In an interview with malaysiakini (www.malaysiakini.com) yesterday (16 September 2003), he defends his role as an employment agency for Puteri UMNO members. The 'nobility' of this Puteri UMNO request touched his heart, and he decided they must be helped, even if it undermined the integrity of the Election Commission. How can there be integrity when there is no food on the table? So he instructs the EC to offer temporary employment to those Puteri UMNO decides should be employed.

THE MANUFACTURED CRISIS OF A Western news magazine threatening the Malaysian Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, is enough for the New Straits Times and UMNO leaders to be more royal than monarch. The NST says in an editorial (NST, 12 September 2003) this "threat" is "a black day for journalism". It assumes there was one and asks if Business Week should have threatened Dr Mahathir for an interview. It takes the high ground which it does not in its daily coverage and reports, and why an "immaculate reputation for accurate and unbiased information" makes or breaks a magazine. Even if the editorial did not say it, at least it explains why the NST circulation nosedived so disastrously as it has, that when a self-serving newspaper serves as the mouthpiece of the ruling party and ignores the fundamentals of the marketplce, its circulation should skid badly.

Far more serious though were dissension within the Sabah UMNO and Sabah BN ranks. The political structure in Sabah has been so modified that UMNO dominates BN in the state. It now wants a Sabah UMNO man as chief minister as the federal UMNO chief is Prime Minister. This has annoyed all and sundry, including its own allies. Then Sabah UMNO decided it wanted to contest in 36 of the 60 constituencies. the Kadazandusun communities 17 and the Chinese seven. Dato' Musa Aman hopes to continue as chief minister after the election, but the Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) deputy president, Dr Maximus Ongkili, said in Papar on 04 September that he would be the next Chief Minister. "I am almost there," he said. This raises the intriguing question of what happens to Dato' Joseph Pairin Kitingan, the PBS president.

He interferes in its contruction. He wanted the main boulevard, which is said to be modelled after Champs Elysee but it reminds me more of the Raj Path in New Delhi, ready for this year's Merdeka Parade. Petronas did not flinch from its duty. It did all the man wanted, but did not give it time to settle. The result: the elaborate granite and marble work in the centre of the boulevard, on which tanks and other heavy military equipment thundered through in the marchpast to break up the hastily done handiwork. I was there on the night of 01 September, and was shocked at the waste and damage all along the 4km boulevard. It cannot be repaired, it must be relaid. Whatever the celebrations cost, one must add perhaps RM50 million more so the boulevard is restored to it was before the tanks and heavy weapons was driven through it. Clearly the practical use of the boulevard as a marchpast ground was not considered when it was built and rushed through. If it is going to be here every year, the cost to keep it in shape would multiply.

IF ONE MAN ALL BUT DESTROYED UMNO, the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, his putative successor, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, undermined the government's confidence and threatens the National Front's (BN) future, it is a frail, crippled, man in his early 50s, imprisoned in isolate at Sungei Buloh prison. His name is Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. His last salaried position was deputy prime minister. He was sentenced on 14 April 1999, convicted for corruption and sodomy, but he was arrested on 2 September, initially under the Internal Security Act. The courts unusually bent the prison rules to ensure he would not pose a political threat to Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, refused him bail, and insisted the two prison terms of six and nine years be consecutive, not concurrent. During his time in jail, the government all but collapsed as Dr Mahathir and his government rushed hither and thither to contain the political damage Dato' Seri Anwar wrought.

The Malaysian Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, has a well-known aversion for beards. After 11 September 2001, and like President George W. Bush, he sees a terrorist in every Muslim beard, When he addressed a gathering of faculty and staff at the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur, his handlers ensured no one with beards or goattees sat in the front rows. There must be reason for this prejudice and fear. He orchestrates a tirade against bearded terrorists in his midst, Muslim to a man, helped with allegations and unverifiable 'facts' from Singapore and Washington, unverifiable at the best of times and with only assumptions and stray links that may not prove anything.

The world went mad on 11 September, two days ago, in ceremonies marking the wounding of the global superpower, with no attempt to address what caused the brilliant co-ordinated attack on the citadels and symbols of the United States' military, political and economic power. Who caused it is not as important as its impact. It exposed the underbelly of the United States in ways that a year later it cannot come to terms with it. In typical no-nonense fashion, the United States quickly identified the culprit, Osama bin Laden, the fugitive son of the Saudi billionaire, and his ubiquitous Al-Qaida network. But not his grievances: the 'desecration' of Islam's holiest sites by a United States-United Kingdom-led armada; the mind-numbing misery of Palestinians under Israeli occupation; an Iraq breaking down under the weight of US/UK-led sanctions. All that mattered is that Muslims are responsible, and they must be put in their place.

