Which is why chancelleries in Asia are not keen about it. However you look at it, it would be seen as China's attempt to build a loyal following amongst Asian states as it girds its loins to keep the United States at bay. Whether it can or not is not the issue. It could. And the reservations come to the fore.

The Taliban was helped to power in part by the Western World's challenge to the Soviet occupation of that country. The West, particularly the United States, armed the only challenge that could oust the Soviet Union -- the Islamic heirarchy, and helped foment a rebellion, which succeeded. Every revolution swallows its leaders, and the Islam revolution in Afghanistan was no exception. And the Taliban, what started as an army of students, eventually took power.

The cost of branded drugs rise so frequently that, like the road tolls, they are beyond the reach of most Malaysians. Common everyday drugs like pain killers are far too expensive. Cardiprin, a specially-concocted aspirin to thin the blook, which I take, cost about RM9 for 28 here, but I get them from Australia through a friend and there is costs about A$7 for 100 tables. Aspirin, which is what Cardiprin is, is easily available in the United States for a few dollars for a bottle of 500. The cost of one branded multivitamin tablet cost the equivalent of 14 sen in India and RM1.50 here. Price gouging is common in most pharmacies, though they justify it by rising prices.

Three countries in Asia stand out in any geopolitical consideration: China, India and Japan. While China flexes its military muscles and Japan its economic sinews, India lies dormant "like a lumbering giant kept in its pen by the barks of a determined foe". India, he believes, moves as now because of the growing power of China not just in Southeast Asia but in the world. If India comes into the region as a satrap of the United States, as many in the region are wont to believe, it could not establish the geopolitical presence in the region it should.

When Tengku Abdul Rahman formed his first cabinet, the two contenders for deputy prime minister (and deputy president of UMNO) were Tun Razak and Tun Ismail bin Dato' Abdul Rahman. Tun Razak won; Tun Ismail went on to be first Malaysian ambassador to the United States, and stayed out until the Malaya became Malaysia, but left a few years later and did not return until the May 13 riots, when he was appointed home minister by the Tengku.

The United States tries too hard to have Malaysians interested in American studies. Too many Malaysians go this way. It assures more than the occasional junket to discuss arcane topics of interest in unheard-of locations in the United States. But its relevance in Malaysia is all but nil. When we do not care much for the history of our own country, what good does studying American history do? I would have thought the most important task is to have a clear mind and think independently, but all the American specialists of Malaysia get out of all this is a decidedly pro-American worldview, not by coming to that conclusion by study but by imbibing the worldview extant. I am amused by serious Malaysian academics fall head over heels to specialise in American studies. But they came in useful to provide non-American content at the Hilton Hotel.

Malaysia's one-sided unrequited love affair with the United States is that of a young girl from the wrong side of the tracks smitten with the handsome heir of a billionaire, violently possessive when he smiles at her rival. He is, in her mind, Adonis, in love with her as completely as she for him. And reacts like an amok when he does not. So, the Star's Dato' V.K. Chin, in his daily comment, is sure US-Malaysia ties must worsen should the vice president be President Al Gore on Tuesday. The deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, is livid that US congressmen ditched the Prime Minister for his rival, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. Hell hath no fury than a woman scorned. This is the gist of Malaysia's problems with the United States. Acts of ommission and commission are brought to justify it.

When the Prime Minister, in the mid-1980s, engaged a well-known United States spin doctor, whose clients included the late Indian prime ministers, Mrs Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv, the former Pakistan prime minister, Mrs Benazir Bhutto, prominent politicians, business men and others, not even one Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim breathed a word. The Prime Minister had had a bad press overseas, which had to be reversed. The Malaysian government hired a spin doctor to lobby that its its palm oil was safe to consume. Did it because it was true or the the product was unsafe? Why then is it treasonable, as we are told it is, for the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, to have his own spin doctor? This in turns makes the Prime Minister and his cabinet look silly in forums overseas. The Prime Minister, not Malaysia, now has a bad press.

He lounges in his favourite chair, slips a tape into his audiocasette recorder, connects its speakers to his ears, catches up with the world. The "books" are expensive, he has them sent over from the United States, but not for the blind, and gets concessional rates. He is also addicted to satellite television channels like the National Georgraphic Channel, pulling his chair to as close as a foot from the television, the commentary helping him understand. He is not alone. The well-known Singapore lawyer, the late Mr David Marshall, went blind in his final years, in his eighties, and a prominent Malay surgeon in his seventies, depended on audiocasette books to keep their minds active and informed.

