Foreign Ministry says 36 Malaysians in Tibet reported safe, with checks widening to Chinese border areas

Foreign Ministry says 36 Malaysians in Tibet reported safe, with checks widening to Chinese border areas



People queue to register as they arrive after being rescued from a flash flood site at Trishuli Army camp in Nepal’s Nuwakot district August 28, 2026. Thirty-six Malaysians in Tibet, China have reported to be safe following flash floods and landslides in the China-Nepal border area. — AFP pic


Summary

• Two Malaysians have been located but 55 remain untraceable after flash floods and landslides in Nepal, according to the Foreign Ministry.
• Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan has ordered continued monitoring and efforts to locate Malaysians, dispatching an official to assist the operations in Nepal.
• Thirty-six Malaysians in Tibet are reported safe, and the ministry's operations room in Putrajaya is coordinating information and assisting affected Malaysians around the clock.

First Published: Saturday, 29 Aug 2026 9:16 AM MYT


PUTRAJAYA, Aug 29 — Thirty-six Malaysians in Tibet, China have reported to be safe following flash floods and landslides in the China-Nepal border area.

Foreign Ministry deputy secretary-general (Bilateral Relations) Datuk Syed Mohamad Hasrin Tengku Hussin said that the identities and status of the 36 Malaysians were still being verified with Chinese authorities, and they are cross-checking for any overlap with the list of Malaysians who remained uncontactable in Nepal.

“We are also conducting cross-checks because we have only just received this information... We will provide an update if there are any names that overlap, including the actual number of our citizens who are still missing or have been found safe, whether in Nepal or Tibet,” he told Bernama here yesterday.


Following the information, the ministry’s coordination efforts had now been expanded to cover areas on the Chinese side of the border, he added.


He shared that the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing and the Malaysian High Commission in New Delhi were also involved in the process as there was information that some Malaysians might have travelled along routes involving China and India.

The Foreign Ministry’s Operations Room in Putrajaya would continue to operate round the clock to coordinate information, assist Malaysians in the affected areas and provide the latest updates to family members, Syed Mohamad Hasrin said, adding that they would continue seeking confirmation from Chinese authorities regarding the whereabouts and safety of Malaysians in Tibet before drawing any further conclusions.

On the possibility of bringing affected Malaysians home, he said the matter needed to be coordinated with the Nepali authorities and tour operators, including verifying the status of their travel documents before any further action could be taken.


The priority at present was to locate Malaysians and ensure their safety in the affected areas, while taking into account weather conditions and limited access, he said.

In a related development, he said Malaysia, through the National Security Council (MKN) and the National Disaster Management Agency (NADMA), was coordinating and assessing the form of assistance that could be provided to Nepal.

Any assistance would take into account the needs identified by the Nepal government and would be subject to the consideration of MKN, as well as the acceptance and priorities of the Nepal government through official channels.

He said while Malaysia has expressed its readiness to assist Nepal, the Nepal government had so far indicated that it had sufficient resources to conduct search and rescue operations and required assistance could include financial resources and other forms of aid.

Nonetheless, Syed Mohamad Hasrin said the ministry is also assessing the readiness of Malaysian agencies, including the Special Malaysia Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team, while the Defence Ministry and the Malaysian Armed Forces were also ready to provide assistance.

Finally, in accordance with a decree by Sultan Ibrahim, King of Malaysia, the ministry would continue to provide affected Malaysians’ family members with the latest verified information, Syed Mohamad Hasrin said.

“At the same time, the media and public are urged not to speculate or disseminate unverified information, but instead refer to official statements from the Foreign Ministry for the latest updates,” he said.

Yesterday, Sultan Ibrahim urged Wisma Putra to take all necessary measures regarding Malaysians affected by the major floods in Rasuwa, Nepal. — Bernama

PAS shuts door on Bersatu reconciliation, excludes Perikatan ally from muktamar

PAS shuts door on Bersatu reconciliation, excludes Perikatan ally from muktamar



PAS president Tan Sri Abdul Hadi Awang said the party has shut the door on reconciliation with Bersatu and will not invite its Perikatan Nasional ally to the 72nd PAS muktamar in Kelantan next month. — Bernama pic


Summary

• PAS has announced that reconciliation with Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia within the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition is no longer possible, citing Bersatu's decision to contest against PN and openness to collaborations with Pakatan Harapan (PH).
• Consequently, PAS did not invite Bersatu to its 72nd muktamar, opting instead to extend invitations to Umno and other PN parties.
• The decision aims to promote Malay-Muslim unity and prepare for forthcoming elections, with PAS focusing on strengthening its election machinery.
• Meanwhile, Bersatu remains open to discussions with parties sharing similar goals, excluding those that previously breached coalition trust.

