Media antarabangsa mendedahkan perbuatan Perdana Menteri, Datuk Seri Najib Razak mengupah media Amerika Syarikat untuk memburuk-burukkan reputasi Ketua Umum KEADILAN, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
“Bayaran dibuat kepada beberapa wartawan konservatif Amerika yang bekerja di Huffington Post, San Francisco Examiner, Washington Times, Natinal Review dan Red State.
“Maklumat diperoleh Jabatan Keadilan yang difailkan bawah Akta Pendaftaran Agen Asing untuk menyerang tokoh pro-demokrasi itu. Kempen itu bermula Mei 2008 hingga April 2011 dan ia diketuai oleh Joshua Trevino.
“Trevino menerima bayaran USD389,724,70,” tulisan portal BuzzFeed bertarikh semalam, dipetik .
Mengikut portal itu, antara 10 nama yang terlibat memburuk-burukkan nama Anwar ialah Ben Domenech; Pengarah Pusat Demokrasi Amerika, Rachel Ehrenfeld; Editor majalah Commentary, Seth Mandel; Penulis Red State, Brad Jackson dan beberapa nama lagi.
Ben Domenech, bekas blogger Washington Post menulis mengenai senario politik Malaysia.
“Tugas saya ialah menulis tentang pergaduhan politik di sana dan memberi pendapat saya sendiri,” katanya dipetik portal berpangkalan di Manhattan, New York itu.
Naib Presiden Yayasan Dasar Awam Texas, Chuck Devore berkata, ia perkara biasa untuk diupah dan dibayar oleh sumber luar.
“Ia bukanlah sesuatu yang luar biasa bagi penulis bebas untuk dibayar dari pelbagai sumber, seperti yang dilakukan oleh Trevino,” katanya lapor BuzzFeed.
Sam Mandel pula mengakui dibayar oleh Joshua dan tidak mengetahui wujudnya entiti lain di belakangnya.
“Saya penulis blog berkaitan isu Israel dan anti-semitisme. Kemudian Joshua hampiri saya dan memperkatakan tentang Anwar yang membuat komen anti-semitik dan bergabung dengan organisasi anti-Israel.
Covert Malaysian Campaign Touched A Wide Range Of American Media
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.
The payments to conservative American opinion writers — whose work appeared in outlets from the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner to the Washington Times to National Review and RedState — emerged in a filing this week to the Department of Justice. The filing under the Foreign Agent Registration Act outlines a campaign spanning May 2008 to April 2011 and led by Joshua Trevino, a conservative pundit, who received $389,724.70 under the contract and paid smaller sums to a series of conservative writers.
Trevino lost his column at the Guardian last year after allegations that his relationship with Malaysian business interests wasn't being disclosed in columns dealing with Malaysia. Trevino told Politico in 2011 that "I was never on any 'Malaysian entity's payroll,' and I resent your assumption that I was."
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.
The federal filing specified that Trevino was engaged through the lobbying firm APCO Worldwide and the David All Group, an American online consulting firm. The contract also involved a firm called FBC (short for Fact-Based Communications), whose involvement in covert propaganda prompted a related scandal and forced an executive at The Atlantic to resign from its board.
According to the filings, Trevino was also employed to write for websites called MalaysiaMatters and MalaysiaWatcher.
Trevino's subcontractors included conservative writer Ben Domenech, who made $36,000 from the arrangement, and Rachel Ehrenfeld, the director of the American Center for Democracy, who made $30,000. Seth Mandel, an editor at Commentary, made $5,500 (his byline is attached to the National Review item linked to above). Brad Jackson, writing at the time for RedState, made $24,700. Overall, 10 writers were part of the arrangement.
"It was actually a fairly standard PR operation," Trevino told BuzzFeed Friday. "To be blunt with you, and I think the filing is clear about this, it was a lot looser than a typical PR operation. I wanted to respect these guys' independence and not have them be placement machines."
Trevino said neither he nor the client knew what the writers were going to write before it went up.
"I provided a stipend to support their work in this area and they would just ping me whenever something went up," he said.
Domenech, a former Washington Post blogger who runs a daily morning newsletter called The Transom, said he "was retained by Josh's Trevino Strategies and Media PR firm in 2010 with the general guidance to write about Malaysia, particularly the political scene there."
