3/19/2014

Little India Riot COI – not life threatening

More evidence from eye witnesses to support the claim that the little India Riot by very nice foreign workers was not life threatening. In the latest report, Staff Sergeant Yaacob Kamis remembered that the rioters told him and his fellow officers to run, ‘You all run, you all run.’ This was when the rioters were about to turn over the ambulance and set it ablaze. The rioters were so kind, they just want to burn the ambulance and telling the police officers to run. Should they not run when they torched the ambulance, it must be their fault as the rioters were only interested in burning the vehicles and not to kill anyone. Swear not life threatening.
 

‘The auxiliary police officer in the ambulance told the committee previously that he had heard the foreign worker say in Tamil: “I want you all to die today.”’ I think this statement was just to frighten the officer and they have no such intent to kill anyone. Remember, they are very nice people and would fall down like little school children when a woman bus attendant gave them a little shove. How could they have such deadly intent? Cannot be!
 

All those people who think the rioters have intent to kill and the riot was life threatening were all wrong. They only wanted to riot, to throw stones, bottles and whatever they could lay their hands on at the police officers. Should any of the objects hit their head, it was not meant to kill them. Just an accident if they died.
 

I am so confident that I am right because I am so knowledgeable. I know the psychology of the rioters. I can read their minds. I am omniprescient. Please feel free to disagree with me. I am not God.

Recipe to take over a small country

The Russians have done it in Crimea. Send in the troops and hold a referendum and you can have a country in your hand. But this recipe requires military might and a majority of the population consisting of people from your country or similar to your country. And one must be prepared to fight with the Americans and the European powers.

There is a simpler and more peaceful way of taking over a country without resorting to arms and with the leaders happily doing your bidding, and the people ignorant of what is happening to their country. Take for example a small island country like Mauritius or the Maldives, small islands with small populations and an innocent but eager govt to want to bring economic growth to their people. The leaders will think that they are progressive and doing everything for the good of the people. Just feed on their ambition and egos and they will behave like deaf frogs.

Step One, encourage their leaders to go all out for economic growth. Help them to sell the idea to their people. If it doesn’t work, use a bit of threat or reverse psychology on the people. You want growth or you don’t want growth. This type of statement sure works on their kiasu people. Once the people and leaders are hooked on this growth drug, everything will fall into place.

Step Two, send in the money. Offer them economic aid in terms of foreign investments to create jobs for the people. This is a formula they cannot refuse. Send in our talents to assist them. And convince them that they did not have enough talents.

Step Three, sign a free trade agreement with them to allow our talents and non talents freedom to migrate and work there. The first batch will be our companies and industries setting shops there. And don’t forget to set up our own schools too. And give the reason that the local talents are not suitable then start to export our people to fill up these companies as foreign talents. If needed to, just employ a few local clerical staff as show of providing jobs for their locals.

Step Four, cultivate the ‘gong gong’ leadership to use our talents in their private and public sectors. Better still, make sure our talents are employed in their stats boards and ministries. Once these people are in place, start to recruit our people to occupy key positions in these institutions and eventually filling them with our citizens. Once our citizens are in control, these institutions, including ministries will be as good as ours.

Step Five, advise the local govt to offer citizenships to our people. If no citizenship, PRs also can. The main goal is to fill the country with our citizens to be their new citizens or PRs. Of course this may lead to some problems with their citizens. Teach them how to disguise our presence by classifying PRs as locals and the daft locals would not have any clue what is going on to their country. For those who have become citizens, pretend to be good citizens and start to buy up their properties, estate by estate. With so much money at our disposal, we can eventually buy up the whole island or at least their prime estates.

Step Six, let time to take care of the rest. With our citizens controlling their industries and ministries, and continuing to employ our citizens, it is a matter of time when we will be the real majority there. And without knowing anything, without doing anything, that island will be ours in half a generation.

