Why should the world wait for next year? It's all happening here right now. An epic of plots and sub-plots worthy of even the most far-fetched Hollywood or even Bollywood blockbuster.

Though speaking of the cinema, Malaysia's real-life dramas were at least equalled in excitement for many by the relentlessly-hyped launch of the latest flick in the James Bond 'franchise', Casino Royale.

A work of cinematic art so dazzling, apparently, that it blinded the usually hyper-vigilant Malaysian censors to its promotion of not just the usual plethora of products, from Aston Martin cars on down, but two distinctly Islam-unfriendly ones: gambling and the so-called 'Vesper Martini', a lethal-sounding concoction of three measures of Gordon's gin, one of vodka, and half a measure of some potion called Kina Lillet.

If a couple of these aren't enough to enable you to escape, ignore or totally forget all the real-life dramas swirling around us, I guess you can always go see the movie. But I'm giving it a miss myself. I've seen enough shameless hucksterism and meretricious trash to be going on with, thank you very much. And in any case I'm too enthralled by some other scary scenarios that have been being playing-out around us recently, some of which continue to unfold as we speak.

The most critical of these, if possibly the least exciting to some, was the Umno president's address to last week's party general assembly. No James Bond-style derring-do here. But if he's ever able to put his sane, sober and statesmanlike words into deeds, and is given the time and support he says he needs, he could eventually prove one of Malaysia's greatest prime ministers.

Or so I thought until I read an article at by Roman Bose, who revealed that the Malay-language version of the presidential remarks had been somewhat less even-handed than the one I had read in the English 'translation'.

But even if Pak Lah's speech was disappointingly duplicitous in the way it was custom-tailored to suit or at least soothe different audiences, it still seemed like a model of reason and restraint compared with the rantings of the next generation of would-be 'leaders' who spoke to and presumably for Umno Youth.

Sectarian rabble-rousing

To the president's musing query "if by softly whispering we can achieve what we want, then what is the reason for us to roar?", his juniors responded with raw aggression.

And in stark defiance of his admonition to avoid stirring-up racial and religious tensions in the course of the general assembly, the young guns of Umno went totally ballistic - indulging in an orgy of keris-brandishing, swaggering, sniggering, self-adoring racist and sectarian rabble-rousing that was chillingly reminiscent of Adolph Hitler's Third Reich, Slobodan Milosevich's Serbia, Saddam Hussein's Iraq or the Ayatollah's Iran.

Who do these messianic 'defenders' of the Malay race and Islam think they are? Considering such statements as "Don't test Malays, they know amok"; "Umno is willing to risk lives and bathe in blood in defence of race and religion"; "the blood of Malay warriors will run in our veins", they see themselves as political personifications of 007 himself, complete with his well-known licence to kill.

Aren't there laws against inciting race hatred and homicide? If so, why aren't these being enforced in this case? Or are non-Malays and non-Muslims supposed to swallow such outrageous insults and threats, or ignore their attackers as just a bunch of overgrown boys having a bit of harmless fun?

There's no excuse for the wayang kulit warriors. They're supposedly bright, well-educated people and Umno Youth head Hishammuddin Hussein, though it seems hardly credible, is the education minister.

His responsibility is to inspire his electors to sharpen their wits, not their weapons; to call them to rise up against ignorance and poverty, not against their Malaysian brothers and sisters of other races and faiths. So if he needs something to wave to lift his audience's spirits, instead of an instrument of killing like a keris, why not an instrument of skilling, like a calculator or a keyboard or some other cutting-edge symbol of progress?

Why care at all?

If Umno Youth's pointless posturings and poisonous pronouncements of last week are enough to scare some citizens into thoughts of leaving Malaysia, as they certainly are, they're also likely to have a distinctly adverse impact on arrivals.

As is that other ongoing drama that's competing so fiercely for media attention right now, the gruesome murder of the Mongolian woman who may or may not have been a model. I must admit that the investigation of the case so far seems to have been, to the surprise of many, a model of fair and honest work by the police.

The whole affair is hardly the greatest advertisement for this country's tourism industry, however, as I was reminded by a picture that appeared in the press the other day: the lawyer, wife and daughter of the man charged with abetting the murder, with a 'Visit Malaysia 2007' poster featuring prominently in the background.

With as many pressing concerns as all the aforementioned, on top of all the usual unsavoury scandals and customary trials and tribulations of daily existence, perhaps it's a blessing, after all, to be able to escape into the fantasy, however far-fetched and fatuous, of yet another James Bond spectacular.

Nothing like a spot of mindless entertainment featuring a hunky new leading man, an assortment of beautiful bimbos and a high-stakes poker game to protect us, for a couple of hours, at least, from the need to face harsh or even horrible reality.

And if the latest exploits and sexploits of 007 don't do it for us, we can always resort to imbibing enough Vesper Martinis to not care less about what's really happening Malaysia, or where it's headed, or how it proposes to get there, or who, if anyone, dares to come visit the country in 2007.