Jan 5, 2015

Globalisation and Neo-liberal billionaire stalking horses

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Globalist Billionaire Tony Fernandes, the TPP and the Recent Rash of Malaysian Plane Crashes

by Scott Creighton at American Everyman
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Who is Tan Sri Anthony Francis “Tony” Fernandes and what exactly does he have to do with all these strange plane crashes involving Malaysian airline companies? And is it just a coincidence that this is all happening at such a crucial time when the globalist TPP is being debated behind closed doors?

A Little Background on “Tony”

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“Tony” as we shall call him, is British. That’s the first thing you need to know. Though he was born in Kuala Lumpor in ’64, he attended Epson boarding school in London and from there went on to study at the London School of Economics. He worked for another billionaire for a time at Virgin Records and had stints with various other global conglomerates including Warner Music, Time Warner and America Online.
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In 2001, “Tony” took advantage of a state-owned enterprise that was doing poorly, AirAsia. He bought it and turned it into a budget, cattle-car air carrier so poor people could afford to fly as well as long as they didn’t mind being treated like crap.
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“Tony” managed to buy the state-owned company including it’s planes, for 26 cents.
(After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, 200,000 Soviet enterprises were sold for pennies to mafia linked figures, many of whom had no business acumen, but the 'right political connections'. Economic advisors from the USA and the CIA oversaw the sale of such enterprises, under the leadership of the permanently drunk and debauched 'President' Boris Yeltsin) 


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Yeah, that’s your “self made man” right there. Was given an airline for 26 pennies. Then the first thing he did with it was bust up the union, screwing over his employees, and stuffing more seats on the plane than it was designed to hold. Frankly I’m surprised the asshole doesn’t chain his customers to the floor like so many African slaves in British cargo ships.
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He was given this sweetheart deal by former prime minister,  Mahathir Mohamad who held that office for 22 years. At first Mohamed neoliberalised sectors of the economy, privatizing certain state-owned industries and pushing the deregulation of the financial markets at the request of the IMF and others. After the Asian Financial Crisis, the prime minister effectively reversed his position on the austerity measures he and his finance minister previously supported. He took over control of the country’s finances and thumbed his nose at the IMF. This did not sit well in Washington back in those days and people like Al Gore and Madeleine Albright were not pleased that he had jumped ship in favor of a more protectionist economic policy.
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“Tony” still maintains some very close connections to Britain. He was given the honor of “Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) “for services to promote commercial and educational links” between Malaysia and the United Kingdom” … for basically being a globalist shill overseas for the “Make the World a Neoliberal Britain” campaign.
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He is currently a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW).
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“Tony” is a sleazeball who fancies himself a TV star. He also has a chain of budget hotels where he treats his customers like cattle once again and his employees like pieces of meat.
Tony Fernandes bought ailing AirAsia in 2001, quickly turning it around with his no-frills, low-fare formula.
“Tony” also happens to own a little something called Tune Group Sdn Bhd which has a number of services, mainly financial and entertainment, but they also just happen to dabble in the insurance game.
The company operates an airline carrier that provides passenger transportation services to various destinations worldwide from hubs located in Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia; operates a chain of hotels in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom; and operates a mobile virtual network that provides mobile calling and SMS services in Malaysia. It also offers prepaid and loyalty cards, and life and general insurance products to consumers. Business Week
It’s funny though, if you head over to the Tune Group Wiki page, they make no mention of insurance at this time. But they do mention it on the Tune Group website. Still it’s odd that someone seems to have edited any mention of insurance from their Wiki page, isn’t it?
Well, maybe not that odd.

“Tony” Sold His Shares of His Insurance Company Just Prior to the AirAsia Plane Crash

It seems that “Tony” got real “lucky” a couple weeks ago when he dumped his holdings in his own company that sells insurance to the customers that fly on his airline.
On December 26, the Malaysian Insider reported that Fernandes, the founder of Tune Group Sdn Bhd which owns AirAsia, had sold a total of 944,800 shares in Tune Insurance Holdings Bhd, with 850,000 shares being dumped on December 22, and the other 94,800 being sold the day after.
According to its official website, Tune Insurance Holdings Bhd is “an insurance product manager” for AirAsia in which “insurance products are sold to (AirAsia) customers as part of their online booking process.”

The share prices of AirAsia and Tune Insurance Holdings both fell on the first day of trading after the disappearance of Flight QZ8501, with the former shedding 12.9 percent at one point. Tune Insurance Holdings lost 0.6%. PakAlert Press
“Tony” dumped nearly a million shares of his own company less than a week before Flight 8501 disappeared into the Java Sea. Would you call that “luck”? Same kind of “luck” that allowed him to buy an airline for 26 cents?
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“Tony’s” company still owns a majority stake in Tune Insurance Holdings Bhd and the million shares is merely a drop in the bucket compared to what they still own. But, it’s still a million shares and it’s still very odd timing.
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It’s not the smoking gun some would have us believe. That may lie in his relationship with Malaysian Airlines.

“Tony” And His War With Malaysian Airlines

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“Tony” wants Malaysian Airlines in the worst possible way. He wants to wreck it, buy it for another 26 cents and profit off the state-owned enterprise. That’s because he’s a neoliberal globalist oligarch and that is what they do.
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While the bodies of “Tony’s” customers are still being pulled out of the Java Sea, I want to go back to Feb. of last year when he was screeching about how state-owned Malaysian Airlines is losing money and thus costing tax-payers. He was saying Malaysian Airlines is “harming” their own customers. That was about a month prior to the mysterious downing of Flight 370.
“AirAsia Allstars, take a bow. Malaysia Airlines lost over a billion,” Tony Fernandes tweeted.

