It is an academic's search for truth from primary sources but revised, usually to propel a self-fulfilling conclusion, to fit into current thinking to make nonsense of it all. So, if you go by what Malaysia did, and has done, with what are now groups linked by Washington to the Al Qaida network, the Malaysian parties mentioned becomes, ipso facto, terrorist groups. But are they? In the long standing dispute between Malaysia and the Philippines over Sabah, both Manila and Kuala Lumpur encouraged anti-national sentiments and activities in the other's terrority. The Philippines sent armed irregulars into Sabah as Malaysia into Mindanao, where a festering Muslim irredentist movement had kept Manila preoccuped for half-a-century and more. But in today's idiom, what the Philippines did is to protect its territorial integrity; what Malaysia did an act of terror.

It is the declared view of all who matter in this war on terror that what happens anywhere in the world that smacks of Muslim terror must be the handiwork of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaida. Any group in Washington's, and its satrapies', eyes, linked to Al Qaida is ipso facto true. So Singapore has a newly discovered terror network of Al Qaida fanatics who were in it years before it was set up. Malaysia has its Kesatuan Militan Malaysia, many of whose members she once encouraged to study Islam in Pakistan but are now convenient scapegoats. In Indonesia there is Jemaah Islamiah. In the Philippines, the Abu Sayyaf. Last week, A French oil carrier on charter to Petronas was attacked in Yemeni waters. Over the weekend, a powerful carbomb blasted two popular foreign haunts in Kuta, in the Indonesian resort isle of Bali, killing 182 and wounding 300, mostly Australians and other foreigners. No one has claimed responsibility, but Washington and Canberra, and Al Qaida experts, are quick to label it an Al Qaida outrage.

In the end, the Malaysian government is caught in an act of its own making. It cannot be seen to be bending to Washington's dictates to return a Muslim. Not when Malaysia is a year away from hosting the next conference of the Organisation of Islamic states. Nor can she ignore the pressure from Washington that he be handed over posthaste. Nor can Malaysia afford to cane the rector of the IIU and then expect to well regarded by the Muslim countries. Nor can she not, if Dato' Abdullah Ahmad Badawi insists Mr Bilal is here illegally, without Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines not reacting to this selective treatment of illegal immigrants.

So, when President Bush deemed, in effect, all bearded Muslims are terrorists, others jumped on his bandwagon. Singapore finds Muslim groups hellbent on destroying it, and finds these groups involved in wanting to overthrow the governments of Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. It now threatens to destroy the Muslim view inimical to it as surely as it did the Chinese view that challenged its political control and hegemony. No proof is offered. The latest Singapore government missive about the dastardly acts of these fundamentalist Muslim warriors accuse some of those arrested recently to have been members of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network in 1990, when that network was a figment, if at all, of his imagination! Unmentioned is that then Osama bin Laden was a favourite of Washington.

But not only in Afghanistan. Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Central Asia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt. In this war on terror, Washington uses euphemisms to describe Islam as an enemy. It has taken on a world wide campaign to put the Muslim in his place, all because it believes those responsible for the carnage on 11 September 2001 were Muslim terrorists. Washington takes the easy way out to decide who it must target. But it is selective. It attacked Afghanistan because a Saudi national from its base in that country orchestrated the 11 September attacks. But Saudi Arabia, whose citizens figure prominently in Washington's list of undesirables, is not touched. And hides in a coccoon when a Rand Corporation researcher cites Saudi Arabia as a prime terrorist state.

Now that UMNO now accuses the EC of foul play -- for what they accuse PAS of doing could not have been possible if the EC did not allow it -- it is proof that Malaysian elections lurches to what is the norm in the Philippines: elections there is fair because each party has an equal right to cheat. It is also proof in Malaysia -- granted that the UMNO charges against PAS has some basis -- that the BN's electoral skullduggery can be sustained only so long as it is kept within BN. But it is not. Which is why there is this sudden show of support that the Federal Court has shown some independence in acting as it did. It does not let the Federal Court off the hook for its past, but it at least shows it must follow the public will once in a while, even at the cost of alienating the government. The judiciary is not about to revel in its new found independence. But it would act, in a judicious mix of fair play and intransigience, for it knows which side its bread is buttered. Its decision on the Reformasi Five is one of its better pronouncements. It does not mean a new epoch is upon us.

The NST comment mentions what Malaysia does to make the foreign worker hospitable. This is impressive, but all that is wiped out with the first caning of an illegal. When the Philippines and Indonesia ordered warships to Malaysia to take away the illegal workers who could not return home in time, she is defensive. Malaysia is within her right to take what action she needs to safeguard her interest. No one questions it. But when she acts capriciously, as now, to create a panic and anger in foreign chancelleries, or when UMNO Youth, an adjunct of the BN coalition, burns the US flag in front of the US embassy to protest an act that that has nothing to do with bilateral ties but over Israel's treatment of Palestinians? This blatant interference in the affairs of another country is more serious than the gut reaction in another for actions against that.

