On the record by Abdullah Ahmad II

1. At last I finished reading this book, in between reading the biography of Mahatma Ghandi, chapter 4 of Kwek's MS thesis, Samsudin Musa PhD thesis, manuscripts on Rafflesia lawangensis, Folia malaysiana, a MS theses from UPM and USM and others. I wished I could do speed reading, but you can't apply sped reading to reading the thesis.

2. I saluted Abdullah Ahmad's clarity in expressing his dislikes of Western Press especially Newsweek, when these media attacked Malaysia and Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. I am as patriotic as Tan Sri, and I would do anything to defend my beloved country and also my beloved state, my beloved town and of course the village of Parang Puting where my blood was shed. But many a time I asked myself if my country and my Prime Minister were not wrong, why would these media did what they did. Of course tan Sri already explained the intention of these media.

3. Coming close to home I would have said the similar things to The New Straits Times, The Star, Utusan Malaysia, Harakah and other tabloids because these local media have quite similar intentions, right or wrong. At times I felt the editors and sub-editors and reporters were a bunch of "idiots" but then I think I understood their intentions as guided by their bosses and owners. After all journalism is a hypocritic arts and journalists are hypocrites.

4. However, I am so proud that Tan Sri expressed his thoughts and ideas in excellent English, very articulate and easy to understand. After all he was a former journalist, diplomat, politician, editor and etc. I had a couple of times spoken to him in person and I admired his philosophies and straight-forward ideas though too biased for his former boss, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, whom I perceived as committed some mistakes as politician.

5. In the last few records he did not minced his thoughts about his dislikes of Kelantan's MB Dato' Nik Aziz, Dato' Sri Anuwar Ibrahim, PAS, Islamic terrorism, western media and Mr Bush. I thought it was fair because Tan Sri had seen most and heard most, but how I wish he was more fair and balanced in his treatments of those who had been "damaged" by NST and all the TV stations especially during the elections.