North and South Korea, an invitation to dance

After all the hypes about how irrational and crazy Kim Jong Un is, the West must be knocked off their balance by the goodwill gesture of Kim Jong Un to Park Guen Hye. Kim has invited Park for a meeting of the two heads. Unbelieveable, this is a notorious beast, insane and obnoxious character, a murderer, as the West would want the rest of the daft world to believe, and now he is offering an olive branch to the South. Cannot be true, must be a trap or some evil scheme. He must be having too much whisky and drunk. This guy cannot be trusted.
 
The South Korean President Park Guen Hye is not going to believe the Americans. She is taking Kim Jong Un and his offer for talks seriously. She has replied positively for a talk with no condition attached. Now this friendly response is going make some people in Washington and Tokyo very nervous. There are people and countries that would not want a reconciliation of the two Koreas and a united Korea.
 
Three have been flagged as possible candidates that would not want a united Korea. The West had been selling the notorious fiction that China would not want it. Then there are the Americans and the Japanese, both have vested interests to want to keep the two Koreas divided.
 
In the case of China, that is on good terms with both sides, though the West is singing the song that China is unhappy with Kim Jong Un and is distancing itself from him, even encouraging China to fix Kim for the sake of the Americans, the Chinese would not have anything to do with the Americans. The Chinese would remain the staunchest supporter of North Korea to keep the Americans from the Yalu River. Even a united Korea would not put fear to China as China has been living with a nuclear power North Korea for ages. A united Korea would see the redundancy of American troops in Korean soil, which is what China wants and which is what the Americans and Japanese dreaded.
 
The USA would have a lot to lose with a united Korea. No more justifications and fear mongering for military bases in the Korean Peninsula, no more control over the South Korean Armed Forces, no more bargaining power to keep the South Korean as a perpetual semi colony. No more force selling of expensive weapons and making the South Koreans paying for them And no more leverage to coerce and threaten China.
 
The Japanese share the same interest to keep the two Koreans divided and more. A military and economically strong united Korea would be a threat to the Japanese, an arch enemy. A united Korea would be able to take on the Japanese on its own very comfortably to avenge its past. A united Korea would give the nationalistic Koreans a united front and common enemy in Japan and would not bow to Japanese pressure. And they would resist Japanese encroachment and also have an axe to grind against Japan for half a century of brutal and humiliating colonization. Japan cannot afford to live with a united Korea.
 
The invitation to a dance party by Kim Jong Un, and the acceptance of the invite are sending shivers to the Americans and the Japanese. If they could have a hand in it, this party must not be allowed to proceed. The unification dream must be killed at the earliest possible opportunity.
 
Park Chung Hee, the former President of South Korea, the father of Park Guen Hye, was assassinated for toying with the same idea of a united Korea. Kim Dae Jung was removed as the President because of his sunshine policy that could lead to a reunification. Park had to be terminated and the Korean CIA, with connections with the American CIA, was made to do the execution. Now Park Guen Hye, the daughter, is reviving the same dream and acting dangerously to the American and Japanese interests. Would she suffer the same fate as her father? Are the South Koreans prepared not to allow a repeat of the assassination of another Korean patriot, another President?
 
The South Korean govt and all its security agencies must take serious precautions to protect the safety of their President embarking on a reunification path. She is in danger, clear and present danger, of being terminated, like her father. Would the South Koreans allow it to happen? Would a false flag incident be hatched to finish her off before the reunification dream takes off?
 
Who will determine her fate and the fate of a united Korea?

The Roy Ngerng saga continues

A fire is burning hot. The CPF is a hot potato issue. What about the Roy Ngerng saga? Immediately after the judgement for legal fee was out, another controversy took centre stage. Did Roy give up his right to cross examine, to be cross examined, or did he not? According to Hsien Loong’s press secretary Chang Li Lin, Roy’s lawyer had confirmed that he did not want to be cross examined. According to Roy he wanted the cross examination.
 
What is puzzling is the thinking of Hsien Loong. What is he thinking, what is in his mind? Could he be thinking that this is a straight forward case of libel and he was suing Roy for alleging that he was corrupt? Period. Let the court decide this civil suit and move on? How would this tussle affect his stature as the PM of the country?
Can this legal suit be taken in isolation, to be treated so clinically like a wound, clean it, sanitize it and bandage it up nicely with no further complication or implication?
 
The social media is on fire. Some netizens are fuming and drawing all kinds of conclusions and threatening consequences, as a political issue. Did Hsien Loong see this coming? I bet so. He must have weighed the consequences and how it would impact his standing as the PM and how it would affect the next GE.
 
This legal case against Roy cannot be simply treated as a private matter between the two of them. It is political as in involved the PM, and the people will see it from the political perspective and drag many issues into it, the CPF being one. Without trying to analyse more in the thinking of Hsien Loong or his party stalwarts, there must be political fallouts coming from this case. Perhaps all these have been taken into account and seen as a price worth paying for, or necessary to take Roy to court.
 
