Handsome old man and Proton X70

Well, this is nice,

Hopefully the handsome old man will not be angry about the Proton-Geely partnership anymore.

This is what he said at the launch of the X70 last night,

PM hopes Proton-Geely collaboration will 

produce truly Malaysian car

Honestly, I don't mind a car not so truly Malaysian if it works well, unlike previous Proton cars which people complained so much about.

But, I do understand how Dr Mahathir feels about the whole thing as Proton is his baby.

Ya, hopefully there will be a truly Malaysian car one day. A truly good one, that is.

Anyway, watching this video made me quite tempted;

But, I think I'll wait for the full review first.

Okay, that's all for today.

Why Yeo Bee Yin and gang want to close down Lynas

This is from yesterday,

Lynas employees fear losing jobs, 

hand memo to govt

excerpts;

Their representative, Jumaat Mansor, told reporters at the entrance to Parliament that Lynas may be facing problems with compliance, which may lead to the company not having its licence renewed by the government in September next year.

If the problem is not dealt with immediately, more than 1,000 employees – 97 per cent of whom are locals – will be out of job and this could affect more than 4,000 members of their households.

“We are gathering here today hoping the government will reconsider its decision and think of the fate of the workers should the plant’s licence not be renewed,” he said.

I'm glad that the Lynas employees are still fighting for their rights and asking for fair treatment by the government.

I understand that they are doing it in face of adversity as the current government for now looks hell bent on closing down their workplace.

The minister in charge, Yeo Bee Yin even twisted the finding of the executive committee that she herself was tasked to set up to review Lynas' operations.

She insisted that Lynas must ship the residue of its plant to Australia while the actual fact was that the committee gave Lynas three options which were listed at number 28 on page 17 of its report.

I'm putting it here verbatim;

28. LPTA menguruskan residu radioaktif Water leached Purification (WLP) LAMP sepertimana yang ditetapkan oleh Jawatankuasa Pilihan Khas Parliamen 2012 yang memutuskan bahawa pengurusan buangan yang dihasilkan di LAMP perlu dilaksanakan seperti berikut:
a. pengkitaran semula buangan tersebut; atau
b. pelupusan buangan di fasiliti pelupusan kekal (permanent disposal facilities); atau
c. mengeksport keluar buangan ke negara asal. 

You may wonder why the minister did such a thing and the answer is simple - she, along with other Pakatan politicians, the likes of Fuziah Salleh and Wong Tack are to gain politically with the shutting down of Lynas.

Whether it's done rightfully or wrongfully doesn't really matter to them.

Yeo Bee Yin, has been an anti-Lynas advocate since the start when DAP used the issue to galvanise especially the Chinese community support for the party.

The anti-Lynas Himpunan Hijau rally in Kuantan in February, 2012 was the first ever with overwhelmingly Chinese-majority participants since 1969. It was later emulated at several other Bersih rallies.

Of course now the minister, who is from DAP couldn't allow Lynas to continue its operation even after the review committee found nothing wrong with it.

To allow Lynas to continue means admitting that DAP and its allies have all the while lied from the start of their smear campaign against BN way back before the 2013 general election.

This is what Yeo Bee Yin wrote about Lynas back then;

• Lynas: The Myth of Converting 
• the Radioactive Waste

Well, it's actually nothing much - just her trying to convince people about how environmentally aware and knowledgeable that she was while whacking the then minister in charge of environment Maximus Ongkili over Lynas.

Now, she is the one in charge and you all can see that she is still trying to profit politically from the whole thing to the point of twisting facts laid down by the Lynas review committee which members she herself appointed.

Does she really care about the environment?

Well, she was silent on the potential destruction of three Ramsar sites in Johor, which is her own state.

You can read that in this previous post of mine;

Re-gazetting Pulau Kukup and others, 

Yeo Bee Yin and gang should support

Some Pakatan supporters had argued that Yeo Bee Yin should be excused as she was inexperienced and that's why she was clueless about Ramsar sites and such.

I don't think that's a good excuse for a minister in charge of environment who once tried to convince people about how knowledgeable and caring she was for the envoironment.

