Japan never fired a shot in anger – Another Japanese lie

A REUTER report in an article in the Today paper on 10 Sep on the discussion between Japan and the USA on how to arm Japan with offensive weapons had this quote from a Japanese official, ‘ …a country that has not fired a short in anger since its defeat in World War II.’ Now why is this a lie? Actually it is a misleading statement. The Japanese has never fired a shot in anger since the First World War. Every shot fired was for conquest and aggression. The Japanese fought the Chinese, Russians and invaded Korea and China, never in anger but with colonial and imperial intent. It bombed Pearl Harbour in perfect serenity of mind. No anger, pure ambition to destroy the American fleet in the way of its conquest of Asia and the world. Every shot the Japanese fired is premeditated, calculated, planned coolly to achieve a military objective.
 
Today, the two most belligerent countries are negotiating on how much offensive weapons Japan should be allowed to have to conduct wars of aggression again. And again it was all done in quiet civility, no anger, business like. It was all about world domination, about controlling the world. The Americans and the Japanese are plotting to control China and East Asia today, two willing partners of war.
Which is more dangerous, a country going to war in anger over some wrong done to his country and people, or one going to war in all civility, with no anger, but only the desire and ambition to conquer and rule over other nations?
 
There are very serious enmity between the Americans and the Japanese. The sinking of their Pacific Fleet and the destruction of the Japanese dream of controlling China and becoming a world super power were clipped by the Americans. And the anger and deep hatred for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the colonizing of Japan, a high humiliation of the Japanese pride were all etched deeply in the Japanese psychic. And the Americans are thinking that for immediate political expediency, they could afford to rearm the Japanese to the teeth. They believe the Japanese have changed and have forgotten the defeat by the Americans.
 
Americans, just you wait. The samurais have not forgotten, and playing good boys for now. Letting out the Arab genie from the bottle was bad. Wait till they release the Japanese samurais armed to the teeth with WMD.

Kopi Level - Yellow

A little degree problem

One company worked up one day to find that all its top management and senior staff did not have degrees. The degrees they declared in their CVs were all fakes. They only found this out when the govt started to check on their qualifications.
 
So how to solve this problem? They went to the ministry and told them that their staff were all competent, very good workers and knew their jobs very well. They didn’t need to have any degrees. And they were very happy with all the staff in their employ. They would have to close down their business if they could not keep their no degree staff.
 
The ministry panic. How, the company would have to relocate and there would be one company less and many jobs would be lost. And horrors of all horrors, many companies are also in the same situation, with many staff with fake degrees.
 
What is the solution?
 
PS. This story is fictional.

Kopi Level - Green

Candle Light Vigil on 17th September at Hong Lim Park

Pl note change of date to 17 Sep. My article posted on 7 Sep said the event would by held on 13 Sep. The organisers have confirmed the date is Wed  17 Sep 14. The venue is Hong Lim Park at 7 pm to midnight.

Bring a candle to light to a dark place.

Kopi Level - Green

Film on Guantanamo banned for national security reasons

A film producer from Sinkestan, called him Mr Tan, made a film on the Guantanamo Prison. He tried to get it screened in New York University’s film festival. According to Mr Tan, the purpose of the film was to better understand the country and to start a national conversation for the citizens to understand their country better.
 
The FBI stepped in and banned the film. Hilarious Clintan, the Secretary of State, said the film put the legitimate actions of the security agencies to protect national security and safety of the Americans in a bad light, in a distorted way as acts that victimized the innocent prisoners in Guantanamo Prison. And also the prisoners have given distorted and untruthful versions of how they were tortured inside the prison by the officers. Hilarious added that these prisoners were committed to armed struggles to overthrow the legitimate govts of the state of Israel and the USA. And the film conveniently omitted the crimes of the prisoners in kidnapping and terrorism and attempting to laundry their crimes as innocent acts.
 
The State Department did not think that these ex prisoners should be allowed a public platform to disseminate their distorted and untruthful past, to mislead the public and to absolve themselves from their criminal activities.
 
The news on the banning of this film has travelled across the Pacific Ocean and scholars have made comments on the case. One professor Eujin Tan said that the banning of the film was right as these prisoners must not be allowed to distort the truth as it would be unfair to those that suffered from their terrorist acts. Another professor Tan Kum Hong said it was natural to have two sides of the story and the gov’t ‘s account need not be the unequivocal truth.
 
It is not sure how Hilarious Clintan and the FBIs are going to react to the comments from across the Pacific Ocean. The film would definitely be banned in the America, like it or not. Hilarious Clintan has decided and Mr Tan would just have to accept the decision, which is normally final.

Kopi Level - Green

The genuine problems of the MOM Jobs Bank

After more than a month of the Jobs Bank coming into operation there were high expectations that many Singaporeans would have found jobs through this strictly pro Singaporean apparatus of the Govt. So I was looking for some happy statistics to clap for my star minister for a job well done. But no data, really, can’t find any data. Now want to cheer for him also no chance to do it.
 
Then I read a few comments in the social media, including the authoritative comments of Leong Sze Hian, and it is confirmed that anyone hoping for some useful data coming out from this Jobs Bank Scheme is going to be disappointed. I am of course. And I was angry initially. I want to cheer, I want to clap and tell the citizens, especially the jobless PMEs and the PME taxi drivers that there is hope. Now I can’t. So don’t blame me for being angry. Felt being let down by another scheme that looked so good on paper. You mean they didn’t know that everyone is watching and looking for some numbers on this scheme?
 
On reflection, on hindsight, admittedly foresight not very good, I have second thoughts. It is really an impossible task for our boys and girls to design a programme to track the performance of this scheme. No way they could do it. There are just no good programmers to do such a simple job as the programmers are all foreigners. And very likely MOM cannot use foreign programmers for this job to show that this is pedigree Singaporean stuff.
 
What about having a few boys and girls thinking through a manual procedure like we used to do before we become an intelligent city and people? Surely must have some procedures for the companies to make monthly reports to MOM would generate some numbers, not up to date to the last minute and not computer perfect, but some data would still be good and available.
 
Now I have to figure out why our boys and girls could not think through a simple administrative procedure that works. First guess, they never approach the Administrative Service where all the talented administrative officers work. So they probably depend on non administrative officers to do an administrative job that they are not trained to do, sure would not work.
 
Or maybe they need some financial incentives like a doubling in pay. I think a doubling in pay from the ministers to the clerical stuff would be a good start.
 
So there you are, the MOM could not produce any data to tell how many Singaporeans applied for the jobs in the Jobs Bank and how many were successful and employed by the companies putting up advertisements for jobs for Singaporeans. And definitely they would not know how many of these companies already recruited foreigners after failing to find any suitable Singaporeans for their vacancies.
 
But MOM has many good data, like 65,000 jobs available in the Jobs Banks and something like 10,000 companies participating. Dunno if they know how many Singaporeans applied for these jobs. No need to ask how many were successful as they have confirmed they did not have such data.
 
Let me volunteer a suggestion. Since no Singaporean can design a decent programme to capture all these necessary information that the people would like to know, perhaps MOM can make an exception and outsource this task to the foreigners to design one. Make sure they write the programme quickly so that we can have some data to chew on.
 
And please don’t jump the gun to kpkb that MOM is useless or the Jobs Bank is a another wayang. There are obviously some genuine problems like lack of programming talents or administrative officers to design an administrative procedure that could produce the results expected.
 
PS, I am just speculating and I did not have access to how they work. Maybe I am just drumming. Please forgive me for my ignorance.

Kopi Level - Green