Finding no avenue to express his concerns and anger, the disenchanted Malay takes refuge in the mosques. Over time, even the official mosques became centres of anti-government discussion. The BN, especially UMNO, ignored it, and lost control of the mosques by default. The Selangor chief minister, Dato' Seri Mohamed Khir Toyo, says in two years, he converted the anti-government congregation in Selangor mosques to its side. He dreams he has. He says this anti-government trend has returned, now that general elections are around the corner. He is wrong. There is more of it now because the fundamental problems that upset the Malay is unresolved. The Anwar affair, for one. The refusal to stand up to the United States when Islam is attacked while happily putting Malaysian students alleged by foreign governments of involvement in religious extremism. Yet when the issue lands at its door, as in Malaysia exporting nuclear technical knowhow to Muslim countries, the issue is fudged, and the company is absolved of all wrongdoing for no reason than it is controlled by a son of the Prime Minister. When it suits Kuala Lumpur, when, for instance, it was not this company but another with no political links, it would have had all the key figures in Kamunting under the Internal Security Act. Look at what happened to Yazid Sufat. He is detained under the ISA for tenuous and obscure links to Arab militants. The US accused him of it. Malaysia detained him, and his two-year extension was recently extended. His links to Islamic militants is as tenuous as Mr Kamaludin to nuclear technology.

WHEN A CENTURY AGO, CHINESE agents seized the rebel leader, Dr Sun Yat-sen, as he walked past the Chinese Legation in Portland Place, London, and held him captive in it, he managed to throw a scribbled plea for help on a scrap of paper out of this third floor prison. A priest picked it up, alerted the newspapers, questions were asked in the House of Commons, and his arrest soon became a cause celebre. The Legation called a press conference to insist Dr Sun is a prisoner and would be tried in China. This raised a political furore. The head of the Legation tetchily replied: "He will get a fair trial in China. First the trial, then the execution." The British Government stepped in. That saved Dr Sun, who went on to overthrow the monarchy a decade later. What the United States want to do with Mr Saddam Hussein is no different from China's over Dr Sun. When the Malaysian Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, demands a free trial for Mr Saddam, he conveniently forgot the injustice to his own Saddam or Sun - his predecessor, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, rotting in jail by the same judicial standards the US wants in Iraq to try Mr Saddam and China for Dr Sun.

HUBRIS BRINGS THE United States, with a little help from the United Kingdom, to its knees in Iraq. It manufactured a crisis, ignored the United Nations, believed it could defy the world, invaded Iraq with little understanding of the country and its culture, sure that it would be welcomed with open arms and flowers from a grateful nation that could not wait to rid the ogre in its midst, Mr Saddam Hussein. It had might on its side and, as the sole superpower, no rivals. When the first salvo was fired, officials in Washington could not believe their good fortune. The mighty Iraqi army disappeared into the Iraqi desert and countryside, the country was firmly under its control, although its optimistic forecasts based on arrogance and belief that no power on earth could stop them from its civilisational mission. It was the Crusades no less. The Christian powers would subdue the Muslim yet again. President Bush, we are told misused the world when discussing the conflict with Muslim nations, but it was far from his mind even now.

AN AUSTRALIAN TV STATION AIRS a documentary which in these days of Washington's war on terror bears little or no relationship to the truth. The United States' sheriff in Asia has to intrude into the region with a blunderbuss, and does not miss a trick to hold Southeast Asia to ransom. So it establishes seigneurial rights in Bali to impose a monument for those who died in a terrorist attack on a Bali night club last year. It would regret this in time to come. When those accused were charged and convicted under an unconstitutional law, about the only people in court to observe the proceedings were Australians, there to ensure that the courts would not do something stupid, like acquitting them for lack of evidence or unconstitutionality. With Indonesia under its belt, the sheriff moves to Malaysia to link it to terror. The SBS TV station aired the sheriff's first salvo on its "Dateline" programme on Wednesday, 22 October 2003, a shoddy piece of work cobbled to help Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, prime minister before this week is out, to destroy his jailed rival and former deputyh prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, but which backfired.