Well, she seems to know a lot about Lynas though. She apparently knows so much that she even ignored facts laid out by experts appointed by herself to review Lynas' operations.

And those other Pakatan self-proclaimed environmentalists Fuziah and Wong Tack....what a bunch of fakes.

Ya, that's what I think of them.

It's all just for their political interests.

It doesn't matter to them if people lose their jobs because they make decisions and campaigned on an issue based on lies and twisted facts.

They also don't care if investors shy away from this country because our government chase away or penalise fellow investors just because a minister and some politicians on its side wanted to benefit politically from it doing so.

That's what this Lynas issue is all about now.

Oh, ya, they will tell the Lynas employees who are about to lose their jobs to look for other employment....easy peasy.....just like what they said to others such as those 20,000 Gamuda people who were at risk of becoming unemployed when they stopped the MRT project back than.

Ya, so easy for them.

So much for Malaysia Baru.

Congrats to Mayumi and Yuki

Very happy for my dear friend who got married last week.

May God bless Mayumi and Yuki with happiness, prosperity and good health.

A song for them;

Re-gazetting Pulau Kukup and others, Yeo Bee Yin and gang should support

This is the latest that I found on Pulau Kukup just now,

Dr M rebuts Johor crown prince, 

says federal govt not 'outsider' 

Well, I have a feeling that this is going to be another round of Dr Mahathir versus the Johor palace.

Anyway, yesterday,

Johor MB assures that Pulau Kukup 

remains a national park

But I guess that's not reassuring enough for a lot of people because the island will remain a Sultanate Land, which means it belongs to the Sultan.

Some people think that today, after all the pressure, the Sultan may want the island to remain a national park, but tomorrow he might decide otherwise.

The island now is his after all.

And how about the other national park areas in Johor?

If I'm not mistaken, the Tunku Mahkota Johor had said that those are also now Sultanate Land.

Other than those, I was also wondering how come the land was de-gazetted without going through the state assembly.

Why was it done quietly?

The Pakatan state government had tried to blame it on its BN predecessor but for that, I had discussed at this previous post,

Farewell Johor's Ramsar sites 


Well, if Dr Mahathir really must insist on this issue, he should go all the way and force Osman Sapian as Johor MB to take back Pulau Kukup and the other national park areas in Johor from the Sultan.

Johor Pakatan government must re-gazette back the land to what it used to be.

That's the only way to make Pulau Kukup and the other national park areas safe.

They must belong to the rakyat and no one else.

All the famous and influential Pakatan bloggers must champion the take back of the land from the Sultan and give it back to the rakyat.

Castigating Osman and removing him from the MB post over the issue would not be enough as that could be seen as mere internal politicking.

Meanwhile, I was wondering how come the minister in charge of environment Yeo Bee Yin has yet to say anything over issue which involves the potential destruction of three Ramsar sites.

I googled "Yeo Bee Yin Ramsar" and at the top of the search is this,

Yeo Bee Yin: Govt prepared for any legal action from Lynas

I'm not sure how the hell that happened.

Anyway, it so happened that the minister is the MP of Bakri in Muar, Johor.

Surely she must have known something of what's going on in her own state.

Don't tell me, she's the same level as Osman and have the same excuse- "Oh, I was surprised. I don't know about it. It's BN's fault."

She should be pushing for Pulau Kukup and the other national park areas in her state to be re-gazetted back to what it used to be.

That would be better than doing nonsense such as twisting the findings of the committee that her own government set-up for the Lynas issue to suit her political agenda. (More of that later.)

And how about the other Pakatan environmentalist politicians?

Fuziah and Wong Tack should be making noises about this too.

So far, I have not heard anything from them.

Don't they want to save the environment like they do over the Lynas issue?

Ya, Fuziah should do another drama like swimming while crying around Pulau Kukup or something.

Or were all those nonsense over Lynas just for politics?

Sigh....and their supporters called me a hypocrite.

Whatever.

Anti-ICERD rally

Everyone seems to be talking about the anti-ICERD rally today.

