This is a new blog, MIKOspace from a good friend. The url is www.miko-wisdom.blogspot.sg.
Have fun reading.
9/10/2014
Outsourcing the way to Go
Pardon my pun, it is real. Outsourcing is the greatest discovery of Sin
City and we did it so well that we can end up shaking our legs and don’t
have anything to do. We first outsourced our banking answering services
to call centres, then we outsourced the whole IT functions to
foreigners. We outsourced our construction industry to foreign workers
and our service sectors to foreigners as well.
Our foodcourts and hawker centres are also being outsourced, including our famous Geylang. All have been taken over by foreigners. Our beggars would also have been outsourced if not of our strict laws to prohibit begging. But the fun side of begging is allowed and outsourced, like busking.
Our top management jobs in GLCs and the private sector are increasingly being outsourced to foreign talents. Oops, some have become instant citizens with the issue of pink identity cards. Our universities are also outsourcing their professorships to foreign academics. Our Medical services too are being outsourced, from nursing to doctors and specialists/consultants. Our civil service is also gradually being outsourced. Oh, I forgot, we will also be outsourcing our tertiary students like we outsourced our sports talents. Our students can rest or if they want to, can enrol in the polytechnics.
Now they are thinking of outsourcing the police and the soldiers. It will soon be a reality when the volunteers’ corp proves its worth. We can even do away with NS and let foreigners put on our military and police uniforms.
The final step in outsourcing will be the govt, the political leadership. When this last step is done, our leaders would have a lot of time to make state visits to countries after countries for networking and fellowship. And if they like it, they could go and watch our outsourced sportsmen and women competing in the Olympics, Asian Games, Commonwealth Games and World Cup, and to cheer them to victory. This will raise the morale of the outsourced sportsmen and women and motivate them to win more medals for the citizens to celebrate on their return. Yes we will be like the Romans, the ruling class. Our leaders could go on study missions too. The bulk of the work to govern the country would be delegated to the foreign talents acting as ministers and prime minister.
The best part of this is that when the foreign talents fumbled, even if they are appointed as ministers or prime minister, they can be fired immediately. It is difficult to do this if the prime minister or ministers are Singaporeans. And the people will be happy as there will be accountability. Non performing foreign talent ministers would be fired like in the private sector.
There is a slight problem though. What would the citizens and leaders be doing with all the free time they have if everything is outsourced? Would they be making themselves redundant when they have nothing else meaningful to do, except maybe counting money or speculating in properties?
Oursourcing is the way to GO indeed.
Kopi Level - Green
Our foodcourts and hawker centres are also being outsourced, including our famous Geylang. All have been taken over by foreigners. Our beggars would also have been outsourced if not of our strict laws to prohibit begging. But the fun side of begging is allowed and outsourced, like busking.
Our top management jobs in GLCs and the private sector are increasingly being outsourced to foreign talents. Oops, some have become instant citizens with the issue of pink identity cards. Our universities are also outsourcing their professorships to foreign academics. Our Medical services too are being outsourced, from nursing to doctors and specialists/consultants. Our civil service is also gradually being outsourced. Oh, I forgot, we will also be outsourcing our tertiary students like we outsourced our sports talents. Our students can rest or if they want to, can enrol in the polytechnics.
Now they are thinking of outsourcing the police and the soldiers. It will soon be a reality when the volunteers’ corp proves its worth. We can even do away with NS and let foreigners put on our military and police uniforms.
The final step in outsourcing will be the govt, the political leadership. When this last step is done, our leaders would have a lot of time to make state visits to countries after countries for networking and fellowship. And if they like it, they could go and watch our outsourced sportsmen and women competing in the Olympics, Asian Games, Commonwealth Games and World Cup, and to cheer them to victory. This will raise the morale of the outsourced sportsmen and women and motivate them to win more medals for the citizens to celebrate on their return. Yes we will be like the Romans, the ruling class. Our leaders could go on study missions too. The bulk of the work to govern the country would be delegated to the foreign talents acting as ministers and prime minister.
The best part of this is that when the foreign talents fumbled, even if they are appointed as ministers or prime minister, they can be fired immediately. It is difficult to do this if the prime minister or ministers are Singaporeans. And the people will be happy as there will be accountability. Non performing foreign talent ministers would be fired like in the private sector.
There is a slight problem though. What would the citizens and leaders be doing with all the free time they have if everything is outsourced? Would they be making themselves redundant when they have nothing else meaningful to do, except maybe counting money or speculating in properties?
Oursourcing is the way to GO indeed.
Kopi Level - Green
Hanoi’s submarine deterrent against China
There is an article titled, ‘Hanoi to deploy submarines in deterrent against China’ in the Today paper on 9 Sep. The analysts and scholars were all in praise of the Vietnamese submarine capability and trumpeting that China is now getting a big headache with Vietnam acquiring 3 kilo class Russian submarines. And Vietnam is deploying the area denial strategy to keep Chinese ships and submarines out of Vietnamese water. The strategy, intelligence and assumptions are truly impressive.
Let me see, 3 submarines from Vietnam will now contain 70 Chinese submarines. This is the most brilliant military strategy I have ever heard as a student of military history. Sun Tzu or Zhu Ge Liang would look like amateurs. China must learn from Vietnam on how to use its 70 submarines to contain American submarine fleets that are probably ten times more and bigger and more sophisticated. China must quickly send a team to learn from the Vietnamese in this ingenious strategy that Sun Tzu would raise his hands in defeat.