THE TENTH OIC SUMMIT IN Putrajaya (11-18 October 2003) has come and gone. Malaysia as host spared no expense to hold it in surreal surroundings. Twentyone heads of state and government - six monarchs, seven presidents, seven prime minister, one provisional head of government - turned up. But those who mattered - President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Col. Muammar Ghadhafi of Libya, for insance - did not. One unspoken fear of those who attended is if, and how far, they could cross the United States over itgs Middle East policies and still qualify for US aid and protection, and be invited to either or all of the White House, Camp David, or Crawford, Texas. Nothing was done at this conference which could upset the United States, now poised to bring into its orbit ironclad control of several OIC members. When it should have taken a strong stand - the US invasion of Iraq - it quietly acquiesced. By allowing the US-nominated provisional governing council from Iraq to take its seat, it implicitly accepted Washington's right to invade Iraq. The OIC representative in the UN Security Council, Syria, acquiesed with the Anglo-American proposal to bring a mercenary force to keep peace in a country they earlier invaded. Just as in 1991, when another OIC member, Malaysia, voted with an earlier Anglo-American proposal to have the UN invade Iraq. The OIC has given up the ghost in Afghanistan, where another US-installed president is in office and in much the same straits.

It is fear that forces governments to cut the niceties and operate in secret. The destruction of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon brought home to Washington that fortress America is in trouble. Its policies overseas must now cause havoc in the United States. It decided on Islam as the enemy, and built up a case without understanding the problem, with revenge as the raison d'etre. It reacted as a cornered animal, threatening havoc and destruction to all who dared stand up to it. The electricity black out could well be nothing more than a mechanical problem, but the fright in US officialdom was clear enough: very quickly and without any evidence whatsoever, it insisted it is not a terrorist attack.

THERE IS THIS INGRAINED VIEW in the West that the natives of what used to be its colonies cannot be trusted to dispense justice, only it could dispense justice firmly and fairly, the high standards of judicial and legal conduct is only available there, and any judgement in the former colonies, if not to its liking, is ipso facto flawed. So when a Pakistani was executed in the United States, and the Pakistan government and his family objected, that was proof enough of guilt as charged. The television news at the time gave the world the firm belief that the fellow deserved what he got. When it is a Westerner who is condemned in an Eastern court, that sentence is imposed by a court that does not understand the meaning of justice.

Underlying this is this unconscious fear of an international bully which capriciously targets those who do not fit into his blinkered worldview: Iraq, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Myanmar, China, and any country that has cause to annoy its cosy simplistic solutions. For a variety of reasons, countries react in fear to the bully. The United States ambassador in Malaysia is, to all intents and purposes, a proconsul of that bully, issuing threats and warnings in public forums. Dr Mahathir in his 22 years in office have challenged this and so what caused this change of heart?

MALAYSIA IS HOST TO THE SOUTHEAST Asia regional centre for counter-terrorism. It was formed after a panic-stricken United States, after the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre, decided this war on terror is best conducted at source. Since then, the United States, with its ally, the United Kingdom, has gone on a frolic on its own, find terrorists in the most unlikeliest of places, attacked Iraq on a whim and now cannot even provide the justification for it. Last year, the US secretary of state, Gen. Colin Powell, proposed the centre be in Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur accepted, and tried to have one in which the United States has no say in it. That cannot be. However one looks at it, Washington needs a centre in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia is the only Moslem country who would have allowed it. After all, in the government's contested view, Malaysia is a hotbed of Muslim fundamentalist terrorism, of the type Osama bin Laden would gladly recruit.