The Prime Minister finds public appearances at home and abroad too stressed for his own good. His senior civil servants think it time he went. He skipped a dinner in his honour by retired senior civil servants for fear of empty seats. Malaysian students in the United Kingdom and the United States question him in a manner he would not tolerate on home ground. But he cannt set foot in Malaysian universities and many Malaysian institutions without an army guarding him for fear of an even more virulent response. Even UMNO members look upon him these days as a Greek bearing gifts. He cannot expect a full hall nowadays for his speeches, unless his officers order it filled by hook or crook. It is not unusual for the hall to be empty 30 minutes before his intended appearance. In his Persiopolis of Putra Jaya, civil servants must, with no exception, fill the hall. The Emperor should not know he is naked.

The Malaysian international trade and industry minister, Datin Seri Rafidah Aziz, is in the United States to drum up investment. Malaysia wants foreign investment, but on her own terms. Foreigners should not question -- "had no right", in her own words, to question -- how the Malaysian judiciary woks: it is impartial and independent. Never mind that few concerned parties outside the government and unfortunate liigants do not think so. But the independence and impartiality of the judiciary, whatever the spin put on it, is why most foreign investment and contracts with Malaysians insist upon arbitration in foreign countries in a dispute. Singapore is the preferred choice. No foreign investor would invest hundreds of millions of ringgit in Malaysia and lose it in a dispute if his Malaysian partner is a prominent business man or if his lawyer goes on holidays with the chief justice. That is not all. Contrary to the spin Malaysian officials put on ministerial foreign investment visits, foreign investors hold Malaysia to ransom, demanding better facilities than the law allows. Motorole, for instance, threatened to relocate its investments in Malaysia in Vietnam. It got what it wanted, and better than those who come in under tax holidays or investment incentives. The Prime Minister had to plead with them in the United States to stay, giving them the investment guarantees they asked for.

The Prime Minister did not attend Friday prayers on 1 September 00, as his office he would. He could not. He left the night before for urgent negotiations with an American conglomerate in the United States. Television news last night (2 September) showed the Prime Minister in formal meetings with the Motorola Inc. topbrass in Chicago. He had hoped to camoflauge this meeting by addressing Islamic groups, but supporters of He Who Must Be Destroyed At All Cost prevented that. An invitation from one Islamic group to address it was withdrawn, and an award from another could well be amidst noisy protestors. Hence his having to leave the country in stealth. The official media no doubt would portray this visit, as every other, a success, but far more serious issues are at stake. It raises fundamental doubts about future foreign investment, with foreign companies already here negotiating for more tax breaks and investment incentives than allowed. This urgent meeting with Motorola follows hard behind-the-scenes bargaining after it decided to shift its Malaysian operation to Vietnam and Malaysian officials wanting to retain Motorola. Malaysia blinked, provided Motorola with fresh incentives, but its key officials would not come down to initial the agreement. So, the Prime Minister rushed to Chicago instead. And a company which already taken advantage of all Malaysian investment breaks is given them afresh to continue to invest.

I would have thought, a simple exchange of Third World newspapers represented overseas send their articles to a common editorial pool, besides the news agency or newspaper he writes for, and from there despatch it to member countries. But this is too simple and does not allow delegates large expense accounts to decide about it in Tahiti. Since those Third World journalists sent overseas often take it upon themselves to go on an extended holiday with pay, even that would be self-defeating. Bernama and several Malaysian newspapers have staff correspondents in regional capitals, Hong Kong, United Kingdom and the United States. But open any Malaysian newspaper, and you cannot find the Malayan report of an event in distant fields. The New Straits Times had had an office and reporter in London for decades, but don't expect any reports from its bureau of events in the United Kingdom. The Star has one in London, New York, Hong Kong, but they do not file, except a wrapup of news culled from the local newspapers. When I once took a British cabinet minister to lunch, on a visit there nearly two decades ago, I invited the Malaysian reporters there to come along, all there for more than three years. None had met him, and they were upset with me when I told them everything heard at the table was off the record. Yet, when these journalists work for Western news organisations, their output and their professionalism rises beyond their wildest dreams.