By Malay Mail
First Published: Saturday, 29 Aug 2026 9:04 AM MYT


KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 29 — PAS has declared that the door to reconciliation with Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia within Perikatan Nasional (PN) has closed.

The rupture follows PAS’ accusation that its coalition partner contested against PN and signalled a willingness to work with Pakatan Harapan (PH).

PAS president Tan Sri Abdul Hadi Awang said the breakdown was also why Bersatu had not been invited to the Islamist party’s 72nd muktamar in Pengkalan Chepa, Kelantan, from September 2 to 5.


“Yes, basically they [Bersatu] went against us in the Negeri Sembilan by-election, and there have been statements about wanting to work together with PH,” he was quoted as saying by Utusan Malaysia after delivering a duha lecture at Masjid Rusila in Marang yesterday.


Hadi was referring to Bersatu’s decision to contest against PN in the recent Negeri Sembilan by-election, as well as comments by party leaders that they were open to cooperation with PH ahead of the Melaka state election.

The dispute has deepened a rift between the two opposition parties, which remain formally within PN.

On June 8, a special meeting of the PAS central working committee decided to end political cooperation with Bersatu after reviewing the state and future direction of relations between the parties.


According to Utusan Malaysia, PAS said the decision was reached after considering current reports, studies and assessments.

Hadi said PAS had instead invited Umno, as well as other parties in the PN coalition, to attend the muktamar.

The invitation comes as Umno has also extended an invitation to PAS’ top leadership to attend its general assembly in Kuala Lumpur from September 9 to 12.

The gathering will also focus on what PAS describes as ummah unity, with the party seeking broader cooperation with other political parties.

“We want to promote unity among Malay Muslims and non-Muslims who are not extremists,” Hadi said.

He added that PAS would use the gathering to strengthen its election machinery, saying a general election could be held in the near future as the current parliamentary term approaches its end.

“Another focus is to strengthen PAS’ election machinery as the general election is expected to be held in the near future, given that the current term is nearing its end.

“There must also be unity within the party. Our unity is strong; there is no internal crisis,” he said.

Bersatu Melaka information chief Hishamuddin Abdul Karim was meanwhile reported as saying the party remained open to discussions with other parties that shared common ground, including PH, ahead of the Melaka election.

He said, however, that any electoral cooperation should exclude parties that had betrayed the trust and spirit of cooperation previously established within PN.

Patron Saint of Economic Kerbau's

From the FB page of:

Robert Hartford

😂😂😂

US military judge throws out FBI confessions of alleged 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden’s aide

US military judge throws out FBI confessions of alleged 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden’s aide



Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as seen shortly after his capture in Pakistan in 2003 (right) and at Guantanamo Bay in 2009, where the alleged 9/11 mastermind remains detained as a US military judge has ruled on August 29, 2026 that his confessions to FBI agents inadmissible at trial. — Muslm.net handout pic via AFP


Summary

• A US military judge has ruled that confessions made by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, to FBI agents are inadmissible at trial.
• The decision, which precedes the 25th anniversary of the attacks, cites continued coercion and lack of legal rights advisement as reasons for exclusion.
• This development adds to the ongoing legal complexities surrounding Mohammed's trial, set for 2028, which has faced numerous delays due to concerns over CIA torture methods.
• The ruling highlights challenges in ensuring a fair trial for the 9/11 defendants.

First Published: Saturday, 29 Aug 2026 9:07 AM MYT
Last Modified: Saturday, 29 Aug 2026 10:13 AM MYT


WASHINGTON, Aug 29 — A US military judge ruled Friday that confessions made by alleged 9/11 attacks mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to FBI agents are inadmissible and cannot be used against him at trial, The New York Times reported.

The ruling comes just before the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.



This week, the trial date for Mohammed and three other accused plotters was set for June 5, 2028 at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.


Mohammed, also known as “KSM,” was considered one of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants before he was captured in March 2003 in Pakistan.


Prosecutors have already excluded statements that Mohammed made after his capture when he was held by the CIA in overseas prisons and subjected to brutal treatment including waterboarding before his transfer in 2006 to Guantanamo, the Times reported.


But the trial judge Lieutenant Colonel Michael Schrama has concluded that Mohammed’s subsequent interrogations in 2007 at Guantanamo were also inadmissible.

“The prosecution has failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Mohammad’s statements to the FBI were voluntarily given,” Schrama wrote in his ruling, which was not immediately released to the public. The Times said its unclassified contents were confirmed by several lawyers who had seen it.


A spokesman for the US military court did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.

Schrama cited an “unbroken continuation of the CIA’s psychological conditioning and severe coercion,” and also found that FBI agents intentionally failed to tell Mohammed that he had a right to be silent and to consult a lawyer.

