In Thailand, the prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, was stopped in his tracks months after his return to power. The middle class, especially in Bangkok, went against him, and he went. The king played a conciliatory role, who decided in the end Thaksin should go. So it was in Italy, where the former prime minister Berlusconi, to remain in power, altered the rules so that the middle class who went overseas could vote, but who in the end turned him out. This has split Italy down the middle, but it showed the power of the middle class more than anything else. In the United States, President Bush is in trouble because the middle class in up in arms over government policies, of which Iraq though the most important is one of many. He faces difficulty in Iraq because the Iraqi middle class, bar those who joined the Americans for personal gain and power, are against the American occupation. Washington has finally realised that Iraq cannot be won, and amenable to bringing in others with more clout in the Middle East for talks on the future of the country.

The 9MP is praised sky high by spinmeisters but it does not mean what it proposes. It is to help the Western countries to rape and plunder from Malaysia. Instead of pursuing an independent course of action, it takes as its own, the American view of the world and Malaysia. If Malaysians suffer, so be it.

SADDAM HUSSEIN'S TRIAL IS an example of victor's justice: First the trial, then the execution. That he will die is certain. But Iraq would be even more volatile either way. But putting to trial former leaders for what they have to do as leaders – that of Saddam Hussein is one, of Slobodan Milosevic another – would redound on US and European leaders once the worm turns, as it will. The United States realises this, and have offering aid in return for not clamouring for Americans to be tried in an international court. The publicity surrounding the trial of defeated leaders is deafening, giving the impression they do not have a case. But they do. And present it effectively. The Milosevic trial at the Hague was seen by Serbs as a punishment for not following Western dictates. His death, and burial in his country estate in Serbia, was a national event in his country, and the Western agenda over what was Yugoslavia is in shambles.

It is money that makes the world go around. No where is this clear publicly than in the United States, and now Iraq. It is so in other parts of the world, but the world is told it is more important in these two countries. The publicity surrounding the release of Jill Caroll, a Christian Science Monitor reporter, from a Iraqi group, was a piece of good news for the United States in an otherwise bleak Iraq. Both the US government and the Christian Science Monitor was emphatic that no ranson was paid. We are told to believe it, when we know any problem they have is solved by money. Journalists, especially American, are prime candidates for kidnap in Iraq, as it is in Afghanistan, even Pakistan. This is why they stay in their hotel rooms in Iraq, or in the so-called Green Zone, where the US and its allies are coccooned in apparent safety. To show that Iraq is in control, people like the US secretary of state Condileeza Rice and British foreign secretary Jack Straw visit Iraq often to show that all is well.

We live in an age of public relations. What the spin meisters say is more important than what is. This is true for Malaysia as it is for the United States. What happened is not important, what the spin meister says is. The United States went to war in Iraq on a lie. But the world is told by the United States the lies do not matter, what was important is that Saddam is gone. In the runup to destroying Iraq, the United States let out that if Iraq continued to be ruled by Saddam it was a disaster for the United States. But is the United States more in more danger after Iraq had been destroyed? American proxies are now in power in Baghdad, those who govern cannot leave the former Saddam administrative centre, the so-called Green Zone, without being armed to the teeth, they do not travel to the countryside, except rarely but only if they watch their step.

PRESIDENT BUSH WAS CROWING two years ago that Iraq is a democracy, that it is a far better place that when Saddam Hussein, who is now facing trial for his life, was in charge. But US destroyed the framework, made enemies of the Baathist Party, opened the country to be run by Shia, made sure that the Sunnis would never have a place in the government. The civil war is fuelled by the Sunnis, Iraqi nationalists (both Sunni and Shia), the youngsters who see no future in an Iraq under American control. President Bush has had to eat every one of US optimistic statements. Sure, there are foreigners amongst these insurgents, but so has the Americans. The world hears only one side of the story, the insurgents are not allowed, but the appears on Arab television stations, even if they do not report the more horrendous American atrocities, is had enough. In less than two years, the Americans have made themselves unpopular not only in Iraq, but elsewhere in the Middle East and Iran. But they want a foothold in the Middle East at any cost. Would they get it?