The government would have us believe that a HUKM report would override any private laboratory report in Melbourne. But HUKM made no attempt to contact Gribbles Laboratory, did its tests in isolation, and reported he has "no acute or chronic" arsenic poisoning and, to impress upon us its professionalism, a whole list of extraneous diseases. It did not consider or attempt to diagnose his unexpectedly falling hair, lack of apetite, unexplained weight loss and other classic symptoms of arsenic poisoning. The HUKM report does not rule out the symptoms he complains of, nor if it attempted to cure or alleviate them. Arseninc poisoning is not easily detectable. One agricultural officer could not, more than a decade ago, understand his sudden loss of hair, weight, apetite -- as Dato' Seri Anwar now complains of -- and tests the government agency he worked for had done on him in laboratories all over the world could not detect what it was, until a poisons laboratory in the United States found it was due to arsenic poisoning. By then it was too late: the poisoning was too advanced for the antidote to work. He deteriorated swiftly, is, in his fifties, bedridden, with no sensation from the neck down, still alert, works on his computer by draggin his arms about, waiting for death. He worked with sodium arsenite, a powerful weedkiller widely used in plantations at that time. If Dato' Seri Anwar lied about his arsenic, after a well-regarded laboratory had said he suffered from acute poisoning, does it mean he lied? Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

Three contradictory strands stand out in the East Timorean imbroglio. One is the abnegation of sovereignty to international forces on allegations of human rights abuse, the other, undiscussed, to maintain East Timor firmly in the worldwide chain of Western satrapies to ensure its geopolitical grip. The third in which Australia tries to worm itself in Southeast Asia as the West's henchman in the region which by going into Timor as the dominant of the peacekeeping troops ensured hostility not only in Indonesia but elsewhere in the region. There is a fourth which can be ignored: ASEAN's hands-off policy; ASEAN, after all, is under no obligation to view the matter in other than its own geopolitical interest. The Malaysian Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, addressed the first at the United Nations yesterday and touched on the second. But it is the United States need to ensure a presence in East Timor outside of civilian control that ensured the UN peacekeeping forces. But should UN peacekeeping forces have the right to abnegate sovereignty on allegations of human rights abuses? Assuming that is accepted, should the troops come from the one country the host country has problems with, in this case Australia? Would, if the tables were reversed, Australia allow Indonesians to lead a UN peacekeeping force? The presence of Australia in East Timor has brought bilateral strains with Indonesia, something that would not go away easily. It also revealed Australia's desire to be the West's bully boy in Asia. The resulting furore forced a diplomatic change in the policy, but the intentions remain rooted in its psyche.

Meanwhile, the croaking frog of UMNO, Dato' Ibrahim Ali Al-Kataki, spews more rumours and lies to suggest President Clinton and others with ill intent towards Malaysia spend unlimited funds to destroy Malaysia. He cannot understand it requires little money to set up web pages and even web sites, certainly not RM60,000 for the equipment and RM30,000 a year to maintain a webpage. It cost me about RM0.00 to set up both Sang Kancil and its web page, although mid-way through it all, I upgraded the computer and monitor for less than RM3,000 with a 56K modem thrown in to boot. Every software I run on it is free, and Mr Gates is a stranger to my computer. My wordprocessor of choice is Word Perfect 8, free for Unix users but not for others. The only additional expense is the monthly phone bill charges and wear-and-tear of the machine. The server is run from Sydney by Bala Pillai, a Malaysian, but is physically in the United States. Why did I take this route? The cost. Web pages are free for the asking. More than that. Bala is a friend and he offered me server space, technical help and the onerous task of putting Sangkancil on the Malaysia.Net (which he owns) website. If Al-Kataki wants a similar deal for the UMNO webpage, the original offer Bala and I made to UMNO and the other political parties is still open, and he need not pay us RM30,000 a year to maintain the web pages; we would require the parties to make up their web pages and update it as often as they would like it, but we would certainly do it for half the annual amount he says it would cost to maintain the pages. UMNO must supply the contents, though. UMNO can be assured, however, that its web pages would be regularly read by more people than it would have thought possible. So far, only PAS and DAP accepted the offer, and they do their own updating. As has many private individuals and organisations, including the banned Muslimedia. On the other hand, if he does not want to be in this company, Malaysia.Net would be happy to post the UMNO URL on it.

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