Prosecutors can appeal the ruling.

Mohammed’s trial has been repeatedly delayed and a plea deal that would have seen the death penalty taken off the table was withdrawn last year following protests from the relatives of some victims of the 9/11 attacks.

Much of the legal jousting in the 9/11 defendants’ cases has focused on whether they could be tried fairly after having undergone torture at the hands of the CIA. — AFP

***

The real culprits were from the shailok state

Don't Cry Venezuela ... Or ELSE

Trump says US clinches ‘biggest oil deal in world history’ with Venezuela worth nearly US$100b



A Venezuelan flag flies as the US and Venezuela negotiate a major oil deal that President Donald Trump said would give the United States majority control of 65 billion barrels of proven petroleum reserves. — AFP pic


Summary

• President Donald Trump announced a significant oil deal with Venezuela granting the U.S. majority control over 65 billion barrels of proven petroleum reserves, which he termed as "the biggest oil deal in world history." This agreement is expected to bring nearly $100 billion in private investment to Venezuela, potentially revitalizing its economy while more than doubling U.S. oil reserves.
• Secretary of State Marco Rubio highlighted that this strategic move aligns with Trump's "America First" policy by securing stable reserves and lowering gas prices.
• However, the deal awaits confirmation from the Venezuelan government.

First Published: Saturday, 29 Aug 2026 8:49 AM MYT


WASHINGTON, Aug 29 — President Donald Trump said Friday his administration has reached a huge oil deal with Venezuela that gives the United States majority control of 65 billion barrels of proven petroleum reserves.

The deal – which Trump proclaimed as “the biggest oil deal in world history” – will bring nearly US$100 billion (RM402.6 billion) in private investment to Venezuela, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves. Its government has operated under intense pressure and close scrutiny from the Trump administration since the US ousted and captured long time ruler Nicolas Maduro in January. It allowed his then vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, to stay on and serve as interim leader so long as she toes the US line.


Trump has made no secret of his desire to secure Venezuelan oil for the US, and in his post announcing the deal on his Truth Social platform, he said it will more than double US oil reserves.


There was no immediate confirmation of the arrangement from the Venezuelan government.


Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had reached the deal with Rodriguez “through a partnership with private business.”

“This Transaction will greatly strengthen the already growing relationship between Venezuela and the United States!” Trump wrote.


Rubio said the deal demonstrated how “President Trump’s bold foreign policy is driving America First wins: securing stable reserves and low-cost oil in our Hemisphere and lowering gas prices here at home.”

“For the Venezuelan people, this deal will bring nearly US$100 billion (RM402.6 billion) in private investment, support thousands of high-paying jobs, and drive the reconstruction of Venezuela’s economy,” the top US diplomat wrote on X, without providing further details.

The news site Axios reported Thursday the two countries were in talks on a dozen productive oil fields with 90 billion barrels of proven reserves — about a third of Venezuela’s total proven reserves of 300 billion barrels. Axios quoted two US officials.

In return for a US ownership stake, private companies, including American firms, would develop the fields and return more oil revenue to Venezuela, according to Axios.

As Fei-Lo (up North) would say "Lanjiao" 😂😂😂

Axios also said the deal would more than double US oil reserves at a time when the US strategic petroleum reserve is at a 40-year low.

Trump also insisted the deal will lower gasoline prices for Americans – a major issue as his approval ratings fall ahead of November midterm elections after launching a war on Iran that has disrupted global oil supplies.

The Trump administration has been urging US companies to invest in Venezuela, but they remain wary due to dilapidated infrastructure and past appropriation of assets of foreign investors by the government in Caracas.

Chevron, the only US oil company that was still operating in Venezuela when Maduro was ousted, said in July that it had raised its daily crude production to 280,000 barrels and plans to increase output by 50 per cent by the end of 2028. — AFP

Why remand Kulai pair but not Perak MCA staff? Kepong MP Lim Lip Eng asks police after flag gaffe

Why remand Kulai pair but not Perak MCA staff? Kepong MP Lim Lip Eng asks police after flag gaffe



Kepong MP Lim Lip Eng called on the Inspector-General of Police to explain what he described as differing treatment in recent Jalur Gemilang cases. — Picture by Raymond Manuel


Summary

• Kepong MP Lim Lip Eng accused the police of double standards in handling Jalur Gemilang display cases, criticizing the disparity between the four-day remand of two individuals in Kulai and the simple questioning of those involved in the Perak MCA incident.
• He urged the Inspector-General of Police to provide a reasonable explanation for the differential treatment, suggesting resignation or dismissal if an adequate explanation is not provided.
• Lim emphasized that unintentional flag display mistakes, if promptly corrected and followed by apologies, should not result in arrests, highlighting the need for equitable enforcement of the law.