I can't write much though, because I just got back from an outstation assignment.

See, I have to work like everyone else.

I don't like to write too much about an event which I didn't attend myself.

Really, I only saw the rally on YouTube Live while in the car on the way back to KL.

Well, this is one of the videos of the rally,

I think it's about as huge as all those Bersih rallies of the past.

I know that some people don't like this anti-ICERD rally.

They said it's stupid and labelled the participants as racists.

Don't know lah. I'm not very sure with the definition of stupid and racists now that it's Malaysia Baru.

But at least let us be glad that nothing bad happened like these,

Sometimes it turned out that people who called others stupid racists are the actual racists and behave worse than those people they called stupid racists..

Fuziah's latest Lynas drama

Some of the Pakatan trolls who commented at my last post,

Farewell Johor's Ramsar sites

tried to divert the issue of their Johor government de-gazetting the state's Ramsar sites and National Park areas by challenging me to write about Lynas.

Okay, fine.

Let me pick this one;

Anonymous6 December 2018 at 12:21

LOL...

No, that's not all.

"This was proven when the executive committee report on the operations of LAMP published on Tuesday noted that there was an increase in heavy metal concentration such as nickel, chromium, lead and mercury in the ground water, she said.

Nickel and chromium, she added, were carcinogenic substances.

Fuziah said this proved that the storage of radioactive waste at the LAMP site had contaminated the ground water.

“I am angry, sad and disappointed. Imagine, for so long we have allowed them to store their waste on site and now it is proven that their waste has migrated into the water.

“We don’t want (to see) 20 years down the road that there’s a sudden increase in cancer cases. Who will pay for it?” she asked during a press conference yesterday.

She stressed that Lynas must keep its promise, made in 2012, to send the residue from its rare earth plant in Gebeng back to Australia."

So an independent panel of scientists concluded that there's been severe contamination of water.

If you want to selectively pick on stuff, why not ask yourself which BN lawmaker tried to protect Kuantan from Lynas?

The de-gazetting was criticised by PH lawmakers, Boo and Surendran.

That proves they really are "neutral" (your favourite word.)

Wrong is wrong.

Which BN lawmaker ever whacked their own side for doing wrong?

Yilek.

I think you're missing the point here.

Very well. I'm going to concentrate on the drama by Fuziah Salleh, the deputy minister in charge of religion and ignore the rest of the nonsense in the comment.

The commentator was actually referring to this The Star article;

I told you so, says an emotional Fuziah

Go ahead click on the link and read it, if you like drama.

Well, it's actually a bad drama and I'm not interested to spend too much time and effort on it.

So, here is the response from this story

Now ministry tells Lynas committee

 to clam up…..

Do click on the link to read it, or if you are too lazy, just read this

extracts;

Common sense however dictates that the committee’s continued silence would only allow politicians to further concoct lies to score brownie points. A case in point was today’s claim at parliament that the stated Lynas’ residue had contaminated the ground water in Gebeng.

This was a blatant spin because nowhere in the report has the committee stated that the ground water was contaminated by Lynas’ residue. Which is why, it recommended the company to conduct a study to discern the cause of such contamination.

An officer with the Department of Environment has a theory on how such a contamination might have happened and according to him it could be due to the rampant mining of bauxite in 2015 to 2016.

“The report did not include the movement pattern of the ground water below Lynas’ site but mind you that the spike of heavy metals tainting the ground water happened throughout the bauxite mining controversy.

“For all we know, the heavy metals could seep into the ground water during heavy rain and the latter could meander its way below Lynas’ refinery because why Lynas had been operating since 2012 and that spike was only recorded in 2015 to 2016,” said the officer.

For more reading, click on this link;

A path littered with potholes for Lynas 

despite thumbs up from independent reviews

But if you all still need more drama, watch this video by Fuziah again,

Okay, I think that should do for now.

I'll write again about this later.

Cheers.

Farewell Johor's Ramsar sites (updated)

Back in November 2013, I asked,

Will Johor government protect Ramsar sites?

