Visit Malaysia, visit Bolehland
SEVERAL glitches have plagued the Visit Malaysia Year 2007 campaign even as 50,000 tourists arrived on the first day of the new year. Teething problems and congestion at facilities have left some tourists hot under the collar.
Not only were there long delays on the much anticipated Hop-On-Hop-Off bus service in Kuala Lumpur, the on-board commentaries did not work.
In addition, several tourists complained about the poor language of the bus drivers and guides and said they would not recommend the service to their friends.
The Hop-On-Hop-Off bus service is a noted tourism tool in many countries, with commentaries providing information on a city's history, landmarks and cultures.
Malaysia has promised tourists a memorable and hassle-free visit, with an assurance that glitches will be resolved in the shortest time possible.
Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said a committee would be making weekly evaluations of the Visit Malaysia 2007 (VM 2007) programme, and problems would be dealt with almost immediately.
In another headache, the move to add 32 check-in counters at Penang International Airport failed to get off the ground.
Malaysia Airports senior manager Abdul Wahab Mohd Yusof said work on the additional check-in counters, costing RM12 million, would start later this month and would be completed only by the end of the year !! (How about extending the VMY until 2008 ?)
He said the extra counters were proposed in 2004, but changes to the design, technical problems and budget constraints had delayed the project.
Repairs to one of the runways have also been delayed.
'These delays are unavoidable,' he said. (Malaysia Boleh !!)
'We tried our best to complete it early, but there were constraints such as the unpredictable weather.
'A new parking apron will also be constructed but it will only be ready by next year,' he said after receiving 560 tourists from Thailand, Singapore and China.
Tourism Ministry director-general Mirza Mohammad Taiyab expressed confidence that the problems would be addressed soon and was upbeat about the increased tourist arrivals.
He said the first-day arrivals put the country well on the way to meeting its goal of welcoming 20.1 million tourists by the end of the year.
That achievement would translate into RM44.5 billion in revenue.
The last Visit Malaysia Year in 1994 drew 7.2 million visitors and earnings of RM8.3 billion
Meanwhile, A 63-year-old Japanese tourist drowned in waters off Pulau Sapi here Wednesday, barely a day after a South Korean holidaymaker died near the same spot.
Junko Noguchi , who was on holiday with her daughter Noguchi Kayo, 36, when she was seen struggling in fairly shallow waters off Pulau Sapi.
Another tourist pulled her out of the water but she was already unconscious.
Lifeguards failed to resuscitate Junko and she was taken on a tour boat to the mainland and rushed by ambulance to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. She was pronounced dead on arrival.
Junko’s death comes a day after a 48-year-old South Korean woman Baek Misook drowned at almost the same spot at about 11am on Tuesday.
On Nov 20, last year Ang Ga Yool, 8, from South Korea died off Pulau Sapi after being stung by a jelly fish and on May 5, a Swedish woman Eva Jackert, 67, died off Pulau Mamutik, also within the marine park area.
TALKING POINTS ON THE EXECUTION OF SADDAM HUSSEIN
1) The execution of Saddam Hussein was not Nuremberg. Despite their flaws, the Nuremberg tribunals for the first time recognized that the crime of waging aggressive war lies at the root of all other war crimes. Nuremberg empowered international law in entirely new ways. Justice Jackson, one of the Nuremberg prosecutors, wrote that the individual accountability determined there must apply to the victors as well as the vanquished. And while Jackson’s goal has yet to be implemented, the Nuremberg precedent set the terms for using international law as a weapon against leaders of powerful as well as defeated governments. The flawed U.S.-controlled trial of Saddam Hussein did not even abide by, let alone chart new ground in international law. This was victor's justice of the worst sort – just the opposite of what Justice Jackson called for. Despite the Iraqi faces in the judge’s chair and at the prosecutors’ table, there is no question that U.S. occupation authorities were determining how and under what kinds of laws Saddam Hussein would be brought to trial. Dozens of U.S. government-hired American and expatriate Iraqi lawyers had worked for the U.S. occupation authorities from the earliest days of the U.S. invasion and occupation in spring 2003. With U.S. officials still running the legal show in Baghdad, the U.S. military occupation still in control of the country, and the escalating war engulfing Iraq, no trial held under these conditions can be considered legitimate.
