Poor Soul!

Dear Soul ...
For all the good you did helping hundreds ...
You would be stunned to be hit hard by those above you, trapped in an investigation ...
by perhaps former colleagues of yours
When it was said you once had The Force in you ...
and I saw you at your office when you fell ...
How sadly different you looked ...

I was there, in his 4-wheel drive ...
When the conspirator bragged about his successful plan to have taped your conversation with him and later report to the powerful top ...
a sexual harassment case filed by a foreign worker against a local employer ...
and you were said to have given the wrong advice to the victim ...

This man was the prime conspirator to send you packing ...
A man of your race with a burning desire for revenge
For all the contempt, scorn and lack of attention he claimed you had for him and his workers time after time ...
in his business dealings ... and I--
I believed him at that time and the truth was soon revealed many times that he was himself a lying rogue ...
A strong man of grey hair and wrinkles who cheated those who were fooled by his charms and frequent self-declarations of absolute high business ethics ...
Please forgive me for not speaking out, dear heart, but who was I ...
but a passerby in a beautiful land of snow-capped mountains, animals and abundant fruit who has learnt the bitter painful lesson of ever speaking out on social injustice anywhere and suffered much with shattered dreams ...

If You were a Powerful Leader...

Further excerpts from a hilarious book, I am Not a Crook (London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1973) by the late master of satire, Art Buchwald. This sub-title is called National Security, pages 29-31.

National Security
The only way to understand the issue of national security which Richard Nixon raised as his reason for employing his own superspies is to put yourself in his place.

Pretend for a moment that you are President of the United States. Despite all your dreams and hopes for this country, there are still people "out there" who are trying to "get" you. They could be students, blacks, Congressmen, senators, newspapermen, labor leaders or just misguided souls who are trying to destroy the American way of life.

It is essential, if you are to be elected for a second term, to find out who your enemies are and what they are up to.

Unfortunately, the Constitution of the United States with its archaic Bill of Rights does not provide the President with the weapons he needs to find out who is trying to keep him from being reelected.

Yet as a President of the United States it is your duty to find out if there is a conspiracy to keep you from serving four more years and to discover who is behind it.If some other political party took over the government, God knows what would happen to the country we all know and love.

So you do what any strong leader would do. You set up a unit in the White House to devote itself full-time to find out who the traitors are.

The group would involve itself in wiretapping, bugging, reading mail and breaking and entering the offices and homes of those who are seeking to take away your rightful place in history. It may be against the law, but as President you have to deal with realities.

AT first you authorize the CIA, FBI, Secret Service, National Security Agency and Justice Department to take over this illegal work. But when J. Edgar Hoover (FBI Director) refuses to go along with the plan, you become angry and frustrated.

Here you are President of 200,000,000 people, architect of a generation of peace, leader of the richest, most well-fed country that has ever walked the face of the earth, and they won't even let you do a little bugging and burglary on the side.

So you say, "Nuts to Hoover. I'll hire my own plumbers to do the job."

You tell your staff to set up, but keep your name out of it. You also instruct them not to tell you what they're doing just in case the plan goes awry. But at the same time you want to know the names of those who are out to get you.

Once the plumbers go into operation you discover your wildest fears about national security are true. There is a plot to unseat you as President, planned and financed by the Democratic Party. You also discovered there is another plot by Alabama's Governor George Wallace to do the same thing. Never has the country being in worse danger.

You discover through intelligence that the Democrats have set November 7, as the day they plan to overthrow your government.

You have no choice but to get the plumbers to step up their activities.

Everything is going swell, but then through stupidity which you have nothing to do with, some of your plumbers are caught at the Watergate. Now you have a real problem. You can either reveal to the nation why you set up the plumbers unit in the first place, or you can tell your staff to keep the White House out of it.

For national security reasons you choose the latter, hoping for the good of the country Watergate will go away. But because of a prying judge and an irresponsible press the story comes out.

It really gets you mad.

With new revelations coming out every day you are faced with three choices: (A) resign; (B) wait for impeachment (C) tough it out.

If you were President of the United States what would you do?

Linchpin to Conspiracy

An Extract from John Dean's 1970's best-seller, Blind Ambition, Page 109:

(Both the White House faction and the Justice Department faction had earlier held a meeting to discuss the ongoing investigations into the break in that had been recently exposed by the news media. The author, then counsel to the President, John Dean was on the way to the Justice Department with the Assistant Attorney General, Richard G. Kleindienst.)

"This thing is so goddam stupid I can't believe it!" Kleindienst exploded when when we reached his office. "Breaking in and bugging the damn Democratic National Committee. There's nothing in there but a lot of crap, anyway. Anybody knows that. Dumbest damn thing I ever heard."

