What Comes After Obama?

Malaysians had the opportunity to watch our dearest ‘Minister in All Department’ in action during Obama’s visit last week. For those who don’t know who I’m talking about, here’s a clue: Once, the Minister played the role of a ‘dispatch’, but this time, he was playing the role of a ‘social escort’ to the President. Get it?

As we were watching him on TV, a friend of mine said, “a perfect escort he is – looking all eager and excited and proud to serve the master”. (and..my mind was showing me a picture of a dog wagging its tail…)

Anyway, I don’t know what my friend meant by that, but hey…it’s a free country. He has the right to say anything and mean anything. But I can’t agree with him more, from the look on the Minister’s face, I guess he must be thinking that the whole world envies him and I can tell that I was right because as soon as I logged on to the net, I saw all these pictures and postings of the dear Minister and Mr. Obama that spells ‘Hail America!’

As quarter American, I’m surprised that I didn’t at all feel the excitement in receiving Obama. All that came to my mind was ‘why ’: Why did the U.S want to visit Malaysia after all these years – since 1966? What does it mean to us? To the world? What will happen next? Or what is happening now?

Because, you see…only morons don’t have any doubts on the U.S. Only idiots don’t look at the U.S with suspicion.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that all Americans are untrustworthy. I know I can trust my American aunt. I’m just saying that American politics is based on, and revolved around the word: ‘selfish’.

The U.S scientists and engineers may have saved a lot of lives through their discoveries and inventions but the U.S politicians have destroyed as many lives too.

We all know for a fact that the U.S doesn’t go around visiting people just because they want to be your friend or because they care. Only Americans like the late Michael Jackson or Oprah Winfrey or Angelina Jolie do that. The U.S is not looking for friends because they don’t need one. They are looking for allies and slaves and you might be surprised of how thin the line is between the two.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the visit of Mr. Obama came to nothing at all for Malaysia. During the 3-day visit, 3 MoUs between Malaysian and American companies were signed:

1. between GE Aviation and AirAsia X for the selection of CF6-80E1 engines to power AirAsia X's 25 new Airbus A330-300 aircraft worth more than US$1.5 billion.

2. between Sime Darby and a San Diego-based biotech company, Verdezyne whereby the former is to take a 30 per cent stake worth US$30 million from the latter

3. between Ambank and Metlife, for a partnership between whereby the latter has invested approx. US$250 million to buy shares in AmLife and AmTakaful.

Hmm…USD2 Billions worth of MoUs are not worth the excitement and all the jumping around, are they? The first one, we buy from the US and so the US gets the money. The second one may bring returns but is open to risk and the US still gets the money. The third one gives no significant impact to the country in any way we look at it.
I mean, we have had visits from China that brought in much more benefits for Malaysia but we didn’t close the roads and troubled the city folks just to let the delegates passed.
I’m sure our leaders are aware of the need to think ahead and figure out the meaning behind Obama’s visit. I’m sure they didn’t just jump around happily, proudly taking selfies with Obama without wondering about ‘what comes next’.

They cannot be that naïve, and be up there.

These people surely knows that TPPA is what brought Obama here. The U.S is pushing hard for TPPA to be signed and the U.S wouldn’t do so if not for a selfish reason. The fact is that, when something is good for the U.S, it is most probably not good for everybody else.

TPPA stands for Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) and is also known as the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement. It is a multilateral free trade agreement currently being negotiated by 11 countries, led by the US. Malaysia is one of the parties negotiating in the TPPA. It aims to further liberalise the economies of the Asia-Pacific region. Covering a broad spectrum of areas and has 29 chapters (and counting), some areas affect our public health, environment and courts system. It is labeled as a trade agreement but only 5 chapters are related to trade.

First and foremost, we need to acknowledge that Malaysia managed to survive 1997/1998 financial crisis by implementing capital control and currency pegging, and signing TPPA will disallow us to do the same in any circumstances. This means that should Soros attack the economy again, we will not be able to do anything to stop him.

TPPA will put the country in the hands of foreign investors whereby they will have the rights to sue the government bankrupt. The same happened to the U.S which put the country in the hands of the people who control Wall Street. The government will not be able to implement new policies or law without first, consulting with foreign investors. We will lose our sovereignty, without the superpowers having to bomb us back to stone-age.

As if attacking us and denying us of the rights to fight back is not enough, TPPA also ensures that we will never be able to stand back up again, ever! This is done by extending the duration of copyrights beyond the present 50 years after the death of the author. This would impact on library digitisation programmes, lead to removal of works already digitised from public access, restrict the re-use or use of out-of-copyright works; raise the prices of library materials; and lead to fewer purchase of works by libraries.

In time, ordinary Malaysians and students will also be impacted, who want to photocopy a textbook, for example. The net result is that all Malaysian’s access to information and knowledge is affected, and there will be negative impacts on the research and education sectors.

Of course there is not all bad about TPPA but the biggest concern is that its non-transparent nature.

The negotiations and the negotiations texts (the documents that are used during the negotiations process) are secret, and all TPP governments have agreed to continue the secrecy until four years after the deal has signed. Now, why would anything be done in secret unless there is something to hide? And why is there a need to hide, if it is really a good thing?