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Thursday, 8 April 2010

APCO = the new Altantuya 2: Who does APCO work for?

By Nathaniel Tan,

The APCO war escalates. Anwar to be censured on the 22nd (a move that can result in his suspension from Parliament), YB Karpal is the first 10-day casualty, while YB Mahfuz Omar the second casualty to meet a similar fate as Anwar.

All Mahfuz did was chant “Umno APCO” – demonstrating not only the clear bias of our Speakers once again, but the absolute paranoia of Umno – berani kerana betul, takut kerana salah: they know they’re in hot soup with this APCO issue.

I have also read with great interest this Bukit Aman expose, which we shall follow with interest.

What is Najib’s/BN’s only defense so far? That 1Malaysia is not related to 1Israel.

To be honest, I don’t myself know how much 1Malaysia has to do with 1Israel.

However, let’s not miss the forest for the trees. 1Malaysia/Israel aside, there’s more to be concerned about, regarding APCO. Last time, I wrote about the Shin Bet connection, today: APCO’s shocking client list – a list Najib is now joining.

The most prominent cases include former Nigerian dictator General Sani Abacha, most famed for being held responsible for executing activist Ken Saro Wiwa and others like him who tried to defend their native lands from pollution and exploitation resulting from unbridled oil exploration.

Abacha is also estimated to have siphoned off some RM 10 billion via corruption during his reign, putting him as the 4th most corrupt leader in the world.

Sounds like someone who’d need a public relations firm, no? Sounds like APCO fit the bill perfectly.

Does this mean Najib needs APCO for similar reasons?

Who else is on this ‘esteemed’ client list?

We have Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat and member of ultra right wing chauvinist (sound familiar) party, the BJP.

Modi is infamous for failing to prevent severe Muslim-Hindu clashes that claimed the lives of thousands. It is said he turned a blind eye to the violence in some tacit approval of the murderous cycle of revenge between the majority Hindu and Muslim minority.

The US cited him for violations of international religious freedoms and subsequently denied him a visa to the US.

Guess who Modi thereafter hired to ‘repair’ his damaged image?

Does this mean Najib is also requiring some serious image repair?

We aren’t done with dictators yet. Check out Nursultan Nazarbayev – a man who altered the constitution of Kazakhstan so that he (and only him) was exempt from a provision limiting the number of terms an individual could serve as President.

(This means that legally he – Nazarbayev and Nazarbayev alone – could serve as President for life, but no one else).

Kazakhstan is rife with repressions that sound familiar to us: curtails of political freedoms, restrictions the press, and even assassinations.

APCO does considerable work in America as well, where they shamelessly serve the interests of tobacco companies (trying to argue that: oh no, smoking isn’t reaaaallly bad for your health :P and other large corporations. They have lead a campaign called Tort Reform, which seeks to weaken laws that protect average citizens against giant corporations.

These are the company in which our PM now finds himself. If I were him, I’d be more than a little ashamed.

I think this is serious cause for us to ask ourselves: why is our government paying RM 23 million to a company that is clearly more than cosy with the Zionists they claim to hate? A company that is involved up its neck with dictators and political scum that no one with the slightest semblance of integrity would want to be associated with?

I posit that this constant obsession with only one small facet of the case: whether APCO = 1Israel = 1Malaysia, is undeniable proof that all the other accusations about APCO and its involvement with our government are true.

I am not particularly interested in who came up with the 1Malaysia idea – it is after all, anything but original.

The important questions are: who APCO really is, whose interests they represent, and what hiring them (by virtue of the clientele APCO typically serves) reveals about the integrity of our government.

Jawablah, YAB Najib!!

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