Educating other people’s children

When Deng Xiaoping opened up China, what he found wanting was the lack of talents in the latest technology, science and engineering. He embarked on a massive education programme by sending hundreds of thousands of young Chinese to the West to learn everything they could. The number by now could be in the millions. And when asked what happened if they refused to return to China? Deng was confident to say that if some returned, that would be good enough. He was confident that many would return, knowing China’s history and being the home for the Chinese. Sure many would stay put in Europe and the US, by there would be some to come home where the families and roots were.

Confidentially he might be saying to himself, if he could build a rich and prosperous China, the graduated students would come home when the opportunities were there. China is now a land of opportunities, and not only Chinese students are returning home, the Americans and Europeans are marching to China for their pot of gold. The fear of an exodus of talented Chinese did not materialise. The Chinese are coming home. Communist, capitalist or whatever, when life is good, when opportunities abound, it would attract talents all over the world to China.

China was investing in their children and counting on them to return home to build their country and to prosper their country.

What have we been doing in the education of our children? We rather educate the children of other countries and hoping that they stayed to work here, or if not, they would be good to us and say a few good words for us when they returned home. Is this what we hoped to achieve by spending hundreds of millions or billions to educate other countries’ children? What about our own children? How much are we investing on our own children other than the 250 PSC scholars?

Think how many of our children would have benefited from the hundreds of millions or billions invested in other people’s children? And think how many of our children will be home contributing to our economy and our growth? We have wasted a lot of money on foreign students with returns that are barely a fraction of our investments. And we have sacrificed the interests to our own children by depriving them of a good education as many could not do so.

And we are wasting more money to employ foreigners as lecturers in our universities, to fatten them, to make them more valuable, while our own lecturers were let go and left in the lurch. Is this a wise policy, a pro Singaporean policy?

We are losing a whole generation of our children by these flawed policies of educating other people’s children and fattening other people’s talents at the expense of our very own people and children. The long term ill effect would be worst as our people started to lose out and opt out of the talent pool and economic system.

What is happening? What kind of silly policies are these? Good? We need more foreign talents, we don’t need our own talents, our own talents are no good? Fakes and cheats are better? If we cannot get a fundamental policy like this right, everything down stream will be tearing our society and country apart. What is the point of a Singapore filled by foreigners and all the good jobs taken over by foreigners?

This is home? Really, surely? Or this is home to the foreigners? What would happen to the true blue Singaporeans if these silly policies are not killed immediately?

Is there a country called Singapore?

Below is a comment left in a thread in TRE on the bullying of a young man by a foreigner titled ‘Abusive Caucasian in MRT train caught on video’. What happened was that a burly Caucasian was not happy with the words on a T shirt worn by the young man. Such things are very common in the West and our young are just imitating the fad. And the brute shouted, taunted and threatened to throw the young man out of the train. The small built local man was obviously unable to match the burly animal and kept quiet. When the brute moved towards the young man a local Malay man stood up to confront him. There was a heated argument and both were called up by the police.

There were many comments of outrage againt this foreign brute but with some silly comments implying that we should be nice to the brute as he is a darling of the establishment, invited here to help us and our economy. Here is one of the comments.

Lim Pei Say Swee Swee:

July 12, 2015 at 5:13 am  (Quote)

1stly, BRAVO to our Malay bro for standing up for hid fellow citizen. Anyone would be honored to have him as a friend.
NEXT: SHAME SHAME SHAME on;
1) The cowardly guy being bullied for not even defending himself. Useless.
2) The commuters who hide quietly in the face of seeing a moron bully another innocent human being, let alone citizen.
3) And OBVIOUSLY, this lower than gutter TRASH Ang Mo, who sounds either British or Aussie, for THREATENING to cause bodily harm to another without provocation. This is clearly a CRIME!!! WTF is the SPF gonna do about this , now that video evidence is shown.
There is something very GRAVELY wrong and anaemic with the Sinkie society here. It slowly resembling China where spectators would rather ignore pleas for help and cheer rapists raping victims than help. Signs of a fast dying nation….


