Unlike The Star's executive editor Wong Chun Wai, I am a proud subscriber and regular reader of the London-based weekly the Economist for the past 20 years.

Whether Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Defence Minister Najib Tun Razak or Deputy Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin like or loathe this magazine, it doesn't really matter to me

They have their values and interests, I have mine.

The major reason I like to read the Economist , and for that matter, most of the liberal Anglo-American newspapers and periodicals, is simply because there is no regular reading materials o­n international relations matching their intellectual quality in Malaysia.