THE WAR ON TERROR, as dictated by the United States, is fast becoming one in Malaysia, as it already is in many countries with fealty to Washington. This is adopted to keep the opposition away from politics, but all it has done is to keep it alive. In Indonesia, this is more widespread than is reported in the news reports, that getting prominence only when this affects the government or foreign countries with an axe to grind, usually and not exclusively Australia. In the process, President Susilo Bambang Yudhyono is seen against the war of terror, the fine elements of which are Washington's, or Australia's dictates. Malaysia has gone wholly with the United States on this, because its largest opposition is Islamic, which it wants to say is pro-war on terror, mainly to blame it Islamically, but gets caught in a bind as the National Front's version of Islam – now Islam Hadhari, but that is under the present prime minister, Pak Lah, only; it was not under the former leader – does not cut much ice in the villages.

The Americans, and now the British, accept as their credo that they do not pay bribes, nor ransoms. They find other means to do so. When I was working for the Malay Mail 35 years ago, I asked an Australian business man how much bribe he was prepared to pay. He said on the surface none, since that was paid by his local agent. He said: "Nothing can be got without a bribe, in Australia or South East Asia." When I lived in the United States in 1976, a town council official, who I knew, accepted a bribe in my presence. He said he accepted the bribe not to lower the standards, but so that he would go early than late to the man's residence. That, I suppose, is all right. That is, in the American credo, not corruption. Hmm!

He could have offset this by ensuring that it was his cabinet. But he could not. He had no clear vision, whether it should be his cabinet or whether it should help his teach win the 2007 UMNO elections. He did not make any important appointments, most dropped had wanted to quit anyway or move on to stare politics or retire. What we saw is not musical chairs, for that entails that when the music stops, there post less. It was jobs for the boys, even if they were not on his side. He announced Mr Muhammad Taib, aquitted in Australia because "he did not speak English" – rather strange for a University of Malaysia graduate of the pre-1970s – for having on him RM3 million in various currencies and which he had not declared. Mr Muhammad Taib, a former mentri besar of Selangor, is a warlord who could stop Dato' Khir Toyo so that he would not challenge Pak Lah's son-in-law for the UMNO Youth deputy leadership. But why should Dato' Muhammed's appointment to the Senate announced the same time as the cabinet reshuffle?

At present, one in two MPs are in the federal government – as ministers, deputy ministers and parliametary secretaries. There are about 90 MPs in government. He wants to reduce that. He also wants to sack, it is rumoured, six cabinet ministers, all of whom had gone to Mecca so that they would not be. Even Tun Mahathir Mohamed, lord of all he surveyed, could not prune it, and his cabinet reshuffles in 22 years of office, was consequential. Pak Lah is stopped in his tracks. He is confused. He son-in-law has made it clear that his men must hold cabinet posts. There is already talk that Pak Lah is not his own man. He informed the cabinet yesterday he has signed a treaty with Japan, which gives Japan most favoured nation status and allows that country to import tax free its cars. In return, Malaysia will get tax free status in Japan for fruits they do not want. The United States has been pushing Malaysia to sign this treaty for a while – Tun Mahathir refused, because it was to Malaysia's disadvantage. It now wants Malaysia to support Australia and New Zealand as members of ASEAN. Pak Lah must explain why he only informed, and not discussed with, his cabinet about the agreement with Japan.

This ASEAN Summit agreed to set up the East Asian Summit, proposed earlier by former Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed. But it was more concerned to making Australia and New Zealand as members than North Korea. There is much discussion if Russia would be a member, although it should be because of its Asian land north of China. It showed the United States' fear of China and Russia more than anything else, and afraid that the EAS may make decisions behind their backs. It sees China as a threat, but China has not ever fought behind its boundaries, with eleven countries on its periphery. Its aim is to keep its borders safe from outsiders. The last time it left its borders was in the Yuan dynasty in the 13th century, and it stopped when the Ming dynasty (17th to the 20th century). The ASEAN leaders, reading from the local newspapers, ignored all that, and welcomed Australia and New Zealand into the organisation. The EAS began with a whimper and will linger on with a whimper.

