Let's Read His Thoughts -Part 1-

As Dzirhan has mentioned before, he will no longer comment on the excerpts as he managed to get hold of the book itself. So let's read his thoughts on the first chapter shall we.

My Thought's on Chapter 1 of Dr. Kua's book-pt1

by Dzirhan Mahadzir - Defence Journalist on Sunday, 12 December 2010 at 19:32

Ok folks, apologies for the slowness but work left me pretty busy, for those unaware, there's a good write-up on Dr. Kua's book launch yesterday, in which more nonsense spouted by Dr. Kua, someone should point out to Dr. Kua that no UMNO member could die fighting Japanese in WWII since UMNO was only formed in 1946, link below

http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/fmt-english/news/general/14065-patronage-the-practice-in-arms-spending

Wasn't surprised Dr. McCoy was present there, but nice to note only 30 people including media/NGO/PKR reps attending which shows how much interest there is in it ;), Notice Malaysiakini now carrying commentary from the book etc, all I guesss to make up for lack of interest, didn't see any coverage in mainstream media. Intersting enough for all the interest in defence issues etc and citing of my articles in the matter in a book and in Parliament by Pakatan MPs and NGO, nobody seems to see fit to speak to me and ask, same for media be it mainstream or online on defence issues, guess people who work in the business not credible in contrast to people who know little save for what they read ;). Anyway enough on that as that will be a note for another day.

Now I have no problem with defence spending being scrutinized or criticised, but my problem is when the matter becomes politicised, distorted and used by people to fulfill their own agendas or when people doing such don't know what they are talking about or when they deliberately used racial issues which is the entire problem with Dr. Kua's book.

The first flaw in the book is the manner of citations used, there's an inconsistancy in Dr. Kua's approach, he gives name credits to articles by writers like my old boss Bob Karniol, who recruited me into Janes and a few others but the numerous times he cites articles in Janes and Defence Review Asia (mostly mine) and the mainstream media articles in NST, Star and others, he can't see fit to name the authors and title of the articles. Now the reason for this is important as knowing who wrote the article, so we can judge the accuracy and quality as not all writers are the same, and the context of the quotation based on the article title. The other problem is just on a personal basis as Dr Kua quotes my JDW focus on the Malaysian Armed Forces several times but it doesn't rate a mention in the selected articles list in the bibliography, wherelse articles he quotes once or twice does which again falls foul of normal conventions in such, like I said I get no credit ;).

The other flaw in the book is that in all honest sense, the supposedly well researched book has no original information, as pointed by both Marhalim and Azra, all the book does is quote materials published publicly, even then Dr. Kua doesn't bother finding out additional information or digging out new information. The so called expose is a lie as nothing contained in the book hasn't been talked about. Furthermore if it really is to be an expose, why did Dr. Kua not find people willing to talk, even anonymously about the alledged wrongdoings etc. If the publishers and writer had been honest enough to state that the book simply was based on open sources and a compilation, I'ed have been less critical but as it is..

I'm not going to bother with analyzing the foreword as it's a waste of time,not to mention the disgusting insincere dedication and go to Chapter 1, first off Dr Kua states that defence spending is passed through Parliament without too much debate, conveniently forgetting that he was once an MP, so whose fault is that if MPs, especially DAP, PKR and PAS don't do their job during the budget debate?? Now as to the issue of tying in withdrawal of subsidies and defence spending, the problem is if we don't spend money on defence, the problem is that we could lose billions down the line due to loss of sovereignity or inability to defend ourselves and Dr. Kua fails to take into account much of the spending is making up for the years where defence spending was postponed. It's ironic that Dr Kua criticised the mainstream media for defence reporting but then cites them extensively in his book, a very hypocritical approach. On pg 2 he cites an article in NST as example of coverage of defence exhibitions but it deons't mention if the article was purely a fluff feature or serious news, btw at least mainstream media covers the defence exhibition, don't recall online media save for KL Security Review covering at all.

On page 2 Dr Kua cites an article by Kym Bergmann on DRA about the Su-30 engine, as I work for DRA and Kym is my editor, it's a actually in my opinion a mix-up or editing mistake on the two stolen F-5E engines and a story about the Sukhoi engines being damaged, there's no Sukhoi engines missing, of course this illustrates the problem of simply relying on articles written, honest mistakes do occur in defence articles written overseas and also locally, even I screw up sometimes but thing is, if you want to cite something which has not been written anyway else, verifying the matter independently is important

As I've already talked about his comments on what RM1 billion can buy, I don't need to add on it but I think I need to ask why is it that when a Malay makes a comment as to what is seen as racist or race baiting, everyone gets up in arms, one the other hand when a non-Malay like Dr. Kua does so in his implication that no Indian and Chinese schools are being built due to defence spending, no one makes noise about it. I'm not a fan of Perkasa or Ultra-Malay nationalists but I think everyone should be held to equal standards.

Interestingly on Pg 5, Bob Karniol's article is cited as saying (the bad grammar clued me in as something being wrong-see end thoughts):

"Looking at the actors in East Asia security compex, defence expenditures of China, S. Kora and Japan, each of their respective airacft procurement budgets would dwalf that of all of SE Asia combine. Look at South Asia Security Complex, against some big numbers for India. What is the impact of Malaysi's 1 squadron purchase in comparison to India's current order of Su-30s (or for that matter China's building plan for the J-10)? Given the disparity in defence budgets, ASEAN countries cannot be said to engae in an arms race agaainst regional powers like India or China, it would not be a race." (5)

Footnote 5 states Robert Karniol "Arms resurgence in Southeast Asia" Straits Times, 15 March 2010. Now look at the online copy of the article at link below where this para does not exist at all, so was this part edited out in the ANN online version of it or it never existed at all and was made up?

http://www.asianewsnet.net/home/news.php?sec=1&id=10740

More to come later....

and this was the addendum..

Did Bob Karniol's quote in Dr. Kua's book exist at all

by Dzirhan Mahadzir - Defence Journalist on Sunday, 12 December 2010 at 19:36

I'm just repeating my last para in my previous note to bring up this issue:

Interestingly on Pg 5, Bob Karniol's article is cited as saying (the bad grammar clued me in as something being wrong-see end thoughts):

"Looking at the actors in East Asia security complex, defence expenditures of China, S. Korea and Japan, each of their respective aircraft procurement budgets would dwalf that of all of SE Asia combine. Look at South Asia Security Complex, against some big numbers for India. What is the impact of Malaysi's 1 squadron purchase in comparison to India's current order of Su-30s (or for that matter China's building plan for the J-10)? Given the disparity in defence budgets, ASEAN countries cannot be said to engae in an arms race agaainst regional powers like India or China, it would not be a race." (5)

Footnote 5 states Robert Karniol "Arms resurgence in Southeast Asia" Straits Times, 15 March 2010. Now look at the online copy of the article at link below where this para does not exist at all, so was this part edited out in the ANN online version of it or it never existed at all and was made up?

http://www.asianewsnet.net/home/news.php?sec=1&id=10740