Of cleavage and dichotomy in the Singapore plurality

I have been ranting almost daily on the open leg policies of the Govt practically everyday and highlighting the serious flaws and consequences taking place. Many Sinkies have fallen victims to these policies and are clamming up, resigned to their fate like what daft Sinkies often do. Those Sinkies that are not affected, yet, are getting irritated by my constant drumming and refuse to see that their turn will come one day when they lose their jobs and unable to pay the high mortgages for their nice homes and nice cars. But my drummings must have some effects, big or small, on the Govt and the elite to want to make amends to this dire state of affair. If it is all gone with the wind, then the deaf frogs can continue to remain deaf and do as they like and wait to be bundled out in the most shocking electoral defeat in the next GE.

There is an interesting article by Tommy Koh in the ST this morning, titled, ‘Is there an ideological cleavage in Spore? I would like to repost the whole article here but ST would probably come after me for copyright infringement. So I will talk about what Tommy said and quote some of his wisdoms to share with my fellow bloggers.

Though Tommy politely asked a question, but his article said it clearly that there is a wide cleavage and waiting to be healed. This global city concept is the remedy of Singapore’s economic ire as well as the cause of the sad state of affair happening daily, to its victims of mainly the PMETs. According to Tommy, ‘American business school gurus such as Gary Hamel have managed to convince Singapore leaders that there is a global competition for talent. In order to succeed, Singapore cannot rely only on its home grown talent. It must look outward and recruit talented people from all over the world, to key positions in both our public and private sectors.’

The recommendation is sound with some provisos and cannot be taken literally, hook, line and sinker. Only silly asses will just blindly accept it as the panacea and implement it without any reservations or amendments. The first point is obviously the issue of nationhood and citizens versus a hotel that has no citizens to talk about. The other point is about key positions and not all and sundry down the line. Why do they want to recruit a super talent in recruiting employees or a salesgirl, or a supervisor? And the dangerous part is to bring in foreigners to key positions in the public sector. But for this the Govt has drawn an invisible line, as long as the political office and administrative services are out of the loop, anything goes.

‘The hunt for foreign talent became a national obsession. As a result, Singapore was in danger of overlooking its own talents.’ Said Tommy. And this obsession went down to talents in sports, in housing agents, in property agents, in employing agencies, and likely in prostitutes as well. When elites are not thinking, this is what will happen.

Tommy added, ‘I am glad that there is a more balanced attitude today. This is the result of two developments. First, Singapore discovered that some so called foreign talent was not really very talented. Second, there was the discovery that, in some cases, when a foreign chief executive officer was hired, he or she discriminated against Singaporeans when hiring staff.’ This is not the bad part. The bad part is for the authority to let it happened and doing nothing about it or paying lip services and pretend that the problem is solved.

The most important statement made by Tommy, though actually very simple and any idiot would know and understand, except the deaf frogs, is this, ‘My conclusion is that Singapore should continue to welcome foreign talent. But it should do so to complement Singaporean talent, not to supplant it. Everything being equal, Singapore should give priority to its own talent.’ When this has to be said in so simple a language and hoping that people will understand, it is so pathetic, and near to hopelessness.

I would like to thank Tommy for his ranting for the sake of country and citizens. The daft Sinkies may be uncomfortable with my rantings, but hopefully they know that this is indeed a serious problem if they can see further than the tip of their nose. And hopefully some deaf frogs will wake up from their arrogant and self righteous demeanour to do the right thing, to do something for the Sinkies if it is not too late.

Kopi Level - Yellow

The good local banks

The prices of Singapore’s 3 local banks at this moment are UOB $21.45, DBS $16.17 and OCBC $9.69. If the prices are an indication of the strength of these banks, UOB easily is number One followed by DBS a distant second. The respective PE ratios of the three banks are UOB 11.11, DBS 10.69, OCBC 12.26. In terms of yield, the respective numbers are 3.3%, 3.6%, 3.56%.
 
