I did expect some unthinking comments from our sycophantic Malaysian mainstream news media in response to allegations former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad insulted Jews in his Organisation of Islamic Conference speech.

Nevertheless, I recently found an article in the Star on Oct 19 to be quite intolerable and completely nauseating, even after taking into account the existing bodek style journalism that the Malaysian public have come to know, love and expect from the Star , New Straits Times , Utusan , and publications of that ilk.

The Star article stated that:

1. Racism is a white man's disease

2. Black people, Asians and Muslims cannot be racists even if they want to be as historically they have never systematically oppressed another group of people based on race.

I find it shocking that any thinking writer could say that there are no Black, Asian nor Muslim racists, bigots and chauvinists in the world today. I find it incredible that any Malaysian citizen could try to insult the intelligence of the average newspaper reader in Malaysia by saying that Asians are incapable of prejudice or racism.

The tragedy is that there are more than a few examples of differential treatment according to race, culture, language, and religion in Asia, Africa and Middle East. The fact is that it is in precisely these Third World regions with multi-ethnic countries that racial and ethnic sentiments, prejudices and fears are most easily manipulated and exploited by unscrupulous politicians to secure votes, power and wealth.

I would think that Great Britain, Australia, Canada, and the United States have gone further in coming to terms with their own histories of racial and ethnic discrimination than we have.

Discriminatory laws against blacks of the Jim Crow era in the southern states were largely abolished in the 1950s in North America. The ' ketuanan white southerners' ideology was severely clipped by law after successful campaigning by the American civil rights movement.

By the way, the American civil rights movement which empowered blacks had amongst its many minority ethnic supporters Americans of Jewish descent, as well as Americans of African descent. Laws discriminating against minority ethnic Chinese immigrants were similarly abolished soon after. It led to a doubling of incomes for the American Chinese community in the course of just over a decade.

The 'White Australia' policy was abolished some decades ago, and with it the withdrawal of official support for the ' ketuanan orang putih Australia' ideology aka 'Two Wongs Do Not Make A White' philosophy. Unlike a certain Southeast Asian country, which had threatened to shoot them or tow their dangerously overloaded and rickety sampans into the stormy high seas, the Aussies actually took in a sizeable number of starving and abused Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s on humanitarian grounds.

Therefore the ketuanan orang putih ideology that once asserted segregation and privilege along ethnic lines has therefore suffered quite a reversal in Westernised societies, to the point where it is no longer considered a kosher topic of discussion in polite white society, except perhaps in Aryan Nation and Klu Klux Klan annual general assemblies.

Unfortunately this reversal in the West has not deterred unscrupulous, power hungry third world leaders from fomenting ethnic chauvinism and prejudices, and racial fears and tensions for personal gain. Saddam Hussein systematically favoured Sunnis over Shias in order to consolidate his power with lethal consequences.

Northern Nigerians have been noted to exclude southern Nigerians from government administrative posts even when southerners were the best qualified candidates. This too is a result of ethnic prejudice, perhaps one characteristic of an envy-stricken society.

The BJP-RSS politicians of India have cynically pursued a divide and rule policy with its ketuanan Hindu ideologies. Their chauvinist leaders regularly accuse minority ethnic groups like Christian Indians and Muslim Indians of being unpatriotic and traitors. Repeatedly, the multi-ethnic Indian Congress Party finds itself outflanked by the chauvinist appeal of BJP-RSS activist slogans, discriminatory policies, and inflammatory rhetoric in every general election.

George Speight tried to overthrow a democratically-elected government because he could not stand the thought of having an ethnic Indian as prime minister in Fiji. His sentiments are based on nothing more than a ketuanan Fijian ideology. Unfortunately for him, his virulent ethnic chauvinism was not shared by most other ethnic Fijians, and his dramatic bid for political power and wealth failed.

The point here is that the list is long. You do not have to be white or living in the West to be an ethnic chauvinist or racist bigot.

I consider Ariel Sharon to be both a bullying ethnic chauvinist and war criminal. He has denied the ethnic Palestinian minority community equal rights, democratic rights, human rights, equal access to jobs and education, and he further sees nothing wrong in treating the minority community in a discriminatory fashion. I am very sorry and very sad to see that the ketuanan Nazi Aryan ideology of World War Two Germany to be mirrored in the ketuanan Zionist ideologies of the Likud Party in Israel.

As an ethnic minority in Malaysia, I hope I will be forgiven, and not be further accused of being unpatriotic for not having any great love or affection for ethnically-inspired ketuanan ideologies whether they are of local or overseas origins. As for whoever wrote that Star article, shame on you!