2) Some ask "if the trial had been fair, would the results have been different?" The conviction of Saddam Hussein for huge crimes against the Iraqi people would almost certainly be the same. The key difference would have been that a fair trial would have allowed -- insisted on -- including evidence implicating those who enabled those crimes: the U.S. for providing military, financial and diplomatic support for the regime, as well as providing the seed stock for biological weapons; the Brits for providing growth medium for biological weapons; the Germans for providing chemical weapons; the French for providing missile technology... etc.... Also, in a "new Iraq" the convictions after a fair trial would have led to life imprisonment -- not the death penalty.
3) Shouldn’t Saddam Hussein have been executed though? The people of Iraq have suffered enormously for more than a quarter of a century of repression, war, sanctions, invasion and occupation. There is plenty of accountability to go around, and certainly Saddam Hussein is responsible for a great deal of suffering. But he did not act alone. For U.S. officials to orchestrate a trial so profoundly flawed, that was designed to keep all evidence of U.S. (as well as European and other international) complicity from emerging, simply shows once again that real democracy and real justice were never part of the U.S. agenda in Iraq. Hanging Saddam Hussein has done nothing to improve the lives of the suffering people of Iraq. What the Iraqi people want, and so desperately need, is an end to the occupation so they can end the war. Many also want an end to the state-inflicted violence that Iraqi governments, both before and since the U.S. invasion, have practiced – that means an end to the death penalty.
4) The fact that the first confirmation, for almost an hour, came only from the U.S.-backed propaganda station al-Hurra, indicates again that the U.S., not the Iraqi government, is still calling the shots around the trial and execution. (U.S. and some British outlets were running headlines saying "Arabic language media reporting SH's execution..." as if al-Hurra was a legitimate independent news outlet.)
5) Most Iraqis are facing such dire circumstances in their day-to-day lives, with escalating violence and other consequences of the U.S. occupation, that after years of his imprisonment the execution of Saddam Hussein is unlikely to have much impact on them. Many Iraqis will no doubt be pleased, some will be angry; the violence is so intense that any violent attack specifically tied to the execution is unlikely to have much additional impact.
6) George Bush is likely to claim the execution heralds "a new Iraq" much as the "mission accomplished," the capture of Saddam Hussein, the election, the constitution, etc. were all supposed to mean a "new Iraq." No one in Iraq is seeing a new Iraq today.
7) There are reports of Iraqi government officials and perhaps others, witnesses to the execution, who danced around the body "shouting Shi'a chants" (according to CNN). Whether true or not, such reports are clearly designed to further inflame sectarian hostilities.
So America's one-time ally has been sentenced to death for war crimes he committed when he was Washington's best friend in the Arab world. America knew all about his atrocities and even supplied the gas - along with the British, of course - yet there we were yesterday declaring it to be, in the White House's words, another "great day for Iraq". That's what Tony Blair announced when Saddam Hussein was pulled from his hole in the ground on 13 December 2003. And now we're going to string him up, and it's another great day.
"Allahu Akbar," the awful man shouted - God is greater. No surprise there. He it was who insisted these words should be inscribed upon the Iraqi flag, the same flag which now hangs over the palace of the government that has condemned him after a trial at which the former Iraqi mass murderer was formally forbidden from describing his relationship with Donald Rumsfeld, now George Bush's Secretary of Defence. Remember that handshake? Nor, of course, was he permitted to talk about the support he received from George Bush Snr, the current US President's father. Little wonder, then, that Iraqi officials claimed last week the Americans had been urging them to sentence Saddam before the mid-term US elections.
Saddam mistake was to invade the oil-rich emirate of Kuwait, which he claimed should have been part of Iraq all along. His envoys said he'd gotten the nod from Washington. But his new conquest put Saddam in a position to threaten Saudi Arabia and dominate the world oil market. When he refused to pull back, the administration of President George H.W. Bush forged an international coalition of Western powers and Arab countries to demolish his forces in 1991's Desert Storm.