The PEs and yields are fairly similar but the price gaps are quite wide. What could account for the price difference, if we are to assume that the higher the price the more confident investors have of the stock and the quality of the company and management, UOB stands up from the other two. Why?
 
One very significant difference in the three banks is that UOB is managed by local talents primarily while the other two have foreign talents as their CEOs and also a fairly large presence of foreign talents among the staff.
 
Can we draw any meaningful conclusion from the three banks vis a vis the value of foreign talents? One thing for sure, the investors have higher regards for a bank that is managed by local talents than by foreign talents.
 
This is only a very broad brush comparison and the analysts would have different opinions when they apply different criteria to determine which is a better bank or better investment. Many would rate the presence of foreign talents at the top as a trump card. Some may find this a joker.
 
What do you think?

An armour of money

 The best postions to be in, needless to say it must be the political offices. Being in those appointments not only one is shielded from all the bad weathers and bad policies, one is even protected with a very high level of assurance that it is a life time appointment, like a job, with career development charted and if the pay is not enough, can always be promoted to higher positions or new positions.
 
While the people are feeling the pain of being jobless, being underemployed, being placed on contract or temporary jobs, being discriminated and replaced by foreigners, political appointments are walled up against such vagaries of life.
 
And being so secured in their positions, they can use the megaphone to yell that the City needs more foreigners and the practice of meritocracy, regardless of nationality, is the way to go forward. The citizens can be replaced by anyone from any corner of the world, as long as the employer thinks that new hire is better than the citizen. It is really laissez faire at an international level.
 
The politicians have nothing to fear of being replaced as they are safely protected by their own rules and being replaced by foreigners only apply to jobs affecting the rest of the citizens. And this is applicable to other essential things like housing, car ownership, healthcare etc etc. They have paid themselves so well that they have literally built a wall of money around them that high prices, high cost of living, high fees of anything will not create any dent in their protective armour of money. In fact the higher the cost of living and prices of properties, the better it would be for them as most of them are landlords. And high car prices, high parking fees and ERP charges are good for them as they will ease congestions on the roads for them to enjoy the free ways. The ability to write their own pay checks means that money not enough would never be a bugbear to them.
 
So they can happily support high prices of properties, of cars, or whatever, as the revenue will go to support their high incomes directly or indirectly. Thus, high prices of everything are a bane to the daft Sinkies but a boon to them. And many are merrily singing the song of more foreign talents to replace the citizens, based on meritocrazy, Sinkie style and Sinkie definition.
 
If the armour of money is not there, no one will dare gloat about higher prices, higher fees and more foreigners.

MH370 – Appealing to a few good men

After nearly 3 weeks, not a clue is found to confirm that MH370 has crashed into a remote corner of the Indian Ocean. The pictures of debris circulating are just that, debris, and no agency could confirm that they belonged to MH370. No bodies were found too.
 
All the theories suggested like a suicidal pilot, fire on board, etc etc were unsound and far fetched given the facts that have been made known. The facts point to a professional hit job and the aircraft had been flown away by very skilful people who knew what they were doing.
 
There is still reason to hope that the aircraft is hidden somewhere and all the passengers are still alive until proven otherwise. Every country must not abandon this hope and resign to accept that the passengers are already dead. This would embolden the perpetrators to dispose off the passengers knowing that the world has given up hope on them and not going to look for them. There is still the possibility that they are undecided as to what to do with them.
 
The act of killing all 239 passengers in cold blood, just innocent passengers in an aircraft, should put a lot of pressure and guilt on whoever is going to do it. There must be more pressure to be put on the perpetrators not to do so, assuming they have not done so. The world, the families of the victims, must appeal to the good conscience of a few good men among the perpetrators to release the passengers. There must be many people involved and there must be someone among them who would be pricked by his conscience to want to expose this heinous crime against the innocents. Appeal to that someone who knows what is going on to speak out to save the lives of the passengers before it is too late.
 
