The people are sheep everywhere, in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand. Nepal, France, Italy, Great Britain, America. For a while they can be led by the nose. But in Thailand, France, Italy, America they cannot be now. They forced the governments in their countries into a crisis (in America and Nepal, the government is in a tailspin) and have fallen. The European newspapers do not want to link Italy with Thailand, but what caused Mr Berlusconi to fall is what fell Mr Thaksin Shinawatra. If a business man becomes a politician by using the techniques of the market place, he will be successful for a while, as Mr Berlusconi and Mr Thaksin has found out to their cost. They are kept in good odour with the middle class in their countries with slick public relations. But this became a farce after a while since no body then believed its message.

Why this should be is not difficult to fathom. Its practioners often do not believe in time what they report, as we have found in the United States and, to la certain extent, in Britain. There comes a time when spin does not force people to believe what is said. It is made worse by newspapers being a division of corporate enterprises. In Malaysia, corporate enterprises own mainstream newspapers and some radio and television stations; the government owns the rest. It is the government that lays down what they -- mainstream and official media -- can report. So there is a sameness in their report. The only creativity allowed is in the peripheral news: court reporting, sports news, anything that does not touch on the personal power of the Prime Minister.

He started the khadi movement, which struck at the heart of the textile industry in Manchester and encouraged Indians to wear Indian-spun cloth. He made a symbolic trip to Dondi, at the sea, where he made salt, then a government monopoly. Sir Winston Churchilll refused to give India its independence to the 'half-naked fakir' but his successor, Mr Clement Atlee, did. He had brought the British Empire to its knees. During this time, his friendship with Britain did not waver. India was finally given its independence, and it opted to stay in the British Commonwealth of Nations, and stays in it to this day. Nelson Mandela used Mahatma Gandhi's tactics in South Africa to end the white supremacy there. Like the Mahatma, Mr Mandela spent years in jail for his views but he retained his belief in the South African white who supported the White-Only government.

More than 100 die everyday. It does not matter who killed them. The Americans kill at leisure. The insurgents kill to frighten the Americans, the Iraqis who have sided with them, to get the support of the Iraqis. Others get killed, as they would in any situation like Iraq is in now. And like the Americans, there are several groups among the insurgents who do the killing.The Americans, with Britain and a host of countries arm twisted to send troops, have spent billions of dollars to bring the insurgents to heel. But they have begun to fight with the government they established. The latest American weapons have been tested in Iraq, but it is the insurgents with their car bombs have spread fear into the foreign troops and Iraqis. It is now not what it used to be. The car bomb has been modified with low technical skills and using common every day appliances like doors. It has become a deady weapon, especially the Americans and others fear death by these bombs more than anything else.

The May 13 riots, ostensibly because DAP celebrated their victory at the 1969 polls by taunting the Malays at Kampung Bahru after the opposition had got a tie in the state assembly seats in Selangor and Perak. The UMNO reaction as swift. Apart from the NEP and the policy of Malay Dominance, it separated Kuala Lumpur from Selangor, altered the constituencies that the Malay would always have the majority in the state assemblies. The MCA could win only in mixed or Malay majority. The MIC could win only in Malay majority seats. The Indian voters were spread to other constitutiences so that they could not be a threat. Areas like Brickfields were variously of Damansara, Siputeh, KL Bandar in the thirty five years since. The people in power, having made sure their version is the dominant, blame the Chinese for having started May 13. The DAP may have provided the catalyst, but the riots was the result of a deliberate plan. UMNO had the political power and the Chinese are blamed for it. The May 13 riots was to remove the Tengku and downgrade the non-Malays in government. They lost the policy making powers they had from independence. It was a far cry from signing the MCA and MIC presidents signing with UMNO the independence document with Britain to being a digit of the National Front in power today.

