Mahathir and Avatar

Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad would have created an “international incident” between Malaysia and the United States if he is still Prime Minister with his post-Avatar view that the 911 attacks in the United States that killed nearly 3,000 was staged as an excuse” to mount attacks on the Muslim world”.

It is a reflection of Mahathir’s continuing “heft” in the Malaysian government although he had stepped down as Prime Minister more than five years ago and the corollary weakness of the Najib premiership that Mahathir could still cause enormous embarrassment to the country with such a conspiracy theory of the 911 terrorist attacks.

Why was Mahathir inspired to embrace the conspiracy theory that the 911 attacks in the United States was staged to fan a world-wide war of Islamophobila just because of the technical wizardry of James Camerons’ “Avatar”, when there had been many other Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters with landmark visual-effects (VFX) scenes even during his years as Prime Minister?

This reminds me of two episodes.

In his biography of the fifth Malaysian Prime Minister which is still awaiting clearance by the Home Ministry to get into the Malaysian bookshops, “Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times”, former Asian Wall Street Journal correspondent Barry Wain wrote of the Mahathir characteristic in his “ability to work both sides of the street”, on the one hand his display of “a public antipathy on general principles at the Americans while his jungle was crawling with US troops quietly training for jungle warfare” from a secret military understanding with the US administration.

The other was the procurement of a special meeting between Mahathir and the incumbent US President Bush in the White House in February 2002 when the Malaysian Prime Minister visited the United States– at the cost of a RM4.6 million lobby effort involving the then Malaysian Ambassador to the United States.

Mahathir should weigh his words even in retirement and avoid undermining national interests with some of his idiosyncratic views.

45 Replies to “Mahathir and Avatar”

  1. LKS,
    Muhathir is a sick and loose cannon. Wonder what his motives are. One shudders when you think that he was at one time a Prime Minister of Malaysia. One can imagine what’s going through his mind. No wonder he chided the Malays for being too simplistic. How could one fathom the crazy things going through his mind? Rather than a case of others being too simplistic, it is of a mamak that has gone off the rails.

  2. MUCH AS HE LIKE TO BE RECOGNIZED AS A VETERAN STATESMAN, HE FELL WAY SHORT!!…PERHAPS, MORE A PAIN IN THE A#SE…. NOT ONLY TO FOREIGNERS BUT, TO LARGE EXTENT THE MALAYSIAN COMMUNITY…EXCEPT OF COURSE, HIS CRONIES AND IGNORANT DONKEYS WHO WORSHIP HIM AS A MAMAK TUHAN!!

    YB, HAVE NO FEAR, THE AMERICAN AND HER ALLIES WILL TREAT THIS FRUSTRATED OLD SENILE FART AS A RUBBISH MOUTHPIECE.

  3. Many of us have seen how our old parents, old bosses or relatives who at one time was successful and dominant fail to adapt to retirement or refuse to be ignored especially if something about them, their opinion, their reputation or their past misdeeds get challengened.

    I have learned one simple lesson: we reap the rewards sown by our forebears and we pay for their mistakes and their indulgence too. It is the cycle of life and it all eventually pass.

    So lets bury the SOB ASAP…

  4. YB

    This wannabe Hitler/Stalin/Mao who has gone to extraordinary lengths to ‘hide’ his part Indian ancestry has only proven 1 thing.

    Finally a M’sian politician, Firaun, much to our disgust, has achieved No.1 World Ranking – as the world’s worst anti-semitist, racist and bigot!

    In achieving that, he has brought our nation and the M’sian people into utter disrepute!

    That any man, more so our ex-PM of a multi-cultural and multi-religious nation should express lament, that another race is only fit to be isolated to ghettoes and had not been wiped out by Genocidal attempt, tells us that Firaun does not qualify to be even spat upon!

    Firaun almost seems to be urging uninformed Muslims, especially the youth, to resort to terrorism. He’s hell bent on on driving as deep a wedge as possible between Muslims and the West so that World War 3 will be hastened. He’s urging them to go to war to secure peace – much like fcuking to restore virginity!! – instead of beseiging the UN to negotiate for peace in the Middle East.