Do not give up on the lives of the passengers. Cry and pray for their return, alive. The world media must work together to make this desperate appeal for the lives of the passengers heard in every corner of the earth, in every media and home to reach out to that one person. Let the one that matters hear the cries and feel the pains of the hundreds of family members of the victims in his hand. Let him know how much pain they are causing to innocent people and to do the right thing, the conscionable thing to save lives that have no reason to be taken away. Let the goodness in these men triumph over the evil in them and in others.
 
There is no good reason to kill so many people. Let them live. Stop the killing while you still can. Do not let it happen and do not be a party to this cruel crime against the innocents. A crime of such evil nature will be revealed today or tomorrow. Do not regret for not doing anything or to participate in the killing and live a lifetime of guilt.

Kopi Level - Green

MH370 - Theory by Yoichi Shimatsu

Is MH370 The Latest Casualty Of The Pentagon's Pivot To Asia?
By Yoichi Shimatsu
3-20-14

The closer that millions of online sleuths come to tracing the trajectory and destination of the missing Malaysian Airlines jetliner, the likelier it becomes that the National Security Agency and CIA will resort to disinformation, including the planting of falsified evidence, to throw off their pursuers in what increasingly appears to be an electronic hijacking by those spy agencies.

More layers of the ongoing cover-up are being hatched now that eyewitnesses at the Huvadhu Atoll, a diving area in the southern Maldives,, have reported sightings of "a low-flying jumbo jet.: South of Huvadhu Atoll, the closest U.S. military facility is Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands. The joint U.S. Navy submarine and Air Force facility has underground hangers huge enough to conceal B-52 bombers, a convenient hiding place for a Boeing-777….

Pieces of the wreckage spotted by US ally Australia further south of Diego Garcia could be a decoy site, salted with physical evidence of airplane parts that have been moved surreptitiously….

Malaysia Targeted by Air-Sea Battle Plan

The case of a MH370 has been solely focused on the possibility of a route diversion by the on-board crew. Completely ignored in press releases and news reports so far is the elephant in the room, or perhaps a better analogy of a Great White Shark in the bathtub - the massive U.S. Navy and Air Force presence in the seas and airspace surrounding Malaysia.

There is absolutely no way that a flying object as large as a Boeing-777 could evade the 24-hour watch over the South China Sea and the Andaman Sea by NSA-USAF spy satellites, high-tech AEGIS destroyers, the new class of Littoral Combat Ships and P3 surveillance planes.

The reasons for targeting Malaysia becomes clearer by examining the bigger picture of an aggressive military build-up in the Southeast Asia region by the combined armed forces of the US, Japan and Australia under Washington's "strategic pivot to Asia" policy. This geopolitical strategy is carried out by the Pentagon and its military allies through the Air-Sea Battle Concept, which disperses Navy and Air Force fighter jets across a network of civilian airfields and secret landing strips.

Beijing is not the only target of the Air-Sea Battle Concept. Malaysia runs a close second to China on Washington's enemies list. Flight MH370, destined for Beijing, is the literal embodiment of the economic alliance and political relationship between : China and Malaysia, making the airliner a most convenient target.

Pressuring Kuala Lumpur

Located on the geostrategic Malacca Strait, Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim oil-producing nation with a "Look East" policy allying itself with Japan and China. Last year the Malaysian and Chinese governments established an economic alliance, which includes Asian access to world oil reserves. In the eyes of Washington and its allies, these are sufficient grounds to treat Kuala Lumpur as an adversary….

Warnings from Washington were repeatedly given to Malaysia over the past few years. In late August 2013, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel flew to Kuala Lumpur last year to pressure the Defence Ministry to cooperated with the strategic pivot through joint naval-and-air exercises directed against Chinese forces in the Malaysian-claimed islets in the Spratley group. These spits of rock and sand located off of Sabah, the Malaysian state in northwest Borneo, have names longer than their diameters, for instance, Investigator Reef and Mariveles Reef.

