People of Arab World Hijacked

All of a sudden, the love of the prime minister for religion has gone up. Even the Menons (left politicians like Rashed Khan Menon and his accomplices) are uttering verses of the holy Quran. The religion trade is now going on massively by making efforts to stop 'fatwa' (religious addict) saying it is a trade of religion traders and uttering the ideals of Islam. Taking the office of a "religion-less" or irreligious state, the love for religion is nothing but a lie and deception.
The people of the country know in whose interest the women policy has been framed. The CIDAW is a charter of conspiracy for turning the women into a commercial commodity. In 1997, a so-called declaration in the United Nations for ending or abolishing all discriminations against the women had got recognition. It is not a charter for development of the women but a story of deception or intrigue. The real Islamic scholars and leaders have taken to the street. They are united not only against the women policy but against all the anti-Islamic policies. Slogans are being raised everywhere in the country that fatwa will be the constitution of the country in future.
Unity of Society
So it is not hartal (closure strike), what is the great need of the country is unity of the society of religious leaders and Islamic thinkers. And only united strength can protect the dignity of the holy Quran. The people of the Arab world have been hijacked. The people are not seeing the dream of freedom. Their fear always is that when bombs and grenades of the hyenas are thrown into their homes. The boisterous sound of weapons and missiles is shattering the life and peace of human habitats. The people are rushing toward hospital in corpse, carrying ambulances with mutilated and severed bodes of the human beings. What they wanted and what is happening; it is like bringing crocodiles by digging canals. In fact, the character of the United States is one and identical. The difference is only in their complexion or in the color of their skin. So the Nobel Peace Prize winning Barack Obama is doing the same thing as his predecessor George W. Bush did. Overtly, it may seem they are not united, but, in fact, they are. The imperialism is the core policy of the United States. As hyenas do not feel good, the United States does not find it comfortable without aggression. They are carrying out killings as they have been doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are a nation of hyenas. They are selling life-destroying tablets and pills in the packets or phials of peace.
US Responsibility
It is also the US responsibility to protect those who they purchased. The movements are a convocation or installation of grabbing anew. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a purchased grouping of the United States. And the United Nations is their place for their pastime and gossiping.
The attention of Obama is fixed not on the people of Libya but on their oil resources or oil wealth. Thrown into deep recession, it is the need of the United States to plunder the resources of Muslims to get their luxurious lifestyle going. When the United States citizens are beset with unemployment and are about to start begging at that time their government has attacked the Libyan people to grab their oil resources. Other autocratic Arab rulers joined NATO air attacks. And the responsibility of the United States is to ensure security to the evil doers or Satans. Sending warships to Libya they gave a signal to others that no more now, the game is over. Our target has been achieved.
Warplanes and Warships
The last desire of former US President Bush was to launch attack on Iraq and Libya. Obama has fulfilled that desire of Bush. But the difference is Bush has already been insulted trough the hurling of shoes while Obama is yet to get that treatment. The people across the world have been fuming. Obama is playing such a game where the world is clapping with contentment when Libya is being bombarded. It means there will be attacks, but quietly. There would be killing but without any sound.
Obama! You are not t he last. The more your atrocities will grow, the more your days will be numbered. Your nuclear weapons will lose their strength and prowess. Look at Fukushima of Japan. They are counting their days for ruination with their own arms. Not much time would be needed to end your game of pride. Your warplanes and warships would crash onto the roof of your White House only in three minutes. Your nuclear reactors would add gloom to the taste of your dream. The wait of the Muslim ummah (community) is for the help of God. The things for which you boast are your deathtrap.

