Day: May 7, 2014

The Malaysian Insider
May 07, 2014

Putrajaya must be transparent about the circumstances that led to flight MH70 vanishing two months ago, and should apologise for shortcomings in the search for the missing plane, the husband of one of the passengers wrote in an open letter to the prime minister.

K. S. Narendran, whose wife Chandrika Sharma was on the Malaysia Airlines plane with 238 other people, said the families have lost their loved ones but Malaysia had lost its credibility in the search for the Boeing 777-200ER.

“Perhaps the most serious casualty second only to the loss of the plane is the severely impaired credibility of your Government and the airline’s handling of the crisis.

“The skimpy Preliminary Report released to the public this week, supposedly based on your guidelines does little to enhance your government’s commitment to transparency, and therefore only adds fuel to doubts, suspicion and speculations,” he wrote in an email to Datuk Seri Najib Razak dated May 4, 2014. Continue reading “In open letter, MH370 passenger’s husband asks Malaysia for transparency, apology”

Two days ago, I gave the MCA Deputy President Datuk Dr. Wee Kee Siong a free double advice: Don’t tell a bare-faced lie and don’t be caught immediately with such downright dishonesty.

This was when Ka Siong tried to rebut my statement in Batu Pahat on Sunday that the MCA President, Liow Tiong Lai had missed a “golden opportunity” to say “No” in front of the Prime Minister and UMNO President, Datuk Seri Najib Razak in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday that MCA cannot accept Najib’s earlier unilateral and arbitrary announcement in Alor Star that the Barisan Nasional Federal Government had never rejected hudud.

This was because what Najib said was not the original Barisan Nasional stand, and furthermore, violates an important BN principle that any change of Barisan Nasional policy must be the result of the consensus of all component parties and not unilaterally and arbitrarily by any one party, even if it is UMNO.

As I told Ka Siong, what Najib said was never the Barisan Nasional Federal Government’s stand, even going back to the UMNO, MCA and MIC founders like Tunku Abdul Rahman, Tun Razak, Tun Hussein, Tun Tan Cheng Lock, Tun Tan Siew Sin and Tun V.T. Sambanthan as they were very clear that hudud was inconsistent with the secular 1957 constitution and would never say like Najib that the Barisan Nasional Federal Government had never rejected hudud.

Now I am offering the MCA President, Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai two additional free advice – don’t distort other people’s statement and to be “caught” immediately. Continue reading “Liow should act on Chua’s advice, requisition a BN Supreme Council meeting where UMNO will be outvoted by 1 – 12 on implementation of hudud”

On 5th May 2014, the first anniversary of the 13th General Elections, Malaysians were torn by grave disillusionment with the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak for a year of failed policies and the dire prospect of a break-up of Pakatan Rakyat over hudud law.

The next day, the beginning of the second year of Najib’s second administration as Prime Minister could not have started on a more ominous note, heralding that Malaysia is heading for a new dark age where all the grandiloquent pledges and slogans of 1Malaysia, World’s Best Democracy and Government Transformation Programme would be consigned to the dustbins of history and replaced by undemocratic, repressive, unjust and draconian rule.

In the morning, the PR/DAP MP for Seputeh Teresa Kok was charged in Kuala Lumpur Sessions Court with sedition over her Chinese New Year “Onederful Malaysia” video, a 11-minute clip lampooning and criticising various failures of government policies.

It is supreme irony that one of the five criticisms in her video alleged to be seditious was about the security situation in East Sabah especially after the abduction of the Taiwan tourist in an island resort off Semporna in November last year – as on the morning that Teresa was charged, news were received of another abduction of a Chinese national in a nearby island off Lahad Datu at about 2.45 a.m. the same day!

Teresa was telling the truth, but telling the truth has become sedition in Najib’s Malaysia as the Prime Minister has forgotten his promises to repeal the draconian and colonial Sedition Act. Continue reading “Najib must take a clear stand – whether he is with the moderates or the extremists, whether he is for 1Malaysia or the very antithesis of 1Malaysia”

COMMENTARY BY THE MALAYSIAN INSIDER
May 07, 2014

If there are any police officials still interested in being honest brokers and if the rule of law means anything anymore in Malaysia, a whole clutch of speakers at yesterday’s seminar on the Allah word and Christianity should be arrested and charged with sedition.

In some other countries, they would be charged with hate crimes because hate is what they were trying to make Malaysians do. Hate Christians and hate Malaysians of the Christian faith. Continue reading “Stopping those who spew hate in the name of religion”

by Looi Sue-Chern
The Malaysian Insider
MAY 06, 2014

A PAS leader yesterday sought to heal the tension between DAP and the Islamist party over the hudud issue when he said that the late Karpal Singh, although strongly opposed to hudud, was never anti-Islam.

Speaking at a memorial service for the late Karpal at the Han Chiang High School in Penang last night, PAS lawmaker Datuk Dr Mujahid Yusuf Rawa said the former DAP chairman always stood by his principles in objecting to the implementation of hudud and the setting up of an Islamic state.

“But he (Karpal) was never a man who was anti-Islam,” Mujahid said. Continue reading “Karpal was anti-hudud, but never anti-Islam, says PAS lawmaker”

— P Ramakrishnan
The Malay Mail Online
MAY 6, 2014

MAY 6 — The passing of Karpal had a shattering effect on me. It was, as it were, we had lost our hope. Such was the immense loss that we suffered.

