The British made sure Iraq was kept secular and ruled by the Sunni since l920. It made sure that its prime ministers were Sunni. That was rigorously followed by the leaders who followed. The Americans changed that, and pay the price. The Sunnis – who form a minority in this mosaic of religions – know now they will never get back into power, and destroy what the Americans have not. The oil piplelines are now blown apart. Today, the Americans are on the retreat, do not crow about their 'successes', and are ready to cut and run. It is a failure which has become normal to them: Philippines, Liberia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, Vietnam. The freed slaves of America were sent to form the government in Liberia; their descendant rulers were machine gunned on the beach by a native revolt. Whether Saddam Hussein is found guilty or not does not matter.

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 Malaysian government wants to see the problem of the naked woman resolved as soon as possible. But will it resolve the problem of the wayward policemen? It would not. A band aid over problems that hit the newspapers will not solve those that are hidden. But the police take is as routine to ill-treat those it arrests. That is the belief. Nothing will change that perception in Malaysian minds. And spread by word of mouth until it becomes public. The reports and photographs in the newspapers of members of parliament upset at photographs of the naked woman asked to do the ear squat will not sway the public minds. The earlier pictures in the newspapers is believed to be true, especially as the police is busy finding out who took the MMS videoclips. Malaysian Home Affairs Minister, Dato' Seri Azmi Khalid, will make no difference in going to China to sort out the problem. Pak Lah saw his Chinese counterpart in Busan, South Korea, did not raise it, as he should have. Perhaps he was not told of it. But that is no excuse. It was certainly not over the Malaysian papers then. It is now. But can Dato' Seri Azmi tell the Chinese authories what they do not already know?

IF THERE WAS A CHANCE of Chinese tourists coming to Malaysia, the latest videoclip has made sure they will not. Pak Lah has ordered the Home Affairs Minister, Dato' Seri Azmi Khalid, to tell Chinese authorities that this will not happpen in future. Malaysia does not welcome Asian or African visitors. They are harassed at the immigration counters at the airport, although they have valid visas. If they escape that hurdle, they face harassment from the police. The 70-second videoclip that the MP, Ms Teresa Kok, produced in Parliament yesterday (24 November 2005) has put paid to any official explanation. It is now the perception that the Asian or African tourist will be badly treated, with the women stripped naked and made to do the 'ear squat'. In the light of the video clip, in fact well before yesterday, Malaysians do not believe the government explanations to the contrary. The Pak Lah administration is desperate that it is believed, for it need the Chinese tourist. There has been less than 65 per cent arrivals for the first nine months of this year compared to the last. Malaysia has all the facilties that are half- empty. The Chinese refusal to come to Malaysia is partly responsible. I have a cousin here with a valid work permit, but all he has seen Kuala Lumpur is between his work place and his flat 300 yards away. He dare not go sightseeing, even with others with work permit, because the police would harass him, and take away his money. The foreigner, unless he is Caucasian, will expect a hard time here. Most professional Indians come here en route to the United States or other Western countries. So they keep quiet about the harassment. The Indian government gets involved for political reasons, making a fuss for specific reasons. The Chinese vote with their feet, their Governments supporting them, especially when it has an edge over the foreign government. A visit by Dato' Seri Azmi Khalid would not reverse a trend caused by his underlings. Could not have Pak Lah raise the matter when he saw his Chinese counterpart in Busan, South Korea, during the APEC summit?

THE CHINESE TOURISTS ARE not coming to Malaysia. It has dropped to 49 per cent less, if you compare the statistics with the traffic in the first six months of 2004 and 2005, and to 65 per cent less, if you compare the figures of the first nine months of last year and this. As the tourism minister and his officials plan to go to China and find out why, the result for the decline is in the Malaysian newspapers. The police stripped four Chinese national women, three of them married to Malaysian citizens, after they were arrested for not having papers on them, the mainstream newspapers said. The tourism minister and his team need not go to China now. The people who matter know why. Pak Lah says nice things of China at the APEC summit in Busan, South Korea. But Chinese government will not encourage its citizens to visit Malaysia to be harassed. It is as simple as that. The herd mentality is at work, the Malaysians say, but the effect is 65 per cent tourist traffic in nine months. The Chinese have voted with their feet. The Malaysian government is feeling the pinch. The government officials say that the visitors engage in illegal activities, but they cannot prove the Chinese do. In any case, all tourists should not be targetted for the few guilty ones. But the Chinese can show their citizens are badly treated by government officials. The Malaysian newspapers carried stories of the police stripping women Chinese citizens, three of them married to Malaysians. What is worse is that the chief of police has promised an investigation, and then the policemen punished. But the prime minister has not acted swiftly as he must. In normal circumstances. he should already have removed the OCPD for the district, and the police men put on trial if there is any truth in the claim. He must find out why Chinese tourists do not come here, and take steps to defuse the already explosive situation. He has done nothing so far.