US Pays Heavy Opportunity Cost 10 Years After 9/11 Terrorist Attacks

Prior to 11 September 2001, the United States was always full of confidence in facing all kinds of challenges and provocations. The name of the United States then was synonymous to "international police personnel" and "financial big brother."
But suddenly, 11 September 2011 came; three aircrafts hit the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon Building of the US Defense Department. Towering buildings collapsed; and the confidence of the people in the United States also collapsed with them. The world community suddenly realized US President George W. Bush could so easily be attacked by the weaker party.
In 2009 when George W. Bush, Jr. left the White House, many people in the United States especially the family members of the US soldiers who had to station overseas to fight the so called counterterrorism war in Iraq and in Afghanistan; as well as the antiwar protestors, were happy to see Bush leaving. They applauded.
Spreading Islam-Phobia
After the 11 September terrorist attacks in the United States, the US security mechanism has also undergone tremendous change. The so-called Islam-phobia also spread quickly in the United States. In the US society, the personal freedom of the citizens became subject to certain restrictions. The immigration law has also been tightened. Once again, Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilization" thought caught the attention of the people again.
Joseph Nye, Jr. who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Clinton administration believed that a major significant shift of the 11 September incident was that there was an increasing strength of the nonstate actors in the power fight. This shift of power has become one of the largest power transitions in the information age.
The number of the people in the United States killed by Al-Qaida terrorist network was more than the people killed by the Japanese military when Japan attacked the US Pearl Harbor during the Second World War. As such the attacks by the terrorists as non-state actors can perhaps be called the "privatization of war." This is because the war between two nations can no longer be limited or confined to the fight and contest of military strength between nations only.
During the Cold War period, the "mutually assured destruction" strategy allowed the United States and the former Soviet Union to process strong and elite military force. But such a strategy could not allow either country to get benefit from adversaries. In the end both sides became equally vulnerable in order to avoid disaster from happening. But the 11 September terrorist attack in the United States has re-written this international rule of the game.
Creating Asymmetric Situations
Joseph Nye, Jr believed the 11 September terrorist attack incident has created two asymmetric situations that in turn have helped to push the Al Qa'ida terrorist network a step forward.
First, it is the "information" asymmetry. While the terrorists are well aware of their target of attacks, but the United States has little understanding of the hiding places and facial features of the terrorists. While some intelligence were able to predict the damage of the nonstate actors could cause to great powers such as the United States but the conclusions of the intelligence did not get acceptance and be included as part of the official counterterrorism strategy adopted by the authority. Second, there is this "attention" asymmetry. While it is logical for large scale participating bodies with many interests and goals to overlook and pay less attention to some of the smaller scale participating bodies; on the other hand, the smaller participating players can pay more attention to their own goals and are able to focus their attention to what they want to do.
On reflection, the global agenda pertaining to the terrorist attacks staged by Al-Qaida Chief Osama Bin Laden has already been dominated in the world scene for approximately 10 years. Although Bin Laden has already been killed by the US military force in Pakistan in May 2011, but the United States has also paid trillions of dollars in the past ten years trying to arrest Bin Laden. The United States has ended up paying more for the opportunity cost than it has earlier expected.
It is indeed strange and funny for us to observe that when the people in the far away land in the United States suffered the hurt of terrorist attacks 10 years ago, some sectors still hold the suspicion that the 11 September terrorist attacks in the United States was but a self-directed act by the United States itself. Moreover, there were also some sectors that were thankful that such tragedy had happened in the United States but had not happened to them; and there were also some compassionate sectors who expressed their sympathies to the people in the United States. But a tragedy remains a tragedy. After the wounds heal, the indelible scars left in the hearts of the Americans can still occasionally feel the pain.
It has been ten years after the 11 September terrorist attacks in the United States. The world media has spent large media space to report on news related to the 11 September incident in order to evoke our past memory of what had happened to the United States ten years ago. But such a memory war will not just stop here; it may even turn worse as days go by.
Top National Priority
International rule of the game is like the Leaning Tower of Pisa; it will continue to tilt toward the side of the stronger power. US President Barack Obama has tried to change it. He begins US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. But the asymmetry situation he faces will be difficult for him to see the result within short period of time.
No wonder some people in the United States feel that the biggest lesson the United States can learn from the experience of the 11 September incident is on how the US Government should handle its foreign affairs. They feel that the US Government should adhere to the advice of former US President Eisenhower who had won many highly decorated war honors for half of his life some half a century ago. This former US president had said: "Do not get into war that involves in the occupation of other countries' territories. Put focus on strengthening US economy as top national priority."
Unemployment Rate and Federal Deficit
However, now the US economy is in a mess. Although the pending US sovereignty debt issue seems to have been resolved, but there are many hidden concerns in the US society. President Obama has continued to be troubled by the high unemployment rate and federal deficit issue in the United States.
The United States has already bid farewell to its former arrogant hegemony and their proudly-hailed power. The misjudgment of what the United States should do after the 11 September terrorist attacks has led the United States loosing many good opportunities to make good the nation. What is left after the 11 September incident is but a rotten economy, a mess and regret in the US society.