"I did not ever have anyone looking over my shoulder for what I wrote, and the guidance really was just to write about the political fray there and give my own opinion," Domenech said. "Of course, Josh picked me knowing what my opinion was — I stand by what I wrote at the time and I continue to be critical of Anwar Ibrahim, who I think is a particularly dangerous fellow."
Domenech attached two pieces he'd written about Malaysia for the San Francisco Examiner as well as one for the Huffington Post in his email to BuzzFeed.
Chuck DeVore, the Vice President for Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (where Trevino now works), said he was unaware of the arrangement in an email.
"He knew of my expertise and suggested I write some pieces," DeVore said. "As I've seen over the years, it's not uncommon for freelancers to be paid for their work from various sources.I frankly didn't think much of it, having been paid by papers in a few nations abroad and by PR firms, such as the one Mr. Trevino was running at the time."
"He never told me who his client was," DeVore said. "I wonder if they did the same via him? Interesting that he filed the paperwork, given it appears he was working for someone else."
Mandel said, "I was blogging about issues relating to Israel and anti-Semitism in 2010, and Josh approached me about a Malaysian opposition figure who had made anti-Semitic comments and was affiliated with anti-Israel organizations. I had full editorial freedom — Josh never saw anything I wrote until after it was published — and I had no relationship with the Malaysian government. I was paid by Josh for what was probably a handful of blog posts in the fall of 2010, I believe, while working as a freelancer in Washington."
According to Trevino, he was approached by publicist and social media executive David All in 2008. He never had contact with "the ultimate client," he said. "I only had an assumption of who I was working for. I never knew exactly who APCO was dealing with, never knew exactly who FBC was dealing with.
" Trevino acknowledged that he shouldn't have lied to BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith, then at Politico, when this first came up in 2011.
"When Ben Smith contacted me in July 2011, I ought to have come clean with him at the time," he said.
As for why he waited until five years after the fact to register with FARA, Trevino said he didn't know he was supposed to have registered until recently.
"The accurate answer is that I didn't know there was a foreign agents database at all." Trevino said. "When all the stuff with the Guardian went down in August, I had a friend ask me whether I regeistered with FARA and I said what's FARA?"
"They allowed me to do a retroactive filing," he said.
Trevino terminated his relationship with Malaysian interests when he joined the Texas Public Policy Foundation, he said.
This article has been updated to include comments from Mandel.
Update 2:33 p.m.: Trevino called back to say that he had actually checked with his legal counsel in 2011 after being questioned by Politico, but had been told at the time that he didn't need to register anywhere.
"Ben Smith had actually asked me if I was a foreign agent back in 2011," Trevino said. "I asked a lawyer friend, my counsel .I said, hey, is there anything I need to comply with? He came back and said no."
"After the Guardian thing, I reached out to a different counsel, and I did some googling and found out about FARA," Trevino said.
UPDATE: Trevino's Malaysia-related posts have been removed from the Huffington Post and replaced with an editors' note that says the author "violated blogger guidelines by not properly disclosing financial ties that amounted to a serious conflict of interest." -buzzfeed
Ulasan GB
Sememang begitulah stail Najib. Penulis-penulis yang ada kaitan dengan APCO digunakan untuk menulis hal-hal yang memburukkan pemimpin Pakatan Rakyat disamping membersihkan imejnya sendiri di media antarabangsa.
Itu sebabnya kebelakangan ini, di dalam menghadapi pilihanraya yang ke 13 ini, banyak berita-berita di peringkat antarabangsa seperti Reuters, Economists dan sebagainya, tersiar kisah yang berpihak kepada Najib & UMNO BN yang kemudiannya dikutip oleh BERNAMA dan sekalian media massa arus perdana serta blogger pencacai UMNO untuk disebarkan kepada rakyat jelata demi untuk menjajah fikiran mereka supaya terus menyokong UMNO BN.
Blog GB ini pernah menyiarkan tentang pendedahan BBC yang meminta maaf kerana menyiarkan program berbayar tentang Malaysia.