MALAYSIA'S INTEMPERATE decision to cane and jail those illegal workers who did not leave the country by 31 July turns into a fiasco. With one fell stroke, she quarrels with her immediate neighbours, insisting she is right which none should object. But when domestic policy is enforced without thought to relations with foreign countries, especially when their citizens are involved, its repercussions would cause more than diplomatic fury. This has happened. Southeast Asian countries are horrified not so much as the caning as the speed with which the new rules came into force, without negotiations and forcing the illegals to rush out to escape the punishment. Indonesia and the Philippines sent warships to rescue their citizens from certain caning. When this policy is defended in injured anger at suggestions of foreign interference in domestic matters, it spills over into domestic reaction in those countries which affect Malaysians. Indonesians now target Malaysians for abuse and manhandling. So widespread is this that the Malaysian foreign minister, Dato' Seri Syed Hamid Albar, asks Malaysians not to visit Indonesia.

Sometimes they believe in their own hype. Not realising, as the Berjaya Group chairman, Tan Sri Vincent Tan would tell you of his gambling venture in Chinese, the killing of the magnitude Genting Berhad makes in its casinos in the Genting Highlands is a pipe dream; he must wish he did not venture into China. In all else, whether it is the Lion Group's venture into housing in China or Renong Berhad's venture into steel making in the Philippines, or the Berjaya Group's venture into timber in South America, or indeed, the YTL Group's ventures in Africa, they fail.

Some like President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh failed spectacularly to imprint their self-importance, only to impoverish, and divide, the countries they led. Fewer rose above self to be national icons: Mahatma Gandhi in India, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Sukarno in Indonesia, Mao Zedong in China, Chiang Kai Shek in Taiwan. Two succeeded spectacularly in imposing their personal foibles on the nations they led, only to discover that that was not enough, and the nation needed another direction which they could not re-engineer: Singapore, Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia's Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed. But they succeeded only to fail.

But those who espouse this war on terror use it to contain secessionist pressures within its borders that has nothing to do with terror: Britain, with its cancerous sore of the IRA; Russia and Chechnya; India and Kashmir; the US and al-Qaeda; Israel and Palestine; China and Tibet; the Philippines and Mindanao, to name a few.

What makes it all frightening is his governance of the country, party and all else by auto pilot while he travels to distant climes at the drop of a hat. He makes it a point to leave the country at least once a month that wags claim he is the most travelled head of government of all time. He is not in the country to provide the leadership and everything dissembles as cabinet ministers prepare for party elections or to jump ship at the appropriate time. When institutions break down, and the government cannot answer for it, it arrogantly restricts debate, assuming that that would resolve the problem. It does not matter which institution one talks off, it is flawed. In politics, in government, in business. You name it. It is broken. Is anyone interested in repairing them? If there is, they are not anyone in BN or the government. When the reality of it strikes home, he could spawn anti-government confrontations that would make People's Power in the Philippines look like a garden party.

The California Public Employees Retirement System (Calpers) withdraws its investment funds from Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand for reasons as varied as poor human rights record and money. Malaysia decided it damns her, though she would not spell it out, for the travails of that unheard, unseen man forcibly whiling away his time in a lonely cell in Sungei Buloh Prison. Now, Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam, the retired civil servant and corporate worthy, in a letter to the New Straits Times today (04 March 2002), insists US investors should not dabble in politics, and fears other countries could follow the US lead and skew the international financial structure. He does not say how, but says Calpers investment strategy would make nonsense of the long-term interests of the US and of "free and fair international trade and finance".

So, military intelligence was involved in this. Buying arms from Latin America and Africa and flown to Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Mindanao. Many army officers were involved in this, many retired early to continue with it. The Philippines government accused one director of military intelligence of involving in the Mindanao imbroglio. To make Malaysia more acceptable to the Middle East, Arabs and Muslims from Africa could come into the country with few checks, and had carte blance to do as they pleased. It made very easy for plotters like those who crashed jets into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington to gather here. One head of military intelligence, now retired, is said to orchestrate the arms shipments, and remains a special adviser in the government after retirement.

