The Shocking truth.. A must watch Video !!

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The young man who claims opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim sodomized him acknowledged in court Monday that he had met with Malaysia’s prime minister four days before making a police complaint against Anwar.

The defense hopes that Saiful Bukhari Azlan’s testimony under cross-examination will bolster its contention that the sodomy trial against Anwar is a political conspiracy masterminded by Prime Minister Najib Razak and his wife.

Saiful’s admission that he met with Najib proves “the issue of conspiracy by Najib and higher-ups in the government,” Anwar told reporters after the hearing.

Sodomy, even between consenting adults, is a crime in this Muslim-majority nation. If convicted, Anwar faces 20 years in prison that could end the career of the veteran politician who has aspirations to become the prime minister.

The trial, which resumed Monday after a three-month break, has attracted international attention. Amnesty International has called it a sham.

“When a country like Malaysia uses this (sodomy accusation) against the leader of its political opposition, it smacks of political persecution as well,” said Lance Lattig, an Amnesty researcher.

Saiful, 24, claims he was sodomized several times by Anwar in 2008 but did not go to police. Instead, he discussed it with Najib, who was then the deputy prime minister, on June 24, 2008.

“I went to him (Najib) to complain about my problem, my dilemma,” Saiful testified.

He claims he was sodomized again by Anwar on June 26, 2008 and that he made a police complaint on June 28.

Anwar, a 62-year-old married father of six children, is on trial for the alleged incident on June 26 only.

Najib acknowledges meeting Saiful at his home but says he offered no advice. Saiful knew one of his officers, who arranged the meeting. Saiful came as an “ordinary citizen who wanted to tell me something,” Najib told reporters in 2008.

Anwar challenged Najib to appear in court to explain the details of the meeting. Few details of the meeting are known, and questions remains as to how a common citizen like Saiful managed to meet a powerful politican like Najib at his home.

“It will be a futile trial if he chooses to use his influence … not to appear in court with (wife) Rosmah,” Anwar said. He added his lawyers will also show that Rosmah had met Saiful previously, a claim that the first lady and Saiful have denied.

It is the second time that Anwar has been accused of sodomy. In 1998, he lost his post as deputy prime minister and spent six years in jail for sodomy and abuse of power. He was freed in 2004 when a court overturned the sodomy conviction. Two years ago, Anwar led a three-party opposition alliance to major gains in elections.

Najib denies Anwar’s claim that he is a victim of a government conspiracy to undermine the opposition alliance, which hopes to win power in national elections scheduled to be held by 2013.

Anwar’s lawyers point to some contradictions in Saiful’s testimony. One medical report says Saiful initially told a doctor a plastic object had been inserted in his anus.

On Monday, Saiful said the doctor was lying and had fabricated the report

Bakun Dam ‘Unsafe’! – Exclusive Evidence on Corner-Cutting and Sloppy Construction Practices

Devastating information has come into the hands of Sarawak Report, which throws terrifying doubt over the safety of the Bakun Dam!

Inside information, which includes documents, photographs and videos, has been passed over to us by former a Quality Controller, who says concerns about sloppy procedures and cost-cutting measures were ignored by the bosses at Sinohydro.

It is well-known that the Chinese contractors were under extreme pressure from the Malaysian Government during the period up to 2009 to get the dam finished as quickly and cheaply as possible, after a series of delays and cost over-runs.

The informant who spoke to Sarawak Report told us:

“We compromised all the time to speed up the project”

The total failure of Quality Control that amounted to negligence

Ready to inundate - Bakun was Taib s pet project. It has been bailed out by the Employee Provident Fund, Malaysia s main public service pension fund.

Bakun has been filling since last October and it is now just 15 meters short of full inundation.  An area the size of Singapore has been flooded to accommodate the hydro-electric project, which sits up-river of tens of thousands of inhabitants, including  the major city of Sibu.

However many believe that it will turn out to be a White Elephant as no genuine use has been found to justify its construction.  Now the whole integrity of the project is thrown into question by the major concerns our information will now raise over the safety of its construction.

The key problem, according to our informant, has been a total failure of the Quality Control measures, which are supposed to ensure the dam is built to proper specifications.

He complains that there were “definitely not enough” Quality Controllers hired for the project and that therefore it was impossible to carry out adequate supervision across the many different work points on the enormous site.

Dams are constructed according to carefully calculated specifications, he explained, particularly with regard to the mix of ingredients for the concrete that is used.  The quality of the concrete is vital for the strength and safety of the structure and the so-called ‘design’ of the preparation takes into account the specific conditions of the particular project.

