9/25/2014
Hong Kong Tiananmen in the making?
The Hongkies are at their best again, protesting for more democracy. They did not see this as an important thing when hiding under the skirt of Queen Elizabeth. They were ruled by the British, a bastion of democracy, for 150 years without democracy. I think they were having a good time then. Then came Patten who taught them what democracy is all about and they now die die must have democracy, to the fullest. If they did not get their way they would not mind doing a Tiananmen in Hong Kong. Good luck to them if that is what they want.
Between the authoritarian rule of mainland China and what democracy could offer, it is undisputed that what the Hongkies are demanding for is a good thing. Bearing in mind that democracy can also be corrupted. I would agree that China needs more democracy and a pulling back on authoritarianism. It is not that the new regime is bent on ruling with a stick. I also think that with prosperity China would become more like western countries in practice and a communist state on paper. When life is good, when there is peace and prosperity all around, when the people are happy and living well, there will be lesser demand for authoritarian rule.
Having said that, the political culture of China and the mentality of the power oligarch need a massive change in favour of greater democracy, more rule of law, and lesser authoritarianism. And this must be enshrined not only in the psychic of the leadership and the people, but also in the political system. Hong Kong could be the spark that is needed to keep the spirit of democracy alive in China and to spread it across the country. China is also changing and despite being an authoritative communist state, the Chinese people are enjoying a lot of political freedom and expression as long as they did not threaten national security and interests. Less haste may be a better way to achieve this result in the long term.
As Hong Kong pushes for more democracy, it must never forget that Hong Kong is a small part of China and is being ruled under the ‘One country Two Systems’ model. Remember, ‘One Country’ comes first if ‘Two Systems’ is to exist. When ‘Two Systems’ threatens the ‘One Country’ formula, when national security is compromised, the ‘Two Systems’ would have to go. Hong Kong is expendable if it threatens China as a country. So don’t push your luck too far. Work within the system and know that Hong Kong is China. China as a unified country, a nation, must never be shaken if Hong Kong is to exist as a prosperous autonomous region.
Hong Kong’s Chief Executive cannot be simply determined by the people to create problems for China, at least not now. The Chief Executive is like the one Golden Share, one vote that can over rule everything when national interest is at stake. Other than that, this Golden Share will be dormant and unseen, and Hong Kong could do as it pleases in almost anything. You don’t sell your country away by allowing the top post to be in the hands of a suspect, someone who would not mind serving the interests of foreigners or a foreigner.
Hong Kong should remain the catalyst, the stimulus to advocate for greater democracy in the whole of China, like the yeast that would change the character of the whole pack. But while doing it, it must not mess up the dough, it must always bear in mind that ‘One Country’ comes first
Kopi Level - Green
Back to Class, Hong Kong Students
by MIKOspace
GO BACK TO CLASS
For Your Future please, Hong Kong students. Education drives out fear. Fear is
frightening, no pun intended. Fear is birthed from ignorance, and driven by
loud rhetoric not grounded in facts.
Why
are Hong Kong students protesting? Because many speakers, news articles,
politicians and so-called democracy activists have generated so much panic and
uncertainties over the next Hong Kong Chief Executive (CE) due to be elected by
universal franchise in 2017. Fears were
planted. Fears that the next HK CE will
be pro-Bejing and anti-Hong Kong? Fears that a “good” Pro-Hong Kong candidate
will not be selected for the final ballot? Fears that HK Democracy (what this?)
will die? Fears that the Nomination Selection Committee would be more
pro-Beijing than pro-Hong Kong? Fears,
fears … and more fears feeding itself to derive the worst of bad scenarios.
Read Hong Kong Politics
for the truth and facts.
Go
learn from the UK and US systems ... HK 2017 electoral procedures are in fact
more democratic and consistent with democratic principles. The American people
have never directly elected their President. Neither did the British people
ever elect their Prime Minister. The candidates were also never nominated by
direct popular acclaim. BUT, HONG KONG PEOPLE WILL ELECT THEIR CE IN 2017..!