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.

So, his comments on a sole superpower is not meant to be applied at home, especially if it strengthens democracy. Democracy in Malaysia is in chains, hobbled, in restricted residence, like the regime's enemies, obeys only the whip of its master in Malaysia, the National Front, and occasionally bashed up by the police as the jailed former deputy prime minister once was. As the world must pay homage, if it wants to or not, to the United States after an unprecedented challenged to its power last September caused it to go berserk, so the country to BN. Any sustained opposition attempt to wound the BN's underbelly causes a retaliation as serious as President Bush's threat to deploy nuclear weapons against its enemies.

The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, says MAS's RM10 billion debt and its slide into certain bankruptcy is not because of mismanagement and thievery but a victim of the sharp decline in world travel after 11 September. Tan Sri Tajuddin Ramli had bought control of MAS on easy-payment schedules available only for Establishmen cronies, made a mess of it, sold it back to the government for a RM900 million profit. Only after the handover was it known how he broke up the airline such that MAS was responsible for the debts, and he made profits for himself, his family and their companies by providing necessary services for MAS. The Treasury representative on the MAS board raised not a smirk, nor the government its golden share to circumvent this rapacity?

After the September 11 incidents in the US, the worldwide war on terrorism was accepted as a necessity in Singapore. This meant that the US would have more troops and facilities in Singapore than heretofore. And that got the Chinese-educated Singapore upset. Singapore was not about to ask the United STates to leave. And it had to mollify the Chinese-educated. So, when Singapore Malays were implicated in the terrorist plot to attack US installations and the embassy in Singapore, it provided the PAP government with the threat to keep the Chinese-educated in line.

The Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, is horrified at claims that al-Qaeda planned in part the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in Malaysia, a former army captain a key figure. "Malaysia had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks," he insists. That may or may not be. But a statement like this is enough for my old friend (at least, I think he still is!), Dato' Seri Rais Yatim, to shoot himself in the foot. He does this so regularly that I wonder if he has skin left on his feet for another bullet!

I made a mistake in the date for the terrorist bombing of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. It is not 30 September but 11 Sepember.

He did not score political points on the judgement. Nor the events of 11 September either. No one address its frightening impact. It is not as modern myth allows, the collapse of the World Trade Centre in New York and the damage to the Pentagon, but for what they represent: the implied destruction of the world's most powerful economic nation and its superpower war room. It is the classic replay of David with a catapault against the mighty Goliath. The David here of course is Osama bin Laden. Its impact, as in the Bible, reverberated throughout the world, and as they aligned with the Goliath of the modern world intensified their search for the Davids in their bailliwick. Dr Mahathir looks out for David clones among his flock. By running with the hares and hunting with the hounds.

President George W Bush's worldwide crusade against terror is as skewered as Mr Osama bin Laden's call for an Islamic jihad. When Mr Bush narrowed his crusade to one man, Mr Osama, and bombed Afghanistan to force the Taliban government to give him up, he turned it, with unwise remarks and general threats, into an attack on Muslims. Mr Osama called on Muslims the world over to revolt against Washington and its satraps. Afghanistan is but the killing fields that would not end when the bombing does. Mr Osama's death or capture would not contain the forces unleashed when the four airplanes crashed into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and the fields in Pennsylvania on September 11.

The Malaysian government is ecstatic the United States at last heeds its advise that only third-degree methods under the most odious and unconstitutional of laws could fight terror. This is what we are told to explain away Malaysia's closeness to the United States in recent months, especially since September 11.

The Malaysian government is ecstatic the United States at last heeds its advise that only third-degree methods under the most odious and unconstitutional of laws could fight terror. This is what we are told to explain away Malaysia's closeness to the United States in recent months, especially since September 11.

AND SO THE predicted, expected, hoped-for air war over Afghanistan has begun. President Bush had raised the ante since the 11 September attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, demanding that Afghanistan give up the suspected mastermind, Mr Osama bin Laden, in a televised show of force which no self-respecting group could obey. President George Bush, Sr, wanted Iraq to cave in to US demands humiliatingly; he did not, and Iraq was engulfed in the Gulf War in which the United States could not bomb it into submission. Nato, with US support, wanted Serbia to cave in; when she refused, she was bombed. And now Afghanistan.

I wrote this for my Chiaroscuro column in malaysiakini (www.malaysiakini.com) today, 27 September 2001

This I wrote for my Chiaroscuro column in malaysiakini today, 13 September 01. It appeared under a different heading.

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