NO INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION SURVIVES if it is not altered to fit the times. Nor would it survive if the promoters are not keen. The latest that will not survive is ASEAN. Nor would the East Asian Summit. Both have lost the reason for being. The EAS has become a talking shop, with all members afraid of China, and to make sure of that, it has admitted Australia and New Zealand as members, but not North Korea. The United States hates North Korea for its independence, and so it is not in the East Asian summit. The 2005 chairman of ASEAN put the knife into the organisation by doing all that a non-member, in this case the United States, wanted discussed. The ASEAN Summit thought that one Myanmarese lady was worth more in ASEAN than 4 million Thai Malays. Neither EAS nor ASEAN can discuss matters of mutual concern without making sure the United States approved. In EAS, Australia and New Zealand are in it to make sure; in ASEAN, this year's chairman is touted as the United States' man. The Wall Street Journal thinks so. ASEAN and EAS has become talking shops, in which nothing of importance will be discussed. They have become organisations more important to the outside world, in which journalists and academics have become more important than the participants. Both ASEAN and EAS are dead, but it will linger on for years, because the countries want it to exist. But no decision they take will be of importance.

THE ASEAN SUMMIT IS OVER. It is held every year now, instead of occasionally as it was agreed in the past. The next one will be in the Philippines. The most important decision it has taken is to fine- tune the East Asian Summit, in which is invited the United States's Sheriff in the region, Australia, and New Zealand, which though has taken an independent stance in the past is always on the side of the West where it matters. ASEAN was once an economic grouping, in which the foreign ministers met annually. It was effective then. Now it is another talking shop, more of interest to the Western academics than its members. It was founded in 1967 in Bangkok to stop Indonesia and Malaysia going to war with each other again. It met annually to discuss common issues. ASEAN was accused then of not pulling its weight, but as more nations became members, it lost its raison d'etre. Indonesia and Malaysia, and therefore Islam, was sideline as the Buddist nations - Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar - joined Thailand to dominate the grouping. It means nothing now. It is more like the European Union now. The presence of 2,000 journalists, and this did not include the 200 that came with the Indian prime minister, Mr Manmohan Singh, and the 300 was in the party of the Japanese prime minister, Mr Junizuro Koizumi, and the academics joined to make this meeting irrelevant.

There is one example from those days. Tun Lim Yew Hock, had been found holed up in a boarding house with an Australian dancer when he was Malaysian high commissioner to Australia. There was much debate in Parliament, and the opposition catigated the government, with the attack led by the then "Mr Opposition", Tan Sri Tan Chee Khoon. Tengku Abdul Rahman was Prime Minister. He allowed the debate to go on for while when he stood up to reply. He said all of the MPs made mistakes and did what Tun Lim did in Australia, and challenged any in the House to stand up who did not do what Tun Lim had done. After a pause, and in pindrop silence, with every MP looking at each other, Dr Tan stood slowly up. No one else did. The Tengku defused the situation by telling Dr Tan that he felt sorry for him. The whole House burst into laughter, and a tense confrontation was defused! This is not possible now.

THE MESS IN IRAQ today would not have happened if the United States had planned before Iraq was invaded. Their plans were of quislings, who were not given positions in the Iraqi government unless they held Western citizenship. In Australia, its citizens could not be in politics if they held dual citizenships. In Iraq, that was a necessity. Iraq had a working government, but that was destroyed for no reason than no planning. No one could be in the new government who held a Baathist Party membership. That restriction threw the experienced Sunnis out of the new Iraq. It was a precipe for disaster. The United States and those who followed it depended on quislings who had an agenda of their own, and who told lies without batting an eyelid. The United States was sucked into a quagmire. The Sunnis created an insurgency, knowing it would not be ruling power, and had no interest in a new Iraq. It got fighters from the Middle East, those who could not go back to their countries after fighting for the United States in Afghanistan against Russia. Osama bin Laden. a wealthy Saudi Arabian who is not allowed back, was, after all, once a CIA agent. So was Saddam Hussein, whose trial makes him a great figure in the Middle East each time the trial fumbles. And it has fumbled more often than not. The United States wants to hang him for what he did as a head of state. All his arguments are waved aside. They created a law that did not exist when he ordered the killing as head of state. The United States had, after all, supported Augustino Pinochet as president of Chile, and turned a blind eye when he allegedly committed the offenses for which he is now found guilty. The killings were done with United States connivance, in Iraq and Chile. The new circumstance in Iraq meant he would have to be killed.

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.