THE FURORE OVER AN ambassador's memoir is creating a scene in London. Sir Christopher Meyers had submitted his draft of DC Confidential, to be vetted, as Sir Jeremy Greenstock's was. Sir Jeremy was head of the British delegation to the UN and took part in the runup to the war in Iraq, and is now in Iraq. It was made clear that Sir Jeremy's account was not what he would write; the book was published with parts removed. But Sir Charles' memoir has hit the ceiling. Not that, apparently, what he said was wrong but that his book contained descriptions of cabinet ministers that would reduce their public view of them. Sir Michael Jay, head of the British foreign service, has taken the unusual stance of telling British ambassadors in a private note that they should not write anything that will damn British policy. The memoir it seems has set back British policy. The British foreign secretary, Mr Jack Straw, has called for Sir Charles' removal as chairman of the Press Protection Council. But his colleagues in the Foreign Office saw nothing wrong with what he wrote. They took bits of Sir Jeremy's book because they said it would damage relations with foreign countries. They did not with Sir Charles' book. Either they have lost, like many in Britain today, confidence in the Labour Government, or they have taken a step further and tie the Labour Government in knots. Even the civil servants could not follow government policies.

It is important for the United States and Britain, especially after its quagmire in Iraq after it believed it would be welcomed with flowers, to win its ubiquitous war on terror. The United States, Britain, Australia would not apportion blame so soon in a police case, but they had already decided guilt of Al-Qaeda or others opposed. In Vietnam in the 1960s, the Vietcong had been blamed for atrocities perpetrated by the United States and its allies. The world believed it at the time, but retired officials have written their memoirs in which they said how these atrocities were done. The war on terror is against Islam, and the United States and its allies decided to make their first strike in Iraq. What happened in Jordan could be part and parcel of the Islamic reaction. We are not sure. Others could be involved. If the United States can act in other countries, so can the Islamic movements. In this case, it need not be Iraqis; it could also be Islamicists around the world who are opposed to the West's condemnation of Islam. Or even citizens of the West who are Muslims.

We are told that UMNO was formed in 1946 to fight for independent. But UMNO was formed on 31 May of that year to fight against the British plan to reduce the Sultans to a digit. Dato' Onn was its first president, and he was clear in his mind why he formed UMNO. It was not independence. He walked out of UMNO in 1952 when it did not agree to his plan to invite the non-Malay into the party, and left it in 1951. He died twelve years later, as an MP but of the Malay nationalist party, Parti Negara. He was not a member of UMNO when he did, and this was the case in two of Malaysia's five prime ministers. He was elected from Trengganu, which is why his son, Tun Hussein Onn's first act as Prime Minister was to go to the state and why he had a preference for the state although like his father he is from Johore. UMNO moved with the times, and changed its goal to independence once Tengku Abdul Rahman because its president in 1951. The party formed the Alliance in 1955 because the British wanted proof that the non-Malay could co-operate with the Malay before it would consider giving independence to UMNO. After Burma left the Commonwealth on independence in 948, the colonial power wanted to make sure that all colonies and protectorates remained friendly after independence. The UMNO-led alliance got its independence because the Emergency (so named for insurance purposes) was hurting. The 1955 talks with Chin Peng was stage managed, and the Chief Minister of Singapore, Mr David Marshall, joined the talks as Britain's man and to make sure the Tengku did not give away more than he could. Malaysia became independent at the time it did because Britain wanted a government in Malaysia that was favourable to it and could take over from it the fight against the communists. It was in a sense a con job. But we are told that the UMNO-led Alliance fought for independence. Nothing could be further from the truth. But UMNO then is not the UMNO today. Dr Mahathir changed it from a nationalist movement to a political party in 1988 so that he could remain in power. The rot in UMNO set in, and continues.

But reporters in the United States (and Great Britain) can act when they know they are fed untruths. They are mad at the deception, and they want to prove to the public that they are independent at a time when they are increasingly not. Gone are the days when rural newspapers are run independently; today, they are part of chains, with even editorials written in corporate offices and sent to all newspapers in the chain. They are worth holding if it makes more money than expected. But the journalists are conversely more agitated when officials feed them lies, as in the United States and Great Britain. Journalists will not have their copy published if it contains their feelings on the matter. In the editorial page, the columns can have their say, but it would mean nothing since the other pages are full of official news, written by reporters who depend on officials for news. And hovering over the journalists are their owners, corporations or, in Malaysia, political parties, to make sure the news is sanitized. I was asked by a politician in a rural state why the newspapers in Malaysia did not report it. The newspapers in Malaysia report only urban events where it mattered to the authority, now even in Sabah and Sarawak. I knew more about events in Kuala Lumpur when I travelled to Sabah and Sarawak.

