justice] safe," he told the newspaper.

Even more pertinently, Aaron David Miller, a long-term Middle East policy adviser to both Republican and Democratic administrations, delivered a damning verdict in a recent issue of Foreign Policy magazine. He wrote bluntly: "Barack Obama has become George W Bush on steroids."

Many disillusioned supporters would agree. Jesselyn Radack was a justice department ethics adviser under Bush who became a whistleblower over violations of the legal rights of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh. Now Radack works for the Government Accountability Project, defending fellow whistleblowers. She campaigned for Obama, donated money and voted for him. Now she has watched his administration – which promised transparency and whistleblower protection – crack down on national security whistleblowers.

It has used the Espionage Act – an obscure first world war anti-spy law – six times. That is more such uses in three years than all previous presidents combined. Cases include John Kiriakou, a CIA agent who leaked details of waterboarding, and Thomas Drake, who revealed the inflated costs of an NSA data collection project that had been contracted out. "We did not see this coming. Obama has led the most brutal crackdown on whistleblowers ever," Radack said.

Yet the development fits in with a growing level of secrecy in government under Obama. Last week a report by the Information Security Oversight Office revealed 2011 had seen US officials create more than 92m classified documents: the most ever and 16m more than the year before. Officials insist much of the growth is due to simple administrative procedure, but anti-secrecy activists are not convinced. Some estimates put the number of documents wrongly classified as secret at 90%.

"We are seeing the reversal of the proper flow of information between the government and the governed. It is probably the fundamental civil liberties issue of our time," said Elizabeth Goitein, a national security expert at the Brennan Centre for Justice. "The national security establishment is getting bigger and bigger."

One astonishing example of this lies high in the mountain deserts of Utah. This is the innocuously named Utah Data Centre being built for the NSA near a tiny town called Bluffdale. When completed next year, the heavily fortified $2bn building, which is self-sufficient with its own power plant, will be five times the size of the US Capitol in Washington DC. It will house gigantic servers that will store vast amounts of data from ordinary Americans that will be sifted and mined for intelligence clues. It will cover everything from phone calls to emails to credit card receipts.

Yet the UDC is just the most obvious sign of how the operations and scope of the NSA has grown since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Under Bush, a key part was a secret "warrantless wiretapping" programme that was scrapped when it was exposed. However, in 2008 Congress passed a bill that effectively allowed the programme to continue by simply legalising key components. Under Obama, that work has intensified and earlier this year a Senate intelligence committee extended the law until 2017, which would make it last until the end of any Obama second term.

"Obama did not reverse what Bush did, he went beyond it. Obama is just able to wrap it up in a better looking package. He is more liberal, more eloquent. He does not look like a cowboy," said James Bamford, journalist and author of numerous books about the NSA including 2008's The Shadow Factory.

That might explain the lack of media coverage of Obama's planned changes to a military funding law called the National Defence Authorisation Act. A clause was added to the NDAA that had such a vague definition of support of terrorism that journalists and political activists went to court claiming it threatened them with indefinite detention for things like interviewing members of Hamas or WikiLeaks. Few expected the group to win, but when lawyers for Obama refused to definitively rebut their claims, a New York judge ruled in their favour. Yet, far from seeking to adjust the NDAA's wording, the White House is now appealing against the decision.

That hard line should perhaps surprise only the naive. "He's expanded the secrecy regime in general," said Radack. Yet it is the drone programme and "kill list" that have emerged as most central to Obama's hardline national security policy. In January 2009, when Obama came to power, the drone programme existed only for Pakistan and had seen 44 strikes in five years. With Obama in office it expanded to Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia with more than 250 strikes. Since April there have been 14 strikes in Yemen alone.

Civilian casualties are common. Obama's first strike in Yemen killed two families who were neighbours of the target. One in Pakistan missed and blew up a respected tribal leader and a peace delegation. He has deliberately killed American citizens, including the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in September last year, and accidentally killed others, such as Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman.

The drone operation now operates out of two main bases in the US, dozens of smaller installations and at least six foreign countries. There are "terror Tuesday" meetings to discuss targets which Obama's campaign manager, David Axelrod, sometimes attends, lending credence to those who see naked political calculation involved.

Yet for some, politics seems moot. Obama has shown himself to be a ruthless projector of national security powers at home and abroad, but the alternative in the coming election is Republican Mitt Romney.

"Whoever gets elected, whether it's Obama or Romney, they are going to continue this very dangerous path," said Radack. "It creates a constitutional crisis for our country. A crisis of who we are as Americans. You can't be a free society when all this happens in secret."

Death from the sky

• Popularly called drones, the flying robots used by Obama are referred to as unmanned aerial vehicles by the defence industry that makes them. The air force, however, calls them RPAs, or remotely piloted aircraft, as they are flown by human pilots, just at a great distance from where they are operating.

• The US air force alone has up to 70,000 people processing the surveillance information collected from drones. This includes examining footage of people and vehicles on the ground in target countries and trying to observe patterns in their movements.

• Drones are not just used by the military and intelligence community. US Customs and Border Protection has drones patrolling land and sea borders. They are used in drug busts and to prevent illegal cross-border traffic.

• It is assumed the Pentagon alone has 7,000 or so drones at work. Ten years ago there were fewer than 50. Their origins go back to the Vietnam war and beyond that to the use of reconnaissance balloons on the battlefield.

• Last year a diplomatic crisis with Iran broke out after a sophisticated US drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel, crash-landed on Iranian soil. Iranian forces claimed it had been downed by sophisticated jamming technology.

 By Paul Harris guardian.co.uk,  Newscribe : get free news in real time