    It is our duty to do everything within our power to condemn him publicly and make sure he does not succeed in this mad hatters scheme. Shame on him!

    dpp
    We are all of 1 race, the Human Race

  5. Mamakinejad goes on to say, “The Jews had always been a problem in European countries. They had to be confined to ghettoes and periodically massacred. But still they remained, they thrived and they held whole governments to ransom. Even after their massacre by the Nazis of Germany, they survived to continue to be a source of even greater problems for the world. The Holocaust failed as a final solution”

    So the 6 million Jews annihilated in the death camps are not enough to please Bolehland’s Ahmedinejad!

  6. No reasonable man in the right frame of mind will want to make that assumption that America framed the 911 attack that killed more than 3000 people. He has said this soon after the aftermath and he is now saying it again. Probably he has an agenda for propagating such preposterous thinking or could be due to his immersion of willful thinking that his “enemies” are all actors. He has mentioned something similar about PAS sometime ago.
    To my mind I think he has a prejudice against America and to a smaller against the whites. I think he wants to be a hero of the Palestinians. Much that we would like to sympathize with the Palestine people but His sheer arrogance and recalcitrant character is of no help to the Palestinians but will only injure Malaysia.

  7. This supposedly retired old man recently compared the ‘Allah’ issue in Malaysia to France’s refusal to allow Muslim women to wear head scarf in schools and Switzerland’s refusal to allow the construction of minarets. It’s not like the Christian majority in these countries are asking the Muslim minority to stop regarding Jesus Christ as one of their prophets, is it?

  8. Mamakthir is a real disgrace and the fact that Najib has no balls to make a statement that repudiates Mamakthir’s statement is reflective of Najib’s rather tenuous hold on power.

    The correct thing to do would be for the Malaysian government to issue a statement distancing itself from the old fox’s statement, and reaffirm its fight against terrorism. Of course UMNO can’t do this for fear of upsetting Mamakthir, and UMNO can only cringe and pray that no further stupidity emanates from the mouth of this bitter old man.

    Is it any wonder that Bolehland is lurching from one stupid mess to another ?

  9. Don’t be fooled by this snakey UMNO veteran. He is not just another senile old man. What he is doing now is consistent with with what UMNO has been doing the past few weeks – fanning discontent and the seige mentality among the muslims in this country towards the christians, jews, christian countries, etc, etc.

    Christians should instead be more vocal in spreading Christ’s message of peace and love and forgiveness, to counter the venom spewed by this old man.

  10. Come on Tun, you don’t deserve to voice your criticism on anybody. What have you done to all malaysian is a living proof in history. At least Warren Buffet and Bill Gates donate their entire wealth out. But you steal our nation wealth for your own family. Even a beggar on street have rights to spit at you.

  11. He sounds like making an apology in defence of the Holocaust, making Hitler a hero!

    With pretentions of a world leader he should not give credibility to the wild conspiracy theories of German lawyer Mr von Bulow whose book, “The CIA and September 11”, notwithstanding 271 pages of “ifs”, “buts” and “maybes”, has nevertheless made lots of money, having sold more than 100,000 copies, many I am sure in Arab Countries….Yes the CIA staged by shooting a missile at their own place of work at the Pentagon??? And the CNN also implicated by CIA/Jews, showing to whole word images avatar style of the planes crashed into the World Trade centre and Pentagon? I suggest he tells his good friend to take CNN out of Astro’s 511 Channel for being part of this world wide conspiracy!

    Bulow argues that the World Trade Centre collapsed due to explosives, not the impact of the Boeings; no planes flew into the Pentagon or crashed in Pennsylvania; and mobile phone calls made by those on the latter flight were simulated by the CIA…
    than 271 speculative pages, full of “ifs”, “buts” and “maybes”, the lawyer weaves his own version of the world-changing events. In it the Arab hijackers were creations of the CIA and were not even told that the planes were to be used as weapons.

    I supposed the Americam

  12. Mahathir should weigh his words even in retirement and avoid undermining national interests with some of his idiosyncratic views. (Kit)
    =================================================

    Perhaps Mahathir wants Najib to step down as PM. Once America habors ill-feeling towards Malaysia and asks its citizens to “buy Malaysian last”, Najib will have a big headache.

  13. Jeffrey may still think that he is still a world leader but he certainly feels hurt when nowadays after several years’ leaving the centre stage of political power of Malaysia, some “kurang ajar” Umno politicians such as Nazri and Khairy Jamaluddin were so daring to pick up a personal fight with him by challenging his personal integrity and by the hostile exchange of harsh words with him so rudely and so openly in the exposure of public media. The psychological affliction certainly caused a lot of unbearable pains and it was so happy for him to find another political forum in the international arena in order for him to unleash the outrages which would no longer be endurable if it had to wait any longer. Marina definitely needs to take such a pitiful old man to consult a psychologist!