Back to Class now. LEARN
HONG KONG (HK)
DEMOCRATS SHOULD LEARN FROM SCOTLAND. There was no mayhem, riots, demonstrations
or Occupy London after the Scottish "No" Vote, despite more than 2
million "Yes" votes. WHY? The Queen, who was also the Queen of HK
until 1997, credited this to "the nature of robust democratic tradition we
enjoyed", but denied to Hong Kong during their 150 years' occupation. “We”
presumably refers only to WHITE Britons. China introduced Democracy into HK in
1997. In any democracy, there will be "strong feelings and contrasting
emotions which must be tempered by an understanding of the feelings of
others". Hong Kongers should grow their own democratic tradition in a
spirit of mutual respect and support for HK future, and indeed also China.
Kopi Level - Green
Read more:
9/24/2014
More Singaporeans in top posts in foreign banks..hahahhahaha…
After Tharman talked about the vanishing Singaporeans in top bank
appointments, today there is a report in the ST saying ‘more’
Singaporeans are now in top bank positions. I cried until I almost fell
out of my chair. Oh there were statistics for this claim. Actually with
the few number of banks here, there could be a good table to show what
is the real situation, how many Singaporeans are CEOs, how many are in
number 2 and 3 positions and how many are foreigners.
Also, how many are promoted recently for cosmetic reason, after Tharman raised the issue in public? Why has the situation degenerated to such a pathetic state of being when Singaporeans used to be the top bankers in our country? Who allowed this to happen? No body knows because it just happened, or everyone was busy counting their money or went to sleep?
No need to waste my breath laboring on this point. It is like the country is going the same direction if nothing is done to put a stop to it. If national leaders could not even bother, or did not see this as a vital issue, best to let it be.
Kopi Level - Yellow
Also, how many are promoted recently for cosmetic reason, after Tharman raised the issue in public? Why has the situation degenerated to such a pathetic state of being when Singaporeans used to be the top bankers in our country? Who allowed this to happen? No body knows because it just happened, or everyone was busy counting their money or went to sleep?
No need to waste my breath laboring on this point. It is like the country is going the same direction if nothing is done to put a stop to it. If national leaders could not even bother, or did not see this as a vital issue, best to let it be.
Kopi Level - Yellow
Mega projects – What have we gained other than the intangibles
We have done great things, built great cities like Suzhou, Tianjin Eco city, F1, great Gardens By the Bay, and now we are going to build smart city or cities in India. We have contributed no small sum to the building of Nalanda University. How much have all these great projects cost us and what were the returns in absolute monetary terms? Let me touch on the intangibles first, like great publicity value, everyone now knows where is Singapore, endearing relationships, building goodwill, they will love us surely, if not at least for our money, they will help us now that we have helped them….etc etc. Ok, now that the intangibles are out of the way, let’s talk real numbers, the bottom line. How much we have spent and how much have we gotten back.? In other words, accountability.
We cannot be spending and spending public money on multi million dollar projects, or hundreds of millions of dollars per project without looking at returns. We are no Santa Claus or international philanthropists throwing our money everywhere for people to like us or be nice to us. It that why people welcome us?
Every project that costs hundreds of millions of dollars must be justified and accounted for. It is public money and no one should be thinking of using public funds casually for vanity. The hundreds of millions spent on foreign students, what is the return? Can I say zero except some goodwill, hoping that those scholars will be nice to us in the future? Oh, they helped to increase our talent pool and talents for the industries.
I believe every project of such high values is meticulously studied before approval. Do these mega projects need Parliament’s approval or need to be reported in Parliament? Have we not gone past the phase to tell the whole world we exist? Do we still need to keep telling the world that we are a world class city and please come and visit us in case the world did not know who we are and where we are?
What do you think? I think the whole wide world must by now know who we are and where we are and how good we are or how daft we are. Do we still need to spend hundreds of millions to advertise our existence or to affirm our relationships with other countries?