Imej Malaysia Tercalar Teruk Ekoran Kerajaan Bayar FBC Untuk Baiki Imej Najib
Di satu ketika, tatkala nama Rosmah Mansor tercalar dengan pelbagai skandal, penulis-penulis upahan ini juga dipergunakan untuk menulis hal-hal yang muluk-muluk tentang Rosmah sehingga jika boleh, kentutnya pun dikatakan wangi.
Malah Rosmah termasuk beberapa pemimpin tertinggi Malaysia menerima anugerah PhD dari universiti antarabangsa demi untuk memulihkan imej-imej mereka yang telah hanyir itu.
TETAPI kebenaran tetap kebenaran. Ia pasti terbongkar dan Najib & Rosmah serta para pemimpin UMNO yang cuba permainkan kebenaran pasti terbongkang!
Sungguh bodoh, kuasa Allah hendak dilawannya.
Bagi kita, kita akan terus berdoa!
اللهم ارنا الحق حقا وارزقنا اتباعه وارنا الباطل باطلا وارزقنا اجتنابه
1) Allahumma arinal haqqa, haqqa, warzuqnattiba’ah,
wa arinal bathila bathila, warzuqnajtinabah
Ya Allah, tunjukkanlah yang haq itu sebagai haq, dan kurniakanlah kami kekuatan untuk mengikutinya (memperjuangkannya), dan tunjukkanlah yang batil itu sebagai batil dan kurniakanlah kami kekuatan untuk menjauhinya (menghapuskannya).
وقل رب أدخلني مدخل صدق وأخرجني مخرج صدق
واجعل لي من لدنك سلطانا نصيرا
وقل جاء الحق وزهق الباطل إن الباطل كان زهوقا
2) Rabbi adkhilni mudkhala sidqin wa akhrijni mukhraja sidqin waj'alli min ladunka sulthanan nasiiran
wa qul ja alhaqqu wa zahaqal bathil innal bathila kana zahuqan
Ya Allah, masukkanlah aku secara masuk yang benar dan keluarkanlah(pula) aku secara keluar yang benar dan berikanlah kepadaku dari sisi-Mu kekuasaan yang menolong. Dan katakanlah yang benar telah datang dan yang batil telah lenyap. Sesungguhnya yang batil itu adalah sesuatu yang pasti lenyap.
6 ulasan:
Najib lebih percaya penulis APCO dari blogger pencacai UBN.
Wahai blogger Pencacai, sedar lah sebelum terlewat, lihat gelombang pakatan rakyat, marilah bersama pakatan kita tumbangkan parti yg percaya kepada yahudi. Jangan menaiki kapal yg dah bocor kerana menanti untuk tenggelam dalam gelombang rakyat...
http://flathijauputrajaya.blogspot.com/2013/03/pas-bermaharajalela-di-putrajaya-semua.html
mereka2 pemimpin umno sebenarnya mereka tak kisah kalau PR Menang pilihan raya..... SBB MEREKA BYK DUIT..... tapi yg mereka pemimpin umno n ngok paling risau.. takut makan nasi kawah hari2 dalam penjara itu saja..... mereka pemimpin umno sanggup buat apa sj ...mereka akan upah wartawan2 luar keluarkan kenyataan di akhbar luar negara lepas tu mereka spin cete kononnya PR nee jahat.... cete terbaru sampai sabitkan anuar dgn kerajaan sulu... helo anuar tak memerintah lagi la UMNO N NGOK. kalau abu sayap nak mai depa akan mai masa anuar memerintAH,dah tak pasai2 anuar kena fitnah... buat apa depa nak mai pertaruhkan nyawa masa umno N gok memerintah mesti ada sebab neee.. berapa byk la pulak mereka upah wartawan filipina neeee.... itu lah dasar perjuangan UMNO N NGOK..... sanggup buat apa saja asalkan tak masuk kandang besi... hidup umno...hidupkan kembali penjara pudu
Semoga allah tumbagkan BN APCO
Saidina Ali r.a. said, "He who digs a pit for his brother, will himself fall into it".
Saidina Ali r.a. pernah berkata, "Dia yang menggali lubang untuk saudaranya supaya jatuh, dia sendiri akan terjatuh kedalamnya".
Fikir-fikirkanlah Jibby.
apa macam pencacai umno sekalian...ada berani jawab??
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