Santos J - Model PR

Santos, a PR from the Philippines, has written an appeal to Singaporeans not to be too harsh on them and allow them to buy HDB flats from the resale market. And he has good reasons to say so. One of the biggest and immediate gain for allowing PRs like him to buy HDB flats is that the Singaporean owners will make capital gains, ie, they are helping Singaporeans to make profits when they buy their flats. I can’t dispute such a sound argument and Singaporeans got to be very appreciative of this wealth creation opportunity provided by PRs. And don’t be envious when they later sell it back to some Singaporeans to make some profits when they decide to go home.

Santos has more to add on his contributions and commitments to Singapore. I quote,

‘Some of you asked about our commitments to Singapore. I can say for certainty that my son will serve NS when it’s time for him to do so.
We are also sacrificing for Singapore.
My wife and I will prefer to remain as PRs because we have a sense of pride being citizens of our country. We were born and raised there. I hope you can understand our feelings for our country just like you have yours for Singapore.
As for my son, he will have to decide what he wants to be when the time comes. He is currently studying at a local school.
I appreciate what Singapore has done for my family.
I ask that you can please think of us PRs who are also struggling to help build your economy and your country. Thank you.

J Santos’
I must say that this is a genuine and passionate plea by a PR for the privilege and right to work and stay here and to help Singapore and Singaporeans in the process. And Singaporeans must take note that he chose to come here to help build our economy and our country. He kind of becomes a quitter of his country and kind of not wanting to help his country and his country’s economy. Now this is a big sacrifice for anyone to make for the sake of Singapore and Singaporeans. If Aquino hears this he will flip and may call Santos a quitter for sure, and a traitor if he stops smiling.
We should embrace such economic mercenaries who came here to help us. It is a pity that he still thinks of returning to the Philippines. If not, he would make an excellent candidate for political office, at least an MP. What a waste, no invitation for tea.
But do not be surprise that he would become the next poster boy, be invited and feasted everywhere he goes. Maybe he will be giving speeches to encourage more foreigners to send their children to do NS.  I am simply touch.
If all the PRs think like that, we will have solved at least two problems, more recruits for NS and a growing economy. And not to forget, Singaporeans can make profits by selling their HDB flats to them.
I am going to ask for his autograph. First I must get a copy of his photo then he can sign behind it.

Big bucks no responsibility, no accountability

Taiwan’s Defence Minister Kao Hua-chu resigned over the death of a national service man who was punished for having a mobile phone with a camera.

‘Hung Chung-chiu's death sparked an outcry on the island, with thousands of protesters demanding an investigation.’ BBC.  The tradition of Confucianist honour and accountability is still prevalent in Taiwan and the Minister Defence found it honourable and responsible to take the full blame for the death of the soldier. It has to be as the death was too big an issue to be swept under the carpet or to pass the buck down to the junior officers. To have a senior military officer to take the fallout was also found unacceptable. Only the Defence Minister was fit and appropriate to shoulder such a responsibility.

In today’s context, when children are sparse and few, and national service is a compulsion, not voluntary or an occupation, the seriousness of the death of a national service man is more pronounced and glaring. The parents sent their sons to be trained to defend the country, to die fighting for the country, not to die through negligence or abuse by his officers, or uncalled for accidents and mistakes.
The ministers or military officers of Taiwan are not paid outrageously well. To them, public service is an honour itself. And they take their jobs seriously and honourably and will own up and accept responsibility when it is due. It is not a case of collecting big bucks but with no responsibility or no accountability to failures or mistakes of their subordinates.

Say what you like, there is honour in the man (the Defence Minister) and honour in the service.   Kao Hua-chu’s resignation brought respect to himself and to the Taiwanese govt. No matter how high is the position, no one escapes and can hope to walk away by patting his backside as if nothing happens when a serious mistake or failure occurred. High office and big pay must come with great responsibility and accountability. How nice if one can be sitting in high office, collecting big bucks and no need to be accountable for any failure or mistake.

Obama and Cameron face off in Syria

The lying and killing were executed by Bush and Blair and their councils of liars when they invaded Iraq, murdered Saddam Hussein and destroyed that country, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the process. Saddam Hussein would take many life times to do the same damage inflicted on Iraq and its people by the Bush and Blair team.

Today, history is going to repeat itself with Obama and Cameron taking on the faces of Bush and Blair and using the same recipe of lies and disasters. Everything is identical, the conspiracy, the mission, the fabricated intelligence, the finger pointing and the players, except this time the new victim is Assad, Syria and its people.

