March 4-5, 2013 -- S
All of a sudden, Malaysia's northern Borneo state of Sabah exploded in secessionist violence a few months away from a scheduled national election pitting the government of Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak of the long-incumbent Barisan Nasional (BN) party against a George Soros and U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED)/CIA-backed opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim. Ibrahim, a favorite of Soros and his gang of electoral interlopers, has demanded a meeting over Sabah between the government and his Pakatan Rakyat coalition. The United Malays National Organization (UNMO), which dominates the BN coalition government lost its parliamentary two-third majority in 2008 the election, its first major defeat since Malaya gained independence from Britain in 1957. Since 2008, the Soros organizations have been turning up the heat on the Malaysian government.

Essentially, Soros, who has pumped large amounts of money into a Malaysian opposition non-governmental organizations, including a newswebsite called Malaysiakini, is using the same playbook on Malaysia that was used against Yugoslavia: foment internal dissension against the government using the electoral process while applying secessionist pressure on Malaysia in one of its far-flung states.

Sabah was once the colony of British North Borneo. The ancestor of the Sultan of Sulu, who ruled over a Muslim kingdom that consisted of the southern Philippines and Sabah, decided to lease Sabah to the British North Borneo Company in 1888 for a paltry annual remittance. The Madrid Protocol of 1885 relinquished Spain's claim to Sabah but cemented its colonial control over the Sulu archipelago. 

When Britain granted North Borneo its independence in 1963, the territory was turned over to Malaysia and not the Sultan of Sulu. The Sultan claims that Malaysian independence and Britain's turnover of Sabah to the Federation of Malaysia in 1963 did nothing to abrogate the original Sulu Sultanate-Great Britain lease agreement, thereby preserving Sulu sovereignty over Sabah. For years, the Philippines government laid claim to Sabah pursuant to the Sulu claim.

Although the Philippines has long claimed Sabah as its territory but the current Sultan, Jamalul Kiram III, a potentate without a realm, felt betrayed by the 2012 Philippines agreement with the Saudi-financed and Salafist-influenced Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to create an autonomous territory in the predominantly Muslim southern Philippines called Bangsamoro at the expense of the Sulu ruler. The agreement, coupled with the fact that up to a million southern Philippines Muslim Moros, mainly economic refugees, have settled in Sabah with the approval of the Malaysian government, prompted the sultan's younger brother, Agbimuddin Kiram, to launch an "invasion" of Sabah to restore the Sulu Sultanate's claim on the state. In 2010, Muslims represented two-thirds of the population of Sabah up from a little over one-third when Britain cut its ties to Sabah in 1963. Many of the Muslims were permitted to emigrate from the southern Philippines as a way to offset the Christian and Buddhist population of the state. However, the influx of Muslims from the southern Philippines has renewed irredentist claims by the Sulu Sultanate to the territory. The sultan has ample supporters among Sabah's newer immigrants. And that has provided an opportunity for the Soros machinery in the Philippines and NED/USAID professional troublemakers to leap into action on the ground in the Sulu islands and Sabah.

Further muddying the waters is the fact that there are several pretenders to the Sulu sultan's throne and the actual sultan does not control a number of the inhabitants of the Sulu island archipelago in the southern Philippines.

What began as a farcical invasion turned deadly after shooting broke out between members of the Sulu "army" and Malaysian police. Sabah has now turned into a major flash point between Malaysia, the Sulu royalists, and the Philippines that has resulted in charges that the Malaysian opposition leader, working with Soros and NED NGO personnel on the ground, provided the financial backing and weapons for a supposedly renegade faction of the "Royal Army of Sulu" to invade the eastern Lahad Datu district of Sabah, creating a pre-election crisis for the Malaysian government. 

The government of Philippines President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III has asked the Sulu rebels to surrender to Malaysian authorities but at the same time it has given a boost to the Sulu rebels by claiming the presidential Malacañang Palace is studying the historical and legal claims of the Sulu Sultan to Sabah. The Philippines has had a dormant claim on Sabah since the creation of Malaysia in 1963 and some observers believe that the Philippines looked the other way when the Sulu rebels launched their seaborne operation in Sabah from Philippines soil. Aquino's mother, Corazon Aquino, launched her revolution against Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos after her husband, Benigno Aquino, Jr., was assassinated by Marcos's agents in 1983 after he returned to the Philippines from a self-imposed exile in Boston. 

Boston was also the headquarters for themed revolution mastermind Gene Sharp's Albert Einstein Institution, the non-violent revolution think tank that set up shop in 1983, the same year Aquino returned to the Philippines. The Aquino revolution became known as the "yellow revolution" and with its trademark yellow ribbons, clothing, and umbrellas, many observers see it is one of the first modern uses of a themed revolution against a government.
  
Look for Malaysian "Arab Spring" mass demonstrations to be breaking out the secessionist flags of Sabah, Sarawak, and Penang. 