Step Seven, our citizens that have become their citizens can start to participate in local politics as rightful citizens. Join or form political parties to contest to be the elected govt. Oh, there is something I missed. Educate the locals there to believe in meritocracy so that our more meritocratic talents can rise to top positions without protest from their people. Because of our high education standard, we don’t need to use fake certificates and CVs. And if possible, convince their locals that they are daft and they need foreign talents like ours to help them and create jobs for them.

Not only will their ‘gong gong’ govt be helping us to take over their country, they will be very grateful that we are sharing with them our growth formula and our talents. They will have all the economic growth they desired. And make sure their local elites also benefited from our presence and investments. Make them very rich in the process so that they will support everything we do. For their average citizens, they may lose out, but never mind, they are too daft and inconsequential to do anything. There may be a few small protests, but no matter. Once they become an absolute minority, there is nothing they can do to overturn our takeover.

And in conclusion, we could own a few islands like the Mauritius and the Maldives to expand our territories and influence.

Not a bad recipe right? We have a growing population and we need to expand. We cannot do that to our big neighbours, but to smaller countries with goondu leaders, there are great opportunities to make such friendly and benign takeovers a success.


Kopi Level - Yellow

3/18/2014

Olam – Is it a bail out using public fund?

The acquisition of Olam by Temasek is raising eyebrows and frowns from many quarters. Kenneth Jeyaratnam has commented negatively on it. Below is Christopher Balding’s article on the buy out of Olam. Temasek seems to be very bullish in this commodity trading company. It came out in full support when it was shorted down by Muddy Waters a year ago. Now it is making an offer with the possibility to buying over the company at a high price of $2.23 when it could have had the company for a song when it was under attack. Why? Why buy at such a huge premium and not when it was about 90c? Another case of buying high? OPM?
 

Why is Temasek supporting a foreign owned company to want to commit $2b on it when it could buy it for less than half the present price? Another long term strategy stuff?
 

‘Just had to write about this interesting little tidbit I saw today about Temasek and Olam. According to news reports, Temasek through a subsidiary is going to buy Olam at a 12% premium to the current share price. This is an interesting development and to me raises a couple of questions. First, I am intrigued that Temasek is paying a 12% premium after the stock has already increased 30% since the first of the year.
 

This means that Temasek is either paying nearly a 45% premium to what it could have paid just two months ago and is really slow to spot a value in its own portfolio or insiders were buying the stock in advance of a buy out offer they knew was coming. This 30% increase is even more abnormal considering the Straits Times (Index) is essentially flat for the year. Neither scenario is particularly attractive.
 

Second, this seems like a very oddly timed buy out. Prior to the first of the year, Olam had traded primarily in the $1.50-1.75 SGD range and this follows on the announcement that profit declined 13%. If Temasek felt this strongly about Olam and its long term business prospects, it would seem to be a better proposition to buy at the bottom of the market because you know the business well and believe the market is undervaluing the business. Not wait until there is a 30% increase in two months and then offer a 12% premium. The general philosophy of long term investors is buy low and sell high. I am just a professor though, so what do I know.’

Christopher Balding

MH370 – Another theory on where it could be

Many of you reading the media and its explanations on primary and secondary radars would get the impression that once the transponder is switched off, the radar would no longer see the aircraft. This is not true. The aircraft will still be on the radar screen as a blip minus the squawks. A transponder, when it is switched on is like the aircraft wearing a name tag to say this is who I am. Without the transponder/name tag on, it will appear as a blip just like any other aircraft on the radar screen. And if the emergency switch is on, four squawks will appear behind the blip to indicate an aircraft having an emergency situation.
 

The reason why the transponder was switched off has a purpose if one is knowledgeable about how the radar works. A Keith Ledgerwood wrote about a theory of radar evasion only those who are in the business would know. Let me explain this theory. All commercial aircraft are expected to switch on their transponders to identify themselves when they are airborne. On the radar screen you will see a blip followed by a couple of squawks or a numeral identifying the aircraft.
 