The final hanging of Saddam, twisting, twisting slowly in the wind. Americans have won. We have inflicted justice upon the man whose country we invaded and eviscerated and caused to break apart. No, there is no sympathy for this man. "President Saddam Hussein has no fear of being executed," Bouchra Khalil, a Lebanese lawyer on his team, said in Beirut a few days ago. "He will not come out of prison to count his days and years in exile in Qatar or any other place. He will come out of prison to go to the presidency or to his grave." It looks like the grave. Keitel went there. Ceausescu went there. Milosevic escaped sentence.
The odd thing is that Iraq is now swamped with mass murderers, guilty of rape and massacre and throat-slitting and torture in the years since the "liberation" of Iraq.
As Bush searches for ways to extricate the United States from the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, which has now cost almost 3,000 American lives and drains more than $2 billion a week from U.S. coffers, little is gained from Saddam's demise. The challenge was not how to eliminate him: he ceased to be a factor when he was dragged out of a "spider hole" three years ago. The problem remains how to replace him.
Latest :
Iraq has launched an investigation into who recorded and distributed images of the execution of Saddam Hussein, as well as the taunting of the former leader just prior to his death, according to a government spokesman.
The announcement of the investigation follows reports of U.S. officials who tried to delay Hussein's execution, fearing it would deepen a civil divide in Iraq.
Death of a Tyrant - Newsweek
This was a guilty verdict on America as well - The Independent
Iraqi government to investigate disorder at Saddam execution - International Herald Tribune
TALKING POINTS ON THE EXECUTION OF SADDAM HUSSEIN - Znet
Iraq probes Hussein execution - CNN
malaysia visit Malaysia year hop-on-hop-off tour bus Mid East US Saddam
Not only were there long delays on the much anticipated Hop-On-Hop-Off bus service in Kuala Lumpur, the on-board commentaries did not work.
In addition, several tourists complained about the poor language of the bus drivers and guides and said they would not recommend the service to their friends.
The Hop-On-Hop-Off bus service is a noted tourism tool in many countries, with commentaries providing information on a city's history, landmarks and cultures.
Malaysia has promised tourists a memorable and hassle-free visit, with an assurance that glitches will be resolved in the shortest time possible.
Tourism Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said a committee would be making weekly evaluations of the Visit Malaysia 2007 (VM 2007) programme, and problems would be dealt with almost immediately.
In another headache, the move to add 32 check-in counters at Penang International Airport failed to get off the ground.
Malaysia Airports senior manager Abdul Wahab Mohd Yusof said work on the additional check-in counters, costing RM12 million, would start later this month and would be completed only by the end of the year !! (How about extending the VMY until 2008 ?)
He said the extra counters were proposed in 2004, but changes to the design, technical problems and budget constraints had delayed the project.
Repairs to one of the runways have also been delayed.
'These delays are unavoidable,' he said. (Malaysia Boleh !!)
'We tried our best to complete it early, but there were constraints such as the unpredictable weather.
'A new parking apron will also be constructed but it will only be ready by next year,' he said after receiving 560 tourists from Thailand, Singapore and China.
Tourism Ministry director-general Mirza Mohammad Taiyab expressed confidence that the problems would be addressed soon and was upbeat about the increased tourist arrivals.
He said the first-day arrivals put the country well on the way to meeting its goal of welcoming 20.1 million tourists by the end of the year.
That achievement would translate into RM44.5 billion in revenue.
The last Visit Malaysia Year in 1994 drew 7.2 million visitors and earnings of RM8.3 billion
Meanwhile, A 63-year-old Japanese tourist drowned in waters off Pulau Sapi here Wednesday, barely a day after a South Korean holidaymaker died near the same spot.
Junko Noguchi , who was on holiday with her daughter Noguchi Kayo, 36, when she was seen struggling in fairly shallow waters off Pulau Sapi.
Another tourist pulled her out of the water but she was already unconscious.