What is disgusting is to see the frequent harassment by these foreign brutes with size advantage and a meek people that would just bent their heads in shame and waiting to be bashed. What happens to the pride of being a people of a nation? Or is there still a country called Singapore with proud citizens, or a failed state with a sick people that, as the above commentator said, resembled the pariah people of a China known as the Sick Man of Asia where its people no longer believed in themselves and their meekness only invited bashing from foreigners?

What is there to be proud of as Singaporeans when foreigners come here freely and feel so free to taunt, insult and bash the citizens? And where are the leaders to stand up for the citizens? Never heard of, not a word to defend the victims of foreigner bashing. They only have praises for the foreigners and would reprimand the people and demand the people to be nice to the bullies and thugs.

And some commentators rightly pointed their fear that the Police may file charges against the Malay man whom they regard as their hero while the brute would be let off. Why are the people thinking that things would turn out this way and our hero would be punished instead of being honoured? Wasn’t this a case of criminal intimidation by the foreign brute against a local? It would be a dark day of shame if the brute is let off and the local hero charged.

Our country, or shall called it a hotel, or a prostitute den, is sick. It can only get sicker by the day if nothing is done to stop the foreigners from bullying our people. We used to have the secret societies or commandos that would take on the rogues and thugs that bullied our people. There was pride, there was identity, there were Singaporeans. Now our people are left defenceless and being taunted, threatened and beaten in our very own country by foreigners acting as if they are above the law, in front of the public as if they are more equal than the locals.

What kind of shit country is this? Why do we need to have such a powerful defence force? Who are they protecting? What is there to be proud about this country? What are we celebrating this SG50 for, the new Sick Man of Asia, to be bullied and bashed around by foreigners invited here to have good jobs and a good life and treating bashing Singaporeans as a past time?

No need to plan forward. No need to think what would happen in 50 years time. The shit is all over the place today, now. If we cannot take care of the problems now, what is the use of planning and talking about how glorious the future will be?

This is home? Really?

The privilege of reading history

Many of us did not have the privilege of reading history in schools. Many were bundled to do science as the in thing then. I read history before being streamed into Science. Fortunately I decided to read history again at tertiary level. The boredom and repeating of historical facts and dates took back stage and history was read differently, to understand how events came about and the players that contributed to the rise and fall of empires and civilisations.

There is one particular trend of thoughts in historical writings that often said the final hours of an empire were normally filled with duds and traitors and unwise policies. And the fall of empires and dynasties was just a matter of time with fools in charge, blinded to their own stupidity. Such conclusions are easy to establish with the benefits of hindsight. Historians simply pick up all facts and figures selectively to fit the jigsaw that they have set out to create, and books were written to confirm the findings.

For all of us who are living, we are living history as it is, at a point in time. What would be tomorrow is difficult to foretell. This is like the chartists analysing stock trends. They would not know whether the stock will rise or fall in the next minute, hour or tomorrow. But if they were to hold up a historical chart, they could tell you all the turns and when to buy and sell. At every moment in time, every empire or dynasty, or regime or govt in power does not know what tomorrow would be. The only thing they know is that they are doing things they think are good, be it for the country or to protect their self interests. They would not have the faintest idea that what they are doing are silly things or stupid things that would lead to their downfall. This is obvious isn’t it? If they know that they are doing daft and pompous things, they would not be doing it, like digging their own graves.

Take the current history that is evolving and happening right in front of us and the ruling govt and the slate of brilliant leaders they proclaimed as the best team they ever had. Isn’t it a truism that they believe that they have the best team in place to run the country for another century? Isn’t it true that all their policies must be the best to keep them in power for another century, and to make the people continue to vote for them? Isn’t it a truism that all the policies and decisions that they made, all the things that they are doing, are the best and right things to win the hearts and minds of the people?

Can be it otherwise, that the best team that they have collected is but a team of duds and fools? Cannot be right? Can it be that all the things they are doing, the policies, we all know what they are, the  CPF, housing policies, AHPETC, Amos and Roy, high minister salaries, influx of foreigners, foreigners replacing citizens,  etc etc, are wrong and they are digging their own grave and paving the road for their own destruction? Cannot be right? Everything they are doing must be good.