Twelve Sulu invaders and two Malaysian policemen were killed in an initial skirmish. As Malaysia rushed counter-insurgency military units to the state, there were additional deaths reported, as well as hostages being taken by the Sulu rebels. The rebellion spread to two district neighboring Lahad Datuk, Semporna and Kunak.

Soros has an old bone to pick with the still-influential former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamed, who once charged that Soros used his hedge fund to destabilize the Malaysian ringgit in the 1990s to destroy Malaysia's burgeoning economy. Mahathir also criticized Jewish control over global banking, earning him a swift rebuke from the United States and other nations where the Jewish Lobby has strong influence. Although Soros and Mahathir later publicly patched up their differences, Mahathir has been critical of Soros's "themed revolution" efforts that have dovetailed with the wishes of the CIA and its fronts like NED and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Soros, for his part, criticizes Malaysia's strong currency controls, designed to thwart the currency machinations carried out by Soros in the late 1980s against the Malaysian, Thai, Philippines, and Hong Kong currencies. Referring to Soros, Mahathir said, "It is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge." Mahathir contended Soros punished Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines for agreeing to admit Myanmar  (Burma) into the Association of Southeast Asian  Nations (ASEAN). Soros was and continues to be a strong backer of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Mahathir has stated that his one-time deputy prime minister and now opposition leader Ibrahim plans to unleash an Arab spring movement, complete with trademark Soros-funded and Sharp-inspired massive street demonstrations in Malaysia if the opposition comes up short in the scheduled 13th general election. The Malaysian opposition has admitted to receiving funds from the NED-affiliated National Democratic Institute (NDI) and Soros's Open Society Institute (OSI). 

Some Malaysian intelligence analysts believe that Ibrahim and Soros worked together to arrange for the Sulu army invasion of Sabah as a way to undermine one of the ruling party's strongest claims, that it protects Malaysia's national security.

The Malaysian government recently expelled Australian senator Nick Xenophon from Malaysia, accusing him of violating his diplomatic status by working with the Malaysian opposition. Xenophon was elected senator based on a single issue, making illegal the use of poker machines in Australia. Xenophon is known for his media publicity stunts, which are torn from another page in the Soros/Sharp controlled activism playbook.

Mahathir has irritated the CIA by funding the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission trials for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, held in Malaysia for the two Americans in absentia, over their roles in launching the war against Iraq. Mahathir has also funded various 9/11 truth seminars aimed at pulling the curtain down from the reason given by the United States for invading Iraq and Afghanistan. Soros and the CIA, longtime partners going back to their days of working together to undermine the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies, have targeted Malaysia for being a holdout in U.S. military designs for the Pacific Rim. Malaysia has shown no desire to host American military bases aimed at curtailing China's growing influence in the region. However, the Philippines, for which the Sulu rebels have used as a base for their invasion of Sabah, is, once again, hosting the U.S. Seventh Fleet at its old Subic Bay naval base, abandoned in 1992. 

U.S. Navy ships are making such a beeline for the Philippines that one if its minesweepers, the USS Guardian, ran aground in environmentally-sensitive waters of the Tubbataha Reef in the Sulu Sea after deploying from Subic Bay. The ship was in the Sulu region in January, just weeks away from the first seaborne incursion of Sulu islanders into Sabah. Some locals are speculating on whether the U.S. Navy was involved in supporting the Sulu islanders' invasion of Sabah. The USS Freedom, America's first littoral combat ship, has been deployed to Southeast Asian waters and is temporarily based in Singapore, near Malaysian waters. 

Malaysia, like Yugoslavia, is a diverse federation with nascent secession movements. As such, the Soros and Sharp government overthrow experts appear to be using the same blueprint they employed for Yugoslavia, split the country into smaller entities while applying pressure for the ouster of a nationalist central government in Belgrade. Not only has secession reared its head in Sabah but there are calls for the secession of the other Malaysian state in Borneo, Sarawak, which joined Malaysia the same year that Sabah joined -- 1963.

The secession clamor in Sarawak is partly fueled by environmental-oriented NGOs that receive financing from Soros and USAID sources. A financial scandal involving Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud, a member of the BN coalition, and Deutsche Bank has helped fuel the calls for separation from Malaysia.

There are even calls for peninsular Penang to copy Singapore, once a member of the Malaysian Federation that opted for secession in 1965. The loss of Sabah, Sarawak, and Penang may result in other peninsular sultanates, such as Kelantan, ruled by an Islamist government with ethnic ties to Thai Muslims across the border, opting to go it alone. There are also nascent claims by the Sultanate of Brunei to the federal Malaysian territory of Labuan, an island in the strategic South China Sea that has become an off-shore financial center. That would leave Kuala Lumpur and the official capital Putrajaya under pressure to turn over government to the Soros-backed opposition. The Soros-backed opposition is also being accused of fomenting secessionist sentiment in the Borneo states as well as Penang to hasten the downfall of the ruling government and political party.

From Bloomberg Commentary

Mahathir Counters a U.S. Push for Reviving WTO Talks (Update1)

Oct. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, 10 days away from retirement, countered a U.S.-led plan to revive global trade talks by saying developing nations must set the framework for the negotiations.