It is today a test of wills. Washington's inopportune attack on Iraq for reasons other than stated was aimed at a military presence in the Middle East. Its military presence in Lebanon was ended 25 years ago with a car bomb and 241 US Marine deaths. It wants to set up one in Qatar to keep an eye, it is said, on Al-Jazeera. It does not trust Saudi Arabia any more, wants to put the Saudi royal family out of business. But it has touched more than it chew in Iraq. It put Saddam Hussein on trial for crimes he is alleged to have committed when President 25 years ago. It has been stressed time and time again that his trial is not vendetta, that the rule of law will prevaile all of Iraq. But the trial is in shambles. What happened in Halabja is not as interesting as what happens in court. It is an impartial tribunal, so the Americans claim, but it chief judge, a Kurd, cannot stand the heat, his successor is found to be a Baathist, and his successor is from Halabja. Whatever happens to the trial, Saddam Hussein has won. He has already written himself into Iraq, and Middle Eastern, history as a Sunni martyr.

The MMS clip showed that the police is doing the right thing, that what happenedd in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is normal in Malaysia, that the police here do routinely what the American military does to it prisoners in Iraq. The American military has justified stripping suspects it arrested, and the Malaysian police has justified its standing orders to humiliate anyone in its hands. The members of parliament are surprised and shocked when shown the MMS videoclip in Parliament house two days ago. They are angry, because the MMS videoclip makes them responsible, and responsibility is not what they were elected for. They say what they do not mean, and stay away from the one issue that caused it. But they cannot this time. No body talks of the Malay dominance - ketuanan Melayu - that caused it. It allows the government and civil servant to ignore the procedures if they carry out this hidden political role. It is this role that allows the police officer to do as he liked. He knows full well that he would be protected. The cabinet can only advise a policeman not to sue a non-Malay student for a complaint against him to the relevant authority. The policeman can do as he likes, and his superior, unless he is a non-Malay, is not punished. When that is the norm, then telling a woman to strip and do the ear squat will not be punished. No amount of soothing talk to the contrary will change that.

THERE AUSTRALIAN OUTCRY ON Singapore's anticipated hanging of an Australian of Vietnamese origin is expected. There was a similar outcry over Malaysia hanging two Australian Caucasians. There is no difference in the outcry. The Australians have found reasons for the media that the trials were unfair. But they make no such claim when Singaporeans, Malaysians, Thailand, Vietnamese citizens are hanged. Their attitude is they deserved it, and they were not 'our' citizens anyway. There is much wrong in the way death sentences are handed out in these two countries, and many have kept their date with the hangman innocent. So what is special about Western and Australian citizens hanged in Singapore and Malaysia? Nothing, only that these countries are the prostitutes of globalisation and should know their place. They should not upset on the West or Australia by hanging one of their citizens. Malaysia defied that, during Tun Mahathir's term as prime minister, by hanging two Australians and one Englishman. Singapore makes an issue once in a while, jailed an Englishman for breaking Singapore laws, sent an American home when he has sure of being convicted under drug laws and hung. The Australians are not interested if one of their citizens who is not Caucasian, and so he will be hung. As he should be. No country, not even a prostitute of globalisation, should be deterred against carrying out its laws. The death sentences for carrying minute amounts of drugs was put into the law books, in Singapore and Malaysia, at the West's insistence. It is now a problem in these countries, given their unfairness, that death sentences are carried out in secret, and the Malaysians know of it usually only after the fact. It a political issue here so it is kept hidden. In contrast, the Australian leaders are on the defensive that one of its citizens, a model, found with banner drugs in Indonesia, is in fact a Muslim.

Most people while believing in rationality would delve in the irrational. People are always afraid of the dark. The Western mind is very logical and dismiss the fears people have. But they delve in the supernatural and supranatural. In the West, where rationality is supposed to reign, the people do go in for charms. I know of may in the West who dismiss the supernatural but wear charms and the like. They take the attude of the late Malcolm Muggeridge, who was asked on BBC why after a life time of atheism he had embraced Roman Catholicism. "What if I am wrong," he replied. We do not know the afterlife. But the rationalist is defensive when he delves into the supernatural. No so the Asian, African or even the South African. The further you move from the land, the stronger the rationalist becomes. That is why even in the United States, the rationalist and the "modernity" of life is challenged by those who believe in charms and the like. In modern day life, it is considered backward if you do not accept the West's belief. So, to be modern, countries in Asia, Africa and even South American take Western trappings. But in their every day life, they take on the traditional beliefs which are often apposite to it.

