CPF – A reflection

Conveniently no one would like to talk about this subject anymore. It is best to let it die quietly, that everything is now normal, your CPF is no longer your savings to enjoy on their retirement.

The inconvenient part about social media is that it has a long of space to bring out dead issues, forgotten issues and uncomfortable issues.

What is happening to your CPF savings? Why are you saving for a life time for? Who is benefiting from your life time saving? You?

Should someone that have saved a lifetime, 30 to 40 years of big savings, not peanuts, 40% to 50% of your monthly income, shouldn’t the saver feel rich and could retire happily and live graciously?

Why are such people still complaining about money no enough when a foreign worker, a maid, not even at the executive level, could work for 10 years or sold here and could return and live a life of relative plenty?

No one wants to think about their CPF savings anymore. It is gone, fait accompli. Oh, to be used to provide medical protection for life. No need to worry about sickness anymore. Just make sure you have enough savings outside your CPF savings to live and enjoy life and enjoy the medical protection.

Asean losing its plot

Asean is not only losing its plot but also its way. It is looking dysfunctional and will become dysfunctional if Asean does not take a good look at where it is going. The formation of Asean by the wise founding members was based on neutrality during a time when the world was embroiled in big power game with the Americans fighting a Cold War with the communist bloc led by Russia. The Americans wanted every country on their side as part of the American Empire. They created Nato in Europe and Cento, Seato to lock in central Asian countries and SE Asian countries to oppose the Russians.

The SE Asian leaders then saw through the game. Why should they be involved and be caught up in other people’s fight, why should they be fighting for the big powers and dying for the big powers? Asean was formed with such a background and premises that it is better to stay neutral. The big power can do all their fighting, Asean will stay neutral and not be involved in the silly contest when they have nothing to gain and not in their interests.

Razak came out with the concept of Zone of Freedom and Neutrality or ZOPFAN and Asean stayed that way, free and stable, to pursue their national interests. Today you don’t hear any Asean member talking about this anymore. Every Asean member is cozying up to the big powers, to be feasted as the darling of the day, happily waiting to be invited to bed. They have forgotten what Asean was all about. When Asean was neutral and staying close as a single bloc, the big powers come wooing. They wanted to be friends of Asean.

Now the big powers have been successful in seducing some Asean members and bringing them to bed, and Asean is now breaking up. Asean no longer sets the agenda. The big powers are setting the agenda for Asean. Instead of the big powers coming to woo Asean as a bloc, individual members are signing up with the big powers, joining the camps of the big powers as their proxies in the big power game of geopolitical tussle for power and influence.

Asean is at the verge of breaking up. The members are all having different dreams, instead of sharing the same dreams of Asean like the founding fathers. They wanted to be the pet boys of the big powers, to walk along the side of the big powers, to carry their little pistols and swagger like little cowboys, wanting to go to wars, to be the silly soldiers fighting for the interests of the big powers that the founding fathers of Asean chose to avoid.

Asean has lost its way. With mediocre and shallow leaders, with crazy leaders, with imbeciles, it is only expected that Asean will break up and individual members will join the camps of the big powers to engage in warfare, something that they have not enjoyed while living the spirit of Asean. They have grown tired of peace and life has been too boring. Now they are looking for excitement and want to have fun, to buy more weapons to fight wars and have more dead heroes to worship. Membership to the Empire is the privilege of the knaves.

Foreign workers – Singapore can have the cake and eats it as well

Many people have written about the pains of being Singaporeans and being displaced by foreigners with doubtful qualifications and backgrounds and ended up jobless or underemployed. The consequences of this self made disaster would be felt many years down the road and it would be too late to do anything if nothing is done now. The impact of this crazy policy would be many times worse than the Stop at Two policy of yesteryear. We may even lose our country to the foreigners and the original Singaporeans would not just be a minority but be victimized by the new Singaporeans and treated as the new dalits of Singapore.

Leong Sze Hian wrote another piece on the same subject posted in TRE titled ‘Singaporeans competing with millions of foreigners for jobs?’ The points he raised and the numbers quoted are not funny. They are very serious and with equally serious implications for Singaporeans.

Let me try to say something very politely on why things could be better and this influx of foreigners could be better managed and better received and accepted by the Singaporeans and with theirapproval. The original concept and assumptions were fair, we need more migrants to help shore up the economy. The govt was also conscious that the foreigners are here to compliment our manpower and talent pool, not to simply replaced Singaporeans. No one will disagree with these premises. The people will be behind the govt if these are the guiding principles in bringing in more foreigners and Singaporeans would have priority in employment.

