Dear Mr President (Letter from Tun Mahathir to Obama)

January 1, 2009

Dear Mr. President,

I did not vote for you in the Presidential Election because I am Malaysian.

But I consider myself one of your constituents because what you do or say will affect me and my country as well.

I welcome your promise for change. Certainly your country, the United States of America needs a lot of changes.

That is because America and Americans have become the most hated people in the world. Even Europeans dislike your arrogance. Yet you were once admired and liked because you freed a lot of countries from conquest and subjugation.

It is the custom on New Year's day for people to make resolutions. You must have listed your good resolutions already. But may I politely suggest that you also resolve to do the following in pursuit of Change.

1. Stop killing people. The United States is too fond of killing people in order to achieve its objectives. You call it war, but today's wars are not about professional soldiers fighting and killing each other. It is about killing people, ordinary innocent people by the hundreds of thousands. Whole countries will be devastated.
   
   War is primitive, the cavemen's way of dealing with a problem. Stop your arms build up and your planning for future wars.
   
   
2. Stop indiscriminate support of Israeli killers with your money and your weapons. The planes and the bombs killing the people of Gaza are from you.
   
   
3. Stop applying sanctions against countries which cannot do the same against you.
   
   In Iraq your sanctions killed 500,000 children through depriving them of medicine and food. Others were born deformed.
   
   What have you achieved with this cruelty? Nothing except the hatred of the victims and right-thinking people.
   
   
4. Stop your scientists and researchers from inventing new and more diabolical weapons to kill more people more efficiently.
   
   
5. Stop your arms manufacturers from producing them. Stop your sales of arms to the world. It is blood money that you earn. It is un-Christian.
   
   
6. Stop trying to democratize all the countries of the world. Democracy may work for the United States but it does not always work for other countries.
   
   Don't kill people because they are not democratic. Your crusade to democratize countries has killed more people than the authoritarian Governments which you overthrew. And you have not succeeded anyway.
   
   
7. Stop the casinos which you call financial institutions. Stop hedge funds, derivatives and currency trading. Stop banks from lending non-existent money by the billions.
   
   Regulate and supervise your banks. Jail the miscreants who made profits from abusing the system.
   
   
8. Sign the Kyoto Protocol and other international agreements.
   
   
9. Show respect for the United Nations.
   
   

I have many other resolutions for change which I think you should consider and undertake.

But I think you have enough on your plate for this 2009th year of the Christian Era.

If you can do only a few of what I suggest, you will be remembered by the world as a great leader. Then the United States will again be the most admired nation. Your embassies will be able to take down the high fences and razor-wire coils that surround them.

May I wish you a Happy New Year and a great Presidency.

Yours Sincerely,

Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad
(Former Prime Minister of Malaysia)

---

Published by Centre for Research on Globalization

"I can change the Malays" - Abdullah Ahmad Badawi

Pak Lah stated clearly that he can change the Malays.

What that change is, is difficult to understand. He has launched the theme of his premiership as the most sublime of all values - Islam Hadhari, or civilizational Islam or Islam that civilizes. So far what has been perceived is Halal Foods and Islamic Finance. So many are still in the dark and would hope it sounds like what it means.

With his term of Office slated to end in March, what is it that Pak Lah have up his sleeve?

Will this change mean intolerance of differences?

The risk that the world will face a nuclear holocast is there. All the risks of whatever nature are always there for practical purposes. I recall an old book written in the 1950's about this spectre - the spectre of of life after such a calamity. You might like to follow a sypnosis of the book, The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham. It really is about the dark spectre of "differences" in human society. The themes are a little reminiscent of current political life as espoused by UMNO.

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

A few thousand years in the future post-apocalypse rural Labrador has become a warmer and more hospitable place than it is at present. The inhabitants of Labrador have vague historical recollections of "The Old People", a technologically advanced civilization which existed long ago and which they believe was destroyed when God sent "Tribulation" to the world to punish their forebears' sins. The society that has survived in Labrador is loosely reminiscent of the American frontier of about the 18th century. The inhabitants practice a form of fundamentalist Christianity with post-apocalyptic prohibitions. They believe that in order to follow God's word and prevent another Tribulation, they need to preserve absolute normality among the surviving humans, plants and animals. Genetic invariance has been elevated to the highest religious principle, and humans with even minor mutations are considered "Blasphemies" and the handiwork of the Devil. Individuals not conforming to a strict physical norm are either killed or sterilized and banished to the Fringes, a forbidden area still rife with animal and plant mutations. Arguments occur over the keeping of a tailless cat or the possession of oversize horses. These are deemed by the government to be legitimate breeds either pre-existing or achieved through conventional breeding. The government's position is considered both cynical and heretical by the orthodox frontier community.

The inland rural settlement of Waknuk is a frontier farming community, populated with hardy and pious individuals intent on reclaiming land from the Fringes. Ten-year-old David Strorm, the son of Waknuk's zealous religious patriarch, has inexplicably vivid dreams of brightly lit cities and horseless carts that are at odds with his pre-industrial experience. Despite David's rigorous religious training, he befriends Sophie, a girl carefully concealing the fact that she has six toes on each foot. With the nonchalance of childhood David keeps her secret. The subsequent discovery of Sophie's mutation and her family's attempted flight causes David to wonder at the brutal persecution of human "Blasphemies" and the ritual culling of animal and plant "Deviations". David and a few others of his generation harbor their own invisible mutation: they have strong telepathic abilities. David begins to question why all who are different must be banished or killed. As they mature, David and his fellow telepaths realize that their unusual mutation would be considered a "blasphemy" and they carefully conceal their abilities. That their mutation cannot be directly detected allows their unusual abilities to remain undiscovered for a time. Eventually the group is exposed and David, his half-cousin Rosalind and younger sister Petra flee to the Fringes. Through the unusually strong telepathic abilities of Petra they make contact with a more advanced society in distant "Sealand". David, Rosalind and Petra elude their would-be captors and are rescued by the Sealand mission to discover the source of Petra's telepathic transmissions.

Though the nature of "Tribulation" is not explicitly stated, it is implied that it was a nuclear holocaust, both by the mutations, and by the stories of sailors who report blackened, glassy wastes to the south-west where the remains of faintly glowing cities can be seen. Sailors venturing too close to these ruins experience symptoms consistent with radiation sickness. A woman from Sealand, a character with evident knowledge of the Old People's technology, mentions "the power of gods in the hands of children".

More at Wiki

The Shoe Sequel

Cartoons from Time.com