THE RIOTS IN FRANCE, of which there is much in television these days, has paralysed not just France and the Western world. I have yet to hear the argument that Muslim youths rioted as digits of the global war on terror against Islam. It may not be, and it could be just the reasons the French have so far given. But one cannot escape from the reason that is not stated. France did send troops to Iraq after the American invasion, as did many other countries, including Germany, to help the coalition forces. The Muslims score a victory in France. It tells the world that any country which helps the coalition forces and have a Muslim population can expect a retaliation. The Muslim youths throughout France had committed havoc in two weeks of rioting. The French government, like the British, have taken harsh measures against them. But will it stop the rioting? When the Muslim youths find it convenient to add the anti-Islam attitude to their list of grievances? The rest of Europe had better watch out. The European Union's rejection of Turkey is a hot potato but wrong for two reasons. One it should not have considered Turkey for membership. The European Union is a Christian grouping. It should have remained so. Turkey has applied for membership of the EU for domestic reasons. It should not have.

The officials are throttled to say nothing about the murders and mayhem, and they would keep quiet in their retirement unless they become activists themselves, as David Kay, the former chief of the WMD in Iraq has done. The television, the media, the government information services is Western inspired, so we get the public relations version of what happens in Iraq. There is little of what happens in the country. Al Jazeera does report what happens in the street, and the mayhem caused by American invasion. But every effort is made to silence Al Jazeera. He who has the information wins the war. But if both sides have the information, they energise their supporters and the divide is wider than ever. We are told after the Amman attacks that most of the 78 per cent Sunnis in Jordan spit at the perpetrators of the American hotels. But those who died are those who wanted to be there. That means well off Arabs, who live in a world of their own and are seen important if they deal with the West. The bulk of Jordan, to these people, are irrelevant. King Abdullah of Jordan is more popular in the West than in his country. So what he says is ignored. The poor people, in the majority, have supported the Baathist Party in Iraq and President Saddam Hussein. They did not change overnight because he is arrested, and his country invaded, by a foreign nation. The United States have gone into war with terror, and terror here means the Muslim world. But it does not understand what the term means, and finding itself in difficulties, gets into dividing the religious and racial factions. It is not between two Iraqi factions, but it is between Sunnis and Shias or between the Iraqi Sunni and the Turkomen, who is Sunni more often than not. But will we hear in memoirs written by those who are there? We might get a sanitized version of what happened there, but little else.

AL QAEDA has said it is responsible for the bomb attacks on three American-owned hotels in Jordon. The Americans call this group Al Qaeda in Iraq. If you listen or read what they have to say or write, they do not tell you the most important fact: that as the war on terror on Muslims is worldwide, the response is too. They ignore this, and suggest the Jordanian Arabs were the ones most affected. But 100,000 Iraqis have died in American bombing. There is no word of that now except that they deserved it. The US Senate has passed a resolution that the American legal system should not be available to those sent to Guantanamo prison from countries in the Third World. The Americans have latched on to Al Qaeda's statement that they are responsible. They are playing an information game as the Americans are. They have found a new organisation called "Al Qaeda in Iraq" and its leaders responsible and therefore gulty. The war on terror against Muslims requires less standards of proof of guilt than murder, for instance. But this is a fight unto death, with both sides having access to the same methods. If the Americans can attack a defenceless country headed by a CIA agent, after months of telling the world a pack of lies, the reaction is equally swift. When it justifies the invasion of Iraq also as a war on terror, and alientate the Sunnis, in power since the British put them in power more than 80 years ago, the reaction was swift. Iraq is in a civil war. It would never be a country again, with handouts from the United States to keep it going, and unsafe for any who supports it. The Sunnis have waged a civil war since they were removed in a fit of anger. They don't want to return. Their aim is to destroy. Four or five Iraqi Sunni organisations supporting the elections next month is neither here nor there. But the Americans and their cohorts in Iraq and elsewhere look upon every Sunni move in their favour as evidence of grasping any floating in the sea. The bombing of the three hotels in Jordan is a direct response to the invasion of Iraq. The hotels would not be bombed if Iraq was not invaded.

