Clockwork Singapore tick, tick, tickles

The once reliable public transport system is turning into a nightmare to many Sinkies, particular the university students marching to their examination halls. The fear is to be caught in a MRT train breakdown and be late for the examination. The universities are also scratching their heads as to how to deal with such a scenario. Should they bar the students from their examinations or make concessions, or alternate provisions to retake the examination? It is not the fault of the students.

Sinkies going for an appointment, job interviews, meetings with clients, attending a court order or police order, dates, submissions of tenders etc etc and are delayed, who is to be blamed? To be late is already a big headache and can cause one to lose a contract, a job, or a boy/girl friend. Now every Sinkie would have to make additional plans when going for an appointment. How much more time to provide for just in case? The need to make such contingency plans because of an unreliable public transport system is going to make life that much more unpleasant and unpredictable and costly. The uncertainty is stressful for sure.

What’s next on the card? More tickles?

The Philippines dragging Asean into confrontation

The Philippines dancing to the tune of its puppet master is trying to drag Asean into a confrontation with China. After threatening to arrest Chinese fishermen and driven off by China, it is conducting a naval exercise with the Americans to simulate an assault on an island. China is warning both protaganists that they are risking an open conflict in the region.

The Philippines is turning around to scream foul and telling its Asean partners that China is obstructing freedom of navigation. The fact is that the Philippines has been arresting Chinese fishermen for years, even pulling Chinese fishing boats into Manila. Only a pest and provocative little country with the backing of the Americans would dare to arrest Chinese boats. The Japanese used to do that but have ceased from such provocative acts.

On record, it is the Philippines that have been arresting Chinese fishing boats and not the other way round. China has been tolerating this little brainless brat but is taking its nonsense no more. China has no choice as the provocation will keep coming as long as this pest thinks that China is afraid of its master, the Americans.

Yesterday China has unequivocally told the Americans and the Philippines that it had enough and is prepared to take them on. The Americans as usual will pretend to be the innocent party and would push the Philippines to front the confrontation. The game plan is to drag the whole of Asean into this confrontation and possibly into open conflict with China. More sales of American arms and a bigger foothold for American troops and intervention, to be the leader of Asean.

Would Asean bite and get itself into an open war with China and turn the South China Sea into a region of hostility? Most Asean countries would not want that to happen, to fight a war for the Americans. But there are at least two American lackeys within Asean that would want to push the boundary for their own vested interests, even having war with China. In the meantime the Americans and the Philippines are adding fire to the brew.

White Man’s Conscience behind bars

I was watching the documentary on Wikileaks in CNA last week, ‘War, Lies and Videotapes’. The star player in the whole episode was Private Bradley Manning, the American soldier who was pricked by his conscience for knowing the evil things and crimes against humanity conducted by the American leaders and soldiers in Iraq. He did the dreadful thing by passing 95,000 military messages to his FBI friends who too, pricked by his conscience, passed the whole lot of information to Julian Assange of Wikileaks and the rest was history.

For this crime of conscience, Pte Manning is now serving 52 years of imprisonment in American jail. He was also accused of being a traitor to his great country, the USA. His fellow man wanted to lynch him. He is the White Man’s Conscience of modern day. There were a few in the past when Red Indians were slaughtered daily, when African negroes were treated like animals, beasts of burden.

Pte Manning is the living White Man’s Conscience, sentenced to imprisonment for telling the painful and feared truths, the lies the Americans fabricated and told the world. The rest of the Americans did not weep. They wanted this conscience to be put away. They did not see anything wrong in the lies they spreaded and the killings of Arabs and Afghans because of their own lies.

And they are going to do more in Korea and now the South China Seas. They are going to agitate the pesky nations to start more wars, through provocations in the name of military exercises for peace. China and Russia should start to hold joint exercises near Alaska, Cuba and the Caribbeans, and Latin America. Then the world will see how the rouges in the evil Empire react to these friendly military exercises.

The silly South Koreans no longer dare to a word on who sank the Choenan. The Philippines is having a LSD high after receiving an antique ship and thinking it is now a naval world power, strong enough to start a war with China. In the meantime the real culprit to start another conflict is hiding behind quietly, with a halo on his head while pushing the South Koreans and the Philippines to go ahead.