The best part is that these two clowns think that they could pull off the same trick without needing to change the plot. It is easy for Obama as the Americans, as a people, are war like in nature and always want to go to war to claim victory and to celebrate the invasion and killing of foreigners, in George Carlin’s words, brown people. They love it and have a very high propensity to kill and destroy brown people while at the same time claiming peace and for the good of the brown people. There will be little pockets of Americans with a little conscience to shout no. This time the only such voice came from brown Americans.

The world is not going to swallow the whole lie once again. And the Brits are also not going to go through this farce without feeling ashamed of themselves. The British Parliament has just shot down Cameron’s call to attack Syria under the same set of circumstances as Blair. They knew the lies and would not allow Cameron to send British boys and girls to become murderers of brown people. According to ST’s Europe correspondent Jonathan Eyal, ‘This is the same inexplicable rush to war, the same refusal to wait for a report from United Nations investigators, the same claim that Western govts “know” who is the culprit on the basis of intelligence information which, of course, cannot be fully revealed.’

Jonathan Eyal also quoted former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who was involved in the Iraq War, reminding the MPs of the perils of going to war on fuzzy logic: “I know,” and “I have the scars.”

The Germans too learnt from the disgraceful Iraq War that they would not be seen to be in the company of murderers and be made a fool and accomplice of the crimes of murderers. They are staying neutral this time and wanting to hear from the UN,

But there is an eager beaver who missed out the actions in Iraq and wanted to be the cheer leader in Francois Hollande of France. Hollande wanted to take the place of Blair in this new blood letting of brown people. He said France is going to punished those responsible for using poison gas to kill hundreds of people. What would he do if it is proven that the chemical attack was done by the USA or its allies? 

And of course the nit wit in Washington, a brown leader or is he black, will not have anything but his way, to drop bombs to kill more brown people like it is his right to do so. And the whole world should just shut up. How could they say no to a Nobel Peace Prize winner who wants to conduct more wars and kill more people? The world must be insane!

The most peace loving nation and people, led by a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, are the most deserving people to wage wars, and the wars they conducted are virtuous in the name of God and peace. Sorry brown people, God is white.

Western hypocrisy - Killing the Syrians is playtime

 Looks like we will be firing Tomahawk cruise missiles into Syria, dropping bombs over their cities, and we can watch them live on TV with a beer and sandwiches. Maybe hold a party and pop a few bottles of champagne. This must be the greatest real life entertainment on earth, better than Hollywood. This seems to be the mentality of westerners when they talked about the impending invasion and bombings of Syria or any country the Americans and the western powers have chosen. It seems that it is their right to do so, that their reasoning, justifications, intelligence reports, fabricated or truth, do not matter, cannot be questioned.
 
Put it the other way, if another superpower and its allies are going to do the same to UK or Japan or another pro West country, would the western media write with so much comfort, and so casually like it is a non issue? And there are international laws to abide by, the resolutions of the UN, of the Security Council, which to the Americans are inconsequential. They are the judge and the executioner, the self appointed policeman of the world. They decide who is right and who is wrong and how they will deal with them. Period.
 
In an article by Hans Blix reposted from the Guardian in the Today paper, he questioned the rights of the American to act so unilaterally, as the policeman of the world and showing their middle fingers at the UN and world opinion. And what is at stake, chemical weapons. No, not chemical weapons but used of chemical weapons. The Americans and the West alleged that President Assad used chemical weapons against the rebels. They are not going to listen to the UN, presumingly an independent source or neutral to the civil war that have sent their officials to investigate the incident. The Americans and the western powers have judged unilaterally, using their own evidence. Assad is guilty!
 
The real culprits attacking the civilians could be anyone, Assad or the Americans and the western powers. The treachery and deceit of war are not so simple and cannot be taken at face value. Who is being framed? Who would benefit from this accusation is clear. It is the Americans and the western powers that can use it to attack and invade Syria. This alone is enough to tell the story and the truth. The Americans and the West are thinking that the Middle Eastern people and the people of the world are stupid and would accept all the shit they throw at them.
 
Chemical warfare is moral obscenity! Then who are the people arming the rebels with chemical weapons? Who are the people providing chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein to use against Iran? Who are the people providing chemical weapons to Osama and the Al Qaeda and the Talibans?
 
Why not ban chemical weapons totally and forbid any country to have them? Who do you think has the biggest arsenal of chemical weapons and producing and stockpiling them? They are hobbyists? They are spending all the money and resources, scientists and experts, all for fun, not to use them?
 
These are the same obscene people who talked about chemical weapons as moral obscenity. How believable are they? No need to guess who. And they are going to use their moral obscenity to attack Syria to kill more Syrians than those killed by the chemical weapons.
 