Kleindienst walked over to his desk and sat down. He waved his arms to emphasize his dismay. "This fella Liddy (Liddy G. Gordon, former FBI agent, general counsel of the Committee to Re-elect the President) must be crazy! He tracked me down at the Burning Tree Country Club on Saturday after my golf game. He said 'John Mitchell wants you to get the men arrested at the DNC out of jail.' Can you believe it? I told Liddy to get his ass packing. If I'd ever seen a guilty man, it was Liddy. He was rattled and nervous and I wasn't about to talk to him."

So that's the little encounter Dick had with Watergate over the weekend, I thought. Liddy's name had not yet surfaced in the investigation, and I assumed Kleindienst had not reported the incident for fear of implicating both Liddy and (Attorney General) Mitchell. Kleindienst was instinctively on the inside of the problem, too. This strengthened my impulse to confide in him.

I watched him change moods as he stared silently at his desk. "If John Mitchell is in trouble," he stared gravely, "I'll resign before I'd ever prosecute him." He knew where this was heading as well as I did. I decided to trade worries with him.

"Dick I don't have all the facts, but I'm worried. I'm afraid this thing could lead to the President. I don't know if the President is involved, but-"

"God, I hope the President is not involved in this, and that you're not involved."


TO BE CONTINUED...

Deniability in a Conspiracy

One of the most interesting parts of the Watergate story was narrated by one of the top players in the scandal: John Dean, counsel to President Nixon. In his gripping account in his 1977 book, Blind Ambition (London: W.H. Allen & Co. Ltd.) of his first day in the White House, he wrote about his time with the powerful administration of one of the world's greatest statesman, Richard Nixon.
Here is an excerpt from that favorite old book of mine which has been gathering dust all these years:

FIREFIGHTING
The tests started that first day at the White House. ... but then my secretary brought me a sealed envelope with a small red tag. I asked her what it was. She had not opened it; it was stamped "CONFIDENTIAL", and the red tag meant "priority". Someone had been planning work for the new counsel. The cover memorandum was in a printed form, with striking blue and red instructions filled in:

ACTION MEMORANDUM
FROM THE STAFF SECRETARY LOG NO.: P523
Date: Friday, July 24, 1970 Time: 6:30 p.m.
Due Date: Wednesday, August 5, 1970 Time: 2:00 p.m.
SUBJECT: Request you rebut the recent attack on the Vice-President.

An attached "confidential memorandum" said that a new muck-raking magazine called Scanlan's Monthly had published a bogus memo linking Vice-President Agnew with a top-secret plan to cancel the 1972 election and to repeal the entire Bill of Rights. Agnew had publicly denounced the memo as "completely false" and "ridiculous", and the editors of Scalan's Monthly had replied: "The Vice-President's denial is as clumsy as it is fraudulent . The document came directly from Mr. Agnew's office and he knows it." My instructions were clear:"It was noted this is a vicious attack and possibly a suit should be filed or a federal investigation ordered to follow up on it."

"Noted" by whom? Since the memorandum was signed by John Brown, a member of Halderman's staff, I called him to find out. The "noter" was the President. I was told: he had scrawled my orders on the margin of his daily news summary. No one had to explain why the president's name was not used. He was always to be kept one step removed, insulated to preserve his "deniability."

So this is my baptism. I thought I was astounded that the President would be so angrily concerned about a funny article in a fledgling magazine. It did not square with my picture of his being absorbed in diplomacy, wars and high matters of state. Was it possible ...?

May be continued soon if I survive this present conspiracy...???

Woopie Vs. Watergate

Here's another funny satirical gem from Art Buchwald's book, I am Not a Crook. For other breaking in depth and even salacious news that most of Malaysia's intimidated cowardly local media is too chicken to cover, please drop by Malaysiakini and Malaysia Today, amongst many other blogs with balls. Though I do not agree with all that are in some of these outspoken courageous blogs, I recommend them because their sensible mature and honest opinions and views reflect the reality of what goes on in the country and make everyone realise how much of the rights and freedom that is so cherished by Malaysians under the Constitution have and continue to be eroded with the compliance of many of those whom ignorant or misled voters have elected.

By the way, it won't be long before I join the growing disillusioned and disgusted friends of mine who will be canceling our subscriptions to the local papers. We are not getting our money's worth
in papers that do not report the latest news but which merely serve as the Hitlerian propaganda mouthpieces of others with dictatorial mentalities.

Sex Vs. The Watergate

I don't wish to put down our own Watergate affair, but when it comes to a good government scandal, the British have us beat by a mile. A recent British scandal had to do with sex.

It is the type of intrigue that even a charwoman can understand, having for its major characters Cabinet ministers, lords, dukes and call girls.

While our Watergate investigation has to do with who bugged whom, the British inquiry zeroed in on who slept with whom and for how much. And while the senate drones on endlessly about what one lawyer told another lawyer in the Watergate break-in, the British scandal delved into the motives of why a man of title, wealth and position would pay for pleasure in the arms of a fallen woman.