Two different perspectives to raise pay

Reasons to justify pay hike for workers

1. Increase in productivity
2. If recommended by the NWC
3. Better employee performance
4. Increase in company profit
5. Cost of living adjustment
6. Difficulties in recruitment
7. Need to pay for talent

Reasons to justify pay hike for ministers

1. Difficulties in recruitment
2. To prevent corruption
3. To pay for the bestest talent
4. To keep up with the private sector
5. To maintain a comfortable life style
6. To compensate for the great sacrifice
7. To maintain dignity
8. To retain talent or they will quit
9. Increase in GDP
10. Individual performance
11. More appointment or wearing more hats

From the above, it is obvious that there are more reasons to give pay rise to ministers. There are 11 reasons compare to 7 reasons for the workers.

My observations are limited and I am sure there are more reasons to justify for a pay rise for workers and ministers. Equally there are many reasons not to prevent pay rise for workers and ministers.

In the case of workers, they need to be competitive, to be cheap, better and faster. And they is a huge supply of workers from poorer countries who are willing to work for less. And workers have lesser hats to wear, lesser appointments to be blessed on them. The only reasons to prevent minister pay hike is when the people are angry just like the Citigroup AGM when they minority shareholders voted against the obscene pay of their top management. Other than this, pay hike for top management is a cake walk.

The Master Race

They ruled the world for more than half a millennium. Practically every country and people became the subjects of their empires.  As early as the 13^th Century, they started to move out across the surface of the earth, to conquer, to rape and kill, to plunder and to rule. The Italians owned the Northern part of Africa, the French owned many parts of Africa as well, and so were the Germans and the smaller European states.  They divided Africa among themselves. The French also claimed IndoChina as theirs.

The Spanish went across to America and conquered that continent, and continued across the Pacific Ocean to take the Philippines. The Portugese skirted Africa to India and Southeast Asia. They were followed by the mightier Dutch who carved out Indonesia as their possession.

The mightiest of all were the British who founded a continent to call their own, North America. They also owned the major parts of Africa, the whole of India and many Southeast Asian countries, and further to New Zealand and Australia.

And together, they ventured into China and shared the spoils in dividing China among themselves. From the little extention of the Asia continent called Europe emerged a Master Race, superior than all the others, and when united, they were supreme in many ways. They built great cities, civilisations, great inventions, arts, culture, and modelled the world to their likings. They lived a life of plenty as rulers of the world, owning countries, people and all their resources and wealth.

The same great European grouping today is near the brink of bankruptcy, a beggar of the world, begging every where, demanding donations and charity from their conquered people, from the countries they had plundered to live in luxury, from the colonies they once owned and ruled, the people they once oppressed and killed

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Saying that they were begging is a misnomer. They don’t beg. Empire builders, the Master Race, don’t beg from the lesser people. They are demanding to be fed, they are demanding trillions of cash to continue their lifestyle of plenty, of being civilised and cultured and being elegant.  Hundreds of billions or trillions have been spent to help them to live a better life while the rest of whole live in near poverty or a much Spartan way of life.  And they are not anywhere near to solving their voracious appetite for the good life without having to work so hard for it. They used to take from the rest of the world. And they want to take again.

The Americans, an abnormal outgrowth of the Master Race, refused to budge or give a penny. They couldn’t as they too are near to bankruptcy. China, a rich nation and empire of its own, plundered and subdued to bankruptcy, all its wealth and dignity stripped, has acquired new wealth and is also unwilling to support the lifestyle of the Master Race that is living beyond its means, and thinking that they still owned the world.

But some former colonies were generous. Some were kind, like little Singapore, offering to help with a $5b loan while it could not afford charity for its own people. Should the world, the conquered people, extend their helping hands to their former oppressor with more money to live a life of aplenty?

Or would this Master Race reassert itself, rearmed and go out to conquer the rest of the world once again, so that they can live on the labour and wealth of other people and nations? Till today, they are still asking for money without wanting to solve their own difficulties. What they are asking today can only last a couple of years and they will be asking for more. There is no end to their problems and there is no end to their asking.

What will the Master Race do next and how would the lesser people of the world respond to their needs? For now they are threatening the world that if they to down, they will bring the whole world with them. That is the strength and reasoning power of the Master Race, the new beggar of the world.