By Malay Mail
First Published: Saturday, 29 Aug 2026 9:13 AM MYT
Last Modified: Saturday, 29 Aug 2026 9:14 AM MYT


KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 29 — Kepong MP Lim Lip Eng today accused the police of applying double standards in their handling of Jalur Gemilang cases, contrasting the four-day remand of two people in Kulai with the questioning, without detention, of those involved in an incident at the Perak MCA headquarters.

The DAP lawmaker called on the Inspector-General of Police to explain the difference in treatment, saying the IGP should resign or be removed if he failed to provide what Lim considered a reasonable explanation.


“The mistakes were almost identical, yet the police response was vastly different. Does police action depend on who is involved?” Lim said in a statement today.


His remarks came a day after Perak MCA apologised over the upside-down display of the Jalur Gemilang and Perak flag at its state headquarters in Ipoh.


Perak MCA state liaison committee chairman Datuk Dr Mah Hang Soon said the mistake was unintentional and was corrected immediately after it was noticed.

He also said police officers visited the headquarters to investigate and record statements from the staff member involved and an administrative officer. The staff member later resigned.

Lim contrasted that case with the police response in Kulai, where he said two members of the public were detained and remanded for four days and also subjected to urine tests.


“In the Perak MCA case, those involved merely had their statements recorded without being detained,” he said.

Lim also cited an incident involving the Kuala Terengganu City Council, which displayed a Jalur Gemilang without the crescent and star. He said the explanation that it was a “technical error” was accepted and no arrests were reported.

“The Inspector-General of Police must immediately explain this double standard. If he fails to provide a reasonable answer or continues to remain silent, as in the Kulai case, he must resign or be dismissed immediately,” Lim said.

He said he did not believe anyone should be arrested over an incorrect display of the national flag if the mistake was genuinely unintentional, immediately corrected and followed by an apology.

“My position is clear. If a mistake involving the display of the Jalur Gemilang was genuinely unintentional, immediately corrected and followed by an apology, no one should be arrested,” he said.

“The police cannot act harshly against ordinary people while going easy on ‘VIPs’ and government agencies. That is not justice. That is favouritism.”

 

Israeli strike kills three Palestinians in West Bank’s Jenin

Israel’s prime minister and defence minister praise the attack as Hamas calls for Israeli ‘crimes’ to stop.

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Israeli soldiers remove the body of a killed Palestinian from a house under construction in the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank on August 28, 2026 [Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP]

By Al Jazeera Staff, AFP and Reuters

Published On 28 Aug 202628 Aug 2026

The Israeli army has killed three Palestinians in Jenin in a rare air strike in the occupied West Bank, amid growing tensions in the territory.

In a statement, the Israeli military said it “eliminated” three people on Friday, one a Palestinian it described as a Hamas operative as well as two of his accomplices.

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Hamas condemned the strike but did not claim the person targeted – whom the Israeli military identified as Qais Bitawi – as a member. Palestinian Islamic Jihad said in a statement Bitawi was a senior operative of its armed wing.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military said the strike targeted a car carrying the men.

The Palestine Red Crescent ambulance service said Israeli ground troops ⁠raided the site of the drone strike, briefly detained medics and ⁠prevented them from transporting those wounded or killed to hospital.

The Red Crescent said its personnel were also detained after arriving at the scene.

The Palestinian Wafa news agency reported that the Israeli drone strike had targeted a house under construction in the western area of Jenin City, and that three Palestinians were killed instantly.

Photos from the AFP news agency showed Israeli soldiers removing a body from a house under construction on the outskirts of Jenin.

People gather in a building, following an Israeli military air strike, in Jenin, on Friday [Mohammed Torokman/Reuters]

‘Stop these crimes and end impunity’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated the strike in a post on X, calling it a “successful thwarting” of the three targeted individuals.

After the attack, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz congratulated the military, police and Shin Bet for the strike and said the Jenin camp has been “evacuated of residents”. He added that the Israeli military is now “permanently stationed there, like other terrorist camps” in the West Bank.

Hamas condemned the strike in a statement mourning “the martyrs who fell in the occupation’s bombing of Jenin,” saying that Palestinians “will continue to cling to their land and rights”.

The group called on the international community “to take immediate action to stop these crimes and end impunity” and hold Israel “fully responsible for the repercussions”.

The occupied West Bank, home to the Palestinian Authority, has seen soaring violence by Israeli settlers and soldiers but has recently avoided Israeli military strikes that have devastated the Gaza Strip since the genocidal war began on October 7, 2023.

