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| 2002-10-17 | The Bali bombing: The world held to ransom A few nights ago, at a diplomatic reception, three European
diplomats were livid I would suggest, as I did in an earlier
piece, there might be more to the Bali bombings than meets the
eye, that it could be a cynical Washington attempt to get both
Indonesia and Australia on firmly on its side in this egregious
war on terror. They focussed their complaint on the carnage, and
how could I dare say Washington would do it. I said there is
still doubt about the fourth plane that crashed in the
Pennyslyvania fields was deliberately shot down as its target was
the White House. In statecraft, such cynical moves are not only
common but necessary. Just look at President Bush's demand that
President Saddam Hussein be overthrown. When self-interest is
all that matters, what is a few hundred, or even a thousand,
lives lost? In Vietnam, it was nearer 60,000. Those involved in
that do not shed a tear as the families of the dead. Many still
think what they did was right.
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| 2002-10-08 | Of Beards And Terrorism: Making allies of prejudice and fear When the enormity of that struck him, various seemingly
intellectual opinions are proferred to suggest that those who
bombed the Pentagon and World Trade Centre are irresponsibe and
bad Muslims; while those who do not indulge in such acts of
terror are responsible and good. At the time, in the immediate
aftermath of 11 September, President Saddam Hussein was a good
Muslim. The alleged ringleader is no where to be seen. So he
targets President Saddam, not for his role in the attacks, if
indeed there was one, but for holding on to the stock of
biological and other weapons Washington, in happier times, had
allowed him to buy and accumulate. It is another sign how
frightened and unsettled the Leader of the Free World is. But
there is a link: both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are
Muslims.
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| 2002-09-13 | The madness of 11 September For what the 11 September 2001 attacks tell us is how
vulnerable the United States is. It sets an agenda that it
expects the world to follow; yet when it wants to invade Iraq,
it cannot get its allies to follow it. It brooks no challenge to
its worldview, and its arrogance, which President Bush showed in
the United States when he warned the UN if it did not approve an
attack on Iraq, Washington and London would go forth
nevertheless. Saner voices are ignored. Even the Arab League is
opposed to any British-American military adventure in Iraq. But
arms are twisted. Jordan, Kuwait, even Saudi Arabia would be
enjoined in this, whether its leaders want to or not. If it
means that some Arab leaders would lose their thrones or office,
it does not seem to matter in Washington so long as President
Saddam Hussein is out. The war on terror has shifted from Osama
bin Laden and his Al-Qaida network to President Saddam and Iraq.
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| 2002-09-01 | Did a knighthood prevent Dato' Onn from being Prime Minister?
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| 2002-03-30 | The Oracle speaks: No racial discrimination in schools!
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| 2002-02-14 | What is the Islamic Supreme Council of North America?
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| 2002-01-13 | Byelection kicks off with the usual defections
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| 2001-12-05 | For Afghanistan and US, the quagmire begins anew The US wields the big stick, assumes as the British Raj and
the Soviet Union before her, she would succeed as they did not.
The high technology of war gives her a tremendous advantage over
London and Moscow in their heyday, and makes her tasks simpler.
But this presumes an Afghanistan willing to be ordered, and
bandied, about. This reliance on high tech warfare comes with
it, as in the US, a reluctance to take casualties. What brought
the US down in Vietnam was the unacceptable casualties. With high
technology, the war must be over before the casualties mount.
As the Gulf War showed, this decides nothing. President Saddam Hussein is still in power ten years after he was pulverised from
the air. The intiial "success" in Afghanistan now leads
President Bush to consider expanding the war into Iraq.
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| 2001-10-21 | Chiaroscuro: Bombing into a quagmire It faces the same conundrum it faced in Iraq: if you destroy
Saddam Hussein, could the new rulers hold Iraq together and be an
American satrap in the Middle East? Obviously, they could not,
and so Saddam Hussein was left alone.
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| 2001-10-10 | The Fundamentalist Fanatics Gird For A Crusade In Afghanistan Terrorists do not go for set piece battles, nor offer
themselves to be bombed as President Saddam Hussein in 1991.
So, the aerial bombardment we see over Afghanistan, not a party
to the conflict except that it harbours the man whom Washington
wants for the New York and Washington attacks. It creates as
much mayhem and confusion in Afghanistan now as it did in the
United States on 11 September 2001. Dropping food at night after
the bombing raids does not assuage the loss of dear ones of those
who live in Afghanistan, although somehow that is seen as less
important than the loss of American lives.
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| 2001-09-19 | The Colonialism Of The Mind Every CNN, CNBC and other TV news programmes on Astro
targetted Osman Bin Laden. There was no doubt in my mind -- as
there was none in 1991 in Washington's demonising of its former
ally, President Saddam Hussein -- the US is ready to strike him
down, Rambo-like, at his lair in the mountains of Afghanistan.
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| 2001-09-13 | Chiaroscuro: President Bush's Dilemma After The TerroristAttack How President Bush reacts to the Pentagon and World Trade Centre
terrorist attacks is how President Saddam Hussein did when the
president's father, George Bush, Sr. attacked Iraq ten years
earlier. Then it was the United States which gloated and the
Arabs cried. But it was tit for tat. Now it is the other way
around.
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| 2001-08-23 | The Only Good Indian, So It Seems, Is A Dead Indian
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| 2001-03-05 | The Bamiyan Buddhas And The Taliban The world is in shock. The global condemning misses
the geopolitical rationale. When the bombing of Iraq
reduced its historical past to rubble, it was justified to
bring to heel a dictator it once backed. Islam's holiest
shrines escaped the bombing, so what happened there was all
but ignored. The need to condemn President Saddam Hussein
was more important than the loss of its historical past.
But more heritage sites were destroyed in Iraq than in
Afghanistan. Somehow, destruction from the air is
excusable, but not if with cannons and dynamite.
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| 2001-01-18 | Remembering Tun Abdul Razak -- 25 Years Later
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| 2000-09-26 | Lee San Choon And The Rewriting Of History
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| 2000-09-03 | What Happened In Malacca Town On 1 September?
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| 2000-09-01 | Merdeka And The Rewriting Of History
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| 1999-11-03 | English College Johore Bahru: Rewriting History
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| 1999-04-28 | The Best Laid Plans of Men and Mice
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