New US Employment Act

US President Barack Obama's big jobs speech, which his administration has been building up to for a while, did not disappoint in scope. The initiative he announced -- to be called the American Jobs Act -- will be carefully scrutinized in the weeks to come, but there are already more than enough details available to come to a couple of interesting conclusions. First of all, it is clearly the case that the Obama administration has, two-and-a-half years in, finally settled on a theoretically-solid Keynesian understanding of how to get America's economy out of the trough in which it finds itself, combined with heterodox solutions to getting spending going again.
Competitiveness and Raising Productivity
The nature of the consensus plan reveals current policy thinking, particularly in the sections which detail spending priorities. A national infrastructure bank is planned to use public sector funding to overcome "viability gaps" in modernizing America's creaking highways, railways and bridges, many of which date from a big push over half a century ago.
Spending, therefore, will largely focus on restoring US long-term competitiveness and raising productivity. It is the tax-cut side of the plan that will focus on shorter-term amelioration of unemployment, with a cut in the payroll taxes paid by employers and employees alike, which should encourage small businesses to hire more.
Opening Reelection Campaign
Rhetorically, the speech was interesting in that it marks a departure from the earlier strand of Obama's economic thinking in which globalization, openness and trade links were regularly held up as partly responsible for American job losses. There was no such gesture in this speech, a sign of the administration's growing maturity -- or perhaps the seriousness of the situation left no space for such suggestions. The rest of the world, India's export-oriented sectors included, will be hoping that this plan will be sufficient to do both parts of the job at hand: to avert a downturn in unemployment that would shove the United States into the second dip of a recession; and to upgrade its productivity, in such a way that it can pull its associated economies back onto a higher growth path.
Yet merely announcing the plan will not be enough; it must pass the US legislature; Obama's relations with Congress have been strained. It will require considerable political skill; but hearing Obama speak, it was difficult not to sense that he was opening his reelection campaign, and there is no doubt that, at campaign time, Candidate Obama discovers a lot of political skill.