What makes the British story different from Watergate is that all the major players kept a stiff upper lip. There was no begging for immunity, no taking the Fifth, no threats to implicate others.

When Lord Lambton, Prime Minister Heath's defense under-secretary, was confronted with compromising photographs of himself and a call girl named Norma Levy, he did not say he was doing it on orders from a higher authority. Nor did he explain he took his action to protect national security. He did not hide behind the Union Jack.

He explained it simply on the BBC, when asked by the commentator (and this is an exact quote, which shows you why British TV is so much better than ours), "Why should a man of your social position and charm and personality have to go to a whore?"

"Because," Lord Lambton replied, "I think that people sometimes like variety. I think it is as simple as that and I think this impulse is understood by everybody."

The main fear in the Lambton affair was that state secrets had been divulged during the liaisons. But Lord Lambton squashed that on his BBC broadcast. "Businessmen do not go with call girls to talk of private matters. If a call girl suddenly said to me, 'Please, darling, tell me about the new laser ray,' or, 'What do you think of the new Rolls-Royce developments?" I would have known something was up."

What also makes the Lambton scandal more interesting than the Watergate was that there was more than one lord involved. As a matter of fact, after Lambton, Lord Jellicoe, the lord privy seal in Heath's Cabinet, admitted to having affairs with call girls as well and tendered his resignation. There was also a duke mentioned, and nobody knows how many knights will eventually be involved.

I must say the British newspapers took it very well. They kept the public fully informed on every last detail of the sordid affair, interviewing the call girls in question, the friends of the lords, the wives and everyone else who could shed light on what became the best story since the Profumo affair. As far as British journalism was concerned, there would be no cover-up.

Some Americans in London believe that the British broke the story because they were jealous of Watergate.

"It was pure spite," an American State Department official told me. "Britain knew it couldn't be a major power without a first-rate scandal, and the only way it could top us was to find one with lots of sex in it. We consider the breaking of the Lambton affair at this time as a very unfriendly act."


The only bright side of the story, from the United States point of view, is that although Lord Lambton wiped Watergate off the front pages of Europe's newspapers, its hard to sustain a call girl scandal for very long.

Watergate on the other hand, will probably go on for years. Americans can take comfort that while Halderman, Enrlichman and Mitchell will remain household words for a decade, Lord Lambton, Lord Jellicoe, Duke what's-his-name and Norma Levy will soon be nothing more than a footnote in Britain's long and illustrious sexual scandal history.

I AM NOT A CROOK

"What do you do when you're feeling blue-a major war is looming in the horizon thus possibly driving inflation up further than it already is in the country; the nation is going to the dogs with scandal after scandal with apparent abuses but little commitment to resolve them; common people are suffering immensely with spiralling prices of commodities and necessities...?" I was asked.

I replied, "I pray; sing; watch a movie; have great sex or enjoy my past-time activities like going for a long walk by the seaside, do gardening or play either outdoor and sometimes indoor games or even have a good read."

When one is disappointed and disgusted with the current social, economical and political situation in one's beloved country, it is all too easy to want to scream and shout, be they obscenities or curses....Indeed, my psychological reaction which would be great self-therapy to my mind and body and at the same time be in some easy form of comic relief would be not just "Go, fly a kite" but "Go, read a funny book"!

Here's a hilarious excerpt from one of my favorites by the late satirist, Art Buchwald which is in my private library entitled 'I am not a Crook' (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1973). The book came out shortly after the highly popular 37th president of the United States resigned rather than face a humiliating congressional impeachment from its nation's highest office, the presidency. There had been months of pain, suffering and soul-searching for Americans following revelations of political shenanigans in the infamous scandal called "Watergate" with damaging leaks from a mysterious source known as "Deep Throat" and hours and hours of recordings on audio-tapes and tons of documents.

But before I go further with that, I wish to assure my American buddies out there that I'm not anti-American even though I do share a laugh at the expense of a rare disgraced favorite son of the Republican Party, I'm an admirer of "the grand old elephant" and its ideals, purely because I am convinced I am born a patriot in a foreign land who is convinced it is honorable to serve and even die in defense of a nation's constitution and for king and country (I make it clear absolutely- not in defense of an Islamic state nor a corrupted regime/government). Yeah, if I were an American I would enlist to fight for the just cause of freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If I may add, in my opinion, Watergate, to the credit of the Americans and their belief in democratic ideals, did not result in untimely deaths by suicide or murder, as far as I know.

In Malaysia, I hope no one (PRESENTLY) faces any unforeseen unfortunate consequences in talking about a conspiracy... Say, what's the name of that 'X-Files'-kind of movie again starring Mel Gibson as a seemingly nutty taxi-driver who believes in conspiracies?