APEC LEADERS MEETING IN Busan, South Korea, discussed, among other subjects, bird flu. Less people die a year of bird flu than a day in the United States of car accident deaths. Indeed, more people die of car accidents around the world, even in APEC, in a day than bird flu in a year; police and military brutality around the world is much serious and prevalent than bird flu, but we do not see APEC, or any regional or international body, discussing it. The world spins on corruption, and it affects us all; yet the matter is not discussed seriously in any international forum. To ensure that corruption will not be brought to court, laws are passed, in every country, to make that more difficult. Bird flu is a laboratory disease that has escaped the coop. As Aids was. The AIDS campaign is over. But how many people have died of AIDS throughout the world in the years we have been warned against it. APEC essentially is a regional body in which the United States, China and Russia is in the same forum. It is their agenda that the rest of APEC accepts. It gives officials a chance to spend public money living it up in foreign countries, even if it was not plain sailing in Busan. Riots and public protests made it inconvenient there, but they were coccooned half-a-mile away in their fortress-like hotels. I have attended many such meetings, and not only APEC, and in countries around the region. But all these international meetings ensure that the divide between the rulers and the ruled at home are wide apart. In a few countries, this is noticed, and the people retaliate.

But the bureaucracy lopped off much of the aid, and only a fraction given to those who suffered the most, and for whom foreigners had given the aid. It seems the aid syndrome, particularly after a tragedy, is to make the governments look good, especially when these governments beg for it. But begging in these circumstances is allowed by the governments, not by its peoples. There are laws in Malaysia against begging, and people do appear in court and go to jail for doing just that, but the government does it all the time. It is excused for doing it. Malaysia looks to the West, as most countries do. But North Korea and Burma has refused. North Korea recently told private aid groups to leave the country if the United States will not rebuild the nuclear plant it is forbidden to build. The United States, of course, will not, so North Korea has ordered the private aid groups out. The few Western reporters talk of unfed childrean and one-track mind of its people. But you can find it in those countries which get aid. India, for instance. These two countries develop at their own pace, and will not listen to advice forced on it. Cuba did that and today has the best health care system in the Americas, the United States included.

But it is peacemeal. As the West would want it. North Korea told the World Food Programme and the NGOs to clear out the country after the US forced North Korea to give up its nuclear programme. North Korea agreed, but asked the US to complete the nuclear programme it had started. The US stalls. And North Korea rejected all food aid. The starving children in North Korea might be true, but it was foisted on the world for a political reason as seen by the US. Today, we do not hear or read anything of the starving children of North Korea. Pyongyang had stopped the US in its tracks. It was justified if it did not use them. The American troops defending South Korea has nuclear weapons in its arsenal. The American troops use depleted uranium bullets in Iraq. The troops in Iraq handling DU bullets are put in quarantine in the US once their term of service in Iraq is over. In Vietnam, Cambodia and Loas, there still live people made incapacitated by DU bombing, just as there are people living in Nagasaki and Hiroshima who escaped the atom bombs dropped by the Americans in 1945, We hear little of Burma in the news. Of the country, not NGOs and others demanding the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. The Burmese junta has outwitted the world. The news we hear about Burma is of changes in the junta, and we are told this creates another split in it. And then there is silence.

The West is angry with Burma and North Korea, for they do not follow the Western dictates of what is good for them. But it is these countries that prepares itself for the years ahead. They do not fit in with the world as the West sees it, but it is preparing itself for the day after the West is defeated. Somewhat like Malaysia on the defensive when Singapore's progress is discussed vis a vis its northern neighbur. But come 2061 or thereabouts, Singapore would form part of not Malaysia but of Johore. The Malay does not pluck the durian but wait for it to fall. I had thought, and one of the reasons for which I was banned from Singapore, that Singapore would take Johore. Not now. The Singaporean belief that Malaysia would not attack the island because of US troops in the island is misplaced. Singapore thinks in months, Malaysia in centuries. This would be a theory, as of my belief in Vietnam in 1966 that North Vietnam would win. It was a theory then but not now!