Lifeguards failed to resuscitate Junko and she was taken on a tour boat to the mainland and rushed by ambulance to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. She was pronounced dead on arrival.
Junko’s death comes a day after a 48-year-old South Korean woman Baek Misook drowned at almost the same spot at about 11am on Tuesday.
On Nov 20, last year Ang Ga Yool, 8, from South Korea died off Pulau Sapi after being stung by a jelly fish and on May 5, a Swedish woman Eva Jackert, 67, died off Pulau Mamutik, also within the marine park area.
The punishment of Saddam Hussein for the deaths of 148 persons, albeit in a manner that civil society ought to find repugnant, raises compelling questions:
Who will be held accountable for sending 3,000 US troops to their deaths in Iraq, for a war based on lies?
Who will be held accountable for the deaths of over 655,000 innocent Iraqi civilians during the course of this illegal war?
Where is the two trillion dollars that this war is going to cost coming from?
When will Congress be held accountable for having voted to go to war?
When will Congress be held accountable for continuing to fund a war, and for abandoning the troops to a conflict that cannot be won militarily?
Tun Dr Mahathir described the execution of Saddam Hussein as barbaric, sadistic and a public murder.
TALKING POINTS ON THE EXECUTION OF SADDAM HUSSEIN
1) The execution of Saddam Hussein was not Nuremberg. Despite their flaws, the Nuremberg tribunals for the first time recognized that the crime of waging aggressive war lies at the root of all other war crimes. Nuremberg empowered international law in entirely new ways. Justice Jackson, one of the Nuremberg prosecutors, wrote that the individual accountability determined there must apply to the victors as well as the vanquished. And while Jackson’s goal has yet to be implemented, the Nuremberg precedent set the terms for using international law as a weapon against leaders of powerful as well as defeated governments. The flawed U.S.-controlled trial of Saddam Hussein did not even abide by, let alone chart new ground in international law. This was victor's justice of the worst sort – just the opposite of what Justice Jackson called for. Despite the Iraqi faces in the judge’s chair and at the prosecutors’ table, there is no question that U.S. occupation authorities were determining how and under what kinds of laws Saddam Hussein would be brought to trial. Dozens of U.S. government-hired American and expatriate Iraqi lawyers had worked for the U.S. occupation authorities from the earliest days of the U.S. invasion and occupation in spring 2003. With U.S. officials still running the legal show in Baghdad, the U.S. military occupation still in control of the country, and the escalating war engulfing Iraq, no trial held under these conditions can be considered legitimate.
2) Some ask "if the trial had been fair, would the results have been different?" The conviction of Saddam Hussein for huge crimes against the Iraqi people would almost certainly be the same. The key difference would have been that a fair trial would have allowed -- insisted on -- including evidence implicating those who enabled those crimes: the U.S. for providing military, financial and diplomatic support for the regime, as well as providing the seed stock for biological weapons; the Brits for providing growth medium for biological weapons; the Germans for providing chemical weapons; the French for providing missile technology... etc.... Also, in a "new Iraq" the convictions after a fair trial would have led to life imprisonment -- not the death penalty.
3) Shouldn’t Saddam Hussein have been executed though? The people of Iraq have suffered enormously for more than a quarter of a century of repression, war, sanctions, invasion and occupation. There is plenty of accountability to go around, and certainly Saddam Hussein is responsible for a great deal of suffering. But he did not act alone. For U.S. officials to orchestrate a trial so profoundly flawed, that was designed to keep all evidence of U.S. (as well as European and other international) complicity from emerging, simply shows once again that real democracy and real justice were never part of the U.S. agenda in Iraq. Hanging Saddam Hussein has done nothing to improve the lives of the suffering people of Iraq. What the Iraqi people want, and so desperately need, is an end to the occupation so they can end the war. Many also want an end to the state-inflicted violence that Iraqi governments, both before and since the U.S. invasion, have practiced – that means an end to the death penalty.
4) The fact that the first confirmation, for almost an hour, came only from the U.S.-backed propaganda station al-Hurra, indicates again that the U.S., not the Iraqi government, is still calling the shots around the trial and execution. (U.S. and some British outlets were running headlines saying "Arabic language media reporting SH's execution..." as if al-Hurra was a legitimate independent news outlet.)