Kopi Level - Yellow
NATO intends to prohibit Russia’s and China’s Development
Below is a condensed version of an article by
Thierry Meyssan on the role of the Americans and what they are up to in
their domination of the world. It told what the Americans were saying in
public and what went on behind closed doors. And look at what they are
doing to Syria, violating national sovereignty and international laws to
bomb another country. It totally ignored the UN and did not even bother
to seek any face saving resolutions or consent before striking at
Syria. The Empire is getting more and more arrogant and defiance in the
use of power against other countries.
And where are the gore and blood they were pointing out at the gruesome beheading of 3 westerners? No, the cruise missiles and bombs would not lead to any blood shedding. No heads will be severed by the bombs. It is all a matter of pushing a few buttons. Nothing else happened, no one dies, no mother and child got cut into pieces, no grandfather and mother got killed in the process. It is so neat and nice.
PS. I tried my best to shorten this piece but still a bit long. There are so many details of the treachery of the AngloSaxon conspiracy that were revealed and I could not cut it shorter.
NATO intends to prohibit Russia’s and China’s Development
by Thierry Meyssan
The Newport (Wales) Summit is NATO’s largest since the 2002 Prague edition. At the time, it meant to include new central and eastern European states within the Alliance. This time it’s about planning a long-term strategy to contain the development of Russia and China so as to prevent their competing with the United States [1]….
future of the Anglo-American imperialist project
Since the coup of 2001 [4], the United States is planning a confrontation with China. With this in mind, President Barack Obama announced the repositioning of US forces in the Far East. However, this agenda has been disrupted by economic, political and military recovery in Russia, which has been able in 2008 to defend South Ossetia under attack by Georgia and, in 2014, Crimea threatened by the Kiev coup…..
While performing its "pivot to Asia", Washington has exacerbated tensions between China and its neighbors, especially Japan. NATO, which historically vassallizes Europe to North America, has thereby opened itself to Asian and Oceanian partners, notably Australia and Japan, through association contracts. It has, in passing, broadened its field of action to the whole world. [5]
In this time of budgetary restrictions, the Alliance, which is not experiencing the crisis, is building a new headquarters in Brussels for the staggering sum of € 1 billion. It should be ready in early 2017. [6]
The issue of the Islamic Emirate
This summer, to the preoccupation with preventing China and Russia from controlling enough raw materials to develop the ability to compete with the United States was added the issue of the Islamic Emirate.
An intense media campaign has demonized the jihadist organization whose crimes are not new, but who just attacked the Iraqi people. We have repeatedly explained that the IE is a Western creation and that, despite appearances, its action in Iraq is entirely consistent with US plans to divide the country into three separate states. [7] For a project which constitutes a crime against humanity because it assumes ethnic cleansing, Washington has used a private army that could be condemned publicly while being supported covertly.
The United States would have taken the measure of the Islamist threat after the IE murdered two of their nationals, journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff. However, a careful examination of the videos [8] suggests that they are not authentic. The problem had already arisen with the IE when it was supposed to have murdered Nick Berg in 2004 [9].
We have also often stressed that the IE was different from previous jihadist groups both by its communication services and its civilian administrators able to manage the conquered territories. So this is a group which is meant to last. As Alfredo Jalife-Rahme showed, the Caliphate, even if it is currently active mainly in Syria and Iraq, was designed to bear arms against Russia, India and China in the long-term [10] .
The issue of the Islamic Emirate did not therefore have to be added to the anti-Russian and anti-Chinese agenda. It was already part of it. Moreover, not wanting to risk that a Member State might express doubts about this masquerade, Washington shifted the debate to the sidelines of the summit. President Obama met eight other states plus Australia (which is not a NATO member, but only an associate) to develop its war plan. It was later decided to add Jordan to this device.
Summit conclusions
The summit held a hurried morning session to expedite the question of its long presence in Afghanistan. Certainly, NATO will withdraw its combat troops as planned by year’s end, but it will retain control of the Afghan army and national security. The summit even allowed itself the luxury of calling on the two candidates for the Afghan presidency to commit to signing without delay the criminal immunity requirements of the United States, while this election is organized and the ballots counted by American forces. Therefore, the candidate who does not agree should not be surprised if he is not considered elected....
