MH370 – PM Abbott knows

‘“Yes, we have very considerably narrowed down the search area but trying to locate anything 4.5 kilometres beneath the surface of the ocean about a thousand kilometres from land is a massive, massive task and it is likely to continue for a long time to come,” Abbott said.
 
His comments come a day after he said he was “very confident” that signals detected in the search for Flight MH370 are from the aircraft’s black box, whose batteries are waning fast more than a month after the plane vanished….
 
“We are confident that we know the position of the black box flight recorder to within some kilometres,” Abbott said Friday on his trip to China,…’ Quoted from The Star online.
 
Of all the Prime Ministers making comments about the MH370, Abbott is the only one who spoke with an unusual confidence. Every time he said something, he gave the impression that he knew something more than what he said. In the above quote, Abbott is as good as saying that he knew the signals detected by the Australians are definitely from the MH370 blackbox and he knew where that blackbox is. And he also knew that the MH370 will not be found there, ie got black but no aircraft wreckage.
 
From the very first day he called PM Najib, and he was accused of jumping the gun, it came across that he had full information of what happened to the MH370. And he was so convincing that Najib even committed himself to declare MH370 sank in the Antarctic and the passengers were as good as gone. Maybe Najib is also in the picture.
Did the confidence of Abbott tell anyone something, that he had privy knowledge from some sources on the MH370? He appears to be someone who wanted to tell the whole story but has been restrained from doing so. For anyone who wants to know more about MH370, it is best to talk to Abbott or to listen to what he said or not said and try to read in between the lines.
 
I think he knows a lot more. Wait for the confirmation that only the black boxes are found but no trace of the aircraft.

Any protection for whistleblower

Below is an extract from a posting in TRE attributed to WSJ online. I quote,
 
‘ (9 Apr) – A top Deutsche Bank AG saleswoman was placed on leave last month after the German bank found what it regarded as inappropriate communication between her and Singapore’s central bank, according to a person familiar with the matter, marking a significant new twist in the yearlong global investigation into the currency market.
 
Kai Lew, a director of sales at Deutsche Bank in London tasked with handling central-bank clients, was put on leave because the bank — the biggest currency dealer in the world — concluded that she had communicated improperly with the Monetary Authority of Singapore, or MAS, this person said. She is one of roughly 30 employees at nine banks who have been fired or suspended as part of a burgeoning global investigation into possible manipulation of currency markets, and the first in sales rather than trading. At the time her suspension was first reported, March 31, the reasons for the move were unclear….’
 
What if this employee is blowing the whistle on her bank? What is the difference between her ‘inappropriate communication between her and Singapore’s central bank’ and that of whistleblowing? If she is whistleblowing, should she be protected? Who should be protecting a whistleblower? If whistleblowers are not protected, who would dare to become whistleblower?

Singapore is no longer a Spring chicken

After 45 years of independence, Singapore is not a spring chicken anymore but more like a ‘lau kway bu’ or middle age mother hen. It is naïve to think that should there be a change in political leadership the country would go into a tailspin.
 
The civil service would be there intact, so would the ministries, the police and the armed forces. The industries would be there grinding and humming as before. There could be a few exceptions that may want to relocate somewhere, we can say good riddance. But in reality you cannot unplug a business, pack it into a container and wave good bye. Anyway a change of govt is not going to shoot everyone on sight.
 
Our polity has reached a certain level of maturity, or at least the politicians in the opposition parties are also decent and matured professionals. If not then we are not deserving to be called 1st World developed country The politicians are not like corporal Amin or corporal Hitler that would go around shooting at anyone that disagreed when they came to power. There could be some changes in policies, in priorities, in directions, but nothing really drastic would be done to undermine the viability of the country and its economy.
 
The only thing that may see some major changes would be the excesses that the people are obviously unhappy with eg high ministerial pay, high inflation and cost of living, high prices of housing/cars, high population growth and influx of foreigners, high expenses that should benefit the citizens rather than foreigners, like the funding of foreign scholarships, and things of the same nature.
 