That's because I had earlier heard they were going to develop the area and I pleaded

 PM Najib, please save the Ramsar sites in Johor

Then nothing happened.

The Ramsar sites remained as they were except for some minor problems.

For a while I thought I had done some good there. That they heard my pleading and questioning and decided to let the Ramsar sites be.

But of course it's not true as mine is just an insignificant anonymous blog.

Most likely it's the authorities back then who changed their own mind over the whole thing.

I have to admit that I didn't keep much attention to the matter after that, especially now that Pakatan Harapan had taken over Johor.

With all its claim of being environmentally friendly, I thought there should be no worries over the Ramsar sites anymore.

Then by chance, someone alerted me of this story this morning,

Pulau Kukup to change from national

 park to Sultanate land, says TMJ

excerpts 1

He claimed that the island, one of the few pristine wetlands in South-East Asia, will be "better protected" after its status is changed from national park to Sultanate land.

“In the past, several national parks were privatised but in Johor, His Majesty Sultan Ibrahim Ibni Almarhum Sultan Iskandar has a different vision.

“To better protect all national parks, Sultan Ibrahim decreed that all the national parks be changed to Sultanate land,” he tweeted.

excerpts 2

Lawyers for Liberty has asked why the stripping of national park status was done "silently", without any public announcement, until the gazette was leaked online.

The group's advisor, N. Surendran, noted that the island was originally gazetted as a national park in 1997 by the then Barisan state government.

"By de-gazetting, the Pakatan state government is proving that they are even worse than Barisan in terms of environmental preservation and protection," he said.

excerpts 3

Renowned as the world's second largest uninhabited mangrove island, it is one of five Ramsar sites in Malaysia.

Ramsar sites are wetland sites accorded international importance under the United Nations’ Convention on Wetlands.

I was like, WTF is going on.

So I called my friend who is in the know in Johor and he told me that it's all true.

In fact he said the other Johor's Ramsar sites at Sungai Pulai and Tanjong Piai had also been de-gezzetted and earmarked for "development".

I have to say that I'm very sad over this latest development.

I once visited Pulau Kukup with my beloved 

I was wrong after all when I wrote this,

"Honestly, I have nothing personal against Osman, but if he becomes MB I believe it is going to be business as usual in Johor....not better."

at this post,

Osman Sapian is the leading Johor MB candidate

right after GE14.

Ya, it's actually worse.

As what those Lawyers for Liberty said.

UPDATES (at 07:03 on Dec 6 2018)

My friend in Johor just now forwarded this statement by the State Land and Mineral director dated Dec 4, 2018,

LAPORAN ATAS BERITA BERKAITAN ISU PEMBATALAN WARTA PEMBATALAN
PERIZABAN TAMAN NEGARA PULAU KUKUP

1. Tanah PTD 4024 seluas 636.2660 hektar (1,572 ekar) Mukim Ayer Masin,
Pontian telah diwartakan sebagai Taman Negara Johor Pulau Kukup oleh
Perbadanan Taman Negara Johor sebagaimana WKJ Bil 561 bertarikh 27
Mac 1997.

2. Di atas keseluruhan tanah adalah hutan pokok bakau semulajadi yang
diselenggara oleh Perbadanan Taman Negara Johor meliputi jeti
pendaratan, balai pelawat, menara peninjau, laluan penjalan kaki dan
bangunan pentadbiran.

3. Majlis Mesyuarat Kerajaan Johor di mesyuaratnya pada 7.3.2018
sebagaimana R/M Bil 443/2018 telah mengambil keputusan sebagaimana
berikut:
i. BERSETUJU tanah PTD 4024 seluas 636.2660 hektar (1,572 ekar)
Mukim Ayer Masin, Pontian dikurniakan kepada DULI YANG MAHA
MULIA SULTAN IBRAHIM IBNI ALMARHUM SULTAN ISKANDAR.
ii. BERSETUJU Warta Kerajaan Bil 561 bertarikh 27.3.1997 sebagai
Taman Negara Johor Pulau Kukup DIBATALKAN.