5) Most Iraqis are facing such dire circumstances in their day-to-day lives, with escalating violence and other consequences of the U.S. occupation, that after years of his imprisonment the execution of Saddam Hussein is unlikely to have much impact on them. Many Iraqis will no doubt be pleased, some will be angry; the violence is so intense that any violent attack specifically tied to the execution is unlikely to have much additional impact.
6) George Bush is likely to claim the execution heralds "a new Iraq" much as the "mission accomplished," the capture of Saddam Hussein, the election, the constitution, etc. were all supposed to mean a "new Iraq." No one in Iraq is seeing a new Iraq today.
7) There are reports of Iraqi government officials and perhaps others, witnesses to the execution, who danced around the body "shouting Shi'a chants" (according to CNN). Whether true or not, such reports are clearly designed to further inflame sectarian hostilities.
So America's one-time ally has been sentenced to death for war crimes he committed when he was Washington's best friend in the Arab world. America knew all about his atrocities and even supplied the gas - along with the British, of course - yet there we were yesterday declaring it to be, in the White House's words, another "great day for Iraq". That's what Tony Blair announced when Saddam Hussein was pulled from his hole in the ground on 13 December 2003. And now we're going to string him up, and it's another great day.
"Allahu Akbar," the awful man shouted - God is greater. No surprise there. He it was who insisted these words should be inscribed upon the Iraqi flag, the same flag which now hangs over the palace of the government that has condemned him after a trial at which the former Iraqi mass murderer was formally forbidden from describing his relationship with Donald Rumsfeld, now George Bush's Secretary of Defence. Remember that handshake? Nor, of course, was he permitted to talk about the support he received from George Bush Snr, the current US President's father. Little wonder, then, that Iraqi officials claimed last week the Americans had been urging them to sentence Saddam before the mid-term US elections.
Saddam mistake was to invade the oil-rich emirate of Kuwait, which he claimed should have been part of Iraq all along. His envoys said he'd gotten the nod from Washington. But his new conquest put Saddam in a position to threaten Saudi Arabia and dominate the world oil market. When he refused to pull back, the administration of President George H.W. Bush forged an international coalition of Western powers and Arab countries to demolish his forces in 1991's Desert Storm.
The final hanging of Saddam, twisting, twisting slowly in the wind. Americans have won. We have inflicted justice upon the man whose country we invaded and eviscerated and caused to break apart. No, there is no sympathy for this man. "President Saddam Hussein has no fear of being executed," Bouchra Khalil, a Lebanese lawyer on his team, said in Beirut a few days ago. "He will not come out of prison to count his days and years in exile in Qatar or any other place. He will come out of prison to go to the presidency or to his grave." It looks like the grave. Keitel went there. Ceausescu went there. Milosevic escaped sentence.
The odd thing is that Iraq is now swamped with mass murderers, guilty of rape and massacre and throat-slitting and torture in the years since the "liberation" of Iraq.
As Bush searches for ways to extricate the United States from the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, which has now cost almost 3,000 American lives and drains more than $2 billion a week from U.S. coffers, little is gained from Saddam's demise. The challenge was not how to eliminate him: he ceased to be a factor when he was dragged out of a "spider hole" three years ago. The problem remains how to replace him.
Latest :
Iraq has launched an investigation into who recorded and distributed images of the execution of Saddam Hussein, as well as the taunting of the former leader just prior to his death, according to a government spokesman.
The announcement of the investigation follows reports of U.S. officials who tried to delay Hussein's execution, fearing it would deepen a civil divide in Iraq.
Death of a Tyrant - Newsweek
This was a guilty verdict on America as well - The Independent
Iraqi government to investigate disorder at Saddam execution - International Herald Tribune
TALKING POINTS ON THE EXECUTION OF SADDAM HUSSEIN - Znet
Iraq probes Hussein execution - CNN
malaysia visit Malaysia year hop-on-hop-off tour bus Mid East US Saddam
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