But it came at the right time. The Western nations led by the United Nations are caught in a bind in Iraq, Iran was refusing to be bamboozled by the Western powers over its nuclear plans, North Korea has caught flatfooted the six-nations that negotiatied an end to the nuclear controversy by insisting that the nuclear power plant it had planned was for peaceful uses, and asked the United States to continue to build it for it. But not after North Korea established the point that the United States was 'playing' politics with it. The people around the World, outside the West, cheered in their hearts for what North Korea has achieved. It has now asked the UN and other agencies to stop feeding its malnourish people, as it believes it is part of the West's plan for North Korea.

President Bush's reign should also be the end of America as a great power. President Bush diverted more money to rebuild the south than it has in iraq, which it first destroyed and now tries to wriggle out of rebuilding it. He, as commander in chief, allowed the US armed forces to use Depleted Uranium bullets in Iraq. The US does not announce in advance that its troops are using DU bullets or its navy ships are using nuclear weapons. But it obviously does. It has withdrawn USaid from those countries who are not prepared to vote against any attempt to bring the US to the International Criminal Court. It has signed an agreement with North Korea not to make nuclear weapons in return for American recognition and aid. All the time, US forces in South Korea carry DU bullets and other weapons of mass destruction. It is reverse side of globalisation. There is an assumption that globalisation should only be good. But the good is only for the Western powevers, as China is finding herself. But Osama bin Laden, who may be dead but is kept alive by the United States, and the Arab Muslim revolt in the Middle East is the reverse of globalisation. The US has got countries around the world to decry the Arab nations and Al-Qaeda and the Arab attack on New York. It is President Bush and the Western countries that now shiver in their pants. President Bush had a great role in this. And for which he will rue in his retirement.

Dr Mahathir defended his stand to criticise Western countries. He told reporters: "As much as they have the right to criticise me, they should give me the right to criticise them...but if you don't want to hear my criticism of them, then you are denying my right." What he says is a truth rarely mentioned because people like Tun Mahathir are rarities and can be picked at random. But education is a wonderful thing. It allows the native to think, and what they think is not the West wants to hear. Today, India and Pakistan are members of the nuclear club, but they fought their way into it, after the two countries made their own nuclear devices. Iran is the next member of the club, to be followed by North Korea. You cannot stop them, but they make them for fear of what the US would do. The US soldier is complainging about depleted uranium they had to handle in Iraq, and get health problems. The New Zealand government two decades ago barred US navy ships from its ports, because it would not say it carried nuclear missiles. That DU bullets are used in Iraq as it was in the Plain of Jars in Vientiane in Laos, who was not part of the war against the Vietminh, and its health problems will be with the people of the area two decades after the DU missiles or bullets are used. North Korea develops its nuclear weapons because it is afraid of the US army just south of the border with South Vietnam uses DU bullets. The US now threaten to use nuclear weapons on any country it suspects of having weapons of mass destruction. But this WMD might not exist, as in Iraq, and not following America's dictates are enough to be pulversed by nuclear weapons.

Besides Iran is not an industrial pushover. According to latest figures, Iran's per capita GDP of US$1,641 is double Indonesia's. Its surplus of $5256m is more than Denmark's or Qatar's. In terms of purchasing power, it is the 22nd largest economy in the world, just behind Turkey but above Poland. The media demonises Iran and it does North Korea. But the US is caught in its own media frenzy. It cannot attack North Korea as it cannot Iran. The surrounding countries may not like the two states, but they use it as a buffer or stalking horse for their own political and nationalistic reasons, none of which has any raison d'etre with Washington's plan for the area. If Washington should attack either, they would be held to a painful military humiliation the likes of which it has not seen. For all that its rhetoric has done is to cause the neighbours to worry about US intentions. The US now wants the countries surrounding North Korea to pressure Pyongyang. It has already lost the initiative there. In the Middle East it has lost the initiative after the mess it created in Iraq.

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. Several in the hall looked long and hard for Malaysia's ranking. It is not there. Look at the data carefully and you would find Jordan ranked 121 and Liberia 123. It is fair to assume Malaysia ranks 122, a dozen places down from the 2004 rankings. This censorship undermined whatever the day was to mean.