Current history or current affairs, in the eyes of the people in power, are the best thing that is happening and would ensure their continue popularity with the people and will be voted to power again and again. We must know that they believe that they are the smartest and most intelligent beings, some even claimed to be immortals, so they must have put in a lot of thinking to come up with what they are doing. And they must honestly, sincerely and wholeheartedly be believing they are doing the right things.

See, at this moment in time, the historians would not be able to tell whether the policies and things the govt are doing are the right things, the good things, or the contrary. That is why there in no one out there to say otherwise. Only the historians of tomorrow would have the wisdom of hindsight, when everything is over, when an empire, dynasty or regime fell from grace, would they be able to say, ya, all the writings were on the wall. The people in power were a bunch of asses and doing silly things. But today, no one would dare to say that. If they would to say anything, they would say everything is fine, the policies are fine, the things that the ruling govt are doing are the right things. And they can be right too, the error of being right or wrong is 50:50. It is like guessing black or white. Who knows better?

What would the historians of tomorrow be saying or writing about the events that are taking place today and their judgement on the leaders of today? We could say, and many agree, that we have had several very good leaders in the early years of the birth of this country and many right policies. How many could say anything about the current leaders, be they good or bad? Can’t tell, dare not tell, or waiting for tomorrow to tell? Or waiting for the next victor or future historian to tell the story of today?

Reading history is a privilege to know what had happened in the past. The only drawback is that the judgement were past by people after the events and could still be flawed. The beauty of observing current affairs or history in the making is that it is happening right before our eyes. And everyone who is an observer, is likely to be making his own judgement of what is happening, based on his own interest be it highly subjective, or objective, if one is lucky to be neutral.

We are seeing history in the making. We are participants in a living and moving history of our time, history now showing. Some may live long enough to write the history of today, or to say, I was there.

NDP - Yesterday once more

I went to shoot the NDP rehearsal this evening and here are some of the pics for your viewing pleasure. Top pic are members of the SADC and Naval Command, not sure what they called the Navy then. The respective insignias were an eagle and a marlin. Next pic is the Dad's Army, our early pioneers in the PDF. And the police wore shorts then. The next pic are members of our Fire Brigade. The rest need no further introduction, the POSB, Nurses and the SIA girls, what a great way to fly.

AIIB’s top 10 shareholders

The top 10 countries funding the AIIB is a very interesting mix of geography and wealth and politics. 

1.     China $29.78b

2.     India $8.37b

3.     Russia $6.54b

4.     Germany $4.48b

5.     South Korea $3.74b

6.     Australia $3.69b

7.     France $3.38b

8.     Indonesia $3.36b

9.     Brazil $3.18b

10.  Britain $3.05b

The BRICS countries are quite well represented except for South Africa, four are in the top 10 with 3 right at the top. Of the 10, 5 are Asian countries if Russia is included as it straddles across Asia with most of its land mass in Asia.  The top 3 European countries are also represented by Germany, France and Britain.

Politically, the pro American camp is represented by 5 countries in Germany, South Korea, Australia, France and Britain. India could be included in this camp but it often wants to project as a non aligned independent power of its own right.

It is interesting to note that Indonesia is among the top 10 shareholders, a sign of an upcoming Asian economic power, to have the billions to spare. This third most populous Asian country that was badly hit by the Asian financial crisis seems to have recovered quite well under the watch of Yudhoyono and is likely to continue to grow under another pro business and growth President Jokowi.

With the West well represented among the top investors, the crying wolf by the Americans and Japanese of transparency and accountability problem is going to be just that, two boys crying wolf. It is also a good thing that these two rascal are kept out of the bank and not allow to throw in the spanner in every decision making process. Looks like AIIB is going to have a good start with the right mix of shareholders in charge.

Not to forget there is another big development bank in the BRICS New Development Bank with another $100b to boot like the AIIB. These two new multinational banks would be the new pillars of the New World Order to give the American and Japanese controlled World Bank, IMF and ADB a run for their money.