There is an upsurge of people fighting against authority for violating the law. The government and civil servants realise this for they have taken as their authority 'the people' in setting things right when they are highlighted. When things are done in secret, they go wrong, and those at the helm take matters in their own hands. We see it the world over. President Bush is in trouble over the war in Iraq. He withdrew the nomination of a Supreme Court justice because his own Republicans and the extreme right rebelled. Prime Minister Blair in Britain is in the same boat, over the war in Iraq, and the people are angry. In his watch, the police not only use guns but shoot to kill. He has turned right, and could well face the fate of the first Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay McDonald, the father of Malcolm (and so well versed with Indian independence that when he visited Chennai in the 1920s, he was told by an Indian that he thought his name was an anglicised form of Ramaswamy Macdonald!) The people are on the march against authority, especially when they are asked to pay more so that business men friendly to the government can fatten their bank balaces.

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 GUERILLA WAR IN Iraq is against the the United States by the Iraqi Sunni. Despite what you read in the news and watch on television, it is not going well for the US. The constitution is a sham. The ministers still cannot go out of the Green Zone, the US term for the area that used to be where Saddam Hussein and his men worked and lived. There is much talk of television these days on how the constitution would change life in Iraq. It was passed with a tremendous margin of votes, with only two Sunni provinces voting against. But the principles of constitutional law as seen in the West is not what it is in Iraq. The constitution which was passed in a referendum last Saturday has no effect on Iraq so long as the Iraqi Sunni is opposed to it. An Iraqi Sunni, Saddam Hussein, albeit President of the country which Britain carved out of the Ottoman Empire, goes on trial for what his actions as head of state, during the Islamic fasting month of Radaman. It was a mistake to order the trial during the fasting month of Ramadan but it fell in line with the United States' timetable for the country. He was arrested in 2001 but the defence is not given the full details of the charges against him. There are other charges against him for the United States want to make sure the death sentence is meted out to him one way or the other.

THE MALAYSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER, Dato' Syed Hamid Albar, has told Thailand not to interfere in Malaysia's internal affairs. Why he needed to do so escapes me, when he did not interfere when the Thai prime minister, Mr Thaksin Shinawatra, told Pak Lah off at the United Nations last month (September) about the situation in southern Thailand, in Dato' Syed Hamid's presence, and both did not respond. Why? It is no use playing to the gallery because UMNO general assembly is around the corner. For Malaysia's record in southern Thailand, where Thai Malays are fighting for independence from Thailand for more than a century, is based on the belief that Britain in the early years of the 20th century should have insisted on the Thai Malay provinces be given to the Malay peninsula. Malaysia has interfered in south Thailand from the early days of independence. I spoke to the PULO representative in the prime minister's department more than 30 years ago. (PULO is the fighting arm of the Thai Malays in southern Thailand.) Malaysia has internationalised the conflict by bringing in the Muslim nations, and brought in the global war on terror that the United States launched. Mr Thaksin has added the pressure recently and so has PULO. Southern Thailand in the East is not safe for the Malaysian. Recently, southern Thai separatists killed a Thai monk, one of several in recent months, and a friend whose mother is from southern Thailand was trapped for months when he went to visit his relatives across the border. It is unsafe to visit southern Thailand by crossing the Golok River In Kelantan state. This is a stream most of the year, and one can wade across into southern Thailand. It has now become a conflict also between Buddhists and Muslims, a religious war in what has been a territorial dispute.

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.

PRESIDENT JALAL TALABANI HAS left the "security" of the Green Zone for the "security" of London. He wanted to tell the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, of his government's plan for the referendum on October 15. But neither he nor members of his government has visited the people of Iraq of what the referendum brings. It is too unsafe. He and his ministers have not ventured out of the Green Zone for fear of being killed by the people. In President Talabani's terms, those people who are against the referendum and those who create mayhem in Iraq are terrorists, and should be eradicated, preferably by the United States or Britain or by the other countries who are part of the US-established multi-lateral force. But the insurgency would not last if locals do not support it, as President Talabani should know by now. First the country is invaded, then the election is set so that the elected are kept isolated in the Green Zone, and those elected ask those who put them in power to remain. President Talabani was "thankful" in London for the multinational effort in Iraq. He blamed Iraqis for protesting against the US-led invasion, as "Saddam Hussein as a bad man". But the United States dealt with the "bad man" for nearly 30 years, had made him a prime CIA source, like Osama bin Laden, and then turned against him, because he did not agree with Washington's plans for the region. President Talabani now faces Saddam Hussein in this attempt to turn Iraq into a US colony. The British tried it earlier, turning the Kurdish, Sunni and Shia provinces of the Ottoman Empre, and called it Iraq after the first world war. They knew their Middle Eastern history, and made sure the Sunnis, who formed 20 per cent of Iraq, as the rulers. They formed Iraq to defeat the French colonial power, who took Syria earlier, and established a Shia president there although he was from a minority Shia sect, the Aluwaites. Nearly 80 per cent of Syrians are Sunnis. The Prime Minister of Iraq, dressed in a woman's dress and flayed alive in Baghdad in 1958 was a Sunni Muslim. The governments that followed is Sunni, of which the latest is Saddam Hussein, which the Americans, like a bull in a China shop, erased, and brought about the present civil war.

