A few middle class men and women cannot make the change, but they can bring others in. Mr J.B. Jeyaratnam, a lawyer and former district judge, had that role in Singapore for 40 years, and remains, in his seventies, honest to his belief. His refusal to kow tow to the People Action Party government, taking official harassment and bankruptcy in his stride, has led others to join him the years that followed. What is remarkable is he is Indian in a Chinese society. Chee Soon Juan, a former university lecturer, is the modern, and Chinese, version. He is in the political dog house for his pains. The task is made easier over the years because the government makes policies often without thinking that upset the middle class. This has happened in Thailand, France, Italy, Nepal, countries in Latin America. Cuba would not be what it is if it had not been led by the middle class against the United States.

Modern government, which keeps Parliament as one would a faithful dog, does what it likes, knowing full well that Parliament would come to its aid when it is necessary. It is so in Malaysia and Singapore, but also in Thailand, France, Italy and many other countries. The Western countries, notably the United States, encouraged this isolation of the elected from the electors, so that these governments would be at their beck and call. Today's governments in Third world countries are not independent, for it can rule as it likes but if that legislation falls foul of bilateral or multilateral treaties with other countries, it is to that extent void. It is made worse when all this behind-the-scenes negotiations are kept hidden from the people. The minister for international trade and industry, Datin Rafidah Aziz, does not tells Malaysians she signed with other countries.

Except for Vietnam, the countries in the region has had Indian influence, brought no doubt by early travellers and business men from India. The Sanskrit they brought along has been corrupted to local parlance, but it is Sanskrit nevertheless. Prince Souvanna Phouma is a former Laotian politician, who told me in the 1960s that his name means Swarna Bhumi in Sanskrit. Tengku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia's first prime minister, had thought of naming his country Langkasuka, as the capital of ancient Indian empire was known, but he was dissuadid because the area was now part of Thailand. The cultural links still continue. When a Thai priest in the palace dies, his replacement is from south India, even today. India had many points in its favour But it has spoiled all that in its mad rush to be tops in the region.

In Malaysia, those expelled from Singapore did provide the intellectual framework for much of its policies, although some had occasion to regret what they did. The former prime minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamed, in his eighties and had a heart attack around Christmas last year, is the grandson of a Malayali policeman from Travancore who became head of security to the sultan of Kedah. Many others though came here to earn a living, fought for Indian independence, and returned to serve the Indian government on independence. Among those were N. Raghavan, a lawyer who became India's ambassador to Argentina. Dr N.K. Nair practiced medicine in Penang, fought for Indian independence, married a German, and remained in Malaysia. His son died as a UN representtive in Thailand. But they are a minority in Singapore and Malaysia. In Singapore, they are looked down upon officially. In Malaysia, they are look down upon by the Tamils, who represent the Indians in power. They cannot join the Malaysian Indian Congress, unless they forget Malayalam and adopt Tamil. But in either territory, they cannot be ignored. Once in a blue moon, someone like C.V. Devan Nair would arise to make their presence felt.

ASEAN was founded in 1967 so that Indonesia and Malaysia would not ever go to war. When the new members came in, it was not either of these two countries which were important, but the Buddhist nations – Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar. And so, these two countries did not for it to be relevant. In the meanwhile, a secretariat has been set up in Jakarta, with Malaysian as its first secretary-general and Singapore took up that post as the second. But it is Bangkok which decides whether ASEAN survives or not. It will let it continue, as ASEAN countries are more caught up in internal and bilaterial affairs. It is a fact that Malaysia and Thailand are caught in the problem of Thai Malays, who are ethinically Malays in Malaysia but have Thai citizenship. Malaysians believe that all Malays must be united under its leadership, and conducts its foreign policy to win a march over Parti Sa Islam (PAS), whose control of Kelantan the ruling National Front believes has to do with many Kelantanese having relatives with the Thai Malays.

ASEAN was founded in 1967 to make sure Indonesia and Malaysia never went to war again. I was on holiday from Reuters in Saigon, and had gone to the 'wrong' room in a restaurant in Bangkok where the officials met. There was Mr Thanat Khoman, foreign minister of Thailand, who brought them together; Col. Benjamin Loudevik Murdani, who was then deputy head of Garuda, the Indonesian airways, later became the first diplomatic head for Indonesia in Malaysia, and went on to be a lieutenant general in the Indonesian armed forces; Tan Sri Ghazali Shafie, now Tun, but then secretary-general of the Malaysian foreign ministry. In return for my silence, the three of them told me of these behind-the-scenes talks. Later on, the Indonesian vice- president Adam Malik, who I had known since the early 1960s and who is dead now, filled me in the details. If Indonesia and Malaysia lost control of ASEAN, it would be a dead letter, as now. It was originally the foreign ministers who met, but now it is a meeting of presidents and prime ministers. The Summit should look at South East Asian Regional Conference, which is not allowed to succeed because India, its leading member, plays politics with other members.

