There must be many who perceive that Sept 11 attacks have been used by the United States and her "Caucasian allies" (United Kingdom, Australia, etc.) as an excuse to extend their western hegemonic interests without sensitivity to Muslim feelings.

Examples are:

  • The current campaign against Saddam Hussein for Iraq's oil under the pretext of his accumulation of nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry (the fact that his Baathist party is secular or that he attacked fellow Muslim Kuwait have been discounted);

  • The stringent checks in airports with dogs sniffling at our minister's bags or asking our dignitaries to take out their shoes or belts without exception on protocol;

  • John Howard's preemptive strike policy without regard to sovereignty issues of neighbouring Southeast Asian countries.

    • Riding at general outrage among Muslim constituency against the actions generally attributable to peoples and countries Caucasian, it seems a politically plus point to take exception to and a dig at Caucasian Brad Pitt. Neither he nor Toyota can sue.

    (Notice that Zam did not say that other Asian stars like Jacky Chan or Chow Yuen Fatt may be better role models and will give us less inferiority complex. Nor will he take such action were our national car promoted by Brad Pitt in advertisements).

    Of course some of your readers will mock at Deputy Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin's actions as a "dumb politico", "buffoonery", but they do not deliver the votes and make the difference.

    Some of your readers have even described our political leaders as having no intellectual merits and that the prime minister should change cabinet.

    I would say that this is a very naive and dangerous view to take. It is so because it is simplistic, and more importantly, it underestimates these people.

    Many people in this country simply do not appreciate that our elites — political and economic — are very intelligent, sophisticated and knowledgeable. They are people of very high calibre even by world standards.

    The problem is that they direct their collective brain power, which is quite immense, at promoting their private interest and perpetuating their continuance as a class and their dominance in political and economic affairs rather than — and more often than not — at the expense of the rakyat's (public) interest.

    One can remove and change the elites when they are not people- or country-directed, provided that one sees with clear vision.

    However, can we?

    We are still distracted by issues of race and religion that evoke emotional responses when intellectual ones take the back seat, and that is the Achilles' heel that the elite of this country can manipulate with dexterity to maintain and perpetuate power. Every issue — even education — will be given a racial or religious slant.

    Few people will realise that the political, economic and corporate interests of this country are concentrated in the hands of and controlled by a few elites only — sometimes directly but more often through a chain of interlocking nominees and sub-nominees and sub-sub-nominees so that the true identities of the puppet masters are not generally known.

    That is a measure of how sophisticated, and duplicitous our elites are.

    Like I say, the more educated and well-informed or -connected among us may see through the hypocrisy, but it is the majority of others that couldn't and are counted upon to deliver the votes and support, and they are the target and who that really matters.

    So by all means single out as a matter of public discourse in furtherance of public interest an utterance or a policy of our politicians for ridicule if they are intellectually untenable.

    There is a wide playing field here because our politicians say different things to different audiences without care of internal consistency: a good example is the tirade against the MCA duo for breach of party discipline without heed to similar breaches by Umno assembly representatives in the Kelantan and Terengganu state assemblies when the hudud laws were passed by PAS.

    But never infer or believe that our politicians are of no calibre. They are simply too intelligent for our collective good. Rest assured that every utterance and policy, though seemingly ridiculous, has already been deliberated and calculated for a specific purpose and a specific target market for personal political and economic benefit. More often it delivers the effect and result. Never mind the logic. That has never been the measure that counts, at least in this country so far.