The bird flu is one of nature's mutations. We now know Adam existed, as the Torah, the Bible and the Koran tells us. There is in Pondicherry in India a direct descendant of Adam, and there are descendants in Asia. Adam is said to be mutation from the apes, with the super gene that made the first human. He moved a 100 miles away. As each mutation took place, it moved 100 miles away, and it went all the way to India and Australia through the landmass where the countries and the Pacific Ocean now is was then called Golconda. It took about 400,000 years for Adam's descendants to reach Australia, a journey that now takes us less than a day. The mutations are faster, and we cannot stop them. Nature must take its course. They found this through DNA research. The stories in the Holy Books reflect the human migration and condition, whatever its messages are. The Mahabharata, or the Great War, is hypothised be the rogue archeologist David Thatcher Childress as the battle between the Rishi Kings which saw the world as a natural progression and Atlantis as the nation where facts and the human brain ruled over nature. in that battle some form of nuclear weapons was used. Which was why Dr Robert Openheimer, who was in the Manhattan Project which developed the Atomic Bomb, said after the Atom Bomb was tested in the Nevada Desert, quoted from the Mahabharata, when the sand in the desert turned green as reported in the Mahabharata.

AL-QAEDA SUICIDE BOMBERS ARE blamed for bombing three Amman hotels. Abu Musab Al-Zarkawi, who is believed to be dead, is the agent directly responsible, the television news and talk shows try desperately to inform the world that this bombings are the trade mark of Al-Qaeda. There is great effort to blame Al-Qaeda for the bombing although there is no hard evidence. But the United States and others have decided that Al-Qaeda is responsible. And that gets world wide play. But is it? Jordan is a soft target who could cause mayhem in the West's war on terror. Iraq is to the left of it, Syria to the north, Israel to the East. It need not be Al-Qaeda or the believed dead Al-Zarkawi, it could be any of the myriad of countries and organisations that could be responsibe. It could also be the West, which is why the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which we are told can investigate it, is rushing to Amman to aid the Jordanian authorities. But is the FBI going there as the Australian police authorities are going to Bali to help the Indonesian authorities investigate the bombing in Bali: to remove the evidence of their involvement?

The insurgency is Sunni-based. It gets help from other Sunnis as the United States and Britain widens its arc of support by getting countries to join it. Al Qaeda is involved. Why should it not when Australia and Japan is involved? It gets new recruits as the US and UK gets other countries to join it in this war on terror. The US army targets in Iraq are Sunni centres. Even Tal Afar is Sunni, though the majority in that town is Turkmen. Mosul, in the north and an oil town, is basically in guerilla hands. The insurgency in Iraq also hits at oil pipelines and facilities deliberately, denying the US and the Iraqi government they set up use of oil. In the 1990s, Saddam Hussein (as proxy for the US) fought a war with Ayatollah Khomeini, but each were careful not to destroy the other's oil facilities. The war destroyed only the area where it was fought. Iran and Iraq, as states, could do that. But such an option was not available in Iraq when the US reduced it to a rubble. Iraq is now a fourth world state. The Sunnis now are determined it should be under a regime that is set up by the Americans. The anger is on both sides, and a mutually- agreed-destruction is not possible now. The US has lost the initiative in asking Sunnis not to touch the oil facilities. So, the insurgency has two aims: one, to drive the invader out; or, as now, make it more expensive to him to get out, and two, to make it impossible for the Shia or the Kurd to take his place. The US-led coalition has destroyed Iraq, and dismantled its bureaucracy. The US plans to federalise Iraq makes it another reason for the Sunni insurgency to continue unabated.

The reports are for the leaders. In the West, and the Third World. We have quickly learnt to forget that the Western news organisations are all for President Bush, Prime Minister Blair and, lest we forget, Prime Minister John Howard, to go into Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein once and for all. That UK and Australia are US poodles does not matter; the poodle barks louder than the master. So the chancelleries in the US, UK and Australia found reasons to invade Iraq, and it is the news organisations now that is pointing out that the reasons were false or non-existent, for the news organisations are now being questioned why they supported their political masters then. But Iraq is a nuclear-bombed country, and could be just another Lebanon in its politics. But is the Western news organisations interested? It has the South Asian earthquake, the Liberian elections or the former South African president charged for corruption to bother. That is the problem with the Western news organisations. They are as embedded with authority as their Third World counterparts. They have an agenda, like the Third World news organisations. And they are both owned by the corporate organisations or those friendly with those in power. Who is calling in the kettle black? The Pakistan Prime Minister, Mr Shaukat Aziz. complains in BBC to complain of the coverage of the Pakistani suffering in much the same fashion as President Bush complains of the coverage in Iraq. This is made possible by globalisation, it is true, but globalisation also tells us that governments and people are the same all over the world. The people in authority like to hide that while milking for all it is worth by another aspect of people all over the world, the aspect of giving what they can afford, and of governments and people all over the world who are the same.

