Ex CIA man says exposed US spy scheme to protect the world

By Mark Hosenball and Richard Cowan

‘WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An ex-CIA employee working as a contractor at the U.S. National Security Agency said on Sunday he was the source who leaked details of a top secret U.S. surveillance program, acting out of conscience to protect "basic liberties for people around the world."… Edward Snowden, 29, said he had thought long and hard before publicizing details of an NSA program code-named PRISM, saying he had done so because he felt the United States was building an unaccountable and secret espionage machine that spied on every American.

Snowden, a former technical assistant at the CIA, said he had been working at the super-secret NSA as an employee of contractor Booz Allen. He said he decided to leak information after becoming disenchanted with President Barack Obama, who he said had continued the policies of predecessor George W. Bush.’

The greatness of the American people is that once in a while there will be honourable men and women who were pricked by their conscience to stand out and tell the ugly truth to protect fellow citizens. There were Woodward and Bernstein of Watergate, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange of the Wikileak, and now this leak that revealed some of the obnoxious things the American Administration is doing in the name of good for the country.

Many leaders of democratic countries, walking under the halo of goodness, conduct and act in very dubious manners, even targeting their own citizens. And not many countries have civil servants who are honourable and brave enough to expose their evil political leaders. Some even drink from the same cup and enjoy the holy patronage and largesse.

This is what Snowden said, "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that (US$200k salary) because I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."

Free our Internet.

Vivian Balakrishnan making a political comeback?

‘Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Dr Vivian Balakrishnan has joined in the hawker centres’ cleaning disputes.

He said it is “arrogant and wrong” of Ms Sylvia Lim to make a political attack on National Environment Agency (NEA) officers for simply doing their job….’

Vivian is calling Sylvia Lim arrogant and wrong for taking a shot at NEA in the hawker centre cleaning dispute. So who is arrogant and who is not arrogant, and who is right and who is wrong?

Vivian has been out of the limelight for a while after the Youth Festival and the acrimony he incurred for blowing the budget by an astronomical sum. Netizens were quite hostile to him and only stopped when he went out of sight and out of the news media. He was eclipsed politically.

Vivian’s latest attack at Sylvia Lim is unwise as the bad blood against him is still there. What is he hoping to do by this attack? To defend his NEA officers is one thing, to attack another politician by calling Sylvia arrogant is not going to be well received. If he is thinking of making a political comeback, to be in the lime light again, he will be surprised. He will hoard the limelight for sure, but for all the wrong reasons and he might regret making this latest statement.

Personally I think his political career is over, even if he is fielded in the next GE. His public image is far from the early days when he entered politics or before he entered politics. He is always remembered for his infamous reply to Lily Neo in Parliament. That is quite a chip to get rid off from his shoulder.

Lessons from China

Some may think this is ludicrous. What can we learn from China, a developing country, and we are first world, China learnt from us. But don’t forget that this developing country is the Number Two superpower now, and is the economic powerhouse, the factory of the world and the biggest owner of American debt.

What can we learn from China? Revisit China in the 60s and 70s, about the same time we became independent and went industrialization. China was still a backward impoverished agrarian country. They have leapfrogged ahead of us now. Why and how?

Inspiration is what that takes China to what it is today. The Chinese were inspired to be a big power, to over take the Americans, to be respected as a rich and powerful nation, to be a rich civilization, PRIDE. Yes pride to be themselves, to believe in themselves, to slog to be where they are today. This is something that we can learn from the Chinese, the belief in your own people, your people’s talent and ability and the pride to succeed, to be a better people and nation.

For the last couple of decades, we have sunk so low that we have no pride in our people anymore. We believe our people are daft. We import idiots, fools, conmen, tricksters, cheats and all and sundry, and called them talents, and pay them like hell. We no longer want to rely on our people, our own talents. We want to buy talents, get talents from everyday, even faked talents, and think that is the way to go forward.

We choose to school and train foreigners to be our talents. We choose to employ foreigners as talents and kick our own talents aside. We don’t believe in ourselves anymore. We don’t believe in our own people. We neglect our own talents. We discriminate against our own talents. No, foreigners cannot and did not discriminate against Singaporeans. It is us, our system that allows them to do so. It is our own making. The fault is with us, not the foreigners.

The people are inspired by faked logics and deceptions to believe that they are losers. And more and more foreigners are employed to be CEOs and in top management in many public funded, govt and govt linked institutions. We are inspired to be a sick and untalented people, needing foreigners to help us, to make our lives better. We are told we needed help from foreigners. And we believe.

Is there anything we can learn from the Chinese in China? They inspire their people to believe in themselves, that they have talents and can compete with the world, with no need to import or rely on foreign talents. They just do it, by themselves.

Inspiring a people to believe in themselves is fundamental to the growth of the people and the nation, the progress of a people, the uplifting of a people to a better country and a better life. Is there anyone out there to inspire Singaporeans, true blue Singaporeans to greater height, to scale the highest mountain? Is there anyone out there to tell the Singaporeans that they are the best, and the best they can be, without the need to look towards half baked third world fake talents as our inspiration, as our saviours?

We need leaders to inspire our people to greatness once again.

Contribution from foreigners to our economy

We had dengue before, but not to this extent. If not put under control, the whole island could become a dengue cluster. We knocked out TB for decades and it is making a grand entrance in this island again.

Now the newest disease descending on this island is chikungunya. It is spreading, from the highly populated foreign worker enclaves in Sungei Kadut and Kranji it is now spreading towards the nearby affluent district of Bukit Timah. First our foreign workers brought them in, and now their generosity is shared by our rich and famous, our elite. The non elite in their high rise flat may be less risky as their surroundings are made up of concrete and not foliage and forests.

Chikungunya is not a native here. Thanks to the foreigners, it is going to be a permanent resident soon. We would not issue them with citizenship, but chikungunya will not go away. And this is only the beginning. What else will the foreigners contribute to our economy to improve the lives of our people? Are there any diseases that have come on board and not reported?

80 year lifespan a threat to retirees

A longer lifespan is conventionally seen as good, as people can now live longer. Not many would want to know that this could be a curse to many in particular those that have ill health with the soul or life being trapped in a rotting and malfunctioning body that costs much more than anything to be alive. But this is only a biological problem.

The other big issue is the social problem. Our whole structure of employment and retirement age are screwed. You can no longer retire people at 55 or 60 or even 70 when they need an income to keep on living. And added to the problem is the art of inflating away huge debt into the future. The savings or pensions of retirees will be eroded at blinding speed that the once enough pension or savings could last so much lesser time. Inflation will reduce their spending power and whatever savings/pensions that were enough would not be enough.

Now I can understand why the smart ones would want a million dollar to keep their good life forever. Those with a few hundred thousands will be caught in the inflationary trap. They would not believe their savings could be expended so rapidly. And that is only confined to normal expenditure without incurring big expenses like medical bills.

With a public housing scheme that is designed to soak up the incomes of buyers under the affordability concept, many will be making just enough to pay for public housing and nothing left for retirement. And no one is seeing this flaw and keeps blaming the people for not saving enough while allowing property prices to rise.

How can anyone save enough when the price of public housing is pegged to what they earned? And to sustain this Ponzi Scheme, the prices must keep going up, which means the need to print more money, leading to unceasing inflation at ever higher rate.

The problems of the oldies will only snowball as the inflation based economy cannot be stopped and the value of money will simply shrink and fritter away. With more oldies joining the ranks of longer lifespan, this is going to be a very critical issue when the number hit the million mark.