A new govt is likely to fine tune govt policies, reemphasise on citizen’s interest and showing more care and concern for the good of the citizenry. And whatever changes, they are going to be done or executed with much thoughts and consultations with the civil servants in the respective ministries.
 
Hey, we are not a 3rd World country with 3rd World mentality and personalities. The new govt, should they be elected, are going to inherit a much more stable system than the old inherited by the PAP govt in 1965. There is no need to reinvent the wheel or to blow up anything. It will be more like massaging and moderating and refining policies to meet the expectations of the people.
 
So, what is the crap about tumultuous changes and the irrational fear of things going bad instead of getting better? It would be system go, everything as normal with incremental changes for the good of the citizens by another team of qualified and experienced individuals, not firebrands or illiterate workers and labourers or the ah peks and ah sohs in the market.
 
The whole island is flooded with highly qualified tertiary educated professionals. There is no need to cry wolf as if the only decent and able people are in the ruling party and the rest of the people are sick, retards and duds. This is a lie the people are made to believe in. The ruling party also has a fair share of the same. The opposition politicians may not be immortals, but they are not demons either.
 
Singaporeans must have confidence in themselves, in fellow citizens to run the country for the good of the citizens and not for the good of foreigners or worse, be run by foreigners.
 
The Spring chicken is not a Spring chicken anymore. The new govt will be inheriting an ongoing system and infrastructure, an economy and all the ministries and the staff running them, and will continue to run them.

Kopi Level - Green. Thanks.

MH370 - The Mangosteen Puzzle

There were 4 tonnes of mangosteens on board the aircraft MH370. This has raised some controversies and conspiracy theories on the part played by the mangosteens in the disappearance of the aircraft. The IGP Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar had to come out to kill the rumour surrounding the mnagosteens.
 
The IGP clarified that he only said there were 4 tonnes of mangosteens and under more questioning that Johore did not have mangosteen plantations, he denied saying the mangosteens were from Johore but being packed in Muar. This clear a part of the puzzle.
 
The second part is that this is not mangosteen season. So where did the mangosteens came from? Malaysia or America, or China? According to the IGP, the mangosteens were sent to Muar for packing and then sent to KL to be loaded in MH370. He still did not say where the mangosteens came from. This mystery is still not clarified.
 
If the mangosteens did not come from anywhere, or if the cargoes were not mangosteens but stated as mangosteens, we could have a bigger puzzle at hand. Remember my earlier post on the mangosteens when I referred to them as a Freudian slip? Could the mangosteens hold a clue to the missing aircraft? Did the IGP know something more about the mangosteens than meets the eyes?
 
Got mangosteens or no mangosteens?

We have no natural resources but people

We used to tell the world that we may not have the natural resources like other big countries, but we have a highly trained and skilled workforce. Our strength is in our quality human resources, highly disciplined and highly educated.
 
This kind of statements is turning out to be a joke, obsolete. We have become a nation with no talents. We need foreigners to create jobs for our people. We need foreigners to help our economy to grow. We need foreigners to replace our daft Sinkies. And the 3rd World recruiting agencies said so and no one in the govt would stand up to refute such degrading comments. But it is not only a comment but they are turning it into reality by recruiting more 3rd World questionable talents to replace our real talents, tested and proven.
 
Tommy Koh commented that we should allow foreigners in to supplement our manpower needs, not to displace our own talents. The proclaimed ‘truth’ is that we no longer have any talents. Our strength, of having a highly trained, skilled and discipline workforce is a thing of the past. Anything got to do with our world class education system for this dire affair?
 
We are a dying breed. Without the foreigners to help us we are dead meat. We are like the Eygptians that built the great pyramids, the Romans that built an empire, the British that once ruled the world. What happened to the great educational system and top ranking universities here? Are they producing duds? Or are they producing foreign graduates to go back to their countries on graduation? If our talent pool is no longer our strength, who else or what else can we fall back on? On foreign talents, our saviours?