Dangerous short-cuts and cost-cutting

There were two dangerous malpractices that have been particularly highlighted by the Quality Controller, who has spoken to us.  First, he says the contractors habitually substituted higher grade mix with lower grade cement in the composition of the concrete to save money.

“When you prepare concrete you need to add water, sand and aggregate and the process must carefully follow the design and quantities of all the ingredients”, he explained.  “You also need to put in chemicals to strengthen the concrete and make it slow to harden.  Any deviation or substitution of lower grade materials can seriously compromise the quality of the concrete”.

Secondly, he says that when the mixed concrete was then taken from the batching plant in cement carriers to be pumped into the dam, workers were then responsible for another regular malpractice that was endemic on the project and had far-reaching implications. This was the adding of extra water to the mix to make it more fluid and easier to pump.  He would reject batches of concrete that he caught being weakened in this way, however he says that he knew that with so little over-all supervision on the site many others got through.

Rejected - this batch of concrete was rejected by the Quality Controller because water was introduced, but its believed many more got through.

The informant has provided us with numerous photographs of this practice taking place at the dam site and has also sent us video, clearly showing workers hosing in water into the cement carriers.

“They did this practice all the time when I was not around.  It happened all over.  They were doing it to make it easier to pump the concrete and to stop their pumps blocking”.

The Quality Controller explained what dam experts have confirmed to Sarawak Report, which is that any tampering with the mix of the concrete at this stage undermines the strength of the concrete and forms a serious risk.

Watering concrete

The UK construction expert Dr Andy Hughes from the company Atkins Global acknowledges that there is a frequent temptation for workers on dam sites to water the concrete, which is hard to handle in the correct state:

“People will cut corners, which is why you have supervision”, he said.  “Any watering of concrete should be rare on a dam site and it should be controlled and done for a specific purpose”.

When we explained the practice at Bakun by workers on site, he insisted “Any changes should be done in a managed way.  The most important thing is that you have consistency across the dam.  If they were doing it ad hoc in a patchwork quilt all over the dam you would not know where the strengths and weaknesses are”.

At it again. Our informant says this is another occasion when he caught workers watering down the concrete, but that his bosses did not take it seriously.

Dr Atkins surmised that the actions by the workers might have been further prompted by the tampering that was taking place earlier in the process, which would have altered the consistency of the concrete.

“If they have changed the ingredients they may need more water. It is like playing around with the ingredients of a cake”, he explained.  “The specification will have been designed according to the conditions of the area and the nature of the available materials.  Any changing of the design mix should have gone through a formal process”.

The bosses ‘didn’t want to know’

Our informant tells us that he constantly reported the problems to his bosses at Sinohydro, including at their daily meetings.  However he got little response or support:

“I used to raise this issue and nobody took any notice of it.  They would just say ‘OK let it go, warn them not to do it next time’, that is all”, he told us. “If I found them adding water to the concrete I would reject it as sub-standard, but I could not be everywhere all the time and I know it was happening when I was not there”.

Sarawak Report has photographs of these rejection notices (see above), reporting that water had been added to the concrete.  However our insider is certain that the vast majority of this tampered mix was not rejected and was used in the construction of the dam.

Dangerous negligence that undermines the safety of Bakun

Powerful energy - starting to fill up.

Our investigations have shown that the seriousness of these findings cannot be under-estimated in terms of the long-term and short-term safety of the dam.  Our informant confirms that:

“The mix was used for the spillway, the intake point, the plunge pool and the face slab, which are all very critical features of the dam.  If these features of the dam give way then the reservoir will break”.

It is a prognosis confirmed by Dr Andy Hughes, who acts as a spokesman for the British Dam Society.  Bakun is a concrete faced, rock filled dam.  The concrete is laid in slabs with critical joins.  He told us:

“The integrity of that slabbing on the upstream face is what keeps the water back.  This is a critical element and there have been numerous problems with the cracking of the upstream membranes of these dams, particularly in South America… Personally, I always worry about the design of these things as we are still not sure how to really design them”

Hughes went on to say:

“The spill-way in particular is also very important.  It has to have very high strength concrete, because of the high velocity of the water passing through.  There are very high forces here”.

High time to investigate !

For years Sinohydro and the construction contractors have refused to take adequate action in response to the official complaints of under-resourced Quality Controllers at Bakun.  Now the project is completed, the dam is being filled and the story is out.

This is not the only safety issue related to the construction of the dam.  It has already been raised as a matter of concern that Bakun has been constructed in a region comprising several fault lines that could be strained by the added load of the water.  Minor tremors have been recently recorded, but these issues have been likewise ignored.