In addition, the summit equipped the Alliance with two new tools: a cyber warfare service to counter Chinese military hackers, and a rapid response force of 4000 men from 7 countries placed under British command. Finally, the summit paved the accession process of Montenegro and, of course, requires member states to develop their military spending.
Some remarks
Despite accusations from the Ukrainian government - according to which Russia would have invaded the country ... but with only 1,000 men that no one has seen, as noted by Giulietto Chiesa [11] -, the summit did not decide to go to war against Moscow and merely posed a symbolic gesture. We do not understand therefore why such ostentation was put on display in Newport.
Unless the important things have been decided behind closed doors at the meeting of the Heads of State Friday, Sept. 5, it does not seem that secret wars were discussed at the summit, but only on the sidelines of the summit with certain allies only. Already in 2011, NATO had violated its own rules by not assembling the Atlantic Council before bombing Tripoli. It seemed effectively impossible that all would agree to such a slaughter. The United States and the United Kingdom therefore met secretly with France, Italy and Turkey in Naples to plan an attack that caused at least 40,000 civilian deaths in one week.
The final release is a rare hypocrisy [12]: the Ukrainian crisis is treated as a Russian aggression, without ever mentioning the coup of Maidan Square, or the installation of a government including Nazis. The Syrian crisis is presented as a conflict between “ a moderate opposition which protects minorities” and at the same time the “tyranny of the regime of Bashar al-Assad”, and “extremist groups”, without ever mentioning that the Syrian regime is a republic while the moderate opposition is paid by the dictatorships of the Gulf, nor that the crisis was triggered by a secret Franco-British war in accordance with the Annexes to the Treaty of Lancaster House, nor that President Assad has just been re-elected by 63% of the electorate, and that the Syrian Arab Republic is the only one to have protected not only minorities, but all its citizens, including the Sunni majority. Cynically, the statement claims that the Alliance has protected the Libyan people, in accordance with resolutions 1970 and 1973, when in fact it used these resolutions to change the regime in Libya by killing 160,000 Libyans and plunging the country into chaos.
Kopi Level - Yellow
And where are the gore and blood they were pointing out at the gruesome beheading of 3 westerners? No, the cruise missiles and bombs would not lead to any blood shedding. No heads will be severed by the bombs. It is all a matter of pushing a few buttons. Nothing else happened, no one dies, no mother and child got cut into pieces, no grandfather and mother got killed in the process. It is so neat and nice.
PS. I tried my best to shorten this piece but still a bit long. There are so many details of the treachery of the AngloSaxon conspiracy that were revealed and I could not cut it shorter.
NATO intends to prohibit Russia’s and China’s Development
by Thierry Meyssan
The Newport (Wales) Summit is NATO’s largest since the 2002 Prague edition. At the time, it meant to include new central and eastern European states within the Alliance. This time it’s about planning a long-term strategy to contain the development of Russia and China so as to prevent their competing with the United States [1]….
future of the Anglo-American imperialist project
Since the coup of 2001 [4], the United States is planning a confrontation with China. With this in mind, President Barack Obama announced the repositioning of US forces in the Far East. However, this agenda has been disrupted by economic, political and military recovery in Russia, which has been able in 2008 to defend South Ossetia under attack by Georgia and, in 2014, Crimea threatened by the Kiev coup…..
While performing its "pivot to Asia", Washington has exacerbated tensions between China and its neighbors, especially Japan. NATO, which historically vassallizes Europe to North America, has thereby opened itself to Asian and Oceanian partners, notably Australia and Japan, through association contracts. It has, in passing, broadened its field of action to the whole world. [5]
In this time of budgetary restrictions, the Alliance, which is not experiencing the crisis, is building a new headquarters in Brussels for the staggering sum of € 1 billion. It should be ready in early 2017. [6]
The issue of the Islamic Emirate
This summer, to the preoccupation with preventing China and Russia from controlling enough raw materials to develop the ability to compete with the United States was added the issue of the Islamic Emirate.