THE ASEAN SUMMIT IS OVER. It is held every year now, instead of occasionally as it was agreed in the past. The next one will be in the Philippines. The most important decision it has taken is to fine- tune the East Asian Summit, in which is invited the United States's Sheriff in the region, Australia, and New Zealand, which though has taken an independent stance in the past is always on the side of the West where it matters. ASEAN was once an economic grouping, in which the foreign ministers met annually. It was effective then. Now it is another talking shop, more of interest to the Western academics than its members. It was founded in 1967 in Bangkok to stop Indonesia and Malaysia going to war with each other again. It met annually to discuss common issues. ASEAN was accused then of not pulling its weight, but as more nations became members, it lost its raison d'etre. Indonesia and Malaysia, and therefore Islam, was sideline as the Buddist nations - Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar - joined Thailand to dominate the grouping. It means nothing now. It is more like the European Union now. The presence of 2,000 journalists, and this did not include the 200 that came with the Indian prime minister, Mr Manmohan Singh, and the 300 was in the party of the Japanese prime minister, Mr Junizuro Koizumi, and the academics joined to make this meeting irrelevant.

There is a lot of movement but no effort to sort the problem out. But it is backward nor forward. It can be sorted out, but there is no will to do so. The National Front government goes into rigor mortis when it is faced with a crisis not with Singapore or Thailand. It does not know what to do then. It cannot ask those who know how to solve it, for it knows it will be rejected. People have offered in the past, but they have been repeatedly rejected, so they look askance at any offer from the government. Now when it needs them, they would not go to their help. Instead, more stories of government agencies manhandling have come to light. The government insists it is right when it is wrong. But that would not get Chinese tourists coming here.

The newspapers, all owned by National Front members, has become party newspapers. How they cover the Pengkalen Pasir byelection shows it. Dato' Seri Anwar was listened to rapturously by a crowd of 10,000. But there is hardly any report of that in the mainstream media. It is the internet that carries such news. It is the internet that splashed the story of the nude China woman. The print media did not report it until their reporters could get some one in authority who could rebut it. But that is what party organs do. That is what the mainstream newspapers do. This present crisis will not go away, not so long as the Chinese tourists do not return. But Malaysia should worry about this. There is no rapport between Thai Prime Minister and his Malaysian counterpart, because each took positions on the Thai Muslims and made statements each wished each had not. So, a modus vivendi was reached by getting Tun Mahathir Mohamed, the former prime minister, to meet Mr Thakson Shinawatra. Today, there is calm in the Thai South, but that to do with a Thai editor locking horns with him. But both Malaysia and Thailand is afraid that the Thai Muslims in the south would want independent of either. But Malaysia is used to this: it lost the other oil producing Malay state, Brunei, from joining Malaysia by its own mistakes.

THERE AUSTRALIAN OUTCRY ON Singapore's anticipated hanging of an Australian of Vietnamese origin is expected. There was a similar outcry over Malaysia hanging two Australian Caucasians. There is no difference in the outcry. The Australians have found reasons for the media that the trials were unfair. But they make no such claim when Singaporeans, Malaysians, Thailand, Vietnamese citizens are hanged. Their attitude is they deserved it, and they were not 'our' citizens anyway. There is much wrong in the way death sentences are handed out in these two countries, and many have kept their date with the hangman innocent. So what is special about Western and Australian citizens hanged in Singapore and Malaysia? Nothing, only that these countries are the prostitutes of globalisation and should know their place. They should not upset on the West or Australia by hanging one of their citizens. Malaysia defied that, during Tun Mahathir's term as prime minister, by hanging two Australians and one Englishman. Singapore makes an issue once in a while, jailed an Englishman for breaking Singapore laws, sent an American home when he has sure of being convicted under drug laws and hung. The Australians are not interested if one of their citizens who is not Caucasian, and so he will be hung. As he should be. No country, not even a prostitute of globalisation, should be deterred against carrying out its laws. The death sentences for carrying minute amounts of drugs was put into the law books, in Singapore and Malaysia, at the West's insistence. It is now a problem in these countries, given their unfairness, that death sentences are carried out in secret, and the Malaysians know of it usually only after the fact. It a political issue here so it is kept hidden. In contrast, the Australian leaders are on the defensive that one of its citizens, a model, found with banner drugs in Indonesia, is in fact a Muslim.