World Economic Prospects

The issue of the US loss of AAA credit rating on last weekend is not over end yet. International credit rating agency Standard and Poor's warned that there is one-third probability that the agency will further downgrade the US credit rating in the coming half to two years. The US economic prospects are gloomy in view of the country's debt crisis. In addition to the spread of the European debt crisis, the global stock markets crashed again on 8 August. G7 and G20 finance ministers and officials called for emergency meetings to find ways to solve the problems.
Great Depression-Like Situation
The global stock market disaster has also caused turmoil in foreign exchange markets. Another round of depreciation of major currencies is expected. Moreover, the US credit rating may be further downgraded. Bad news comes one after another. Many are worried that the situation may be worse than what happened in the 1930s and that there may be a repeat of the Great Depression. What measures the Malaysian government would take to deal with this crisis? This is another matter of concern.
First of all, the current global economic problems, especially the US debt crisis, are very tricky. Almost all economists are at their wits' end as to how to solve these problems. One and a half year ago, with the exception of Prof Paul Krugman, almost no economist or research institute foresaw and warned the possible serious debt crisis in the United States. They also failed to predict that the United States would lose its AAA credit rating or have its credit rating downgraded to an even lower level. Europe, which is now plagued by the debt crisis, was the most severely stricken area in the first round; whereas Asia and Latin America were seriously hit in the second round. Almost none of the countries in the world can escape the crises.
Rise of Unemployment
The two rounds of financial crises have affected each other and now Asia is deeply plunged into the economic recession. The signs of this economic recession are the drastic fall of stock markets and depreciation of currencies. In medium and long term, we will see the decline of economic growth, rapid rise of unemployment rates, drastic drop of actual wages, and inflation. In other words, the degree of the current economic recession in the world, especially in Europe, is not far from the Great Depression in the 1930s, or even worse.
Finance ministers of G7 countries have recently met to discuss how to prevent the financial markets from plunging into turmoil as a consequence of the European debt crisis and the downgrade of the US credit rating. At this moment, an appropriate measure for the governments is to adopt expansive currency and financial policies in order to increase the total demands. However, Japan has already suffered economic downturn for seven years. During this period, the country suffered another severe setback caused by the earthquakes and tsunami. Japan has repeatedly adopted the measure of tax cut and expanding public spending. The country's interest rate has even dropped to the unprecedented 1 percent. Still, these measures have been to little avail. In other words, the economic problem of East Asia (Japan especially) has failed almost all economists. Both the governments and academicians have not been able to come out with any effective solution. At the same time, China may also find it hard to protect its own interests. Thus, it is not practical to expect China to come to the rescue. People are becoming more and more pessimistic over the economic prospects.
Second, the major economies in the world are now in different phases of the economic cycle. This is a rare and special phenomenon and has made the problems even more complicated. The United States has gone through more than seven years of expansion period since its economy started to recover in 2001 and has slowly declined from the peak. Now the United States is deeply plunge d in the debt crisis and its economic growth dropped drastically. The slowdown in the growth of the corporate surplus clearly proves this. The US debt crisis has also dragged the whole world into trouble. After this round of serious recession, the world economy may have to take a long time to gradually recover.
Third, the chaining effects in the current international trade and finance have increased a great deal. For example, the deterioration of the European debt crisis may cause serious losses to French bank Société Générale and the biggest bank of Italy and may be accompanied by the so-called ‘competitive’ depreciation. The plummet of the US stock market had also instantly led to the crash of stock markets worldwide. All these cannot be explained by fundamental economic theories. The European and US governments are still at their wits' end in handling their debt crises. As the interest rates, stock markets, and foreign exchange markets see drastic rise and fall, hindrance is expected in the financing of international trade and investment, and multinational capital because the risks have risen substantially.
International Policy Coordination
We can foresee that in the coming few years, there will be an obvious decline in international trade and investment as well as capital movement. This is of course greatly disadvantageous to the global economic growth. The turmoil and unrest in the global financial markets indicates the necessity for comprehensive reforms of the international financial system.
The key international currency, the US dollar, will become extremely unstable. Although governments of countries worldwide understand the importance of the ‘international policy coordination,’ they rarely walk their talk due to their selfish consideration. This has substantially weakened the stability of the international economic and financial system as compared to the past.
Future Scenario
We do not see any reliable and feasible solution for the debt crises in the near future, yet. The negative impacts on small economies like Malaysia are also obvious. One good example is that the economic growth of our country for this year is projected at 4.5 percent only. We foresee that various economic indicators will further decline in the second half of the year. It seems the recession is inevitable. As the demands from overseas declined drastically, expanding domestic demands will no doubt help to stabilize the economy in short-term. However, whether it is done through increasing budget for public projects or implementing incentives for rental cut, it will invariably lead to a soar of budget deficit. If the government rushes to implement some public projects, the quality and economic benefits of the projects may be affected easily.
Considering that the increase of the private investment had reached 24 percent in the first quarter of the year, it is indeed necessary to think twice on whether the government should introduce new measures in stimulating investment. In view of the bad and unfavorable external economic environment, economic stability is more important than economic growth.

US Health Care Bill Gets Approval

The US House of Representatives has passed the US Health Care Bill so that President Barack Obama can fulfill his medical reform dream in the past 100 years in US history. He said that: "The Americans responded to the call of history." Indeed, in retrospect, we can see that the United States is the only advanced country that does not have a proper medical health care plan at national level.

Health Insurance Sector
The population of this advanced country will have to buy their own private health insurance to prepare for emergency use. However, out of the total US population of 300 million, nearly 50 million people in the United States are without any form of proper health care insurance. Still then, the US medical health care cost has continued to rise steadily.

In 2007, the United States spent $2.2 trillion on medical care. It accounted for 6.2 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Such medical care cost is two folds higher as compared with other advanced country. As such, how the US Government can make more citizens effectively protected under the new health care reform plan and how to make this new health care plan system to run more efficiently in carry out its intended goals have become the Obama administration's priority.

Affecting Unemployment Rate
For Malaysia, the start-up of any social welfare plan can immediately add to the financial burden of existing workers and their employers. If the Government tries to put such social welfare or medical health care plan into practice in great hurry, the production cost of businesses and enterprises will drastically be increased. This can lead to drastic reduction in Malaysia's external competitiveness and trigger another round of migration of foreign investment to other countries. When this happens, not only the economic growth of the country will be affected, the unemployment rate can also drastically be increased.

Through US President Obama's health care reform plan, we can understand that any effort in pushing out social welfare or health care plan by any nation must take into account the affordability of the government and the civil society!