THE EMAILS AND TELEPHONE CALLS I received after I wrote the piece yesterday (3 October 2005) led me thinking about the Bali bombings three years ago. I did not have the guts to write about it then. It remains a theory, as what I wrote yesterday is, but they remain plausible theories. It will be years before they are proved right, by someone looking at the causes of the Bali bombings ...

TUN MAHATHIR GOT IT RIGHT. He did not apportion blame on the Bali bombings to Al Queda or the Jemayah Islamiyah or to other Muslim groups. But the ease with which both these organisations were blamed, and that this has been on the news particularly round-the- clock ever since the bombings last week, and the defensive posture of the Indonesian government followed by the British blaming the Australians for not letting it know of its 'early warning' to Australian revellers in Bali, and the constant berating of those who would listen that Al-Qaeda was involved, suggests something has gone wrong. The Western governments, or its intelligence agencies, are behind it, and keep at it because the people on the ground in Indonesia and elsewhere do not believe the events in Bali last week. The United States (and Australia, among others) created incidents in South Vietnam in the 1960s, blaming it on the Vietcong. There is no unanimity among Western reporters that Al Qaeda was involved, Jason Burke of the Guardian thought that Al Qaeda could not be involved, and the discordant voices in the Western media is matched by the ordinary people around the world, Muslim or otherwise, having doubts on the official story of the Bali bombing.

Datin Seri Rafidah will not resign. Nor would Tan Sri Isa Samad. So, the public attention is on the Customs and Excise Director-General, Tan Sri Halil Mutalib. But he would not resign either ...

President George W. Bush is in second term when tragedy struck in the form of Hurricane Katrina, adding to his problems as America's chief executive. He is in the same boat as President Richard Nixon, who resigned 33 years ago than face the possibility of an impeachment, on August 9, the year he was re-elected. President Bush has gone to war against terror in Iraq, when Hurricane Katrina struck ...

UMNO, or the UMNO Baru today, is not the nationalist political organisation that brought this country independence. UMNO that brought this country independence died in 1987, by court order, and in its place rose UMNO Baru. That UMNO Baru is formed is orchestrated by leaders of the old UMNO who led UMNO Baru. They were still in power, and they ordered the registrar of societies to declare Tengku Abdul Rahman's request for UMNO to be re-registered ...

Tun Mahathir spoke what was happening in the world, but it was not what Western diplomatics, including the EU representatives and the British ambassador, wanted to hear. They walked out. Earlier, the NGOs, which prescribe their narrow points of view on rest of the world but not in their eventual countries of origin, protested Tun Mahathir's human rights record before the event, and most boycotted the event. As they would ...

The war cries from Washington and London does not carry weight these days. The occupation of Iraq is a disaster. British carved Iraq out of the Ottoman Empire, and ruled through its cronies, till from the early 1920s until the then British-lodged Prime Minister, Nurul Said Pasha, had run away in a woman's dress, and was flayed alive by the people. The people in Whitehall did not know their history as to why Iraq was structured the way it has been ...

The Malaysian foreign minister, Syed Hamid Albar, has called on Thailand to win over its Muslims. He meant the Malay provinces of southern Thailand, which has remained provinces of Thailand for over a century, as Kelatantan and Trengannu was until 1942 and during the war years part of Japanese empire. It was only after the war that it became part of Malaya. On the west coast, Kedah and Parlis was under Thai suzerainty until it was separated from Thailand in the early 20th century ...

The minister of international trade and industry and UMNO women's wing president, Datin Serii Rafidah Aziz is the next cabinet minister proven corrupt. The mainstream newspapers and mainstream TV media have confirmed it. Which means it is true. There are other stories of cabinet ministers and others corrupt, but if the alternate media write about it, then the laws of defamation apply, and they are stopped in their tracks ...