The host government dedicate more security than it can afford to these meetings, which include a gathering of Caucasiuan academics which can last up a week. The academics have taken over, and the meetings are seen as occasions for coverage of national leaders. The format of these meetings are built for their convenience. What was discussed at these meetings? We do not know, but we know what our leaders said, for that is all over the papers here. These meetings seem to strengthen the leaders of countries. Before the APEC meeting, Malaysia's Pak Lah visited Bush a few days before APEC. We do not hear of our leaders calling on other leaders in APEC besides the United States and other Western powers. That Pak Lah visited Washington in secret, and his visit sprung on Malaysians after he landed there, gives him an importance he does not have in the world scheme of things. The only things these meetings show up is the intense nationalism, or the lack of it. President Roh of South Korea spoke in Korean in public; in Malaysia, our leaders would have talked in English. Our leaders speak in English so that they would get coverage overseas. Foreign correspondents in South Korea or Thailand have leaders who speak in public in their national language. The US Embassy in Thailand and other countries engage native people to translate what the government leaders tell the people. In Bangkok, the translation of Thai ministerial statements and press conferences is given to correspondents who do not speak Thai and visiting reporters. I used to get translated texts of press conferences by post. But there is no such worry in Malaysia. The vernacular press is ignored. With the result, we at least know what is happening in this country by reading the vernacular press.

The United States gets complete dominance around the world for what it does in Afghanisation. That is because its opponents there do not have the sophistication that the Sunnis have in iraq. It would have helped the United States if it knew history. They do not. When I took history and inernational affairs in Harvard to whence I had gone as a Nieman fellow in Journalism in 1976, most of my friends in Harvard were dismissive of it. My lecturers included Thomas Kanza, a former foreign minister of the Congo. And what I learnt there was not the dry fact that history is often regarded as, but that the countries in Africa, Asia, South America were different from one another, and we must treat each country in its entirety. The Americans tend to treat contintents as if the countries in them do not matter. From that attitude to the war on terror, where Islam is treated as a monolitic religion, when in fact it is not. That is how it got into the mess it has in its foreign policy. An American who understands the world do not agree with his government's attitude towards war on an adjective. To an independent mind, the United States going to war on Islam was a mistake. True Muslim governments support it. But their people do not. The United States as a result has created a divide between the people and their governments. The governments wag the war on terror, as in Thailand and Malaysia, to remain in power. If in relatively peaceful countries, the difference between the people and the government is present, then do we need to talk of countries where there is no government, as in Iraq or Afghanistan?

There is no universal health care in poorer countries. They take life as it comes. If a person should die because of bird flu or other pademics, then so be it. There is the usual sorrow of course, the more so when television cameras are round, but death holds no terrors to these people. It is part of life, as it is not in the developed countries. The governments, barring a few, are not interested in the poor. The more so when they are taken care of, and expensive medicine is given them at a fraction. Corruption is the more the poorer the country. The funds they collect are rarely sent to those who badly need them. Malaysia never admitted that it was struck with tsunami, as Thailand and Indonesia was. But it was, and out of the press because the victims were fishermen and poor people in the north western states of peninsular Malaysia. The aid was given to Indonesia and Thailand and none to Malaysia's victims. But Malaysians gave aid to the fund thinking it was was the local tsunami victims. The aid for the quake victims in Southeast Asian earthquakes was few and far between. Much of the aid there was by private groups.

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 US wants to spread its influence in the Middle East. It gains that influence by talking of, for example, democracy at home and corruption at the target country which can take many forms. It bribed the senior advisers of the Shah of Iran with residences in the US and with money, but when the crunch came, even the Shah was not allowed in the United States. Iran is now an Islamic state, Shi'ite, and one of the countries the Americans want to control. It was the time of the Cold War, and it wanted countries on its side in the Great Battle with the hated Soviet Union. So all this was fair game. And it sang its praises by favourable press notices. The conduit was news organisations, mostly Western but Third World as well. The information war was won by the US because it had the most resources. A continuing gripe in the 1960s of US foreign service officers was the growing influence in the region of Agence France Presse, the French news agency. Now that the Cold War is over, its new enemy is Islam. But it and the West uses Cold War officers to fight the battle, and fall flat. The difference is education. The farmers children in the Third World are educated. Those who were educated in the Soviet Union were derided in the Free World and those educated in the best universities of the Free World were given pride of place. But they got education, and they learned to think. Some found that the United States was superior to the others, while others thought that all foreign imperialisms were a menace to their countries. In the Cold War, there was the cushion for either the United States or the Soviet Union of the Non-Aligned bloc. But post-Cold War, there is no cushion. In the Cold War period, a meeting with the Soviet Union and the United States ambassadors at a neutral country can affect the war in Vietnam. Not now. Not yet. The Muslims all over the world are angry. And the enemy to the West comes from every where not just in the Middle East. So the war in Iraq has its effect in southern Thailand or Mindanao. The governments of Thailand and the Philippines have to take up the cudgels to prevent the Islamic insurgency from boiling over.