4. Pembatalan Warta Perizaban Taman Negara ini adalah bagi tujuan
mendaftarkan hakmilik atas nama DULI YANG MAHA MULIA SULTAN
IBRAHIM IBNI ALMARHUM SULTAN ISKANDAR.

5. Lanjutan daripada keputusan tersebut, warta pembatalan rizab telah
disiarkan dalam Warta Kerajaan Negeri Johor Bil 3808 bertarikh
25.10.2018 dan seterusnya hakmilik atas nama DULI YANG MAHA MULIA
SULTAN IBRAHIM IBNI ALMARHUM SULTAN ISKANDAR telah didaftarkan
pada 29.10.2018.

6. Surat pemakluman berhubung keputusan MMK tersebut juga telah
dipanjangkan kepada Pengarah Perbadanan Taman Negara Johor
sebagaimana surat pentadbiran ini bertarikh 5.8.2018.

7. Draf Rang Pembatalan Perizaban Tanah Bagi Taman Negara di bawah
Enakmen Perbadanan Taman Negara (Johor) 1989 telah disemak dan
dipinda oleh Y.B. Penasihat Undang-Undang Negeri Johor sebagaimana
surat bertarikh 6.8.2018.

8. Walaupun pembatalan rizab Taman Negara Johor Pulau Kukup telah
diwartakan dan seterusnya pendaftaran hakmilik tanah tersebut kepada
DULI YANG MAHA MULIA SULTAN IBRAHIM IBNI ALMARHUM SULTAN
ISKANDAR telah disempurnakan, , ianya dipercayai tidak akan
menjejaskan fungsi-fungsi Taman Negara Pulau Kukup sedia ada yang
diselenggara oleh Perbadanan Taman Negara Johor selaras dengan hasrat
DULI YANG MAHA MULIA SULTAN IBRAHIM IBNI ALMARHUM SULTAN
ISKANDAR semasa menitahkan PTG untuk memproses dan membawa
kepada pertimbangan Pihak Berkuasa Negeri atas permohonan kurniaan
tanah tersebut.

PENGARAH TANAH DAN GALIAN,
JOHOR
4 DISEMBER 2018

Okay, let me go through this one in simple English. If the Land and Mineral director was not lying, these are what he basically said;

1. Johor BN government under TS Abdul Ghani Othman gazetted Pulau Kukup as part of the State National Park on March 27 1997.
- Yay, I'm a Ghani's fan. He's a good guy. This whole shit would not have happened if he is still the Johor MB. But the current Sultan of Johor doesn't like him very much, and most people know that.

2. Johor BN government with DS Khaled Nordin as MB made the decision to give the land to Sultan of Johor on March 7 2018.
- So, my suspicion that something was not right with Khaled's administration since he took over in 2013 was right. Read back my posts from back then if you don't believe me. The links were at the start of this post.

3. The de-gazetting of Pulau Kukup was on Oct 25 2018 and officially given to the Sultan on Oct 29 2018.
- Well, Pakatan took over Johor on May 9 2018. So, that dastardly Khaled's BN administration made the decision to give Pulau Kukup to the Sultan in March, then Osman Sapian's Pakatan administration actually de-gazetted and handed the island over to the Sultan in October. See, I told you all that nothing change. Actually which is worse, deciding to give away the island or actually giving away the island?

4. The letter which convey the decision to de-gazette Pulau Kukup was given to the Johor National Park director on Aug 5 2018 and the draft to de-gazette the island was checked and edited by the State Legal Advisor on Aug 8 2018.
- And the exco said the Pakatan's Johor government didn't know anything about it before the whole mess went viral. Come on la. Land and mineral affairs come directly under the MB's  office the last time I checked. Eh, and anything done after Pakatan took over Johor on May 9 is Pakatan's doing. They know the whole thing was bad yet they carried on with it. Why?

5. The State Land and Mineral director said "ianya dipercayai" (it is believed to be) that the whole thing is going to be fine.
- So, that's the rationale of the Pakatan's State government.,,,,okay, never mind. I don't want to continue further because if I do then this post could be deemed as seditious and I would most likely end up in jail. So that's that.
 Ciao.