There is no international law which can accuse Malaysia or even Pakistan of what it did. The United States continues to strengthen its nuclear weaponry programmes while it threatens others from getting into it. It unilaterally decided the only nuclear powers should be restricted to those who have the technology. No new comers are allowed in after the cut-off date. The racist rationale behind it clear enough: nuclear weapon technology should be confined to the Judae-Christian countries of the West; others should not be. But Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan broke the barrier; several more are on the verge. Israel and South Africa have nuclear weapons, but their role is played down for the two countries are inextricably linked to Washington over it. The others are not. The idea of Muslim countries like Iran and Libya and communist North Korea is frightening enough in Washington, free lance transfer of technology more so.

Let us look at the state of play in South Asia at the turn of the millennium. Washington shifted its support from Islamabad to New Delhi, forcing Pakistan leaders to justify what it was once taken for granted. Afghanistan was firmly in Western hands, the last victory of the Cold War, the Taliban, supported no doubt at Washington's request but which it continued after the war. The rise of the Muslim parties threw Washington's goodwill in Islamabad at risk. The destruction of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in 2001 changed the confrontational world view from the Soviet Union and communism to Islam and Osama bin Laden. But on the basis of what is known, or rather published, it does appear that Dr Khan's activities could not have gone the way it did if it was not approved. The Pakistan armed forces is in control of its nuclear weapons programme. It would not allow a rogue scientist of even national acclaim to do what Dr Khan did. It did not. He was forced to take the blame, but for one who, if the charges against him are true, is guilty of treason is let off with a light slap on his wrist. There is more to it than meets the eye. Dr Khan could not have sold his wares to North Korea without official authority, even if it is for the money it would bring in.

Having found nothing in Iraq, with Washington and London blamed on how they went to war, and Presidential Elections in November, some link had to be found. They focussed on Pakistan. The father of its nuclear bomb programme, a metallurgist named Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, stands accused of having sold nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and, incongruously, North Korea. Incongruous because Dr Khan in a televised confession said his mission was for Muslim nations to acquire a nuclear capability. That North Korea is in this list suggests that he was a small cog in a large wheel. The Pakistan nuclear programme is controlled by its armed forces. Nothing Dr Khan did was as he confessed, a free lance operation to sell state secrets. This programme is so tightly controlled that if Dr Khan was telling the truth, he would have been hung out to dry years ago. But it became useful to have a scape goat while exonerating an important Washington link in this ubiquitous war on terror.

NEPOTISM IS ALIVE AND well in Malaysia. As elsewhere in the world. When Rupert Murdoch considers who should oversee his vast business empire after him, the products of his loins get a head start. So when the Genting Highlands chieftain retires at 85. It is common in the business and financial world. In politics and in the civil service, it is frowned upon but it exists after a fashion. When one has the power to do it, why should one demur? The dynastic succession is now a political ideal as a monarchy or a commercial fact of life. Often this nepotic evidence is indirect, allowing the children of the leader to make hay while daddy (or as is as common, mummy) governs or rules. In several Asian countries, sons succeed fathers. Competence is implicit in several, but not all, of them. In Singapore, its long time Prime Minister and now senior minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, has sons and their wives in important cogs in the republic's wheel; one, Mr Lee Hsien Loong, will be prime minister before this year is out. In North Korea, Kim Chong Il succeed to the presidency when his father, Mr Kim Il Sung died in 1994. In Malaysia it varies. Two cabinet ministers owe their position to their late fathers: the second prime minister, Tun Abdul Razak, and the third, Tun Hussein Onn and their sons, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak and Dato' Hishamuddin Tun Hussein sit in the cabinet. The DAP leader, Mr Lim Kit Siang, grooms his son, Mr Lim Guan Eng, to succeed him. It is considered a "right" to allow the children to make hay while their fathers shine.

Mr Husam thinks this money is not Al-Qaeda funds but the illgotten gains of UMNO bigwigs in search of a golden parachute in foreign countries. He is wrong. Nor is it Al Qaeda money as SBS alleges. The Saudi business man, however rich he is, deals with people he is comfortable with - and would usually prefer a Lebanese or a South Asian. By no stretch of imagination could Dr Adrian Ong, the Malaysian expatriate in Sydney, be mistaken as a South Asian. It is more likely these funds, if it exists, came from Far East sources - possibly from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong,Vietnam, China. Does this matter if the aim is to destroy he who must be destroyed by any means? So the Malaysian end of this elaborate conspiracy saw it an opportunity to put a nail in the political coffin of Dato' Seri Anwar. It was not thought through, and now haunts instead Pak Lah, UMNO and all who wants Dato' Seri Anwar out of their hair.

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