News travels fast. Usually distributed by Western networks, newspapers and news agencies. Every time the Third World is able to cope with reporting the news, additional rules are brought in so that only the Western networks, newspapers and agencies can report exclusively. So the Third World agencies, and newspaper reporters do what they do best. When their leaders travel, or when they summarise Western newspaper reports. The newspapers in the Third World often ignore their own news agency reports for the Western news agency reports. The big problem is money. The wherewithal of working like the Western reporters is to have a communication network that is beyond the budget of the Third World agencies and newspapers. So they depend upon the West. And become drugged the extent that even news on their backyard is not covered. For Malaysia, its backyard is southern Thailand where there is friction between the Thai authorities and the villagers. I have not seen a report in Malaysian newspapers of what is happening there. They cannot because the Malaysian authorities are playing a dangerous game there. No one is allowed to, or would not, report that in the newspapers, almost all of which are owned or controlled by one or other parties in the National Front, and they owe their loyalty to the head of the National Front, who is also Prime Minister.

The Asian and African power has to fight their way into the Western scheme of things. They find the West acts as a closed shop, and they have to fight their way through. Japan sold its cars around, against the Western car makers, and sold better cars cheaper, until today it is a member of the Western car manufacturers. They begain their effort to be recognised in the 1960s. China fights its way to be accepted as an industialiased nation, as Japan did in the 1960s, but it will win the fight. The West has changed its tactics, and are in China. All the major car manufacturers are in China. But China is an industrial power in its own right. IBM computers will now be made and sold by the Chinese. IBM in the US has increased its profits be having their computers made in Taiwan and in China, and how sold the computer division to the Chinese. China has offered to sell Proton cars at 40 per cent of its manufacturing value, but this was vetoed by the Proton board, all Western oriented, who would rather manufacture it locally or get money for not manufacturing it. But it will soon mean that Malaysia will not have a motor car industry. The Proton car was set up to allow the Malay to be confident with tools and heavy machinery, but it was the bosses who made money out of buying the parts from Malaysian Chinese foundries set up for the purpose. Now these foundries would make spare parts for the European cars. If you are a Western lackey, like Thailand, then you get the immediate benefits of it. Thailand has a motor manufacturing industry of western countries, and makes a good living out of it.

The Malaysian foreign minister, Syed Hamid Albar, has called on Thailand to win over its Muslims. He meant the Malay provinces of southern Thailand, which has remained provinces of Thailand for over a century, as Kelatantan and Trengannu was until 1942 and during the war years part of Japanese empire. It was only after the war that it became part of Malaya. On the west coast, Kedah and Parlis was under Thai suzerainty until it was separated from Thailand in the early 20th century. Tengku Abdul Rahman Putra, born of the Kedah royal family and this nation's first prime minister, was educated in Thailand and his mother was Thai. But Malaysia was after independence in 1957 have blamed the British for allowing the southern Thai Malay provinces to be under the control of Thailand. In 1976, when Thailand abrogated the rule whereby the Malaysians could operate in southern Thailand to prevent the Malayan Communist Party from using the area as a safe haven and Malaysian troops prevented them from coming the border.

THE PRESS COVERAGE of the PAS Muktamar (in effect, its annual general meeting) in Kota Bharu over the weekend was, by Malaysian standards, unexpected. They had gathered there to see PAS leaders fight amongst themselves as the party set its sights into the future. But they went away disappointed. None of that happened. Instead the muktamar let young leaders take over for the fight ahead, a revolution within that only two political parties attempted since the Second World War. When Loi Tek scampered with Malayan Communist Party (MCP) funds in 1947, its cadres chose the 28-year-old Chin Peng to succeed him, and who led the communist insurgency in Malaya and now lives in comfortable retirement in Thailand. The Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM) in the 1990s decided the old must make way for the young, with only the President, Dr Syed Husin Ali, remaining amongst the old guard, and that made it easier for it to merge with Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR).

So why is Glenn Braveheart in Port Klang? It is a naval ship, pure and simple; it was bought from the Singapore Navy. It is used as a naval vessel. The automatic identification signals, which all commercial and private ships, though not military vessels, must at all times switch on, is often off on the Glenn Braveheart. Conspiracy theories abound why it is in Port Klang. Glenn Defence cannot explain why except in unbelievable public relations explanations. That its shareholders include a former CNS and other senior RMN officers, it clearly has a plan different from what it reveals. Is it a local link to the unstated US plan to involve Malaysia as a local node for its global war on terror. Has it to any role in the sharp rise in piracy in the Straits of Malacca? Is it linked to the Thai onslaught on the Thai Muslims in south Thailand? Is this why there is total confusion when news of the ship got frontpage play in the "Utusan Malaysia"?

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