“So much money wasted. If people were more efficient Malaysians would spend less on travel.”…

… “I wonder if it’s fair that Malaysia Airlines can lose so much money and protect its market share. Can only do that with taxpayers money,” Tony Fernandes tweeted.

The outspoken Fernandes also took aim at Malaysian regulators, implying they were seeking to hinder MAS’s competition.

“Imagine how many jobs AirAsia could have created if (there was) effective regulation. We have done amazing. Unbelievable. Despite all the roadblocks,” he said. Financial Express, Feb. 2014
At the time, Malaysian Airlines, one of the highest rated airlines in the world, was losing money and a lot of it. But they were providing great service to their customers and therefore costing “Tony” some business.
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He may have thought that with the airline losing money at the rate it was, when the two Malaysian Airlines planes went down (370 and Flight 17) so would the company. He would then stand to gain by buying it up for next to nothing like he did with AsiaAir.
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Turns out, “Tony” miscalculated and in Aug of this past year, after Flight 370 and Flight 17 went down, the government of Malaysia decided to double down on the airline, rather than sell it off to a globalist oligarch like “Tony”
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You see, “Tony” had tried to destabilize Malaysian Airlines once in the past. He was brought in by the board of directors in 2011 essentially to try to salvage the company. What he tried to do instead was undermine it by busting up the union and selling off assets like all other vulture capitalists try to do.
The much-awaited restructuring of the board of national carrier Malaysia Airline System Bhd (MAS) was announced yesterday, which witnessed AirAsia Bhd’s chief executive officer Tan Sri Tony Fernandes and his deputy Datuk Kamarudin Meranun being appointed as non-independent non-executive directors of the company effective tomorrow (August 2011). Borneo Post
He failed because the unions pushed back and “Tony” left after only a couple months. Seems they didn’t like the snake oil he had to sell.
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“Tony’s” history of wanting Malaysian Airlines is a long, well documented one. Here’s an article from 2013 which explains his globalist agenda and shows how he and the former head of MAS wanted government out of the airline business.
It was the most bitter of public feuds between airlines bosses. In May 2008, national carrier Malaysia Airlines (MAS) was accused of unfairly pushing up sales by low-budget airlines AirAsia. It ended with then MAS managing director CEO Dato’ Sri Idris Jala barring then AirAsia CEO Datuk Tony Fernandes from any of the MAS flights.

Now all that is water under the bridge. The two have a lot in common. For one, they did not mince their words at the Global Malaysia Series on August 13 (Tuesday) when they both said the role of the government in business should be that of a facilitator only and they wanted a small government role in business in Malaysia.

Dato’ Sri Jala said the government should stay out of the airlines business and sell its stake in MAS when the price is right. “MAS should have been sold when I was there. I brought the share prices from RM3 (US$0.92) to RM6.20 (US$1.84),” he said. The share price for MAS is currently at 0.30 sen (US$0.10). (See note below on  statement issued by Dato’ Sri Jala  post-conference.) Establishment Post, Aug. 2013

Conclusion

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Prior to the disappearance of Flight 370 over the South China Sea, you had to go back 20 years (1995) to find a fatal accident involving a Malaysian Airlines flight. They were rated one of the few (13) five-star airlines in the world with a pretty large share of the market in Asia.
AirAsia has never had a crash.
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Now Malaysian airplanes are dropping out of the sky like flies.
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Contrary to popular belief, the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement isn’t dead in the water. They are still trying to push it in Australia and the U.S. even though there’s a lot of dissent taking place in some of the other 11 nations that are supposed to sign on the dotted line along with them. Of those, Japan and Malaysia seem to be the leading hold-outs. Japan wanting to defend their “sacred” agricultural industries like rice and sugar, and Malaysia is deeply concerned about things like environmental protections, labor rights and of course, state-owned industries.
One of the key state-owned industries Malaysia is trying to protect, just happens to be Malaysia Airlines.
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Right after Flight 370 went “missing” in March, last April, Obama went on his “Neoliberalize the Yellow Man” tour where he tried to sweet talk world leaders from the 7 nations in that area into agreeing to the terms set out by the various global businesses who wrote the TPP. He failed. And then Flight 17 was shot down.
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As is altogether too often the case, when the Economic Hitmen fail to achieve a globalist agenda, in come the jackals.
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Is it really so improbable that someone somewhere is trying to deconstruct a certain Malaysian state-owned company in favor of privatizing it? Could this possibly be a warning or a threat to the Malaysian government for not signing on the dotted line?
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Was the AirAsia taken out in retaliation? (By the Malaysian Government???!!!)
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Or, is it all just a big coincidence?
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When you have globalist oligarchs like “Tony” waiting around grinding their teeth, dreaming about all the mammon they can get from another 26 cent investment, you have to wonder about things like this.
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When you have some 800 major corporations and entrenched billionaires thinking about the same thing they can get out of the potential of the world’s largest free-trade zone (think “Nazi work camps” on a global scale), you can stop wondering.
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Back in April of 2014, I wrote about Flight 370 and Obama’s “Pivot to Asia”.
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I still stand by my original conclusion.