Military raids on Palestinian towns in the West Bank are common, but Israel last carried out a strike there in February 2025.

Friday’s strike in Jenin comes as separate Israeli strikes in Gaza killed at least five people, and as Nikolay Mladenov, the high representative for the United States-led Board of Peace, warned that the failure of both sides to adhere to the roadmap for peace “threatens a collapse of the ceasefire in Gaza”.

Chris Hedges: How the Media Sells Genocide

Consortium News
Volume 31, Number 236 — Friday, August 28, 2026


Chris Hedges: How the Media Sells Genocide


Western media, by employing double standards, censorship, deceptive language, amplifying Israeli lies and dehumanizing Palestinians, facilitates the genocide in Gaza



Joy to the World – by Mr. Fish.

By Chris Hedges
ScheerPost

The Western media manufactures consent for genocide. It normalizes Israel’s decades-long military occupation and apartheid. It erases Israel’s flagrant violations of international law. It perpetuates the fallacy of Israeli victimhood. It betrays, discredits and demonizes the work of Palestinian journalists and media workers in Gaza, at least 220 of whom have been killed by Israel between Oct. 7, 2023, and August 2025. It supinely accepts draconian Israeli censorship. It acquiesces with tepid letters of protest at Israel’s refusal to allow foreign reporters in Gaza — an effort by Israel to mask its war crimes. It amplifies Israeli lies, from beheaded babies to widespread sexual assault of Israeli women on Oct. 7, to obfuscate the truth.

When writing about Gaza, verbs are in the passive tense. There is no subject. No one is accountable. Genocide, it seems, is an act of God. No different from an earthquake or tsunami. Clichés and opaque adjectives such as the “cycle of violence” or “clashes” distort and falsify reality.

“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought,” George Orwell warned.

Terms such as “genocide,” “atrocity,” “ethnic cleansing” and “occupied territories” magically disappear from media reports on Palestinians, whose resistance is routinely described as “savage” and “barbaric.” New York Times reporters are instructed by editors to avoid terms such as “Palestine,” “genocide,” “carnage,” “refugee camp,” “slaughter” and “massacre,” when referencing Palestinians.

The media slavishly regurgitates what Israel feeds it. Saturation bombing becomes “surgical air strikes.” Israel’s weaponization of famine becomes a “food shortage.” The killing of unarmed civilians — including children — becomes “clashes.” The hilltop fortress-like compounds of Jewish colonists becomes “neighborhoods.” Extrajudicial assassination of a journalist or a doctor becomes “died.”

Ruins of Beit Lahia in the Gaza Strip, destroyed by Israeli bombardments, Feb. 23, 2025. (Jaber Jehad Badwan / Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 4.0)

Genocide, referred to as the “Israel-Hamas war” is justified as “self-defense,” part of the mantra of Israel’s “right to defend itself.” When schools, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, mosques, churches and other civilian targets are obliterated, they are labeled “Hamas command centers” or targeted because Hamas is “using civilians as human shields” — something Israel does routinely, when the army binds detained Palestinians and forces them to enter potentially booby-trapped buildings and tunnels ahead of Israeli troops.

When Israelis are held by Hamas, they are “hostages,” even if they serve in the military. When Palestinians — including children — are held without charges or trial and disappeared into Israeli detention centers, where torture is “widespread” and “systematic,” they are “prisoners.”

Missile attacks on tent cities or hospitals are blamed on Palestinian armed groups firing errant rockets. If Israel acknowledges the attacks — which very rarely happens — they are described as a “tragic mistake.”

Civil institutions in Gaza are characterized as “Hamas-run” to cast doubt on the veracity of what they report. The New York Times routinely qualifies announcements from the Gaza Health Ministry by noting it “does not distinguish between civilians and combatants,” masking the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians.

The result is some of the most convoluted writing in the history of journalism, including the Nov. 5, 2023 New York Times headline that reads: “Explosions Gazans Say Was Airstrike Leaves Many Casualties in Dense Neighborhood.”

“When Middle East Eye journalists Mohamed Salama and Ahmed Abu Aziz, along with Reuters photojournalist Hussam al-Masri, and freelancers Moaz Abu Taha, and Mariam Dagga — who had worked with several media outlets, including the Associated Press — were killed in a “double tap” strike — designed to kill first responders arriving to treat casualties from initial strikes — at Nasser Medical Complex, how did Western news agencies respond?” I asked in my column The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists.

A hospital bed at the Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza. (WHO)


“Israeli military says strikes on Gaza hospital targeted what it says was a Hamas camera,” the Associated Press reported.

“IDF claims hospital strike was aimed at Hamas camera,” announced CNN.

