Quote by Joey, a blogger in TRE

This is a quote by a blogger in TRE to my article on How much GIC and Temasek have contributed to the public coffer. And I take liberty to modify it a little. This is the original comment, ‘People working harder and harder for lesser and lesser to feed an elite group which is getting fatter and fatter.’

This is my extended version…People working harder and harder for lesser and lesser to buy smaller and smaller flats at higher and higher prices and the elite getting richer and fatter.

How to weaken the Sinkie core?

This is a simple question with many simple solutions. But there is a catch. When one is talking about the core, it reminds me of biology lessons when the core of a cell is the tiny nucleus. That is the core, and the core is meant to be very small though a very important critical mass. Is this the population core that the Govt is talking about, a smaller core is still acceptable, the smaller the stronger, or strengthening by making it smaller?

In conventional logic, to strengthen the population core, it must be increasing the numbers that are making the core. A 70% Sinkie core is definitely a stronger core than a 60% or 50% core. No craps about quality replacing quantity and a core of 30% of super talents is better than a 70% core of the masses. Theoretically this is good on papers but rubbish in reality. No country can have a population of super talents and no average or below average citizens unless the latter are all culled in a screening process, or expelled.

Weakening the Sinkie core is so easily done, by reducing their numbers or percentage in the population. Another way is to dilute them with foreigners as new citizens to hide the truth, that there are now more Sinkies but not really Sinkies as a Sinkie would know.

There are many ways to get rid of Sinkies. Forcing them to emigrate, some left because they find themselves no longer competitive vis a vis foreigners, under pressure by the system, disadvantaged. How about a policy that invites foreign talents to replace local talents? Sounds logical, clinical, practical, functional but totally devoid of the intangibles of country and citizens, of a social contract between govt and its people with share values and a common bond and destiny. It is all so numerical, so calculative and economic. Man is not just an economic animal. A country is not an economic unit.

Nothing can be worst than to replace local talents with fake talents or half baked talents. And that is not strengthening the core but eroding the core, undermining the Sinkie core. It is so easy to weaken the Sinkie core.

North Korean bomb making East Asia a safer place

Contrary to all the hue and cry about the latest detonation of a nuclear bomb by North Korea, this act and the nuclear capability of the North Koreans have in many ways helped to stabilise the East Asia region from going into war. Japan and South Korea will now have more reasons not to provoke the North Koreans or threaten military actions every other day. The consequences of a hostile act by any of these two countries could be devastating. There are now more reasons to want to be nice to the North Koreans and develop more lasting and peaceful economic and diplomatic relations instead of making enemies.

The bigger threat of war in the region, the evil Empire in the US too will have to take cognizance of the North Korean’s ability to deliver the black eye. The Americans cannot afford a nuclear bomb on any of its major cities. Any preventive strike, any hostile act of aggression, any premeditated invasion, threat or provocation, or war games, will have to be very carefully calibrated and restrained. The cowboy’s shoot first talk later cannot work anymore as the price to be extracted by the North Koreans is unacceptable.

And no, the North Koreans, like any nuclear power, will not be trigger happy to fire a nuclear missile at any country any moment. Such an act is assured self destruction of North Korea. The American nuclear arsenal is formidable and unchallenged and cannot be challenged. The nuclear capability is an insurance certificate the North Koreans have bought for themselves against any cowboy president in the US that thinks he could strike with impunity. The North Koreans have secured their country from foreign attacks.

The current spate of fist waving and table thumping are likely to subside and reasons and cool heads will take over. The war rhetoric and war games the Americans and South Koreans conduct regularly near the North Korean’s border would have to be toned down for good measures. Any military intervention for a regime change in North Korea is now out of question. When the bully does not have overwhelming superiority to hit out at a weaker enemy that cannot hit back, the bully would have to talk less aggressively from now on.

The North Koreans have bought peace and avoided the fate of an Iraq or Libya. It is now the turn of the Iranians to do the same to protect themselves against an invasion led by the evil Empire and its proxies. Only then would Iran be safe from the evil Empire and Israel. No country would want to start a war with a nuclear power. For they cannot win and should it come close, the nuclear power will just unleash its nuclear might to end it all.

Strange but it is the hard truth. The world is a safer place with the acquisition of nuclear power by small nations to protect themselves against aggressive and belligerent evil Empires and their proxies that believe in might is right.

How much weight to carry around?

Do you want to walk around with 60kg, 100kg or 150 kg as your body weight? Between 60 to 100kg I think many could still feel quite comfortable to move around with their daily life routines. Beyond that, to carry more than a 100kg of body mass, getting around is not going to be easy and there are many other negative side effects. The first part is to keep and maintain that weight, it is going to be very costly in the consumption of food and medical services/products. Even the whole wardrobe got to be changed, as well as the furniture.

On the lighter side of 100kg, living is that much easier, and that much cheaper. One does not need to eat a pail of rice and all the meat and vegetables to go with, maybe a bit obese but not too heavy on the knees and the feet and the heart. There is no need to eat like a glutton, wasting so much food that is totally unnecessary. The intake of a 150kg is going to be more than twice that of a 60kg, and more of everything.

This is a very simple analogy of what a population of 5m, 6m and 7m is going to be like. If we can get along fine with 5m, why pushing for 6m or more? Can we live with 5m and remain healthy? The Govt’s view is that we are hitting a crisis of a life time if we don’t go the 7m way. The reasons given were not convincing and never look like anything of a crisis. There will be major adjustments that needed to be made. The adjustments are much easier at the current level than when it balloons to 7m. It will then be a 7m kind of problem.

There is often the call to be mean and lean and fighting fit. 7m is not going to be fighting fit but going to slow down everything as the cost to sustain a 7m population is going to be very much more difficult and the returns will be marginal. The fact that the GDP will only grow by 2 – 2.5% for a 100k increase of heads annually just does not make reasonable sense. Why are the social and other costs and consequences not spelt out for the people? So far everyone has been told of the good things but no one is telling the bad part.

We all know what it is like of a 150kg body. The similarities need no imaginations.

Japan, the first of 21 Demands in the 21st Century

Japan is back to its mischief once again like it did to colonise Korea, Manchuria and China and eventually the whole of Southeast Asia. During its imperialist days, it repeated fabricated acts and incidents in China and blamed it on the weak Qing Govt and later the ROC. And after creating every incident it will demand apologies, compensation and special concessions from China. It kept on bullying China and eventually invaded China in an attempt to colonise the country.

Japan has started to create incidents to provoke China by first making a fictitious buying out of the Diaoyu Islands which it snatched from China in the late 19^th Century. This has forced the Chinese hands to exert their rights over the islands. The Japanese escalated the tension by scrambling fighter aircrafts and naval crafts to intercept Chinese surveillance planes and ships. The latest tension is the accusation that a Chinese frigate locked radar onto a Japanese destroyer. This is like the Tonkin Incident when the Americans accused the Vietnamese for ramming their patrol boats against an American warship.

And the haughty and arrogant Japanese PM Abe is making his demand that China apologise for the act. This is going to remind the Chinese of the 21 Demands Japan made on China to control China and seized Chinese territories. Many Chinese are going to be riled by this demand and will react in a hostile manner and raising the temperature in the island dispute. Japan is provoking China to defend itself and to accuse China of acting aggressively. This is likely to be part of an American Japanese plot to show to the Southeast Asian nations that China is indeed an aggressive big power.

What can China do? China cannot run away from this fight. It has to take the Japanese and the Americans on or it would have endless troubles and even losing Diaoyu Islands for good. China must demand that Japan withdraw all its ships from Diaoyu Islands or face the consequence of war. This is the new bottom line.