When two aircraft fly very close together, in formation, the radar may only see one blip for the two or more aircraft in close formation, giving the impression there is only one aircraft. Another way is to fly above or below the other and the radar, being two dimensional, will only show one blip instead of two. Get the picture? So, if MH370 were to switch off its transponder and fly beneath another aircraft, the radar will pick up one aircraft and one transponder signal. And MH370 could fly under the shadow of another aircraft without being detected.
 

According to Keith Ledgerwood, there was a flight SQ68 flying from Singapore, passing Penang and onwards over India, Pakistan to Europe. MH370 could intercept SQ68 and fly beneath it to conceal its presence to the radar controllers and break away somewhere in Pakistan or Afghanistan towards central Asia and no one will know anything amissed.
 

And the westerly path taken by MH370 to Penang then starboard on a northwesterly direction fits this theory. And MH370 could be in central Asia.
 

The unexplained and questionable part of this theory was the path of MH370 towards Penang evident to radar and its subsequent flight under SQ68 would also be seen by radar. This defeats its intent to hide its presence and radar controller could see what it was doing. If it could avoid the Butterworth radar altogether by flying 280, it might be able to sneak under SQ68 undetected, then it makes sense.
 

So, this theory requires expertise knowledge of radar operations and radar coverage in the area. The flaw is that MH370 flew into radar cover and was seen and tracked, which made a fool of what it was doing. If its intent was to hide, why showed its face to everyone? Why conduct a stealth manoeuvre for all to see?

Fixing the Govt

I am sure everyone reading this will have their eyes popped out and couldn’t believe what they are seeing. I don’t think anyone can fix the govt intentionally as they would likely to be fixed instead if they dare to try. I don’t think any opposition party could do this either. We all know how the game is being played, the odds and what would be the consequences. And definitely not for me to fix the govt.

But the govt is being fixed and appears to be ignorant of it. Perhaps they could not see it in this light. Who then could be doing the fixing? We have all been kpkbing about the job market and how Sinkies have been fixed real bad by the foreigners and foreign owned recruitment agencies. But the real culprits include the CEOs of local and foreign companies who are condoning this practice of not hiring Sinkies and replacing Sinkies with foreigners and their own kind. They deliberately, either with one eye closed, or just turn and look the other way, or worse, even promoting it, to discriminate Sinkies in employment.

So the end result, many Sinkie professionals lost their jobs. When the number was small, they blamed themselves, thinking that they were really no good and the foreigners were really better. Today, when the truth is out, many are feeling very sore. And who would they blame? No need to give you this simple answer. Their unhappiness and anger, their feeling of being cheated and short changed, would be directed at the govt for sure. You can read it in the social media. And this will cost the govt dearly and the political price to be paid will be very high. Yes, the govt is being fixed when the people are being fixed. And the fixers are those employers who discriminate against Sinkies in employment.

The lackadaisical attitude of the govt to fix this problem only adds to the grievance of the victims. They may not see the correlation or did not think the people would turn against the govt. They would think that it is not the govt’s fault! From the way they are happily embracing the foreigners and sleeping with them, and keep welcoming them without hesitation speak for itself. It looks like they are blind or choose to be blind to what is happening and feeling very comfortable and secure with the situation. Yes the proverbial deaf frog, always doing the right thing.

As the anger grows against the foreigners for taking their good paying jobs away while they downgraded to underemployment, with many even forced into retirement, unable to find employment, it is a matter of time when they will be break free from their slumber and hapless state to make those who helped in condemning them to pay for it.

Those who fixed them will have to pay for their crimes. They would not be going after the employers and the recruitment agents. They would not want to know that it was the employers and the recruitment agents’ faults.

Who do you think they will go after or put the blame on? This is a simple case of being fixed by others and thinking they will get away with it. The govt appears to be a willing party to be fixed by the employers.


Kopi Level - Green