At the same time, a mystery force led by a claimant to the title of Sultan of Saah send a group of Filipino gunmen, allegedly trained by a retired American commando, attacked Sabah with a series of shootouts with the Malaysian Army. US counterinsurgency troops happened to be operating in the southern Islamic-dominated areas of the Philippines, where the "sultan" recruited his desperado guerrillas….

How to Knock Out Aviation Electronics

The flight paths of MH370 were not across uncharted waters, as news reports suggest, but over some of the world's most heavily watched maritime channels. As soon as the jet lifted off Kuala Lumpur, its communications signals and radar image were picked up by US Navy signals intercepts officers stationed at Changi Navy Base and Sembawang dockyard in Singapore, which are effectively bases for the 7th Fleet. Triple coverage would have been provided by USAF listening posts at Halim Air Base near Jakarta.

The Malaysian airliner would then been picked up by the many USN ships patrolling the South China Sea, in and around the Spratley Islands. Besides AEGIS radar ships, the Navy has dispatched a new class of Littoral Combat Ships, including the USS Freedom, to the pivot.

Beamed from one of these ships, a powerful type of radar called X-band or narrow-aperture radar could easily have disabled all of the planes. The advanced radar system, now used in electromagnetic warfare to knock out missile and planes, led to the unintended blackout of Los Angeles Airport (LAX) in April 2004….

As reported in the news, MH370 was steered toward the Indian Ocean by the insertion of a computer command into its navigation system. Since at least the 911 incident and possibly earlier, Boeing passenger jets can be remote-controlled by the US intelligence agencies. Any recently built American-built aircraft can now be electronically commandeered and operated like a drone.

The only question is whether the American government is willing to engage in such a reckless disregard innocent lives. That point has already been proven in countless drone strikes against civilian compounds in places like Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, the Horn of Africa and many unreported locales. Though illegal and immoral, death from the skies is official policy. Without any effective restraints, the Pentagon can easily eliminate the passengers of Malaysian Airlines.

Perhaps it is not too late to save any surviving hostages, but that task would require a commando team capable of rescuing them from inside a heavily guarded U.S. Military base in the center of the Indian Ocean and flying them to India, the only coastal country in the region secure enough from a Pentagon counterstrike. Rambo, are you ready?

Flying Under the Radar

After its electronic systems were knocked out, MH370 made a sharp left turn toward the Kra Peninsula along the thinly populated and insurgency-troubled Malaysia-Thai border. The jet dove to 6,000 feet and possibly lower, enabling it to evade detection by flying below the ground radar. Its path, however, was briefly picked up from the northern side, where the Thai Air Force bases a fleet of Saab jet fighters….

Then MH370 crossed over the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman Sea, which is crowded with commercial vessels and oil tankers. That particular section of the strategic passage is constantly monitored by NSA-CIA surveillance stations assigned to protect Indonesia's Sumatra offshore oil platforms operated by Exxon and BP. Just north of Phuket is the Thai Navy's 3rd Headquarters, where American servicemen keep track of all ship and airplane traffic over the Andaman Sea.

It is impossible, in short, with so many radar facilities and airbases in that oil-rich sea for any jetliner, especially along an unscheduled air route, to go unspotted. So somebody is lying, and perhaps everybody is lying.

The Impunity of Criminal States

The cargo manifest for MH370 has yet to be released…
The other possible motive is the human assets aboard the jet. The passenger manifest does not disclose the occupation or rank associated with the names. Was there a VIP on board of extreme high value to Western intelligence agencies?

The lesson of MH370 is that the Great Powers act in secrecy and with impunity. Wars of strategic interest are no longer waged openly but are conducted by proxy armies, mercenaries with guns, propaganda agents placed inside of human-rights groups, media blackmail, social media manipulation and spies in the sky….

The all-powerful hunters will become the frightened hunted, as is starting to happen now as millions of online users narrow down the destination of MH370.

Yoichi Shimatsu, former editor of the Japan Times Weekly, is a Hong Kong-based science and technology writer.

PS. I have removed some of the elaborations to shorten this long article.