BRUTAL DICTATORS IN IRAQ are not new. The British was one in iraq. So were the Sunni leaders that followed. Iraq had no free elections since the 1920s. And it showed during the recent referendum. The Americans, and its sidekick, the United Nations, are happy that all went well. As Saddam Hussein would have crowed in his day. The Iraqi know which way the bread is buttered, and voted accordingly. So it is not surprising that the Americans recorded, so they said, more than 90 per cent of the votes in many Shia and Kurd provinces. The Sunnis, having lost power, were expected to vote against. But the Americans added difficulties at the last minute. One would have required two thirds of a province to vote "no". The people did not know the details of the constitution they were voting for. The ministers did not go to the ground in a country which CNN had a think tanker in Washington say is better than during Saddam Hussein and and security improving day by day. But the Americans are caught in a Catch-22 situation: The Sunni and the Iraqi nationalist, who include Shias, Kurds, Turkomen and others, have vowed to make it difficult for the latest dictator in Iraq to succeed. The Sunnis know they will never rule Iraq again, and they will make it difficult for others to rule. Their task is made easier by the invader dismantling what existed in government and not putting its own in force. Now it is too late. Iraq is in the throes of a civil war. The invading force, the United States, will have its troops in Iraq for decades for it will be worse after they leave. Iraq is now a fourth world state, with anarcy and no government. You would not hear it in the newspapers.

A BAD PEACE IS EVEN WORSE THAN WAR, said Tacitus, about the Roman conquest of Britain. He also quoted the British chieftain Calgacus tell his troops about Rome's insatiable desire for conquest and plunder and to 'savage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; they make a devastation, and call it peace." He wrote this 2,000 years ago but it refers to the United States as well, now. Mr Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary and one of those who hurtled into the war in Iraq without an exit plan, said the United States was more powerful than Rome. The United States behaved now as the Romans then. And like the Romans, the United States are left wondering where they went wrong. It is perhaps trite to suggest now that you do not go to war with an adjective, but that is what the war on terror is all about. The United States did not want to sound racist, so the war against Muslims quickly became the war on terror. It invaded Iraq because of oil. It is a Muslim nation, so the adjective made sense in Washington. Its reasons at invading Iraq has proven false. There were no weapons of mass destruction, and Iraq had no nuclear plan. That it had both was why it officially invaded the country. It displaced the Sunnis and Baath party members from power, and put Saddam Hussein on trial. It had no plans other than ensure that the Sunnis and the Baathist Party did not rule. But in deciding that, it made sure that Iraq was not a oil producing state anymore, but a fourth world state which was like Vietnam in the 1960s. It war on terror made sure that all Sunnis world wide were targetted. In the Middle East, the Sunni sect of Islam dominated, and the Arab street was with the Iraqi, who did not like his country to be ruled by an invader, which the United States is. The coalition it has cobbled is a smokescreen, to make other countries join it in this war on terror. It went on an information war to regard those supported the Iraqis as foreign insurgents, as if they are not foreigners. The referendum on the American-drafted constitution may yet pass, but the insurgency would not end.

THE PEOPLE CAN BE LED like sheep. The politician knows it, the political party knows it, the people know it. People who welcomed Saddam Hussein and voted him into power, now spit at him. Why? Because they think they have a new dictator to rule them. The CNN and BBC know this only too well when they rouse the people to spit at Saddam by going back to the alleged atrocities he had done as head of state. It is victor's justice that is being parlayed in Iraq today. No amount of whitewash, in television and newspaper reports can wash this away. Saddam is a victor if he is not hanged, and a martyr if he is. He is brought to court after he is overthrown, but it took more than three years after his arrest, and it could not the chargers against him and his compatriats until just before the trial. But the point is not that. It is that the American-led Iraqis can lead the Iraqi people as surely as Saddam Hussein. How else could it have led the people to throw scorn on a man they revered before the invasion. The people voted the constitution of Iraq in for the same reason they would have voted a referendum on a bill by Saddam Hussein. In some constitutiencies, the vote was 99 per cent, a vote that would have gladdened Saddam Hussein. It is power that mattered. Who had it ruled the people.

