Father Dave with Dr Chandra Muzaffar in 2014
Once again, we are indebted to my dear brother, Dr Chandra Muzaffar, for his powerful and important insights into the mechanisms of global hegemony
Dave
BLACKROCK – NO COMPROMISE WITH EVIL
Chandra Muzaffar
The International Movement for a Just World (JUST) empathizes with the concerns expressed by several NGOs and public figures in Malaysia over the involvement of the fund manager, BlackRock, in Malaysia’s infrastructure development.
BlackRock has extensive investments in companies closely allied to Israel’s arms industry. It has a 7.4% stake in Lockheed Martin, a defence contractor that has played a critical role in arming the Israeli military. This is why Lockheed has been accused of complicity in the barbaric genocide in Gaza which is now in its eighth month. The CEO of BlackRock, Larry Fink, is known to be a staunch supporter of Israel in its colossal massacre of Palestinians.
BlackRock has earned the wrath of former Federal Ministers such as Khairy Jamaluddin and Saifuddin Abdullah and a former Menteri Besar, Mukhriz Mahathir, on the one hand, and the head of the Malaysian branch of the global, Palestine based Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, Dr Nazari Ismail, on the other, mainly because it is now the owner of Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), a partner in a consortium to manage Malaysia’s 39 airports. Though GIP holds only 30% of shares in the consortium — Khazanah Nasional, the government’s investment arm, and the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) own 70% — GIP, given its expertise in airport management, will inevitably play a significant role.
Is it because of this expertise that GIP was brought into the partnership? There are other firms with a comparable level of expertise that could have been considered. Why should we collaborate with a company owned by an entity that has such close ties to the Israeli and US military establishments? It is a matter of serious concern because it is airports — not restaurants or supermarkets — that are now being managed by GIP owned by BlackRock. Because it is airport management with all the data at the command of its managers— some of which will be highly sensitive — which is at stake, that the Malaysian authorities should have realized at the very outset that ownership of GIP can never be a mere economic proposition. To put it bluntly, it is a transaction that has profound security ramifications.
What makes BlackRock’s purchase of GIP and ipso facto its status now as partial owner of Malaysian airports, all the more bizarre is the fact that Malaysian Airports Berhad (MAHB) which hitherto managed our airports had no sound financial reason to sell off its shares to a US based fund manager with intimate ties to Israel. It was reported in February 2024 that MAHB recorded “a net profit of RM 543.2 million for the financial year ending December 31, 2023. This is a huge jump from the previous year, when the company made a profit of RM 187.2 million, and also higher than the profit it made in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic paralysed the aviation sector worldwide.”
That there was no financial justification for the sale of MAHB shares is further reinforced by the excellent management performance of MAHB. As its acting CEO Mohamed Rastam Shahrom put it, “We have worked hard to deliver value to our stakeholders in the past year. Amidst improved operating conditions we have managed to deliver improved financial performance, and we are making good progress in our airport modernisation, digitalisation and commercial rejuvenation programmes.” ( MalaysiaNow June 20)
Some supporters of the move to bring in Black Rock and GIP opine that the real reason is linked to geopolitics. Since we have strengthened our relations with China in recent years, our leaders feel that we should also develop further our ties to the US. Balancing relations with the two superpowers does not mean a readiness to sacrifice principles. If Malaysia which has often adhered to ethical concerns in regional and international politics, now deviates from such norms and tries to please one superpower or the other, it will tarnish its reputation and lose credibility.
As a nation, we should never be perceived as colluding with entities that are complicit in one of the most inhuman and cruelest genocides in history. When the moral dimensions of a conflict are so stark, we must make sure that we are not dismissed as a bunch that “hunts with the hounds and runs with the hares.” Our commitment to principles and ethical values in a catastrophe like Gaza should be demonstrated through deeds — deeds that prove over and over again that we will not compromise with evil.
Dr Chandra Muzaffar is President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)
Malaysia. 24th June 2024.
Journalists who tell the truth!
The following article was written by my friend, Dr Chandra Muzaffar and entitled, “Kudos to journalists who tell the truth”. It is republished with permission.
UNESCO should be congratulated for awarding the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize for 2024 to Palestinian journalists covering Gaza. The prize this year was announced in Santiago, Chile in conjunction with World Press Day on 3 rd May 2024.
The prize named in honour of a Colombian journalist murdered in 1986, Guillermo Cano Isaza, is a recognition of the courage shown by journalists who are prepared to carry out their responsibilities in the face of grave danger. Guillermo was a newspaper editor who was a vocal critic of drug barons in his country and in South and Central America.
It is an indisputable truth that journalists in Gaza have been confronting the reality of death every day of their lives in the last 7 months as Israeli bombs rain their congested homeland and Israeli bullets target any child, woman or man who inhabits that
narrow strip of land. Up to this point – 7th May 2024 – 143 journalists have lost their lives in the Israeli assault on Gaza.
This is the largest number of journalists killed in a conflict within a certain period of time in a certain demographic setting.
The number of journalists killed should be viewed in the context of the huge massacre that has taken place in Gaza since October 7th. Israel – mainly its armed forces and Zionist settlers who are allowed to kill Palestinians at random – have annihilated at least
35, 000 people in the course of the last seven months.
It is heart-rending to know that about 70 per cent of those killed are children and women. Indeed, more children have died in the present conflict in Gaza and the West Bank than in any previous assault upon Palestinian territory since 1948 when the state of Israel was established.
If the story of this senseless slaughter has been told to the world, it is not simply because of the courage of the journalists associated with the conventional media. The alternative media have also played a significant role.
Within the alternative media in Gaza are a large number of citizen journalists telling the truth to relatives and friends through their handphones and other channels. They too are heroes and heroines because of their indomitable courage and their willingness to take great risks, risks which place their very lives in peril.
It is because these citizen journalists had shared their stories with certain conventional media channels which in turn had scrupulously verified the news and information they had received that so much of what was, and is, happening in Gaza is now known to the world.
A television station operating in both Arabic and English which helped to disseminate the actual happenings in Gaza and the West Bank far and wide was of course the Qatar based Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera also has its own huge network of journalists on the ground whose courage and integrity are awe inspiring.
Through their commitment to truth and justice, they have raised journalism to a loftier level. It is a shame that such a television station should now be banned by the Israeli authorities from reporting from Occupied Palestine or Israel proper.
It only confirms that the Israeli state does not want the world to know the truth about what it is doing in Gaza. But the truth will prevail in the end. That is the immutable law of life.
After more than 75 years of oppression and suppression, of extermination and expulsion, millions and millions of people all over the world have come to know about what Israel really is, and what it has been doing to the Palestinians and other Arabs.
Israel is exposed as never before. The whole world now knows that it is an arrogant, cruel and inhuman state and society. It is so selfish and self-serving that it has brought about its own downfall.
At this juncture it should also be emphasized that while Israel is perpetuating colossal injustices against Palestinians, there are also millions of Jews in North America and Europe who are against Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. They want the rights of the Palestinians restored.
They are convinced that Jews, Christians and Muslims can live together in peace and harmony.
Together with Palestinians and millions of others from every continent and community, they would applaud Unesco’s decision to award this year’s World Press Freedom prize to Palestinian journalists covering the catastrophe in Gaza.
Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)