The Japanese won us our Merdeka in 1957. They had defeated Russia in 1905, the United States, France, Great Britain, Netherlands between 1939 and 1942. That they were subsequently defeated in 1945 is neither here nor there. For that victory by 1942 showed that the 'white man' did not have any special magic with their race and could be defeated, and slowly the 'white man' gave up his belongings in Asia: From India to Macao just off Hongkong ...

THE ROYAL MALAYSIA POLICE is up in arms about a crime committed. To make sure that it means business, it informs the press. There is only one problem with it: the story is false. But falsity about anything matters little with the press, particularly the New Straits Times. There is before the RMP a slew of police reports – about cabinet ministers and their corruption, with assorted proof – that the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim had filed for which the judge who sentenced him in the sham trial and for which he has since been acquitted by the federal court has now been appointed to that bench – which the RMP takes no notice of ...

THE PRESS COVERAGE of the PAS Muktamar (in effect, its annual general meeting) in Kota Bharu over the weekend was, by Malaysian standards, unexpected. They had gathered there to see PAS leaders fight amongst themselves as the party set its sights into the future. But they went away disappointed. None of that happened ...

THIS IS THE SILLY season in UMNO. Party elections are about to begin. No campaigning is allowed. All candidates must stand on their own standing, which should not, in theory, be added to with open campaigning or issuing of election manifestos and the like. The branches and divisions should select the right leaders without being subjected to old fashioned electioneering ...

WHEN MUSLIMS ARE AT prayer, five times a day, all entertainment at those times – on radio, television, on stage, in night clubs, restaurants and elsewhere – must stop. Men and women at these places must be segregated at all times. The deputy minister in the prime minister's department, Dr Abdullah Mohamed Zin, says the Islamic development department's new rules demands it. It does not matter if they are Muslims or non-Muslims, or if no Muslims are in the audience ...

THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON THE POLICE issues a damning report. The police are corrupt, abusive, high-hand, obsolete, behind the times, stuck in a groove, take the law into their hands. So damning that it recommends 125 possible ways to revamp it to what it should be: as guardians of law and order. It reveals corruption so bad that one police officer admits to assets of RM34 million ...

IT IS POLITICS AS usual. The animosity, even hatred, between Dr Mahathir Mohamed and his protege-turned nemesis, Anwar Ibrahim, is unalloyed. They punch in different directions, often viciously, but however hard they try, they end up punching each other. Each display an arrogance and overconfidence in what they consider their hour of triumph ...

IT WAS THE MOST talked about TV interview in recent times. The SMS's flew fast and furious – I got no less than 20 in 30 minutes on the day to remind me – and a diversionary and irrelevant discussion if Astro would block the interview. No one blocked the BBC "Hard Talk" programme, many rushed home to catch it when it was aired at 07.30 pm on 10 May 2005. But it turned out much ado about nothing ...

AN 18-YEAR-OLD BOY, Ahmad Hafizal Ahmad Fauzi, is the unlikely victim of an elaborate plan to brainwash Malaysian youths to support the National Front (BN) for all time. On May 10, the Kangar magistrate's court fines him RM600 or two weeks jail for missing the mandatory three-month national service training. The DPP demanded an exemplary punishment to warn teenagers of their fate if they defy calls for national service. With a total family income less than RM600 a month, to which he contritbutes a quarter, he could not pay and went to jail ...

UMNO CAN CHOSE TO ignore it at its peril. With or without the National Front (BN) it leads in tow. It does, not with careful thought or plan but in the self-confident belief in its invincibility in which every setback is seen a victory and every attack on it proof of its resilience. It is a path it always took when caught in contradictions of its raison d'etre ...

THIS YEAR'S WORLD PRESS Freedom Day, marked every year on 03 May, in Kuala Lumpur began with a lie. In the official booklet given to those who attended, is the "World Press Freedom" rankings, which Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters without borders) prepare annually. A metaphorical ruler is used to rank press freedom in 167 countries, in which Denmark is annointed as the most free and North Korea the least. But only 166 countries are ranked ...

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