How would this end up with Roy now in a mood for a ‘suicidal’ mission, a do and die no option recourse? The bigger this saga is blown up, the bigger the implications, and they are unlikely to be positive for both of them. Would it blow the PAP’s chance in the next GE? This is on the lips of every politically conscious citizens and political observer.
 
What is at the end of the tunnel?

No poverty in Singapore?

The issue of poverty is a very sensitive one in one of the world’s richest city state with the highest percentage of millionaires. How can there be poverty when there are no beggars, or the poor here are better off than the poor elsewhere? How then does one define poverty or being poor? Theoretically, a person with a $1000 pm income could buy a 2 rm public flat. How can that be poor? The assumptions that after paying for the flat he would still have enough to get by, feed a family and children going to school. If this is the bottom line, the number of poor in Singapore must be very low indeed.

Professor Tommy Koh wrote a recent article stating that 30% of the population are poor. He is now embroiled in a debate with the MOE on the scale of poverty among students. Though the data quoted were complex and not everyone is in agreement, the bottom line is that how many are poor or living below the poverty line.

The next question is where is the poverty line? In Singapore there is no poverty line. So how can there be poor when there is no poverty line. Tiok. The next question, why is there no poverty line? The answer and I quote, ‘Minister for Social and Family Development Chan Chun Sing had previously refused to define an official poverty line for fear of a "cliff effect" even though it is not known what this meant.’

If you choose to put on blinkers, the world is a tunnel. If one chooses to read only fairy tales, the world is so airy fairy. Are there people struggling to live on their small income and bordering on poverty or living below the poverty line? Deaf frogs, blind frogs or blinkered frogs, all have a different view on this issue.

Kopi Level - Red

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China providing an alternative to the failed American model stock market

‘China now gives investors an alternative to (the)manipulated HFT U.S. stock markets - www.examiner.com
 
On Nov. 17, China finalized the completion of their linking the Shanghai stock exchange with the Hong Kong exchange, creating a $4.2 trillion capital market that is also open to foreign investors. Debuting yesterday during Asian trading hours, this new and dynamic market will provide an alternative for American and other global traders to invest in a massive stock exchange that is free from the manipulation and High Frequency Trading (HFT) that occurs on U.S. exchanges, and will even exempt foreign investors from paying capital gains taxes….
 
In March of this year, financial author Michael Lewis laid a bombshell on the investment community when he published his book Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt. In this fictional story based on real life factual data, Lewis showed how HFT was used so much by the primary brokers on Wall Street that it completely rigged the stock markets and allowed the siphoning off of hundreds of billions of dollars from investors simply because their machines saw trades before they happened, and bought or sold shares to follow trends.
 
It is perhaps ironic that for decades the perception has been that fraud, corruption, and manipulation has been projected upon Asia, and Asian markets that had limited regulation to protect investors. However, those days are quickly changing and with this new and transparent stock market merger between Shanghai and Hong Kong, opportunities now appear far greater and with much less risk of fraud overseas than they do in the U.S. and European based exchanges.’
 
The above article talked about the alternative stock market platform China is providing to the world of finance to overcome and to step away from the highly flawed, manipulated and failed American stock trading system. Fund managers would now have a more transparent and trusted stock exchange to invest their funds collected from innocent investors in. It is a fairer and less manipulated market than one dominated by high speed computers that made all the trading principles, fundamentals and methodology irrelevant, a joke. Traditional and conventional fund managers and retail traders have been robbed and massacred by the highly deceptive high speed trading programmes without knowing what really hit them, without knowing they have been cheated by them and the regulators of the exchanges.
 
High speed trading has violated and broken all the rules and regulations of stock exchanges for fair trading and have deceived investors that there was nothing wrong or illegal about their modus operandi. This does not mean that the govts, the US govt included, the regulators and the big fund managers did not know that the operations are illegal, criminal and fraudulent. They have been allowed to continue to operate and cheat other investors simply by virtue of their control over the regulators not to report or apprehend them for frauds and cheating. Everyone in the industry, the govt and regulators, are complicit in this crime while the investors are totally helpless about it except to lose their savings and fortunes. The wiser, or those who have lost everything, could only stand aside and watch in vain, not to participate or cannot afford to participate in the con game again.
 
China has seen through the deception and is offering genuine investors and fund managers a fairer and more transparent platform to invest and trade without being cheated by the computer traders. The American model is waiting to collapse just like the greenback, all built and propped up by sheer manipulation of the regulators/govt and the big computer operators.
 
Now that there is a reliable and fairer system to trade stocks, more fund managers are likely to shift their portfolio to the Shanghai/Hongkong market and leading to a quicker demise of the American model. The Singapore Exchange that is highly similar to the American model and would not be spared and would likely meet a similar ending once New York and London hit dirt at ground zero. Good riddance.
 
The end of the American model is near and a new and fairer financial centre in Shanghai/Hongkong would rise to take the place of New York/London and Tokyo. No more computer trading and no more manipulation of the stock market with impunity. There is new hope and a new world order at the horizon.

Kopi Level - Red