This is akin to the Philippines threatening to go to war with China with its fishing fleet led by a museum piece of scrap metal called a battleship. China must be having a big headache with the threat from Vietnam’s submarine might and the Philippines naval fleet of fishing boats.
I am very impressed with the analysis and worried for China. Soon China’s navy would be contained by Vietnam and the Philippines and would have to confine its naval vessels to the East China Sea only, and be kept away from the South China Sea.
We are seeing the rise of two naval powers in the South China Sea to over shadow China’s sea power with minimal effort and resources but sheer brilliance in ideas and strategies. Impressive is the word.
Kopi Level - Green
9/09/2014
Chok Tong to India to reaffirm ties
‘In a statement yesterday (7 Sep), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Emeritus Senior Minister (ESM) Goh Chok Tong will visit India from 7 to 11 September 2014 to reaffirm the close bilateral ties between Singapore and India.
“To promote stronger links between the next generation of ministers from both countries, ESM Goh will be accompanied on his visit by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office and Second Minister for Home Affairs and Trade and Industry S Iswaran and Minister of State for National Development Desmond Lee,” the statement said….’
What does the above statement mean? To promote stronger links, does it mean the current links are not strong and intimate enough? What would stronger links mean? Is it because the Indians are not happy with the CECA and Chok Tong has to go there to renegotiate or to assure the Indians that things could be better?
India used to have two strong men in the Singapore Govt in full support of stronger bilateral relations, ie Chok Tong and George Yeo, who were instrumental in the signing of the CECA. In the absence of George, is Chok Tong the only strong lobby left and the Indians are feeling insecure and need to be reassured that someone will replace George in this relationship?
Which country must Singapore send the ESM to reaffirm frail ties? Or which country needs to be regularly hugged to tell them that ties are good and no need to worry? Or it is the other way, that Singapore is feeling the coldness from India and needs to be embraced by India to feel good? Have we not have had enough of the Indian Fever, or are we asking for more? I already started to imagine Chok Tong doing the John Travolta routine, Indian Fever once again, minus George Travolta. Who is the next George Travolta in line to build strong Singapore Indian ties?
Kopi Level - Green
Hillary Clinton: ‘We came, we saw and he died’
The above is the famous joke from Hillary Clinton often quoted to describe how callous and cavalier the Americans are of the lives of Arabs in the Middle East. They came, they saw and they executed Saddam Hussein and many more Arab leaders as if it was a natural thing to do, a fun thing. The hypocrisy of the American and western policies in the Middle East is best described by Jeffrey Sachs in his article, ‘Let the Middle East govern itself’ published in the Today paper this morning. No one, I mean no Afro Asians, would bother about what I say. They would even pooh poof it as nonsensical and hysterical if I were to write what Sachs had written. It is best that it comes from a western intellectual to say the truth.
Basically what Sachs said was that all the wars of intervention in the Middle East were never about democracy or human rights. It was all about oil, about control of a real estate and transit to Asia. All the Arab leaders and parties are dispensable and would be disposed off when they turned against American and western interests, meaning too ‘nationalistic, anti Israel, Islamist and dangerous to America’s oil interests’. The Americans have been supporting practically every group and party in the region and also in their destruction.
Sachs quoted the Sykes-Picot Agreement between the British and French that ‘ formed a lasting pattern of destructive outside meddling. With America’s subsequent emergence as a global power, it treated the Middle East in the same way, relentlessly installing, toppling, bribing or manipulating the region’s govts, all the while mouthing democratic rhetoric.’ These few sentences summarized the ugly intentions of the Americans and the West in the Middle East. The Americans would only install a regime that is acceptable to them. Period.
The invasion of Iraq has led to its ‘destruction as a functioning society in an ongoing civil war, fuelled by outside powers, that has caused economic ruin and collapsing living standards’ and the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Not to dismiss or ridicule the beheading of the two American journalists, how could the lives of two Americans be more precious than the hundreds of thousands of death inflicted by the Americans on the Arab nations in the Middle East? The hypocrisy must stop here.
But no, the Americans are hell bent to topple another Arab leader in Bashar Assad. ‘More than 190,000 Syrians are dead and millions have been displaced as a result of an insurrection supported by the US and its allies.’
Everything in the Middle East is about brute force. And as Sachs said, the rise of ISIS, another creature that Hillary Clinton has been credited as the grandmother, America intervenes again with more bombings, and violence rule the day. How does this relate to the article by Thomas Friedman that the Russians and the Islamic States were all about violence and brute force when the real culprit of violence and brute force is none other than the Americans and the West?
Sachs was calling for an end to American and western hypocrisy in the Middle East, to leave the Arab states alone to deal with their problems and find their own status quo. As a consoling gesture to the Americans he said, ‘There is enough hatred, corruption and arms in the region to keep it in crisis for years to come.’ He knew that this is what the Ameicans and the West would want to see, a region in perpetual conflict, dysfunctional economies and govts, and not able to become a threat to Israel and American/western oil interests in the region.
How much more explicit does it takes to understand what is going on in the Middle East? Is it about democracy, human rights and about America and the West helping to keep peace? Don’t be naïve.
Kopi Level - Green
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