Three months ago, the UMNO management committee met. Pak Lah, as deputy president normally presidents. But he was on his way to the United States with his wife, who was stricken with cancer. The UMNO vice president, Dato' Seri Najib Tun Razak, presided. It suggested that the UMNO general assembly be postponed until just before Dr Mahathir retired to give him a fitting farewell. The next day, he said it would be held as scheduled - in June. It was a not-so-subtle way to force Dr Mahathir to leave earlier than scheduled. It failed. Any attempt by Pak Lah to be his own is slapped down hard. For the Old Man sees it as every such as deliberate insurrection. It is not, but does it matter. He did what Pak Lah now does. As did Dato' Seri Anwar, Tun Ghafar, Tan Sri Musa. Dato' Seri Anwar succeeded in destroying the Mahathir myth so effectively that another such is unthinkable.

THE OLD MAN WAS IN FINE FORM. He did not disappoint. As always. He let loose his feelings, in this, his penultimate speech at an UMNO General Assembly. The end is in sight. The UMNO president went into it with all hands flailing and warned UMNO and Malaysia of the perfidy of the Anglo-Saxon powers, which he did not identify but any who did not identify them as the United States and the United Kingdom is better off in a lunatic asylum. What a speech it was! He did not mention or refer to his deputy, who takes over from him in four months, by name or title, though he did his nemesis, now confined to his wheelchair in Sungei Buloh prison, offhandedly, and gave few any doubt he would hold office until the day he retires. It put paid to the belief of some of his cronies and aids that without him the country, and they, would suffer irreparable damage. If persuasion and hectoring was not enough, there were the copious tears, when he talked of the future of the UMNO he destroyed.

What G-8, like the United Nations, should have discussed is the war in Iraq, but both would rather concentrate on the minor issues as its reconstruction, not of how one nation ignored the UN and the world to wage war on another for no reason than that it wanted to remake it in its image, and destroy a government that stood on its independence. Because it is the United States and the United Kingdom that invaded Iraq, it must be right even when it is wrong. Washington is upset Indonesia took that as a cue to force a long standing minority, the Acehnese with a centuries-old grievance, into submission. Like the Kashmir problem, the Acehnese problem is now a terrorist problem.

IN THIS COLONIAL WAR the United States fought in Iraq, invading it to rearrange the political map of the Middle East, Washington presumed that only one worldview is accepted: its own. It would not allow any opposition, amongst its citizens or international bodies like the United Nations, not for the weapons of mass destruction it claimed Iraq had, but to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime. The United States has a long history of destroying its clients when they get to act independently of Washington's dictates. And Saddam Hussein was once a client, as Osama bin Laden was, and many a third world dictator it now finds would not continue to dance to its tune.

THE SOVIET UNION TOOK TWO MONTHS TO seize Kabul in Afghanistan on Christmas Day 1979 and a decade to withdraw in ignominy. It ruled by the sword to subdue a proud race only too quick to defend their tribal allegiances and foreign invasions in the best way they knew: by spreading fear into the hearts of the invaders. Aside from the usual ambushes and harrassment in a country well suited for guerilla war, they seized young largely Central Asian recruits of the Soviet invasion force, buggered them and sent them back, with or without their throats slit. One ambassador in Tashkent said this more than military defeats or bombed airports ensured the end. The United States rushed to arm the very people it now fights again, created a rag tag army of Islamic fighters, mostly of Middle Eastern descent which now targets Washington's imperial agenda. This is not unusual: President Saddam Hussein, Colonel Muammar Ghadhafi, Osama bin Laden were all creatures of the CIA, whom Washington used when it served its prupose and discarded when it did not.

This is ignored in the mind-numbing propaganda spewed in round-the-clock television coverage of war by the United States and the United Kingdom to justify the invasion. But it has come unstuck. Why should they overthrow President Saddam Hussein? We do not know. It depends whom you ask, and when. Why the war began is not why it continues. An invasion force whose only major difficulty would be how to refuse the mountains of floral tributes without upsetting the grateful Iraqis who had had enough of a cruel despot who eats boiled babies for breakfast now is caught in a quagire its commanders had once casually dismissed out of their minds. After all, God and Might is on their side. Worse, they believed in their own spin, and believed, more than the Iraqis, of how right they are, only to face hubris.

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