Sunday, March 3, 2013

What the Malaysians Know

Via TPM, Buzzfeed has a story about how a bunch of conservative pundits, especially but not only Josh Trevino, acted as paid agents of the Malaysian government in a covert propaganda campaign:
A range of mainstream American publications printed paid propaganda for the government of Malaysia, much of it focused on the campaign against a pro-democracy figure there.
According to Trevino’s belated federal filing, the interests paying Trevino were in fact the government of Malaysia, “its ruling party, or interests closely aligned with either.” The Malaysian government has been accused of multiple human rights abuses and restricting the press and personal freedoms. Anwar, the opposition leader, has faced prosecution for sodomy, a prosecution widely denounced in the West, which Trevino defended as more “nuanced” than American observers realized. The government for which Trevino worked also attacked Anwar for saying positive things about Israel; Trevino has argued that Anwar is not the pro-democracy figure he appears.
Pretty amazing stuff. But none of the reports I’ve seen brings up a blast from 2005 we should surely remember: Think Tank’s Ideas Shifted As Malaysian Ties Grew:
For years, the Heritage Foundation sharply criticized the autocratic rule of former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, denouncing his anti-Semitism, his jailing of political opponents and his “anti-free market currency controls.”
Then, late in the summer of 2001, the conservative nonprofit Washington think tank began to change its assessment …
Heritage’s new, pro-Malaysian outlook emerged at the same time a Hong Kong consulting firm co-founded by Edwin J. Feulner, Heritage’s president, began representing Malaysian business interests. The for-profit firm, called Belle Haven Consultants, retains Feulner’s wife, Linda Feulner, as a “senior adviser.” And Belle Haven’s chief operating officer, Ken Sheffer, is the former head of Heritage’s Asia office and is still on Heritage’s payroll as a $75,000-a-year consultant.
Hmmm.
It seems that some years ago Malaysia’s ruling party took a good look at leading pundits and policy intellectuals in the conservative movement, reached a judgment about their personal and intellectual integrity or lack thereof, and acted in accordance with that judgment.
Funny how Malaysia gets who these people are and what motivates them — while our own press corps doesn’t. Paul Krugman, The New York Times

1 comment:

  1. Rob Carter remarks: I never trust the likes of Paul Krugman a pure economic theorist profiteer (Probably their planted guys) who caused the "stimulus" intent of employment and money flows to go to theirs and then after the fact call "Keynesian Infrastructure stimulus" they inspired to be classified AS A FAILURE OF KEYNES THEORIES. Krugman is so busy with being a Professor Noble winner, he writes for NYT good big commissions. He is supposed to be Economics stories, but so hungry fee for writing and spreading disinformation to suit Karl Rove GOP agenda within his positioning of a Left Wing "Common Dreams" ~ "Truth Out" ~ RSN Reader Support News & other fee for journalism more profitable than economic blogging etc, He writes daily somewhere and some quite big un-researched stories on any subject from Politics to Brad Manning case, I don't believe he does more research that an average economic Journalist, and he is anti-Keynesian Theories, and refuses to even admit Russian Professor & Vice Minister's Wave theory some 80 years ago before USSR Jailed him for telling the Western economic disaster to come. (Despite the theory has evidence and reasons from Industrial Revolution 1771 & USA Independence 1776, up to 2050 whereby they expose Wars, recessions & Depressions repeat in 100 year waves such as 1829, 1929 & assumed 2029 before a new Western Rebellion before 2050. I call that the Un-industrial Revolution when the likes of OWS demand and get a middle Socialist replacement for Capitalism, when they replace automation, machines and Robots with man to revers the opposite 1771 to 2013 replacement of man with machine. In 1950 USA Labor force was 12,300,000 and now with a population doubled from 130mn to 300+mn they still have a labor force of just 12mn, their farm sector labor dropped from 1959 10mn to 2012 7mn. Ignore Krugman as an honest economics' professor using hio Nobel award for credibility as a new paid for stooge new Journalist, but occasionally as here he appears to get some things right. I prefer Robert Reich & Noam Chomsky who agree with me on Krugman as does Global Economic Intersect Professor John Loundry blog (I am an arbitrator for his cases sometimes.

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