The camera belonged to Reuters, which said Israel was “fully aware” the news agency was filming from the hospital.

“When Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al Sharif and three other journalists were killed on Aug. 10 in their media tent near Al Shifa Hospital, how was it reported in the Western press?” I asked.

“Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalist It Says Was Hamas Leader,” Reuters titled its story, despite the fact al-Sharif was part of a Reuters team that won a 2024 Pulitzer Prize.

The German newspaper Bild, published a front page story headlined: “Terrorist disguised as a journalist killed in Gaza.”

Demonstrators carry memorial portraits of Palestinian journalists Anas Al-Sharif, Khaled El-Shawa, and Saleh Al-Jafarawi in Madrid on May 17, 2026, during a march marking the 78th anniversary of the Nakba. (Barcex / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)


“The linguistic gymnastics employed by the media went as far as redefining words, making them meaningless,” writes Assal Rad in Don’t Say Palestine: How the Media Manufactured Consent for Genocide:


“Mainstream media failed to describe Israel’s repeated breaches of the ceasefire with the language of violation. Instead, the coverage followed the same patterns of rationalizing Israel’s attacks and uncritically parroting Israel’s claims to justify its actions. As Palestinians continued to be killed — during a ‘ceasefire’ — and the flow of aid did not reach the level of need or what was agreed to, Western media framed these flagrant violations as ‘tests’ or ‘challenges’ to a ‘shaky ceasefire.’ As leading human rights organizations like Amnesty International warned that the genocide was, in fact, not over, legacy media continued to frame it as a war with a ‘fragile ceasefire.’”

Words matter. Words justify actions. If there is no genocide, if Israel is defending itself in a war, the U.S. and Israel’s European allies have the right to provide tens of billions of dollars in military aid. If this is a war begun by Hamas on Oct. 7 then it is possible to lament the obliteration of Gaza and mass slaughter by Israel as the regrettable result of the Hamas attack.

This corruption of language is designed, as Orwell noted, to defend the indefensible:


“Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.”

Adam Johnson in How to Sell a Genocide: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza, examined over 12,000 articles from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN.com, Politico, Axios, USA Today, and The Associated Press, along with 5,000 TV segments aired on CNN and MSNBC. His carefully researched book is a damning indictment of the “liberal” media’s justification of the genocide.

CNN and The New York Times instructed their editors and journalists that attacks could only be attributed to Israel after confirmation from the IDF and GPS coordinates. Johnson quotes a source at CNN:


“Whether it’s in the newsroom or in the field, we couldn’t credit anything to Israel unless we were held to this impossibly high bar of having to call it an “explosion,” until we geolocated the site of the explosion, sent the coordinates to the Israelis and asked them for comment.”

You can see an interview with Johnson about his book at The Electronic Intifada here.

CNN journalists reporting on Israel and Palestine must submit their work for review to the network’s Jerusalem bureau prior to airing. The CNN bureau, like all news bureaus in Israel, is required to abide by restrictions imposed by Israeli military censors.

The very few Palestinians who appear on CNN and other legacy media outlets, are routinely asked — usually before they are even permitted on air — if they “condemn” Hamas. Guests who express even tepid criticism of Israel are asked whether Israel “has a right to exist.”

No one is ever asked if they condemn Zionism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, genocide or Israel’s 100 year war on Palestine. Nor are they asked if the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves — which under international law they do, including with weapons.

Our domesticated journalists and news organizations are, as Robert Fisk pointed out, “prisoners of the language of power.” They dutifully parrot the official lexicon. This makes them not only propagandists, but accomplices to genocide.

Those who protest the genocide, including students on university campuses — many of whom are Jewish — are smeared as “Hamas supporters” and “antisemites.” Journalists ferret out Zionist students, usually found ensconced in campus Hillel houses, who claim to be “fearful for their safety,” because of the protests. The media pays little attention to the rise in anti-Muslim bigotry or the repression meted out to student protestors, which includes not only police brutality and 3,000 detainments and arrests, but suspensions, probations, expulsions, withholding of diplomas and the firing of sympathetic faculty.

Protest in Thomas Paine Park in New York City against the detention of pro-Palestine activist and Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil in March. (SWinxy / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0)


Slogans which call for Palestinian liberation — including “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — along with the Palestinian flag, have been criminalized.

The message is clear: Jewish lives matter. Palestinian lives do not.

“The reports of UN agencies, of respected human rights monitors, of medical journals, and of professional medical personnel, are generally treated with respect and given prominence in the mainstream media,” writes the historian Rashid Khalidi in the introduction to Robin Anderson’s book, The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza:


“Not in this war: instead, if such sources are cited at all, equal media treatment is given to the outrageous slanders and calumnies against these organizations and individuals, smears that are produced in profusion by Israel’s legion of professional propagandists and its myriad of defenders in the US. Besides smearing critics of Israel’s genocide as supporters of Hamas or terrorist sympathizers, the main weapon in their arsenal of defamation is their systematic and outrageous misuse of the deadly accusation of antisemitism.”