Tens of thousands of people live down river , culminating in the major coastal city of Sibu.  To refuse to thoroughly investigate concerns raised by the projects own experts would be a form of negligence of the utmost seriousness.

There has been yet another attack on Sarawak Report today.  This time our site was temporarily disabled by a deliberate hacking exercise.  We suggest the proper avenue for the authorities is to address this issue and the many other serious matters that we have been trying to raise in recent weeks and not to persist in trying to shut us up instead.

Give Me one Reason Why I should March on the 9th of July ??

Actually I can give you more than one reason. But knowing that manyMalaysia Today readers tend to focus on the ‘wrong’ part of the article rather than what they should be focusing on (just read the comments to see what I mean) maybe I should focus on just one reason. That is easier for most of the smaller brains.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Now, look at the chart above and tell me what you see. Yes, that’s right, Malaysian elections are won through gerrymandering.

Okay, in case you are not sure what you should be looking at, look at the figures under the column ‘GOVERNMENT’ and compare the % seats and % votes columns.

Can you see that in terms of votes the Alliance Party of 1959, 1964 and 1969 and Barisan Nasional since 1974 till 2008 never really did that well? The best was in fact during Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s rule in 2004 when Barisan Nasional garnered 63.9% of the votes and again in 1995 (65.2%) just before the 1997 financial crisis and the 1998 political crisis that followed.

Nevertheless, even this did not give them two-thirds of the votes (66.67%).

The rest of the time, Barisan Nasional (or the Alliance Party) won only 50% to 60% of the votes (except in 1969 when they won less than 50%).

However, as you can see, it is seats and not votes which has been giving them the government time and time again. And, as I said, this is because of gerrymandering.

The Parliament seats vary from a mere 5,000 voters to over 100,000 voters. Invariably, all those ‘smaller’ seats are Barisan Nasional seats, in particular Umno, while the ‘bigger’ seats are those which Barisan Nasional has no hope of winning and which will certainly fall to the opposition.

Okay, to make you understand the issue better, it works like this. The opposition can win 100,000 votes and it will be just one seat. Barisan Nasional, on the other hand, also wins 100,000 votes but it will be two or three seats.

Now, that is why the opposition wins 50% of the votes but only 40% of the seats while Barisan Nasional’s 50% of the votes gives them 60% of the seats.

In short, dear readers, this means, based on the present system, the opposition will NEVER form the federal government because it will NEVER win more than 50% of the seats in Parliament (unless it can win more than 60% of the votes, which is quite impossible with that many phantom and postal votes floating around).

And this also means we need electoral reforms. We need a law passed that says the variance in Parliament seats should be plus-minus 20%. This means, if the benchmark for Parliament seats is, say, 50,000 voters, then the variance of 20% translates to 40,000-60,000 voters per seat (not 5,000-120,000 like now).

Only when this happens would the opposition have a fair shot at forming the next federal government. If not it will never happen (unless the opposition can garner more than 60% of the votes).

In some countries this is the law. Some countries make it law that the seats must be plus-minus 15%. In others it is plus-minus 20%. (In fact, in some countries the law says that not less than 30% of the candidates must be women). Only in Malaysia it is plus-minus 95% (gila babi sungguh).

So now you know why we need electoral reforms. And now you know why we need to march on 9th July 2011. And this is not about the opposition. It is not about Anwar Ibrahim either. It is about the rights of the people of one-man-one-vote.

If Malaysia had direct elections (like in the United States) to elect our Prime Minister, then Najib Tun Razak would never become the Prime Minister of Malaysia. Then, like in America, a non-white (in Malaysia’s case a non-Bumiputera) could become the Prime Minister.

Alas, in Malaysia we have a system that ensures the Prime Minister will always be someone from Umno and the government will always be an Umno-led coalition.

The next question would be: why bother to vote then?

Good question. I would urge you to vote so that we can see a strong opposition in Parliament and the emergence of a two-party system in Malaysia. That in itself is reason enough to vote. However, if we can see electoral reforms, then that is another matter. Then we can vote to see a change in federal government.

And that is why we need BERSIH and also why we need to support Datuk Ambiga Sreenevasan. Electoral reforms will never happen unless the people make it happen.

And ‘the people’ are you and I. We can’t depend on just the politicians.

Don’t forget, at one point of time many now in the opposition were once in the government (and many now in the government were once in the opposition). And when they were in the government did they push for electoral reforms? Or did they take advantage of the unfair system to hold on to power and only now that they are in the opposition they make so much noise about electoral reforms?

Trust me, if the opposition takes over the federal government they too would not want to change the system. They will maintain the present system to ensure they remain in power. Why change the present system to one that allows an easy change of government? And many in the opposition who were once in the government exploited the present system and did not utter a word of protest until they found themselves in the opposition.

