Can we provide some support for Asian Liberals/Progressives?

[ck4829]

It seems as though Far Right Americans have some interest in the political workings of Asian countries.

Jack Abramoff:

Abramoff took on the Northern Mariana Island of Saipan as a client in 1995. Abramoff and his law firm were paid at least $6.7 million by the island's government from 1995 to 2001.

The Northern Marianas is a US commonwealth and thus may apply the "Made in the USA" label to goods manufactured there.

Frank Murkowski, then Republican Senator from Alaska and chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, submitted a bill to extend the protection of U.S. labor and minimum-wage laws to the workers in the U.S. territory of the Northern Marianas.

In testimony before the Senate, it was described that 91 percent of the workforce were immigrants, and were being paid barely half the U.S. minimum hourly wage. Stories also emerged of workers forced to live behind barbed wire in squalid shacks without plumbing. A Department of the Interior report found that "Chinese women were subject to forced abortions and that women and children were subject to forced prostitution in the local sex-tourism industry." While on the trip, at a benefit dinner for Willie Tan of Tan Holdings Corporation, DeLay was quoted as saying:

"When one of my closest and dearest friends, Jack Abramoff, your most able representative in Washington, D.C., invited me to the islands, I wanted to see firsthand the free-market success and the progress and reform you have made."

An undercover investigation by ABCNews captured Willie Tan speaking on a hidden camera about a conversation with DeLay about labor reform laws. According to Tan, " said, 'Willie, if they elect me majority whip, I make the schedule of the Congress, and I'm not going to put it on the schedule.' So Tom told me, 'Forget it, Willie. No chance.'"

Abramoff later arranged an all-expenses paid trip to Saipan for Tom DeLay on New Year's Eve in 1997. Although House ethics rules at the time prohibited House members from accepting such gifts from lobbyists, the trip was funded directly by Saipan and thus was technically allowable. An internal memo from Preston, Gates, and Ellis stated that these sort of trips are "one of the most effective ways to build permanent friends on the Hill."

...

Abramoff's team also represented the government of Malaysia, and worked toward improving Malaysian relations with the United States, particularly with trade relations. Abramoff also reportedly wanted to spread his influence deep into the Muslim world through a front group called the Lexington Group.

Belle Haven Consultants and the Heritage Foundation:

By the end of 2001, Belle Haven had hired ASG for help "promoting and advocating Malaysia's positive investment climate and business opportunities" in connection with a company called PK Baru Energy. A new group called the US-Malaysia Exchange Association also hired ASG for support "enhancing the bilateral relationship between Malaysia and the US." Megat Junid, an associate of then-prime minister Mahathir Mohammed, said in a 2004 interview that he organized Malaysia Exchange after talks with Edwin Feulner.

In 2001, House majority leader Tom DeLay and three other congressmen traveled to Malaysia with their spouses on a trip officially sponsored by Heritage. Heritage senior fellow and former U.S. Senator Malcolm Wallop, who went on the trip, told Time magazine that Belle Haven's financial involvement was more important to the trip than Heritage's. In the following months, more congressmen made their way to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia and senior Malaysian officials began beating a path to Washington, an interchange that climaxed with Mahathir visiting the White House in May 2002, his first state visit in eight years. Though in past years Heritage had been publicly critical of Mahathir, Feulner hosted a dinner reception on that visit to honor the prime minister.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Haven_Consultants

Call it a hunch, but I think we need to help them out.