War against the Islamic State getting closer

The Axis, from Washington and London, has reached Canberra. The three European colonial powers have joined hands to take on the ISIS. They have formed a ‘Coalition of the Willings’ once again to take on the Islamic fighters they called evil. On the evil Islamic fighters side there is a real coalition of more than 80 countries, fighters from these countries who marched there with their feet, to fight on the side of the Islamic State. This kind of volunteerism and martyrdom is frightening and very difficult to defeat.
 
When we were part of the first ‘Coalition of the Willings’, many knew it was the ‘Coalition of the Unwillings’, we could be excused for being forced into a situation when we were either with George Bush or against George Bush. We had no choice. Do we have a choice this time? Has the armed twisting started and we would again be volunteered to fight in this war against the Islamic State?
 
In the first instance, fighting to topple Saddam Hussein was a pretty isolated event. Invading Iraq on a fake charge of WMD, a serious violation of a country’s sovereignty, a very serious precedent set by the evil Empire to justify an invasion, given the predominance of the Empire, it was quite safe to do so with minimal repercussions.
 
To be actively involved against the Islamic State is not going to be a cake walk, and not going to be pleasant. In particular, living in a sea of Islamic states and with many sympathizers quietly supporting, it is deadly crazy to incur their wrath. We cannot afford to be involved in this war. We are too vulnerable and exposed.
 
May wisdom rule and we be spared from becoming a party to this Coalition of the Willings or Unwillings. We have no choice but to walk away. And pray there is no hero who thinks this is another party for a bit of glory and chest thumping. This war is disease. There will be plenty of gory.

Kopi Level - Green

Are we gaming the university ranking systems?

Within a few years, the rankings of NUS and NTU have shot up by leaps and bounds. It is like out of the blue we are world champions or nearly there in table tennis and nothing else. And every time when the media proudly splashed in their pages that we were ranked higher than the Ivy League universities in the US and UK, my goose pimples popped up instantly. Really ah? Even if we are really better than these Ivy League universities, why are our graduates ended up as rejects and unable to compete for jobs in our very own country, in our very own system, in our very own companies, organisations and institutions? Never mind.

Our universities are flooded with foreigners in the administration, the teaching staff and among the undergrads and post grads. Is their presence part of the gaming process? If they are, I say if, cause I dunno, how much are we paying for all these foreigners just to put a mask over our face? Foreigners in administration and teaching staff, mostly academically highly qualified, don’t come cheap unless they are from Timbuktu. But Timbuktu doesn’t count for high rankings, so NG. And there is the often repeated complaints of hundreds of millions, by now could be billions of dollars, given as scholarships to foreigners. Are the scholarships and money spent part of the gaming process too?

Now what is the gain, what is the return if the money were spent on gambling. Shit, why did I say gambling? It must be the influence of the casinos or the big gamblers managing big funds. I mean gaming the system, not gambling the system. Ok, just to be clear, I am not saying anyone is gaming the system, I am just asking if we are gaming the system and what is the cost of gaming the system?

Before I forget, what is the gain? Like the medals for table tennis, what is the gain and is the gain worth it for the money spent? So what if our rankings are in high heavens. What is the point? It would be better to use the money to build a few monuments, maybe cheaper if the maintenance is low. Just don’t build monuments that need hundreds of millions for upkeeping and to provide jobs for highly paid foreigners.

Anyone knows if we are hooked on gaming the university ranking systems and who gives the green light if we are really doing it? It costs a lot of money that could be used for better things. My gut feel is that we cannot be so stupid to waste public money on such cheapo reputations. Our administrators would have better sense and circumspection not to waste public money. Our rankings are high because we are good and the presence of the foreigners is coincidental. There is nothing to it. Go look somewhere else. We don’t game the system for some cheapo unrecognised subjective rankings that really mean nothing.

Kopi Level - Green

A little wisdom from the wise ones

For many years many people were wondering why the stock exchange of a financial centre, aspiring to be the top financial centre is Asia, is allowed to go on a self destruct mode. Don’t agree? The SGX is in the pink of health? Again, I love to resurrect George Yeo’s famous comment, what you see from the outside, everything is so perfect but is not real. Some would say the stock exchange is doing fine, damn bloody fine, with the latest technology, the most expensive computers, the newest tricks in play, and a top foreign talent in charge, things must only go right. Or maybe I quote another eminent, look at the long run, the pains today would be worth it, like how we suffered in the early years of nation building and being rewarded today. Everything will be fine in the long run. It is all in the schemes of things.

All those who are in the stock market business know very well that the market has collapsed. And no one knows why or wants to know why. The broking houses are encouraging their clients to trade in foreign markets, not to touch this dying market of inactivity. It is like a cemetery in the day. I too have been scratching my head wanting to know why. And when the experts also claimed that they are clueless, paid millions to be clueless, you should know why.

I raised a few obvious observations. I was told that they knew what they were doing. I did not get that. Few day’s back, met a businessman who spoke the simple plain truth. When they do not want your business, it means there are vested interests involved and there is no need to hit your head against the wall. Go around it, yes, like trading in other markets. The various parts of wisdom are coming together and making sense now. And this morning a blogger put in this comment in my blog, ‘RB, u smoke some pot is it. What inquisition? No way they do lar why slap your cheeks for what? Tio Bo?’

It makes good sense, the situation is getting clearer. The people may be screaming their lungs out crying foul. But nothing will be done. No way. Just to mention a few, the influx of half bakes and fake foreigners to replace Singaporeans, you really think they don’t know? Why is there inaction? The CPF issue, high cost of living issue, the wasting of public funds on scholarships for foreigners, the replacing of the academics in the academia with foreigners etc etc. You think they don’t know, they are stupid?