The massive defections of readers and viewers from mainstream media to social media platforms that do not filter news through the Israel lobby, the U.S. government or corporations, are a stark indicator of the media’s bankruptcy. The response to these defections has been “platformicide” — the use of algorithms, shadow banning, restriction of live streaming capabilities and the closing of accounts by social media giants such as Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube and TikTok, to dramatically reduce the reach of reporting on Palestine.

This censorship is part of a coordinated effort to hide the horror of the genocide from the public.

By constantly referencing Oct. 7, the Western media decontextualizes the genocide. It ignores Israel’s 19-year siege of Gaza. Oct. 7 is characterized in the Western media as “unprovoked.” Israel’s massacres of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza in the winter of 2008 and 2009, along with its attacks on Gaza in 2012, 2014 and during the Great March of Return in 2018 and 2019 are ignored.

The 1948 Nakba — when European Zionists seized more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, violently expelled 750,000 Palestinians, destroyed more than 530 Palestinian villages and killed 15,000 Palestinians — is rarely referenced. Seventy percent of those driven from their homes in 1948 were forced into Gaza.

The Zionist project is predicated on fostering historical amnesia.

“Once Hamas was established as a brutal, terrorist group whose members gleefully tortured, dismembered, and beheaded babies without conscience, no further explanation was needed,” writes Anderson in her book. “The media simply avoided reporting Israel’s history of violence and as a result, establishment media also avoided the conditions of everyday life for Palestinians.”

The fiction that there is currently a ceasefire in Gaza — Israel has killed at least 1,286 Palestinians and injured 4,257 since it supposedly went into effect — has become the excuse used by Western media to turn its back on Gaza. This genocide denial has characterized the coverage since its inception. It masks not only Israel’s crimes, but Israel’s stated intention to ethnically cleanse all Palestinians from Gaza. It effectively neuters international law. And it makes a mockery of the profession of journalism.

When the last act of ethnic cleansing happens, Western media will, I am sure, continue to bombard us with Israeli agitprop, euphemisms and clichés.

It will justify the genocide until the end.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.

This article is from Scheerpost.

AN OLD STORY FROM CIRCA 2023 - THE BANGLADESHI WORKERS MINISTER

 

OutSyed The Box

Friday, August 28, 2026

AN OLD STORY FROM CIRCA 2023 - THE BANGLADESHI WORKERS MINISTER

 

The following is an old story. From around 2023 - THREE YEARS ago, But considering yesterday's blockbuster news this old story from 2023 is being viralled again. So remember that ALL the news, events mentioned herein are THREE YEARS old.  I am sort of redoing it, using pseudonyms.  RULE NO 1 - NO NAMES.

How Congress Party's S------n Became Billionaire In Foreign Workers Scandal : RM38 Million Cash , 200kg Gold Seized & RM 500 Million Account Frozen

According to those FINANCE GUYS, S------n, the Member of Parliament for Tapong since 2008, was appointed as the Secretary in the Congress Party Federal Territory by former Party president Sam Value in 1997. He had also served as deputy ministers under the Bodohwi and Bossku administrations. It was not until 2020 that he was made a full minister – Minister of Bangladeshi Workers – that came with “golden opportunities”.

Born and raised in gang-infested Centul, it wasn’t hard for S------n to click with the big boss of the Congress Party, a component party of the corrupted Barisan Rasuah coalition. After all, Sam Value was the infamous Godfather of Indian gangsters in the 1980s and 1990s, who served under the Mahazalim leadership during his 22 years rule (1981-2003).

When a Tamil Daily exposed in 2017 how S------n stole from the rental collection of the state Congress Party building, the then-Deputy Youth and Sports Minister brought mobsters to the media office and beat up its General Manager and staff. The attacks saw journalists and employees of the newspaper company left bleeding, injured and even suffered some broken teeth.

But unlike Bollywood films, there was no happy ending for the poor owner and staff of the Tamil Daily. The despicable Congress Party leader was as untouchable as Prime Minister Bossku, who himself had stolen billions in the Wan Em DB scandal before he lost power in the May 2018 General Election, and whose party – Dumbno – had ruled the country almost uninterrupted since independence in 1957.

Also known as “Ganja S------n”, he was never arrested, let alone prosecuted, but was let go with a slap on the wrist. As Bangla Workers Minister under the illegitimate backdoor PM MY (March 2020-August 2021) and PM Penyu (August 2021-November 2022), the Congress Party deputy president boldly enriched himself through corruption and money laundering.