THE PEOPLE OF IRAQ vote in a referendum tomorrow (October 15), not knowing what they are voting for. The United States and Britain has given their blessings. But the president and cabinet ministers, secure (so they think) in the Green Zone and not daring to go out, even to the airport, for fear of assassination or ambush, discuss the constituition as if it is the US or Italian or Malaysian. The people do not know what it is about for no politician has discussed it with him. Not even in Baghdad. The referendum tomorrow has no relevance for the future of Iraq. It is surreal, the referendum is conducted to American home requirements, and will produce nothing. The moral will still remains with the Iraqi, who is fed up with seeing his own country invaded by foreigners. The Americans made the biggest mistake of all in refusing the Sunni any role. The constituiton was drawn up by the Shias and the Kurds. Iraq did not have a written constitution. But so does Great Britain. The Sunnis boycotted the election. Sundry Sunni groups are co-opted to write the constituiton, but these groups represent only themselves, if at all. The US is now trying to get Sunni groups not to boycott it. There is no or little coverage of the referendum the past two weeks. Even the invaders know that if the referendum is lost, they cannot withdraw their troops on their own timetable. If the referendum is won, then it is a hard slog to the next target, which is the elections early next year. The Sunnis, who are excluded from drafting the constition, are not likely to take part in it. The invading force, which is what the Americans and all its allies are, is stuck in a quagmire, much like in Vietnam forty years ago but worse. The Sunni Muslim is the dominant religion in the Arab lands. Saddam Hussein, once the CIA's great asset, has now become the Arab's, Iraqi Sunnis and Iraq's hero. He is on trial next week, but here again the invading force made a mistake. He is put on trial during the Ramadan fasting month, again to the American schedule. He has won the victory, whether he is hanged or not. Every miscalculation on him and the Sunnis are to the advantage of both Sunnis and Iraqis.

THE TELEVISION NETWORKS AND newspapers are all about the South Asian earthquake, a disaster engineered by nature. There is little talk now of the man-made disaster in Iraq. When it is all over, the man-made disasters will have killed more people than nature's. As it would be in Iraq and Afghanistan than in Pakistan. Those who are glued to television, as many Malaysians are these days, are shocked at the paucity of services in an emergency. But they say not a word about Iraq, where more people are dead or worse off than in South Asia, and the bombs have reduced to rubble what used to be pastiche of an European city in a way no natural disaster has. Imagine what would happen to Kuala Lumpur should it be reduced to rubble, either by nature or by man. The South Asian earthquake, the tragedy at New Orleons, the Guatemala earthquake show that if man continues to test nature, then the forces of nature would demand a catastrophic price. Man-made wars, as in Iraq, is to reduce potentially growing nations into rubble. The reasons may be justified, but the end result is the same. It is a question of power. Do we expect BBC or CNN to cover the ordinary people in Iraq who are made homeless, or cannot get a modicum of medical treatment? No, we don't. We expect either or both networks to show the power of the countries they represent. So it is Fallujah reduced to rubble, and no mention is made of the people made homeless in that town. We do not hear of the people forced to leave the town while CNN or BBC reports of another attack on the attacked town. But human beings are the same the world over. The refugee from Fallujah is no different from New Orleons or Balkot. The attention given to the South Asian earthquake and news elsewhere, particularly 'democratic' developments elsewhere, is due to difficulties the Americans face in Iraq over the referendum this weekend (October 15).

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. Historians, and journalists, looking for what happened miss the causes, often lie. They look at the dominant event, and interview people of their recollection of it, and miss the larger story, which is why it took place. If you read Patrick Keith's book, Ousted, the story of an insider's account of why Singapore was ousted from Malaysia in 1965, you get the impression that it was wholly the Tengku's fault and Mr Lee Kuan Yew was blameless. Much like the Iraq war, where the Americans are blameless and insurgents are guilty of fighting their invader. But the two men represented two different points of view. Singapore would have remained in Malaysia had Mr Lee Kuan Yew behaved then as he behaves now. Patrick Keith, who left Malaysia for Australia forty ears ago, wrote the book, which is pubiished in Singapore and (not yet) released in Malaysia - the Special Branch has not cleared it for distribution) as a senior government official involved in the drama. But Singapore would have left Malaysia in 1965, because Mr Lee did not understand the Tengku, and it was the Tengku who held the cards. And he put in charge of the negotiations those who wanted Singapore to be out of Malaysia. All this remains a theory, although books are coming out by historians and journalists who suggest the Tengku's raison d'ete was correct and Mr Lee's wrong.

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. New Orleons and the southern states are just an excuse, but the anti-war crusade has been buttressed by American incompetence in the south, President Bush has taken the blame, and provides reasons by the day why he should be impeached. He has taken responsibility for all that went wrong with Hurricane Katrine. He will dither with excuses until the mid-term elections next year, and then he would resign or face impeachment. But the Republicans are also asking for answers. Even if the Republicans are in the majority in the House of Representatives (Congress) or the Senate, the possibility of an impeachment is real.

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