We are now beginning to see an ugly picture splashed in our increasingly battered social conscience: the steady growth of the poor and the steady rise of Malaysian Rockefellers.

While the poor suffer at the foot of the Twin Towers, the rich laugh from the clouds above. While Americans suffer from their recent oil price hike, the oil companies still profit handsomely.

In Malaysia, through the same economic system that promised equality and social justice based on the equitable distribution of wealth, we are now seeing the growth of two 'untouchable' classes: one of the abject poor untouched by the care of an insensitive government and the filthy rich untouched by the reality of what they have created.

The world runs on this ethos; the rich will continue to get richer.