On the day of Karpal’s funeral, I wanted to bid him farewell in my own personal and special way.

This is the outpouring of a grieving heart.

This was my good-bye to him:

My dear Karpal,

It is difficult to accept that you are no longer with us. For more than four decades you were part of the landscape of this nation and very much a part of our lives.

Today you are no more!

It is well-known that you were highly respected and greatly admired, but we did not know that you were also loved so deeply. It took everyone by surprise. There was no way to know this; there was no indication; there was no expression of this affection in the past.

While you were alive, there was no means or reason to measure the people’s affection for you. In your death, we discovered that there was so much undeclared love for you. The out-pouring of affection for you was simply incredible and astonishing. Their affinity for you was totally overwhelming, dear Karpal. Continue reading “It’s so hard to say good-bye, Karpal”

By Gopi Chandra Kharel
International Business Times
May 6, 2014

The projected flight trajectory of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, shown by an arc, could have been a mistake. (Photo: Australian Maritime Safety Authority)

It appears that the authorities are not sure if the data gathered in the nearly two-month hunt for the missing Malaysia jet, which projected the likely flight trajectory of MH370 shown by an arc, was a correct analysis after all.

An international panel of experts is in the process of re-examining all data gathered so far, in order to be sure if the international team has been looking for the missing plane in the right place, officials said on Tuesday.

Senior officials from Malaysia, Australia and China met in the Australian capital to discuss the next move in search for MH370, after two months of intense efforts in the southern Indian Ocean yielded no tangible results. The meeting hashed out details of plans for another search operation that could take up to a year to complete and will cost about A$60million – an amount that has raised quite a few eyebrows.

Now that the authorities are not even sure if the search operation thus far for the missing MH370 plane was taking place in the right place, it is likely to raise further questions from the family members of the passengers aboard, as well as the public. Continue reading “Projected Flight Path of MH370 Mistaken? Authorities Not Sure if Data Analysis was Correct”

BY TIM HEPHER PARIS
Reuters
May 6, 2014

(Reuters) – European safety officials on Tuesday proposed tougher rules for ‘black box’ flight recorders in the strongest regulatory reaction yet to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) said it would propose increasing the recording time on cockpit voice recorders to 20 hours from two to make it easier to understand plane accidents and prevent vital evidence being overwritten.

Newly published proposals would also bring into force recommendations made by French crash investigators after the loss of an Air France jet in the Atlantic in 2009, but which remain bogged down in talks among regulators.

These include the addition of a new pinger frequency making it easier to locate the recording devices under water, where lower frequencies travel further. Continue reading “Europe draws up tougher black box rules after MH370 mystery”

by Henry Austin
NBC News
6th May 2014

Only “a handful” of commercial vehicles can search the depths of the southern Indian Ocean in the area that is believed to be the final resting place of missing Flight MH370, an expert said Tuesday.

Officials announced Monday that all of the data compiled in the hunt for the Boeing 777 will be re-examined to make sure the right area is being scoured as part of a new $55-million phase of the operation.

Capt. John Noble, the former general manager of the International Salvage Union, told NBC News that it made sense to narrow down the search area as much as possible.

“You’d be lucky if there was a handful of vehicles that can to go to the sort depths of the ocean that we are talking about here because they simply don’t make them,” Noble said. Continue reading “Missing MH370: Only ‘Handful’ of Subs Capable of Hunting Jet”

By David Molko, CNN
May 6, 2014

“I’m an engineer, so we don’t talk emotions too much.” Those were the words of Capt. Mark Matthews of the U.S. Navy shortly after the Australian Defense vessel Ocean Shield had discovered a series of pings in the southern Indian Ocean.Perhaps he didn’t want to discuss his feelings. But he had a twinkle in his eye, a bit of what he called “cautious optimism.” I’ve seen that same glimmer shining through on the faces of dozens of others involved in the arduous search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. It’s been there through each new lead, and even through some of the setbacks.

The search for the missing Boeing 777 has gone on for eight weeks now. We’ve all had to learn a new technical language: from Inmarsat satellite data and the “Doppler Effect,” to the TPL-25 and Bluefin-21. We’ve heard countless theories about where the plane might have gone and who might have been flying it.

Both the science and the science fiction have, at times, almost drowned out what this search is about at its core: solving the mystery of what happened to the 239 men, women, and children who were on board MH370. Continue reading “MH370: Hope transcends frustration in quest to bring families closure”

Susan Loone
Malaysiakin
May 6, 2014

Being the loyal and devoted wife, she stood in his shadows all these years without public recognition and appreciation.

But last night’s memorial for the late Karpal Singh at the Han Chiang College Hall, Penang, saw tribute paid to his widow, Gurmit Kaur, who sat amid the 1,000 odd crowd at the event.

“This woman dedicated and sacrificed her whole life to Karpal for years in silence, standing steadfastly behind her husband as he went about his work, contributing to the nation,” said her second son, Puchong MP Gobind Singh Deo.

“This woman is my mother, let’s give her a big round of applause, it is not easy, not easy at all to do what she had done,” he added, as the crowd clapped loudly in her honour. Continue reading “‘She dedicated and sacrificed life to Karpal’”