To Tell the Truth

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to To Tell the Truth.

"Number one, what is your name, please?"

"My name is Richard Milhous Nixon."

"Number two, what is your name, please?"

"My name is Richard Milhous Nixon."

"Number three, what is your name, please?"

"My name is Richard Milhous Nixon."

"All right, panel. Now I will read the story. "I, Richard Milhous NIxon, am the thirty-seventh President of the United States. I was reelected with one of the largest mandates in American history
After my reelection it was revealed that some of my closest aides were involved in dirty tricks, election fraud, breaking and entering and perjury. Congress is now discussing my impeachment." (Applause)

"Now, panel, only one of these contestants is the real Richard Milhous Nixon.

"Let's start the questioning with Kitty."

"Number one, if someone came to you and told you that they wanted to pay hush money to defendants caught in a Watergate break-in, what would you do?

"I would tell them it was wrong."

"All right, Orson, you're next."

""Number three, it is revealed that on your income tax return, you claimed a deduction of five hundred and fifty thousand dollars for donating your your Vice Presidential papers to the National Archives. But it turns out the donation was made after the law was changed. What would you say to the charges?

"I would say (former U.S. President) Lydon B. Johnson made me do it."

"Number one?"

"I would only say I did what (famous economist) John Kenneth Galbraith has been doing for years."

"Bill?"

Number one, the House Judiciary Committee has asked for tapes and documents to help them in their impeachment hearings. How would you handle that?""First I would tell the American people that I am willing to to cooperate in any way to bring the Watergate matter to a resolution. Then I would tell my lawyer not to turn over my tapes, or documents that he considered would in any way hurt the Presidency of the United States.

'Number three?"

"I would say the house is on a fishing expedition, and I am against fishing expeditions of any kind.

"Number two?"

"I would get (prominent business tycoon) Ron Ziegler to call it a cheap shot."

"Peggy?"

"Number three, at one press conference you said, (Nixon's Chief of Staff) John Dean did not tell you about the hush money being paid to the Watergate defendants. At another you admitted he did. How would you square the two statements with the American people?"

"I would say that people will read different things into what I say. But I'm the only one who knows what I meant."

"Number two?"

"I would call in Senator Hugh Scott and show him new evidence that Dean is a liar."

"Number one?'

"I would announce the end of the oil embargo in the Middle East."

"All right, panel, our time is up. Please vote for the person you think is the real Richard Milhous
Nixon.

'Now will the real Richard Mihous Nixon please stand ... I said will the real Richard Milhous
Nixon please stand up? Come on, one of you is the real one. Hurry up, we're running out of time. There seems to be a mix-up, ladies and gentlemen. No one wants to admit he's the real Nixon.

"Number one, who are you?"

"I am Sarah McClendon*, a newspaperwoman."

"Number two, who are you?"

"I am (disgraced former Vice President) Spiro Agnew, a fiction writer."

"Number three, who are you?"

"I am not a crook."


*I'm not too sure of the identity of this lady-I'll try to find out more about her.

The "Malaysian Conspiracy" Video

Left: Malaysiakini info on Who's Who discussed in the conversation (Click to enlarge).
The video below is from YouTube, courtesy of Malaysiakini and the Bar Council. It shows controversial Malaysian lawyer Lingam talking with the aid of a handphone to allegedly Chief Justice Ahmad....

Once again, Malaysia, you are in the eyes of the world for the wrong reasons. Malaysians, show what honesty, courage and pure justice is without perversion to the world.

Death of a Mongolian Beauty

Was it a gunshot, C-4 explosives or a grenade which killed her? Who actually did it? Is there a conspiracy, rightly or wrongly, as believed by a growing skeptical questioning public since the first prosecutor's opening confident declaration that only three persons were responsible for this international crime?

Have we forgotten how harsh the penalty is for the mere possession of either a gun or an explosive device in Malaysia? Yes, the penalty is death by hanging... and it wasn't too long ago, sometime in the 1980s that even a young boy who was below 16 and found in possession of a weapon, was sentenced to death... So we have two men mucking around freely with guns and explosives like we're in Hollywood except that the weapons were real and it was a lethal death show and not a wholesome family entertainment movie that these murderers are now providing the shamed and embarrassed law-abiding good Malaysian public that believes in truth and justice. Malaysia, THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING... The world will still be watching Malaysia, after the trial when Altantuya's Discovery Channel's prolific documentary- producing dad has his heart-wrenching movie about her and her unjustified horrific death in Malaysia completed and shown.

Malaysians... you are all part of the plot in the movie right now ...

The trial continues tomorrow with the testimony of one of the murder-implicated members of the elite Special police squad which protects the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia.
Remember to click on pics to enlarge them!



The Borneo Post news cutting is dated 29/3/07 about the elite police squad.