Then only they bising tak habis-habis.

Is demonstrating part of Malay culture?

Is demonstrating part of Malay culture? Umno says no. Maybe it used to be no 500 years ago. But it became Malay culture back in 1946 when they opposed the Malay Union. And if not because of this demonstration there would not be an Umno around today. Umno was born against the backdrop of the 1946 demonstration. So a demonstration is the father of Umno.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

SCENE ONE: British Malaya. Kampong Baharu, Kuala Lumpur. 1946.

Said: Assalamuailakum!

Rahman: Mualaikumsalam. Ah, Said, what brings you here? Come in.

Said: Ay Rahman, are you going to the demonstration tomorrow?

Rahman: Demonstration? What demonstration?

Said: We are getting together to demonstrate against the government. We are going to oppose the plan to set up the Malayan Union.

Rahman: But I thought the Malayan Union is a fait accompli. Haven’t the Rulers already endorsed it?

Said: Yes, but the Rulers were tricked by Sir Harold MacMichael. They did not know that the setting up of the Malayan Union will not only erode the powers of the Rulers but that of the Rakyat as well. So we are going to oppose it.

Rahman: But won’t that mean we shall also be demonstrating against the Rulers?

Said: No, we shall in fact be defending the powers of the Rulers. We are not trying to accuse the Rulers of selling out the Rakyat. We are taking the position that MacMichael tricked the Rulers. So the Rulers are as much victims as the Rakyat. Raja Uda, Datuk Panglima Gantang, Nik Kamil and Datuk Kamaruddin have already spoken to the Rulers and Their Highnesses have sanctioned the demonstration. The Istana is also sending representatives to join the demonstration. The Rulers are with us, Rahman.

Rahman: I’m not sure, Said. Demonstrating is not our Malay culture. And I am wary about opposing the government.

Said: Alamak, Rahman, we can no longer be feudalistic. All over the world the people are opposing their governments. Our neighbours Indonesia and the Philippines have already gained independence. India is soon going to be independent. And they are gaining independence because the Rakyat dared oppose the government. Malaya will never gain independence unless we dare oppose the government.

Rahman: But still, Said, demonstrations are a show of defiance and dissent. We Malays are not like that. Malays are a tolerant and subservient race. We never oppose the powers-that-be even if they are evil and unjust. That is not what Hang Tuah taught us.

Said: Rahman, Hang Tuah is outdated. That is something that is 500 years old. Today Malays must be like Hang Jebat.

Rahman: I am shocked that you say this, Said. Are you saying that Hang Jebat is the hero and not Hang Tuah?

Said: Exactly! Look, Rahman, tomorrow is going to be the beginning of the New Malay, the Melayu Baharu. Don’t you want to be a part of history? We are going to see history being made tomorrow. Do you want to just be a spectator and watch history being made rather than be a participant in the making of history?

Rahman: Said, I work for the government. You sell nasi lemak. You have nothing to worry about. I have to think of my job and my family.

Said: If we all just think of ourselves and not of the nation when is Malaya ever going to see self-rule? We all need to make sacrifices. I sell nasi lemak because I refuse to work for the government. I don’t recognise this government so how can I work for it? I choose to sell nasi lemak although I can take the easy way out and work for the government like you.

Rahman: You are different Said.

Said: What is so different between you and me? I also have a family to feed just like you. But I refuse to collaborate with the government. If I work for the government that means I agree with what the government is doing. I will never work for the government unless we first see a change of government. I would rather suffer and earn pittance by selling nasi lemak rather than live a comfortable life on a salary earned from a government I am opposed to.

Rahman: (sighs)…You are always the dissident, Said.

Said: That is because I am a Muslim, Rahman. But I follow the true principles of Islam. In Islam if we collaborate with evil then we are also evil. We must oppose evil, Rahman. That is what Islam asks us to do. If you are a true Muslim at least join us for the demonstration tomorrow. Maybe you are not yet ready to resign from your government post. Never mind. But at least oppose the government by joining us tomorrow. Be a true Muslim.

Rahman: Okaylah Said. You have convinced me. I will be there. And let whatever happens happen. If I get sacked from my post I will accept that as God’s will.

Said: Rahman, you will not regret it. Tomorrow is the beginning of Malay Nationalism. After this we need to talk to the Chinese and Indians to ask them to join us in the fight for Merdeka. We can’t do it on our own. We need the support of the Chinese and Indians as well. That has to come.

SCENE TWO: British Malaya. In front of the Majestic Hotel, Kuala Lumpur. 1946.