In Malaysia, Renong and its linked conglomerate, United Engineers Malaysia (UEM), were given government privatisation projects without due diligence, and the two companies, who could have made billions out of it, ended up in unrepayable debt and bankrupt. Every project it was given ends is in debt or bankruptcy. The government rescues every one, retires the debts and hands the companies back to those who caused it to fail. Tan Sri Halim Saad took a personal loan in Hong Kong for US$800 million to buy the now bankrupt National Steel Mill in the Philippines admist negotiations in which he was involved for a Malaysian company to buy for it less than half. The venture collapsed. But the Malaysian government takes over that private debt for what turns out a scam. There is no uproar, even the opposition kept quiet.

Moscow is annoyed with Kuala Lumpur's continuing and active support for the Chechen rebels. Malaysia has over the years backed numerous Muslim separatist groups, helped actively the Muslim Mindanao rebels fighting for their home state from the Philippines. All of this is not officially revealed, and come to light when Malaysian cabinet ministers and UMNO officials reveal them to score points or to make themself more important than they are. His on-the-tun policy on terrorism gets too complicated even for him, and he now faces pressure from all sides. His most pressing concern though is the Malaysian hand in the 11 September attacks.

But the Prime Minister's world view is not believed by his flock. This does not mean that he cries wolf yet again. Far from it. What he says could well be true, and this Islamic revolutionaries pose a fundamental threat to one's way of life, as we were once told the Communists did. Why is it then that most people who do not, like sheep, accept the official explanation and ask embarrassing questions? One is if Nur Misuari is as dangerous an Islamic fundamentalist rebel to the Philippines as Ustadz Nik Aziz Nit Mat's son is to Dr Mahathir, why is one treated with kid gloves and the other with the mailed fist? Has it to do with the unpalatable fact that in the current definition of terrorism, Malaysia supported a terrorist group as it indeed it did when it backed for decades the Misuari plan for Muslim Mindanao to secede from the Philippines?

Would there be another magazine to replace it? Highly unlikely. The cost is prohibitive. Those who try want one to highlight the views of a leader. The idea of an independent journal without an axe to grind is so alien to these financiers as in Wall Street that one can write it off altogether. Which country in Asia outside of Japan, the Indian subcontinent, the Philippines have magazines that survive without the patronage of whoever is in power? That tells it all.

Neither Kuala Lumpur nor Manila thought through what after Mr Nur Misuari's arrest. Both acted within the larger context of the war against terror, to which they are reluctantly conjoined, and where Mr Misuari was at the time of his arrest, though he used one of the special routes Malaysia had set up for the Mindanao rebels to ferry to and fro Sabah, could well have been pinpointed by US aerial surveillance. The gungho statements in the two capitals suggest this. Both dissemble at what to do with him. The Philippines, therefore, must keep her distance from him, as Malaysia, with its newly entrenched Islamic credentials and its long history in backing him.

There is money, lots of it, to be made in this modern slave trade. The son of a former cabinet minister is a multimillionaire in his twenties by controlling the import of workers through the employment agencies his father threw his way. He drives around in cars that each cost more than a Malaysian earned in a life of back-breaking toil. The workers came from Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. The list changed with the official mood, and the scams involved were many. One ambassador tried with any seriousness to curtail this trade in his countrymen, but he left before he could: the powers ranged against him, in Malaysia and in Bangladesh, were too strong for him to overcome. The rules are changed so often that corruption is endemic. Only the government insists it is corruption-free, but it is the name of the game in every sphere in which the government is involved. But with each change in the regulations opens yet another avenue for corruption.

Pak Lah (1364)   United States (636)   Straits Times (412)   Samy Vellu (224)   Putra Jaya (200)   Chief Justice (200)   Saddam Hussein (188)   Vincent Tan (164)   Civil Service (154)   Parti KeADILan (148)   Islamic State (118)   Johore Bahru (100)   Sungei Buloh (94)   Bukit Tinggi (88)   Abdul Razak (80)   Pengkalen Pasir (68)   Ting Pek (64)   Armed Forces (59)   Soviet Union (58)

Malay Dominance (58)   Yong Teck (56)   Hong Kong (56)   Human Rights (56)   Syed Hamid (54)   Puteri UMNO (52)   Islam Hadhari (52)   Royal Commission (51)   Hussein Onn (51)   Rafidah Aziz (48)   Indian Congress (48)   Open House (44)   Vision Schools (44)   Shah Alam (44)   Malay Unity (42)   Chua Jui (42)   Abdul Taib (42)   Ampang Jaya (36)   Ras Adiba (36)

Osama Bin Laden (36)   Nik Aziz Nik (20)   Ling Liong Sik (18)   Lee Kuan Yew (18)

High Court Judge (14)   Wan Azizah Wan (9)   Lim Kit Siang (9)   Megat Junid Megat (8)

Mahathir (2960)

Anwar (2399)