In fact, S------n was so corrupt that he actually did not deny the involvement of Congress Party members in the misappropriation of funds from “PenjanaKayaRaya” involving a total of RM100 million. The programme-turned-scandal, under Prime Minister MY’s National Economic Recovery Plan, offered financial incentives of between RM600 and RM1,000 to employers for each employee or apprentice employed for up to six months.

But the biggest dirty money machine was the hiring of foreign workers into the country. On June 16, 2022, S------n said that Bangladesh and Malaysia had agreed to a limit of 25 agencies to recruit Bangladeshi workers for Malaysia. However, the next day, Bangladesh’s Expatriate Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Imran Ahmad rubbished the statement.

Mr Imran had also clarified that the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by both countries did not mention anything about 25 agencies. Worse, despite admitting that there was a surplus of illegal Bangladeshi workers in the country, S------n had pushed to bring in more Bangladeshi. And the disgraced Bangla Workers Minister deliberately set a limit of 25 agencies to create monopoly.

The clueless, incompetent and corrupt regime of Prime Minister MY saw the cost of hiring foreign workers shoot up from about RM16,000 to RM20,000 per worker because various agencies involved had to “share the money at different levels”. The cost of hiring was incredibly ridiculous that Bangladesh refused to send any workers in 2020 – till a transparent system was in place.

The Bangladeshi government wanted the Malaysian government to connect to their online system to detect irregularities, but was declined. If the Malaysian labour market is allowed to link directly to the Bangladeshi system, it would kill syndicates and middlemen, ending the monopoly and corruption. It’s not rocket science why S------n rejected it – he was on top of the food chain of the lucrative market.

To get an idea of how the business has made S------n and his cronies mega rich, look no further than the latest operation that was carried out by a Multi-Agency Task Force (MATF) led by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) on Monday (July 24). Over RM38 million cash and 200kg of gold worth over RM60 million was seized along with 17 luxury vehicles such as Ferrari and Maserati.

Involving the police, Immigration Department, Customs Department, Bank Negara Malaysia (Central Bank), Inland Revenue Board (LHDN) as well as Cyber Security Malaysia (CSM), the special operation saw raids carried out in 34 locations in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor involving 315 officers. The man behind the crimes is “Dato Kilam”, the proxy and bag carrier for S------n.

Dato Kilam, also commonly known as “Dato Kilam”, was the trusted lieutenant of the former Bangla Workers Minister entrusted to launder dirty money from the Bangladeshi recruitment business. Also known for distributing Indian movies and bringing in artists from India to perform Tamil concerts in Malaysia, Kilam has finally been arrested and grilled by the MACC.

Also arrested was businessman-cum-politician “Datuk S------n Accomplice”, who is linked to former ruling party Berdua, and a “Newspaper Owner” (owner of Tamil Daily No. 2). More than 30 suspects have been identified by the anti-corruption agency, busting a syndicate involved in corruption, smuggling, money laundering and illegal tax evasion.

Crucially, the MACC has also frozen funds amounting to RM500 million linked to Kilam. If this crook has in his possession RM500 million, can you imagine the real wealth of ex-minister S------n? There’s a reason why S------n was known as “Ganja S------n”. In 2021, Kilam was exposed by a local newspaper as not only a criminal involved in illegal smuggling business, but was also a drug dealer.

Yes, the Congress Party gangster did not become a multi-millionaire from his venture into agriculture business – coconut cultivation – as he would like the people to believe. Rather, it was his venture into illegal businesses, using Dato Kilam as his proxy and cover, and links to underground Mafia that made him super-rich, so much so he believed he could buy his way out with money.

However, the arrogant politician will not be able to count on Dato Sri Rawana to bail him out this time. S------n was a traitor – one of the Barisan Rasuah MPs who had signed the Statutory Declaration to support rival Berdua president MY as prime minister after the 15th General Election produced a hung Parliament.

Not only S------n had betrayed the leadership of Dumbno president Dato 47 DNAA, but he has shown that he was an untrustworthy ally of the Dato Sri Rawana-led Gomen. In December 2022, he deliberately went out for lunch and did not return for the counting of votes in the deputy speaker election, causing Alice Wonderland of Pakatoons to receive only 146 votes instead of 148 two-thirds majority votes.

Like former premier Bossku, who is serving 12 years in prison and fined RM210 million for abuse of power, criminal breach of trust (CBT) and money laundering, S------n is another shameless crook who did not blink twice about stealing RM19 million disbursed for a chilli planting programme to Yayasan SayaKaya, a foundation led by himself.

Source : THOSE FINANCE GUYS