Oh, dear, what have we now? As though we do not have enough of terrorism, we were told no less by our prime minister that the world is also faced with economic terrorism.

While he said this terrorism could take various forms, he focused on a particular one, and our mainstream media, as always, were on tap to give his view uncritical prominence.

This form occurred when a foreign investor all ready to ink the deal that would bring investment goodies to Malaysia was lured away by a rich, developed nation, apparently near to Malaysia, that could offer a lot more in return to the investor.

The upshot: poor developing countries like Malaysia are terrorised by rich developed ones.

And since Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad raised this at the Smart Partnership Dialogue (although, judging from our mainstream coverage, it was more a Mahathir monologue), he suggested that poor developing countries should come together and fight this economic terrorism.

Mahathir's rhetoric was no doubt also meant to shock as this is apparently his way to get the "sensationalist" western media to pay attention to him and his Smart Partnership Dialogue that just concluded.

Problem is, if he thought his eco-terrorism was something new, he was deluded. What he spoke of has been around for far too long. For example, did not Malaysia in the 1980s lure away some of the computer processing plants from countries like Singapore with our cheaper labour?

Perhaps Mahathir was trying to be radical, recalling the time when he decided to peg the ringgit despite a world of criticism that prompted him to write in Time , not without some pride, that he was a free market heretic.

Be that as it may, let's critically examine this eco-terrorism idea of his and risk doing him wrong, like the many who criticised his pegging the ringgit appeared to have to eat humble pie because of a stronger showing of the Malaysian economy since the financial turmoil of 1997-1998 (although I don't think the verdict is all in yet).

To begin with, it is monumentally baffling that he should blame only the rich developed nation offering the more lucrative deal as the terrorist. What about the investor?

Sounds like it is more the culprit here. At least the rich country could say they were helping their citizens and economy, whereas the investor was motivated by their giant-size greed.

The world has become the investor's oyster (so to speak) and it does not have any qualms in going for the most lucrative returns, not caring if it is helping the poorer citizens of the world or not. What's important is they get as much out of its investment as possible (for the shareholders), and this actually has become so basic an ideology of capitalism that it can be found in any standard text on the fundamentals of economics.

The more one looks into the blame apportioned by Mahathir then, the more it shows he is hardly shocking or radical. He is not even keeping up with today's economic or business reality.

Why did he not blame the investor and its rapacious appetite for profits? The fact that he didn't suggests that he was upset by that rich country's action. And so, he resorted to this action that is in keeping with his well-known trait of ruthlessly attacking anyone who crossed him.

Murmurs of Singapore as the likely rich developed country apparently made the rounds among the press, but Mahathir neither denied nor confirmed it while appearing a tad smug about the speculation.

Still, in the final analysis, it is really not significant whether he named that country. What is important is: why not blame the investor instead?

In an age of giant corporations ruling and carving out the world market to satisfy their giant-size greed — and the scandals now gripping corporate America are only the latest manifestation of it — they have become the true economic predators or terrorists.

Their near monopoly control of almost all industries has turned the world market into a seller's market, meaning they have more leverage to wheel and deal and demand buyers to cough up more for their goods and services.

What can buyers really do but go along with it as best as they could, unless they are prepared to go without? This is no different than the various countries of the world, developed and developing, competing for the giant corporations for investment.

Did Mahathir want corporations to consider investing only in developing countries? Now, that would have been radical, but then he should have blamed the corporations as investors for eco-terrorism in the first place.

What happened to his purported support for the protestors at the WTO meeting in Seattle, Washington, USA, in 1999, even though back in Malaysia he shamelessly saw no problems with ruthless suppressions of peaceful protests of him and his administration?

Or did he misunderstand the message of the Seattle protestors — that the giant-size greed of the global corporations has led them to engage in less than transparent operations, resulting in a growing gap between the rich and the poor (not just between developed and developing nations but also within any of these countries), social disintegration, and environmental destruction?

Some may chalk up Mahathir's baffling idea of eco-terrorism based centrally on the above example as yet another of his paradoxes.

That suggests his ideas and thoughts lack intellectual rigour, or he is a sloppy intellectual thinker. But this is giving him credit that he himself has rejected on the basis that he does not see himself an academic and even proud of the fact he thought he had proven academics wrong occasionally.

Rather, he appears to be operating merely at the level of settling the score with that rich, developed country that upset him — the only thing consistent with his Machiavellian politics par excellence. No more, no less.