  14. “….Jeffrey may still think that he is still a world leader…” (Onlooker Politics). Actually what I said was “pretentions of a world leader”. That’s because I don’t know any acknowledged and credible world leader who have opined publicly that von Bulow’s CIA staged conspiracy of 9/11 could be credible or that Jews “held whole governments to ransom. Even after their massacre by the Nazis of Germany, they survived to continue to be a source of even greater problems for the world. The Holocaust failed as a final solution” with the nuance leaving it open for interpretation as if it might (who knows?) be good thing in the world for the Holocaust to have succeeded as a final solution.

  15. Doc Maverick never ceases to surprise or amaze.
    This is the man who had once, as the late Tunku had written in a book, suggested for the system of government in Malaysia to be changed from a constituional monarchy into a republic.
    He must be an avid follower of that British SAS motto ‘Who Dares Wins’…

  16. This old man has a lot of guilt-conscience, and normally before a person like him is dead, he will become senile and talk a lot of nonsence, the more sins he has, the more stupid comments will come out of his mouth. It will be interesting to know what is his last comment, perhaps it will be “Minta ma-ap Anwar”.

  17. I have never seen or read anyone in the world..that plays dirty politics………like Mahathir.
    All been exposed year after year…what a crooked hypocrite he is..what low class actor he is…what a racist he is..yet he continues.
    He compares Malaysia being so fortunate against Palestine..always using countries that are less fortunate than us..to try and fool young Malaysians..to say .how fortunate we are …under UMNO BARU.
    Why can’t he compare us with South Korea..Taiwan or Singapore?
    With his low class dirty..filthy mind…what is he trying to teach young Malaysians?………..NOTHING…except on and on trying to brainwash to support UMNO BARU.
    Yes…..Najib needs his style ..while he plans o create more fear and destroy more properties…and find a way…to get the race politics active …..on the streets…since the recent religion one…..backfired.
    Such is the kind of lives we are going through .under a part…that feel no shame to rob us..and keep trying to fool young voters..their only hope to get elected again.
    Slogans..create fear…and how lucky we are…

  18. You fellas are such babies.. Israel doesnt want this new pressure group “GCSQ” comprising of Arab States to gain strength. It spells trouble for them. So they brought in the Indian Muslim ( that led UMNO for 22 years or more ) to discredit the launch by cursing and pissing Jews & Americans the world over. It’s all sandiwara lah. Kalu tak percaya check the Kerala Muslim and his wife’s accounts. All the loot are stashed in Israeli banks lah coz thats the last place the dumb UMNO Malays would look !! You kids, he he he

  19. This shows clearly Mahathir have no sincere feelings for the..some … 4000 dead.
    If he have some respect for the families…he will not bring this sad incident back again with such a low class comment.,
    He is not a Statesman at all.
    He is a dirty low class sickening .. thick skinned … crooked politician..and only in Malaysia…you can have crooks talk like that..with no fear.
    His dirty politics is legendary…and he seems to enjoy being one.
    Yes…he knows the whole world knows he is a crook…so he keep on talking nonsense..to enjoy himself.

  20. Mahathir, a few conclusions can be drawn about yourself from your irresponsible and provocative statement:

    1) You are a coward. I challenge you to make that statement in front of the families of the 4000 innocent people who died on 9/11. Tell them it is all make belief ala Avatar. Then let them tell you if their loved ones really died because of a “staged” attack as you alleged.
    2) You are a troublemaker, not a peacemaker. Instead of promoting world peace in a world of unrest and violence that we have now, you are making it worse with your totally unfounded, irresponsible and ridiculous statements.
    3) You are a lousy statesman. Look at your peers. One good example is Lee Kuan Yew. He commands great domestic and international respect and his views and advise are seeked by many countries, whereas you have lost a lot of respect in your own country due to your racist views and policies which have polarized the country and severely damaged the inter-racial harmony, and internationally you are not even well respected, certainly no where near Lee Kuan Yew.
    I could go on, but enough said!