Developing nations ``want to be able to propose an agenda, which will be fair to rich and the poor,'' Mahathir, 77, told a meeting of leaders from the 21 Asia-Pacific economies in Bangkok. Last month's failure of World Trade Organization talks in Cancun, Mexico, was a ``minor success,'' he said.

Support for Mahathir may undermine efforts by the U.S. to get APEC leaders to back a revival of talks using the text of the failed Cancun accord as a starting point. Some members of APEC, whose economies control half of world trade, were among nations calling for an end to farm subsidies in the U.S. and Europe as part of trade liberalization.

Mahathir has ``always said free trade should be fair trade -- this is perhaps the last time he'll be able to make an impact,'' said Lee Heng Guie, head of economic research at CIMB Securities in Kuala Lumpur. His successor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, may take a more diplomatic approach to promoting the same stance, he said.

This isn't the first time Mahathir has been on a collision course with the U.S. and Europe. He took on the U.S. financial community five years ago by blaming the 1997 devaluations of Asian currencies on hedge fund managers such as George Soros, whom he called a ``moron.'' He is also keeping the Malaysian ringgit's value pegged to the dollar as the U.S. pushes for flexible exchange rates.

Tariff Cuts

Mahathir's insistence on a new draft, which would set back already delayed talks, is a cause for ``despair'' if it finds an echo among other developing countries, New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark said. Freedom from tariffs, quotas and bans may add as much as $500 billion to $8 trillion of annual global commerce, the WTO estimates.

Trade ministers from the 21 Asia-Pacific economies on Saturday called on world leaders in a joint statement to revive the WTO talks. Members should use a text of the failed compromise agreement in Cancun as the starting point, the communique said. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick called for leaders to ``move beyond hand wringing.''

Mexico, Chile and the Philippines were among APEC members that had resisted easing limits on imports of industrial goods without concessions on agricultural trade. By cutting tariffs on foreign-made cars and allowing free entry to multinational banks developing countries would reduce themselves to suppliers of cheap labor to global companies, Mahathir said.

``At Cancun, we could not agree to the agenda, simply because it wasn't our agenda,'' said Mahathir.

Cheap Labor

A new draft would mean more delays to the so-called Doha round of negotiations that started in Qatar two years ago, with 2004 as its deadline for removing trade barriers. Singapore's Trade Minister George Yeo says the goal has already been missed by at least two years. APEC trade ministers last week decided to ``quickly re- energize'' negotiations by using the draft Cancun agreement as the starting point.

The U.S. today signaled that it's willing to reach a compromise on farm subsidies. Bush ``understands the difficulties that many nations have with policies of their own, as well as ours in the area of agriculture and how difficult that is,'' U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said in Bangkok.

``But he's committed to try to do everything he can to move that along,'' Powell said.

`Missed Opportunity'

Mahathir may try to lobby other APEC leaders to refrain from renewing that call in their official communique, to be released tomorrow at the end of the leaders' meeting.

``There are differences in views,'' Sihasak Phuangketkeow, the Thai foreign ministry spokesman, said at a press briefing. The leaders agreed that ``what is important is to start talks seriously on the basis of the best text instead of starting anew.''

If the current round of talks starts afresh, ``then truly we'll never get around,'' New Zealand Prime Minister Clark said.

Attending a panel discussion with Mahathir and Clark, Chilean President Ricardo Lagos sided with New Zealand, calling Cancun ``a tremendous failure'' and a ``missed opportunity.''

Opposite

Mahathir, who is also the finance minister, defied the International Monetary Fund in 1998. The IMF recommended raising interest rates to keep local currencies from falling. Countries such as Thailand, where the contagion began, followed the fund's advice and allowed their companies to go bankrupt under high interest costs.

Mahathir did the opposite. He pegged the ringgit to the dollar and imposed controls on taking money out of the country, moves that allowed him to slash interest rates to revive exports. Stanley Fischer, then deputy managing director of the fund, described Mahathir's policy as an ``extremely retrograde step.''

Four years later, the IMF called Malaysia's currency peg a ``stability anchor'' to the economy.

Mahathir opposed the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last year, he called Australia ``unsafe'' for Muslims. Last week, he asked Islamic nations to unite, urging them not to be ``defeated by a few million Jews.'' Currently, he's exhorting Muslim nations to give up their dependency on the U.S. dollar and trade using the gold dinar.

Protection

By levying a 300 percent tariff on imported cars, and by saying it won't consider new licenses for overseas banks before 2007, Malaysia wants to protect local enterprises, such as state-owned Perusahaan Otomobil Nasional Bhd., or Proton, and Malayan Banking Bhd., or Maybank.

``We think we should be allowed to protect our own little businesses, our own little banks and industries, at least until we're big enough to compete,'' Mahathir said. ``The thrust really should be on fair trade, rather than free trade. Fair trade can be free, but free trade can be unfair.''

The APEC countries are the U.S, Japan, China, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Brunei, Chile, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines and Vietnam