How much more and longer can the world live with this American and western hypocrisy? And they are claiming that they are not going to topple the Assad regime, not to tip the balance in the battle on the ground. Who are they trying to deceive? And their allies are singing the same tune, refusing to question if the chemical weapon attack got anything to do with the Americans and the West. Who is there to arrest these international gangsters? At the moment no one and the Russians too have to eat humble pie if the American led attack goes ahead. The Russians too cannot protect Syria despite Putin and all the tough talks and its interests being violated.
 
While the Americans and the western powers think they can hit Syria and Syria unable to hit back, Syria might as well take on a single country like Turkey or Israel and throw everything it has on one target. Turkey looks like a more attractive target to extract heavy casualties and damages.

Discrimination by majority rule

We are still hearing a lot of angry discriminatory remarks being hurled every where about how the majority ill treated the minorities. I must say that there are policies that are discriminatory in nature. There is no denying that discrimination by the majority against the minorities exists everywhere and in every country. The difference is only a matter of scale and severity and also the reasons behind it.
 
There is some discrimination in govt policies towards the minorities in some areas for sure. To understand why it happened, one needs to understand the history behind some of these discriminatory practices and the necessity of it all then. One point that separates the discriminatory practices here from other countries is that it is not discriminatory by virtue of race or religion per se. The historical circumstances dictated that some policies were necessary as a matter of national security. Please feel free to disagree but let me explain.
 
During the days of Malaysia, our number one enemy was Indonesia. There was Confrontasi, with bombings in the streets and with commandoes dropping into Johore and if I can remember, in East Malaysia. It was war in a way, or the threats of war. There was hostility between the two countries.
 
Then we were separated from Malaysia in a not too amicable way. Malaysia became enemy number one with the hostility from Indonesia dying off. There were a lot of suspicion and mistrust and verbal warfare and agitation by the politicians.
These historical backgrounds led to the crafting of some policies that were discriminatory by any count but the reason was not racial or religious to begin with. Our relationship with Malaysia went on a roller coaster ride with a few ups and many downs. This in a way imprisoned the security mindset of the policy makers till today. We are having a lull, a good respite in our relations with Malaysia for the last couple of years. How long would it last and how quickly the relationship can turn sour is as fast changing as the weather as the source of acrimony between the two states is still there, and is unlikely to be removed for a long time to come.
 
Despite the so called discrimination, the country prospers in all fields and life is good to all the citizens, to a matter of degree. There is relativity involved with some doing much better than others and with some feeling that they could do much better without the discrimination. The reality is that life has improved for the majority and minorities and the economic pie is bigger to share around.
 
The composition of the population remains fairly similar from the days of independence. The Chinese are in absolute majority with the Malays, Indians and Eurasians forming the smaller minority groups. The circumstances leading to the migrants arriving in this island were mainly economics in nature. They came to eke out a better living and with many, particular the early Chinese and Indians, planning to return to their motherland eventually. The thought of permanent residence or becoming citizens were the furthest from their minds except for some who married the locals and had sunk roots here. The rest is history, and today they are citizens of this flourishing and modern city state.
 
The Chinese became a majority by chance, with no preconceived or preplanned intention to do so. It could be either way. The Malays could remain the majority with the rest as minorities. The Indians actually stood a better chance to be the majority by virtue of their closed association with the British colonial masters. The British were used to them and dependent on them for their administrative assistance and labour. If the British did not freely import the Chinese coolies here, the racial composition could be Indian majority and Malay minority or vice versa, and a trinkle of Chinese presence.
 
What would Singapore or Singapura be like if the absolute majority were the Indians or Malays? In all probability, Singapore would still be as prosperous as it is today, by fate or predestination. If the absolute majority is Indian, then it could be a mirror image of Mumbai or Kolkatta or another Indian city, an Indian PM and many Indian cabinet ministers and MPs. If the Malays were the majority, Singapore could be another image of a Malay city or state and the composition of the govt is likely to be Malay PM and Malay Ministers and MPs in the majority.
 
Now the interesting question, would the majority of an Indian or Malay state be less discriminatory as the Chinese majority state today? This is hypothetical of course. Would the Malay or Indian majority be as generous as the Chinese to their minorities? Would the Chinese as a minority plus the other minorities be hurling accusations of discrimination against the majority ruler? Would they be treated as fairly as the minorities of today’s Singapore?
 
What kind of Singapore would it be like? Would there be less or more discriminations on race and religion? What kind of economic opportunities would there be for the Chinese minorities?
 
PS. I hope we are mature enough to discuss this issue without resorting to name callings and behaving like mad dogs. Should this discussion go down the longkang when the insecure and extremists come in to mess up the discussion I would not hesitate to close down this thread. In a way this is a test on the maturity of the bloggers here, a small representation of the masses at large. Are we ready to discuss such issues?