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.

THIS IS THE INFORMATION war. Lance Price, who has published a book of his role in lying to journalists in Great Britain under Tony Blair, said he routinely lied to journalists and the press on Tony Blair and his government. Those of the journalists who knew them as lies were immediately dubbed "conspiracy theorists", as I was for my piece yesterday (04 October 2005). It is conspiracy theory in 1965 to say that Ho Chi Minh and the Vietcong would win. But not ten years later. But journalists take the line of least resistance, and write what they are told. John Kenneth Galbraith summed it well years ago: "The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking." We are not allowed to question what we are told. The United States do not want us to think too deeply on Iraq. It was Gen. Tommy Franks who told us that the United States do not 'do body counts'. But it is the United States which does so, to tell the world it is winning the war in Iraq and the war on Islamic terror. But it forgets one very important facet of life among the insurgents: they do not like their country to be invaded, they will do anything to drive out the invader at much cost, they will get foreigners to support it as the United States will only after armtwisting. It tells us, daily, of how it is winning the war, and it cannot tell that without telling us of how many insurgents they have killed, how many Iraqis they have misplaced, how many cities they have displaced. They spin the story around, and we lap it unquestioningly, that the United States is winning the war in Iraq. And the only way it can tell the world that 'good' news is by telling us how many Iraqis, insurgents and locals, they have displaced or killed.

The war in Iraq has brought Al Qaeda into the country, and all Muslim fighters, most are from the ground, into the country. These people do not read newspapers, listen to pontificating statements on television or read 'think' pieces in the main newspapers in the West. And they do not accept Islam to be what they say it should be. In Arabia, Sunni Islam rules. In Iraq, it does not. The United States invaded Iraq and disbanded the Sunni Muslim from their posts in the government, allegedly for being a Baathist. But the Sunni rule in Iraq was ensured by the British, in a race with France for colonial hegomony in the Middle East. They ruled Iraq for 30 years, and lost out when its Sunni prime minister, dressed in a woman's dress, complete with the hijab, was flayed alive by the crowd in Baghdad when he was caught out. The subsequent rulers were Sunni, of which Saddam Hussein was the latest. In thumbing for Shia religious rule, Britain was dismantling its own creation, and turned, with American help, into a mess. Saddam Hussein was hated in the Middle East, but the ineptitude of the West in Iraq has allowed Saddam to be a Sunni martyr. He knows he will be hanged. But he will be hanged a martyr in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Iraq has become an ungovernable country, with the West, particularly the United States, making mistakes that will prove Samuel Huntington's thesis of a clash of civilisations,

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. Malaysia got its independence in 1957 after Britain was forced by the Communist Party of Malaya, which had forced the British hands into giving power to an Oxbridge elite, who could be manipulated from behind the scenes, who declared its independence in 1957. That elite continues to run the country, though the leadership is not Oxbridge educated. But the unpalatable fact is that it was the Japanese who by defeating the five European powers set in motion the string of countries that became independent in the 50 years since the Second World War.

When he interviewed Jomo Kenyatta, after his release from prison in the 1960s and unpopular in Britain, on the origins of the Mau Mau movement in Kenya, he noted at one point in the interview that the Mau Mau rebellion was led by uneducated tribesman. "I would not know," he replied softly, "I have a Ph.D from London University, Tom Mboya graduated from an American university ..." and as he listed the educational pedigrees of the other Mau Mau leaders, the camera shifted to Mr Freeman reeling in shock at the response to his question. It was a moment to be savoured. Mr Kenyatta went to be President of Kenya. There was none such in the Hard Talk interview with Anwar Ibrahim.

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