OK, the silly myth that Singaporeans are choosy, lazy and stupid, please do not raise these comments again. It not only show how shallow and stupid the person is, but also show how anti Singaporean is the thinking. Singapore belongs to the original Singaporeans and not to the foreigners. Compromising on this principle is treason. Singaporeans must be in charge. Period.

Let’s seriously put Singaporeans first. Make sure Singaporeans are fully and gainfully employed before the next foreigner is allowed in. It is like at the immigration check points. We have express lanes for Singaporeans. This is home, this is our country. We are Singaporeans and this country belongs to us. The govt/MOM must establish express lanes for Singaporeans for good jobs. 

Singaporeans can register in the express lanes and be placed for jobs suitable to their qualifications and experience. Only after the Singaporeans are placed that foreigners can be considered and approved for employment here when no Singaporean is left in the queue. This is elementary Watson. Every country is doing it.  No need to reinvent the wheel and try so hard to be stupid and to be anti Singaporeans.

Is it so hard to implement such a policy for the good of Singaporeans? I bet you, if the govt’s policies are along this line of thinking, the PAP would be voted into power after every election and will be the party of the people. No need for funny things to be done during elections. The people will go vote for the PAP, as the party for the people. No bluff. So simple!

Sitting on stolen lands, acting as sheriff and deputy sheriff

The Americans and Australians are sitting on stolen lands that belonged to the indigenous people of North America and Australia. They seized the lands from the native people and claimed it as their own, with the power of the gun. Now they called these two continental size land as theirs, as America and Australia and hushed up on the protests by the natives and their claims for the return of their lands in the United Nations.

Today we are seeing the two nations built on stolen lands sailing into the South China Sea and appointing themselves as the sheriff and deputy sheriff of the region, carry guns again to stamp their authority. Indirectly they are staking their claims on the South China Sea and the islands under the pretension of protecting freedom of navigation. Their war ships and war planes are here, to control the South China Sea as their playground.

After stealing the continents of North America and Australia, they are eyeing the South China Sea and the islands and the resources below, wanting to claim them as theirs as well. Would they also be thinking of the Asean countries and revive the concept of colonialism or the Doctrine of Christian Discovery?

When are the Americans and the Australians going to return their stolen lands to the indigenous people of the respective lands? What audacity they have in appointing themselves as the sheriff and deputy sheriff of the South China Sea?

Alibaba – The power of the pen

Alibaba paid $375m for South China Morning Post (SCMP) in Hong Kong.  It looks like a risky but normal commercial deal for Alibaba to want to diversify into the media industry that could compliment its complex and worldwide business empire.  According to the New York Times reporting from Hong Kong, there is a bigger agenda for Alibaba in this purchase. I quote,

‘Alibaba Group Holdings in taking over Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP), is making an ambitious play to reshape media coverage of its home country, taking aim at what company executives call the negative portrayal of China in the Western media…the deal was fuelled by a desire to improve China’s image and offer an alternative to what it called the biased lens of Western news outlets….’

The power of the pen to shape how people think by telling stories laced with carefully crafted toxic messages has been a blatant transgression of the media industry. The Western media have two centuries of head start to mould and shape the thinking of western educated readers all over the world to think, act and behave the way they wanted them to. Many Afro Asians are now more familiar with the folk tales and history of the West than their own history and culture and subconsciously adopted a western persona without know it. They spout nonsense and hate against anything Asians and Africans without a clue as to why they are doing it and who they really are.

The Singapore’s version is the anglophiles, the western thinking bananas fed with with a diet of potatoes and hamburgers and a mind full of hate against China and anything Chinese. Thanks to the contributions of western media like the NYT, Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, Agencies, Reuters and what not. They have nothing good to say about China and would put a negative spin to everything China did and a positive spin to everything western.

The acquisition and control of SCMP is a small step taken by a commercial establishment like Alibaba to share its corporate responsibility towards its home country, to say the right thing, to give China a proper and positive image instead of all the craps and biased reports from small mind hill billies in the US and the red neck Europeans. Two centuries of planting negativities cannot disappear overnight and media like the SCMP would take at least one or two generations to cleanse the mush in the unthinking Afro Asian minds. There will be resistance, disbeliefs, denials and withdrawal symptoms to wean these unthinking minds of bananas to think straight again. Some may realize it faster than others, some may not. The good news is time is on the side of an Asian perspective as the ageing anglophiles will soon be history and not able to spout their rubbish without thinking.

What the Alibaba intends to do with SCMP is similar to what Channel News Asia is doing, presenting Asian news by Asians. Channel News Asia will lose its credibility when it slips back to using westerners to report Asian news and may even be banned by Asian countries from doing so if it is silly enough to stray away from this successful and acceptable formula.

Do not try to resist. Resistance is futile, and the truth shall set you free.