An intense media campaign has demonized the jihadist organization whose crimes are not new, but who just attacked the Iraqi people. We have repeatedly explained that the IE is a Western creation and that, despite appearances, its action in Iraq is entirely consistent with US plans to divide the country into three separate states. [7] For a project which constitutes a crime against humanity because it assumes ethnic cleansing, Washington has used a private army that could be condemned publicly while being supported covertly.
The United States would have taken the measure of the Islamist threat after the IE murdered two of their nationals, journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff. However, a careful examination of the videos [8] suggests that they are not authentic. The problem had already arisen with the IE when it was supposed to have murdered Nick Berg in 2004 [9].
We have also often stressed that the IE was different from previous jihadist groups both by its communication services and its civilian administrators able to manage the conquered territories. So this is a group which is meant to last. As Alfredo Jalife-Rahme showed, the Caliphate, even if it is currently active mainly in Syria and Iraq, was designed to bear arms against Russia, India and China in the long-term [10] .
The issue of the Islamic Emirate did not therefore have to be added to the anti-Russian and anti-Chinese agenda. It was already part of it. Moreover, not wanting to risk that a Member State might express doubts about this masquerade, Washington shifted the debate to the sidelines of the summit. President Obama met eight other states plus Australia (which is not a NATO member, but only an associate) to develop its war plan. It was later decided to add Jordan to this device.
Summit conclusions
The summit held a hurried morning session to expedite the question of its long presence in Afghanistan. Certainly, NATO will withdraw its combat troops as planned by year’s end, but it will retain control of the Afghan army and national security. The summit even allowed itself the luxury of calling on the two candidates for the Afghan presidency to commit to signing without delay the criminal immunity requirements of the United States, while this election is organized and the ballots counted by American forces. Therefore, the candidate who does not agree should not be surprised if he is not considered elected....
In addition, the summit equipped the Alliance with two new tools: a cyber warfare service to counter Chinese military hackers, and a rapid response force of 4000 men from 7 countries placed under British command. Finally, the summit paved the accession process of Montenegro and, of course, requires member states to develop their military spending.
Some remarks
Despite accusations from the Ukrainian government - according to which Russia would have invaded the country ... but with only 1,000 men that no one has seen, as noted by Giulietto Chiesa [11] -, the summit did not decide to go to war against Moscow and merely posed a symbolic gesture. We do not understand therefore why such ostentation was put on display in Newport.
Unless the important things have been decided behind closed doors at the meeting of the Heads of State Friday, Sept. 5, it does not seem that secret wars were discussed at the summit, but only on the sidelines of the summit with certain allies only. Already in 2011, NATO had violated its own rules by not assembling the Atlantic Council before bombing Tripoli. It seemed effectively impossible that all would agree to such a slaughter. The United States and the United Kingdom therefore met secretly with France, Italy and Turkey in Naples to plan an attack that caused at least 40,000 civilian deaths in one week.
The final release is a rare hypocrisy [12]: the Ukrainian crisis is treated as a Russian aggression, without ever mentioning the coup of Maidan Square, or the installation of a government including Nazis. The Syrian crisis is presented as a conflict between “ a moderate opposition which protects minorities” and at the same time the “tyranny of the regime of Bashar al-Assad”, and “extremist groups”, without ever mentioning that the Syrian regime is a republic while the moderate opposition is paid by the dictatorships of the Gulf, nor that the crisis was triggered by a secret Franco-British war in accordance with the Annexes to the Treaty of Lancaster House, nor that President Assad has just been re-elected by 63% of the electorate, and that the Syrian Arab Republic is the only one to have protected not only minorities, but all its citizens, including the Sunni majority. Cynically, the statement claims that the Alliance has protected the Libyan people, in accordance with resolutions 1970 and 1973, when in fact it used these resolutions to change the regime in Libya by killing 160,000 Libyans and plunging the country into chaos.
Kopi Level - Yellow
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