And Zuraidah Ibrahim in her morning article said scholars are not smart. I must say I totally disagree with her. The scholars are damn smart. They know exactly what they are doing, and what they would not do or should not do.  The only problem is that the laypeople did not know what is their agenda?  They have their agenda that may be different from what the people want, or they have different priorities. It is not nice to say they have vested interests.

Mao Zedong was not an exceptionally brilliant man. He was a librarian. Ok, this is subjective as a person without a string of degrees from the best universities and branded as a scholar can also be very brilliant. Mao Zedong, despite many huge errors he committed in his last few years as a ruler, is still revered and highly respected as the founder of modern China. Some outsiders like to condemn him as a murderer and the obstacle to China’s modernisation. The Chinese people know best. They are the beneficiaries of what Mao Zedong did for them and for China. It is a long story.

Would our elite, the smart scholars, please don’t be dismissive to say they are not smart, be revered and respected by the generations to come? Or would they be condemned for selling out the country and people? Only history will judge them. There is one big difference between Mao Zedong and our elite. Mao was doing what he did for China and the Chinese people. There were some exceptions, he is not immortal. Oops, our elites are also doing everything for Singapore and the Singaporeans. You can have your contrary opinions.

Why is Singapore heading in a direction that the people are so exasperated and very angry about? Is it that the people are stupid, or is there something else? Why are the smart elite allowing the country to slide down a slippery road of no return? Of course they did not think so, like the CPF thing and the influx of foreigners thing, it is all good for the people and country. Have faith.

What would the wise ones said?

Kopi Level - Green

Singaporeans exasperated for a nation wide Inquisition

With the flooding of foreigners, affectionately called talents in some quarters, to the tune of more than half a million, and many millions have came and gone, and to think that they were all genuine is foolishness in the highest order. And to think only that this state of affair is real, only a few fakes and the rest are genuine, is pure stupidity, grade 99.9999 purity. Reverse this it is like 99.9999 purity for daft.

The token discovery of a few low level fakes to show that something was done and the people were appeased, is a sad reflection of the kind of mentality and ethos of the elite. We have checked and only a few fakes. No more problems, all is well. Remember what George Yeo said? Everything looks so perfect on the surface, but it is not real.

The Anoop Shankar case is not only just the tip of an iceberg. It is a revelation that there is a huge iceberg of fakes living generously at the expense of real hardworking Sinkies that have been turned into PME taxi drivers and security guards.  And these fakes are the so called talents with the skill sets that daft Sinkies did not have and must be imported to replace the daft Sinkies.

There is a need for an Inquisition, to sieve through every single foreigner hired and employed here. The problem is big, bigger than the white elephant in the room. It is time to throw the 3 monkeys that see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil out of the window. Singaporeans must not live under such a big lie at their expense and being laughed at like fools by foreigners all over the world, even from underdeveloped 3^rd World villagers that called themselves geniuses and making a fool of our talents and elites. It is like ‘they came, they saw, and Singaporeans got replaced’.

When would there be a nation wide Inquisition? When would they dump the Jobs Bank into the waste bin? How many fakes are here? 30% would be a very conservative figure. We have been had by the fakes for so many years and refused to do anything about it. Whose great idea is that? Does anyone have a vested interest to flood the island with fakes without wanting to question or do anything about it?

Who is endorsing the fakes to be here, gainfully employed with impunity?

Kopi Level - Yellow

Anoop Shankar – Would NUS World Rankings be affected

The revelation of a ‘genius’ professor (Singapore has this fetish craving for geniuses) who was an academic staff of NUS but got caught with his pants down, with fake credentials in the US is sending a little tremor around our reputable institutions of higher learnings. We have carefully honed our skills by gaming the ranking systems, oops, I mean by making sure that we followed the norms set by international agencies, not intentionally of course, to raise our rankings to be among the top universities in the world. We are definitely not gaming, otherwise if the criteria demand having a monkey as a professor, they would have appointed a monkey to the staff too. Now doing that would be gaming. We are quite near to the class of Harvard and Cambridge, beating many top Ivy League universities in the US and UK. And we achieved this by sheer quality of the institutions and the staff.

Now we have this dubious honour of sharing in the hiring of a fake as an academic staff and publishing many papers to help in our rankings. How would this affect our university’s rankings? Is this another one of those, ‘it happens once in 50 years’ cases? If it is so, then we should thank God that it would not cause too much damage to our reputation. If it is not the case, and many more are fakes, then we will have a very embarrassing problem at hand.

How would we know that there are other fakes in the academia? The only way to find out is to comb through with a fine brush, the academic qualifications of the staff, especially the foreigners. The question is, do we want to do this and risk our rankings and reputations tumbling to the abyss? My suggestion is not to do anything. Let it be. Then we can keep our rankings and the integrity of the institutions? Did I say integrity? Oops, wrong choice of word definitely. Change that to reputation.

How many people really think that there is a need for a thorough investigation in the academia for fraudsters? This disease of having fakes and fraudsters in the whole island has been spreading and the writing has been on the wall for too long. And it is not only in the academia! It is something that must be done and in a hurry. But no one bothers. Or is this problem already known in the closed circles and the solution is to announce that no degrees also can if one can perform, and can be promoted to high positions too. Definitely not! These are two separate issues.

Do we have a problem? Yes, no? Do we want to acknowledge that we have a problem? Do we then want to address this problem? If all the answers are no, then we have no problems and Rip Van Winkle can go back to sleep for another 50 years. We can continue to plan for the big 50 year celebrations and party.

Some say the best solution to a nasty problem is to look the other way. Don’t talk about it, don’t do anything is the best.

Kopi Level - Green