The West thinks it can ask Muslim nations, those who support it, to treat Muslims as they have often been treated by these governments. But they forget that these Western nations, like those of old, adopt Islamic methods of punishment. The prisoners at Guantanamo prison and the British ulltra-legal methods are contrary to their legal system, and are adapted from the Islamic brethren. Aft the earlier crusades, from Pope Urban II's in 1089, the Christians learnt from the Moslems, as they have in the latest Crusade as President Bush put it. Though what the Western nations have taken to heart is what they reject. It is Islam's great fault, but now it is the Christian nations' fault as well. No one talks of it, but it is a fact that the Christian nations of the West have taken to heart all the things they criticised in the past. Is the West telling us that education teaches us to be cruel to our fellow men? On the other hand, Muslim nations are blamed for what they do at the West's behalf. I happen to know the background, most of which still confidential, of Malaysia and Indonesia's role in East Timor. It was egged on by the United States, Great Britain and Australia, among others, and the two nations did a creditable job. But the Western nations turned against Malaysia and Indonesia after East Timor had become independent, and it was these countries that were blamed, and discredited. Even by Great Britain, the United States and Australia. We now know why. It was to enable an Australian firm to grab the oil revenues between East Timor and Austria. It was important at that time of Portugal discarding its last two enclaves, Macao and East Timor, of those in Macao, and therefore the Chinese, coming freely to East Timor and going freely into Indonesia. It was the time of the clash between capitalism and communism, and countries were either with the West or with the others. Malaysia and Indonesia acted on the side of the West, and were blamed for being colonialists after the threat was over.

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.

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.

Half the BN state assemblymen did not know what to do with it. Even if they did use it, they could not get the information they wanted from the government departments, which have cleverly turned the cutting edge of technology into a chopping block. Several used it in the only way they knew how: as expensive paperweights. Today, no one talks of the laptop computers. The state does not hand out laptops now. For a good reason. Tan Sri Mohamed Taib found fame by being arrested in Australia with a shopping bag full of cash, about RM2.5 million worth in foreign currency, which he had not declared, nor has he explained why, as a trendsetter in modern technology, he did not believe in the usual high-tech methods of transferring money like bank transfers and drafts and other negotiate currency. He resigned. His successor did not care for it. It is up to the mentri besar of the day to decide how to alter the format of the state government and its priorities. So one is never surprised when the new man comes up with outlandish ideas, the only rationale for it is that it gives a crony a nice line in commissions to provide a useless gadget or embark on a policy that is at best half-baked.

IS THERE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM in Malaysia? Yes. There is no doubt about it. But as in all societies - including the US: try building a mosque or a Hindu temple in the middle of a Christian community; or wear a Muslim headscarf to school in France or at work in a supermarket in Denmark - it is not absolute. It cannot be. The United States, like Malaysia, is fond of lists. They create one for every conceivable occasion and statistic. It is a powerful weapon to browbeat those it believes it can, and use these lists on various issues to shame the governments to believe they are unfit to be in the globalised world of nations it dominates. These lists are at best of doubful truth. The US, in these lists, would be among the top. But we saw what happened to Muslims there after 11 September 2001. The Guantanamo detention camp was for Muslims from the uncivilised world. If the Muslims were from Britain or Australia or other "civilised" nations, different rules apply. But if you from the "uncivilised" Muslim world, like Pakistan, Indonesia, the Middle East, and elsewhere, death is too good for them. Washington is critical of Malaysia's execrable detention laws, but keeps its silence when it enacts tougher laws to punish the Muslims for their temerity to challenge Christian civilisation in this, in President George W. Bush's memorable phrase, crusade.

It now comes to a head. It is the Indians - never mind that they are not MIC members - who now demand answers he would not provide. The MIC does not address the Indian underclass but it is this underclass and their blind obedience to whoever is MIC president that prevents him from lifting them out of it. The danger of an educated underclass is one he does not want to even think about. But he much. The pressure now comes from concerned Indian leaders. It does not matter if they have a political motive. The problems are real. If he wants a longer lease as MIC president, he must announce his plans for the Indian community. He cannot. The self-interest of those around him alone will inhibit that. But he believes he has an escape route well laid out: he has considerable investments in Australia and believes that is where his retirement out to be.

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