Having been out of action for the past two weeks due to the pressures of completing a counselling course, it's great to be back in the battle against the lying, larcenous Umno/BN regime.

But as good as it is to be back in the fray, I'm afraid the forces of evil have made advances on so many fronts in my academically enforced absence that it's tough to decide precisely where to rejoin the fight.

Given the psychological nature of my recent studies, however, and the increasingly insane assaults that the Umno/BN propaganda machine is making on the minds of the Malaysian people, I might as well throw myself into what ‘news' agency Bernama recently referred to as the 'psy-war'.

Faithfully dancing, as ever, to Umno/BN's loony tune, Bernama quoted Umno supreme council member and Deputy Education Minister Dr Mohd Puad Zarkashi, as warning that "Umno could be in peril if it fails to curb the psychological attacks mounted by the opposition".

"The opposition's approach was dangerous," Puad reportedly went on, "as it could influence the minds of the young who did not fully understand the history of this country and were thinking too much about material things and freedom."

azlan As double-speak has a way of doing, it then got somewhat confusing, as in: "Their thinking could be affected by negative perceptions.

"For example, the 1Malaysia concept is a good thing and is perceived negatively by certain quarters who could influence those with little understanding of the concept in a negative way."

Such a load of psychobabble from a deputy minister on anything, let alone education, is enough to make a person sigh, or rather psigh, with despair.

But as confused, confusing and fundamentally false as Puad's above utterances are, they come across as almost sane compared to the near-psychotic ramblings of some of the other Umno/BN big-guns.

Umno/BN's top brass show their madness

Like Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, for example, who according once again to the ever-reliable Bernama , in talking about the ludicrous Umno/BN plot to smear Anwar Ibrahim with a sex DVD said "the court will reveal the truth and provide answers to all questions raised by the people".

Then, conceding that he was "aware that many people were waiting to know the truth about the video and also those who questioned the validity of the party investigating the matter", he delivered himself of the psycho remark that: "We have learned. What we did will be manipulated if exposed too early. The public will be influenced by unreasonable campaigns and in the end, the truth will be lost."

As if the truth wasn't always systematically lost or more accurately stolen by Umno/BN, its spokespersons and media minions sustain the illusion that this grotesque government is anything but criminally crooked.

azlan Add psychologically challenged into the bargain, with maniacs like Ibrahim Ali and his gang working hand-in-glove with the Umno-owned nutter tabloid, Utusan Malaysia , in spreading their dangerous delusions of a Christian conspiracy to take over the country, abolish Islam as the national religion and install a Christian prime minister.

De facto law minister and Umno/BN parliamentary mouthpiece Mohd Nazri Abdul Aziz was apparently so shocked by such racist, religionist and seditious rantings as to be temporarily rendered schizoid.

First stating that the government should "get rid" of a bunch of crazies like Perkasa, he has now entirely changed his mind and declared that Malaysians "need to live" and "be mature" in "dealing with such characters as Ibrahim and his ilk, since social platforms and media such as Twitter and blogs have allowed statements such as Ibrahim's to proliferate beyond the government's ability to proscribe or punish them."

In other words, the powers-that-be have lost the plot along with their senses in the heat of the psy-war they're waging on the Malaysian people in a desperate bid to cling to power and avoid prosecution for their crimes.

Australian government rocks the boat

But what's psyching me out even more than Umno/BN's criminal insanity is the fact that my own Australian government is so deranged as to fancy it can solve its so-called ‘asylum-seeker' problem in collaboration with these people.

Julia Gillard and her government must have lost their proverbial marbles. Ever since Dr Mahathir Mohamad's quip to "shoot them" in response to arrivals in Malaysia by boat from Vietnam, then his quick revision of his statement to "shoo them", Malaysia has had a record for being among the ‘worst of the worst' nations in the world for people-trafficking and the exploitation and abuse of refugees.

So as far as I'm concerned it's moral, ethical and I hope electoral madness for Australia's government to so much as contemplate trading boat-people for refugees from Malaysian camps. And also racist madness, given that this dirty deal would involve swapping each presumably Muslim Afghan boat person from Australia for four no doubt Burmese and thus Buddhist or Christian refugees from Malaysia.

And while we're on the subject of Australian outrages, what about the threat to establish the so-called Lynas Advanced Material Plant in Gebeng, Pahang, over local residents' fears of radioactive waste?

NONE If, as Lynas insists, the plant poses no environmental risk, why can't it build the thing in its home state of Western Australia? And if, as I read somewhere the other day, the company has lodged money with the Malaysian government as a good-faith deposit as an indemnity against any future damages, who actually received this money and where is it now, and what is Pahang royalty's role in all this?

Such questions raise the fact that usually the most puzzling aspect of psy-wars is that you're never entirely sure who the enemy is, or who's behind the scenes providing the ammunition.

But as long as whatever we're fighting has anything to do with Malaysia, we don't have to be psychic to know that it all comes down to money and power, and thus to the psychopaths, sociopaths and kleptomaniacs of Umno/BN.

 

 

DEAN JOHNS, after many years in Asia, currently lives with his Malaysian-born wife and daughter in Sydney, where he mentors creative writing groups. Already published in Kuala Lumpur is a third book of his columns for Malaysiakini , following earlier collections 'Mad about Malaysia' and 'Even Madder about Malaysia'.