  21. /// Why was Mahathir inspired to embrace the conspiracy theory that the 911 attacks in the United States was staged to fan a world-wide war of Islamophobila just because of the technical wizardry of James Camerons’ “Avatar” ///

    I don’t think it was just Avatar. This is just pure speculation, but I think TDM should stop using that conspiracy theorist Matthias Chang as his ghost writer.

  22. An imaginary question and answer session with Dr Mahathir on allegations of his “ability to work both sides of the street”.

    On Barry Wain’s first charge: why display in 1984 public antipathy against Americans and yet allow their troops to crawl all over Malaysian jungles in training pursuant to secret military understanding with the US administration?

    Mahathir’s reply: “Whats the beef ? It was not for free. It was based on the Bilateral Training and Consultation Treaty with US covering quid pro quo reciprocal arrangements for Malaysian military officers to train in the US under her IMET program. Don’t forget that since 1980s the US has become the biggest source of our foreign investment, and had been Malaysia’s biggest customer adding to prosperity of the country! What of allowing the US to set up a small-ship repair facility at Lumut and a plant in Kuala Lumpur to repair C-130 Hercules transport aircraft when these generated employment for local Malaysians? The Hercules contract also benefited Airod and created employment for Malaysians. Later Airod was even awarded the contract to assemble the undercarriages for the F5E and other aircraft. This had increased our Malaysian technology skills. This is pragmatism. Yes US’s administration is bad. Its foreign policy is bad but what has that got to do with business and economic pragmatism that we should rightly pursue? Business is business: if US is bad as I criticise her on world stage, there’s nothing wrong for Malaysia to make money and receive economic benefit from this bad boy so that we have the resources to render economic help to the good boy like Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe!.

    Whats the next point of criticism?”

    Ok this point of his procuring photoshoot with US President Bush in the White House in February 2002 at the cost of a RM4.6 million lobby effort involving the then Malaysian Ambassador to the United States..

    The gravament of the charge/accusation :

    The World Trade Centre fell, and a wing of the Pentagon was attacked on 11 September 2001.

    If Bush & his administration were complicit in this self inflicted injury to hoax the world out of Islamophobia, a view Mahathir is sympathetic to, why then did Mahathir lobby at RM4.6 million expense to have a photoshoot session with Bush a year later in February 2002 after he knew about this???

    Ok Dr M’s will reply in defence:

    1. “I never initiated the lobby. Well wishers did. When I knew, I went along. Not that I admired/bodek Bush but more of not disappointing well wishers and their efforts! OK?”

    2. “Sept 11? Well arrangements to have photoshoot were afoot (without my knowledge) well before 11 September 2001 (the attacks on World Trade Centre & Pentagon)”.

    3. “Besides I only came to suspect Bush complicity in 9/11 attacks only after the photoshoot – a year earlier when I heard about Andreas von Bülow’s controversial hypothesis alleging CIA conspiracy and Bush’s complicity in his book but that book you will note was published only in 2003, a year after the photoshoot. So you can’t blame me of hypocrisy or working both sides of the street!Any more criticisms?”

  23. /// Mahathir’s reply: “Whats the beef ? It was not for free. It was based on the Bilateral Training and Consultation Treaty with US covering quid pro quo reciprocal arrangements for Malaysian military officers to train in the US under her IMET program. ///

    What’ the beef? As usual, TDM speaks from both sides of his mouth and suffers from selective Amnesia.

    When the Philippines kicked the US out of its Clarke and Subic bases, Singapore offered its Changi base for logistics (and not permanent presence), TDM kicked up a fuss. And he quietly and secretly does what he objected when Singapore did the same thing.

    Now that is playing both sides, the front and the back.

  24. ///Now that is playing both sides, the front and the back./// -TheWrathOfGrapes

    I wonder anyone has done that to him.

    However the example you cited, he can still justify hypocrisy/duplicity cum pragmatic politics as being necessary with prioritising national and own peoples interest, and I am sure there will be many examples that may be quoted in support that other countries, including the US will be guilty of the same in the pursuit of their respective national interests inconsistent with their high sounding professed moral claims.

    I guess people here are just angry when they perceive that the “playing of both sides, the front and the back” is directed not just at outsiders (like eg S’pore or US) but also at one’s own people and country. :)

  25. “Jews have always been a problem. They have to be confined to ghettos and periodically massacred.”
    Those are the exact words of the notoriously sly, evil mamak kutty which were quoted and carried by news media when he launched the maiden assembly of the General Conference for the Support of Al-Quds (GCSQ) in the capital on Jan 20. Coming from a supposedly “great leader” and a champion of the Third World, every single ounce of the speech is irresponsible, inciting and damn racist, to say the least. In fact, back in the 80’s his rumoured involvement in the Freemason movement put him on the backfoot, to the extent that he had to deny it in his speech during an Umno general assembly in that period.
    His Jew-bashing speech at the GCSQ event did not end there and this bum also spewed venom on the Western imperialists, taking aim at the United States.The absurdity and stupidity of his speech reached nonsensical heights when he drummed up a conspiracy theory ala Michael Moore that the Sept 11 attack on World Trade Centre in New York was staged by the US in order to attack Iraq and Afghanistan, i.e. the Muslim world. The amazing thing was that many of his running dogs and zombie like fans will believe every shred of nonsense that comes out of his big open foul mouth. It goes to show a basic fundamental problem with Malaysians (especially hardcore ultra racist Umno-ites and Malay nationalists) that this veteran, senile, egoistic and evil leader is the only “hero” that they can look up to.
    He himself has allowed billions of ringgit (RM100 billion according to Barry Wain’s recent book) to be leaked from the nation’s coffers to satisfy his enormous megalomaniac egoistic appetite. Billions were squandered and lost due to comatose projects like Perwaja and the LRT system etc..
    Nepotism, cronyism and abuse of power have been the order of the day.
    On another note, this racist started out as an Ultra-Malay which in fact he is a complete mamak by birth. By wearing the “Keffiyah” symbolising his solidarity with the Palestinians’ struggle, Mahathir has shown his ultimate chameleon side.
    His economic policies have shown failure and the spill over effects are felt up until today, with the country now lagging to even compete with minnows back in the 1970’s like Indonesia, Thailand and even Vietnam and Cambodia.
    He built a coterie of cronies that sucked the wealth and resources of the country to the point that it was unbearable for the economy.
    His leadership was an absolute nightmare, none more so than the devilish treatment of his once anointed successor, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who was stripped, beaten and jailed in 1998.

    He has created a political corrupted monster in Umno that gobbles up everything in its path and rules the country according to their whims and fancies. While the tallest and biggest super-structures were built, education, healthcare and welfare of the commoners deteriorated.
    As he is being shunned by the rest of the world except for Venezuela, Zimbabwe as well as Iran, and is being left behind by globalisation and rapid technological advances.
    Hey mamak kutty, the Jews are not the problem, you are, to the very core!

  26. MSN Encarta dictionary’s first defination of avatar is as follows:

    1. incarnation of Hindu deity: an incarnation of a Hindu deity in human or animal form, especially one of the incarnations of Vishnu such as Rama and Krishna.

    Unfortunately for us though, I think Dr M is an avatar of Rakshasas. The rakshasas are evil spirits in Hindu mythology with magical and shape-shifting abilities

  27. TDM writes again, not using ghost writer I assume in his blog, to repeat his earlier belief in conspiracy theory – that the buildings’ collapse straight down, floor upon floor, and not sideways was more like controlled demolition ; that 4 planes hijacked at the same time to initiate the attack, needed good planning but the muslim terrorists “are not good at planning, they just strap bombs to themselves and storm into a crowd”….

    The octogenarian knows that people’s psychology is such that they will choose to believe what they like to believe and refuse to acknowledge the obvious facts of the attack that they don’t like to believe, notwithstanding inconsistencies of the conspiracy theories.

    This is a deliberate stoking of and appealing to emotions of those of his target audience who refuse to acknowledge that Islamic terrorists perpetrated the attack, preferring to blame the heinous acts to the Zionist sympathethic US administration instead.

    What agenda is he up to?

  28. This che det is more than just senile. He is now LOA (lacking of attention) and wants the world to know that he is still alive and kicking. Just today he is adamant that it was a conspiracy the Yanks have cooked up. Imagine the greatest free world country having to stoop so low to kill more than 3,000 people just to wage a war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan!!
    Hospital Bahagia is waiting for a filthy rich and lunatic dude like him to while out his immoral days!!

  29. And I observe that every year mamak will have his holiday in UK (he likes Cambridge for some reason) and Switzerland (again for some strange reason). Please avoid the west if you have always chosen to look only in one direction, which is east and down at your feet, lest you contaminate these places.

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