The Evil Empire , USA , has hijacked Philippines' Sovereign power and is now acting as Philippines' helmsman in Philippines relations with China.

The Evil Empire USA has hijacked Philippinnes sovereign power  and is acting as the helmsman in Philippines' relations with China. It is determined to dominate the South China Sea and the East China Sea to contain China's peaceful development. USA has lost the peaceful economic competition against China and is now resorting to military might to intimidate China . But China will not be intimidated Below is an article from China Daily about USA's evil design in the South China Sea.

As the award of the pending arbitration on the South China Sea dispute is about to be announced, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday said he was open to talks if the result is favorable to the Philippines. Besides, he ruled out the possibility of armed conflict, saying his country is "not prepared to go to war. War is a dirty word." Duterte's statement is a rebuttal of many Western countries' call for the Philippines to take a tough stand.

The arbitration has become one of the most attention-grabbing topical issues around the world. The result will not only add up to the debate about maritime rights in the South China Sea, but also become a bargaining chip for geopolitical major-power games.

Former Chinese state councilor Dai Bingguo, at a workshop between Chinese and US experts on Tuesday, said the award will "amount to nothing more than a piece of paper" and China won't hold back even if the US sends all of its 10 aircraft carriers to the South China Sea. Dai's words show that China won't reconcile over its principle of non-participation in and non-acceptation of the arbitration.

The illegitimacy of the arbitration won't be whitewashed even with the endorsement from the US and its allies. China is ready to confront whatever challenges lie ahead.

If the US amasses military forces in the South China Sea to pressure China, Chinese society will support the Chinese government to deliver tit-for-tat countermeasures. China doesn't want the region to be the No.1 hot spot in the world, but it won't cower if it is forced to fight back. Nothing, even more destructive strategic weapons than aircraft carriers, will scare China away.

Even though the arbitration was filed by the Philippines, it will soon be knocked out in the post-arbitration landscape. Its petty position in the major-power game will simply make it an expendable player.

Washington's elaborate maneuvers in the South China Sea aim to squeeze China's space and make trouble for its rise. Washington has used Manila and Hanoi and some of their long-standing problems with China to serve this purpose. However, as more outside pressures step up, they will have less autonomy in dealing with Beijing.

Former Philippine president Benigo Aquino III outsmarted himself by scheming on the international arbitration with the help of the US. The action has actually cost the Philippines the initiative in talks with China. Washington, instead of being a help, has kidnapped the Philippines. The US has taken the Philippines' position as a helmsman in dealing with its relationship with China, and Duterte seems unable to change that as of now.

Posted by Southernglory1           From  China  Daily

---

---

---

The Kodak Moment – A management case study

The Kodak Moment was once the triumph of Kodak Eastman Color, one of the top successful corporations of the US and the world. It was successively used and identified with Kodak and every photographer knew what a Kodak Moment meant. Today the Kodak Moment is history. It is instead used as a case study in business schools to tell the story of how a very successful company failed to acknowledge all the signs of its impending fall, ignoring the challenges and kept marching arrogantly forward, alone, when the forces of the competition are going against to put an end to what it is doing.

Kodak Eastman Color had seen all the signs of its downfall but chose to ignore them, denied their existence, tried to sweep them under the carpet, and pretended that all was well. Well, all was not well. When things were wrong, they were wrong.

Are there Kodak Moment in our midst, when all the signs are bad, pointing in one direction, the end? And the people responsible, like the top management of Kodak, chose to ignore, to look the other way, to do more silly things thinking that the problem would go away? The problems did not go away, Kodak went away, together with its top management. Kodak Eastman Color is now history when it once controlled 90% of the photography film industry.

We have a glaring Kodak Moment in the stock market. Everything is going wrong. All the bad signs are there. All the wrong things being done to wreck the stock market like the CDOs in the subprime crisis. And those responsible are ignoring them like Kodak, not wanting to know, turning to look another way, and tried very hard to do more silly things, hoping everything would turn out well or for as long as they could hold before the roof fell on them.

The fall of Lehman Bros during the subprime crisis was also another great example of a Kodak Moment. They just did not want to know what were going wrong. By not acknowledging them, by not talking about them, there was no problem at all. But Murphy’s Law would come back to kick them real hard, that what can go wrong, or already went wrong, would fall apart below their feet.

Is Singapore playing Santa Claus again?

Temasek was reported to have set up panel of advisers for the Americas and Europe with the biggest names that money can buy. In the ST on 17 June, it reported, ‘The Temasek Americas Advisory Panel(TAAP), …has seven members, including PepsiCo chairman and chief executive  Indra Nooyi, Honeywell Internation chairman and CEO David Cote, and former US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner,…former DuPont chairman and CEO Ellen Kullman, online education platform  Coursera CEO Richard Levin, Mr Ronald Sugar, former chairman and CEO of defence giant Northrop Grumman, and former chairman and CEO of agribusiness Bunge, Mr Alberto Weisser.

The report also said Temasek had set up an European Advisory Panel in January but did not name the panelists, presumably also high powered who’s who in Europe.  Temasek has big investments in these continents and needed good advices that money can buy. And these eminent people would not serve for free and would definitely be paid handsomely. I am presuming of course. They may be doing charity for Temasek by asking for peanuts and being in the Panels would be a great honour itself that is more rewarding in non monetary terms. It is more likely and realistic that such high powered people would not spare their precious time for free. The big question is how much?

How many of such Panels have been set up world wide and hopefully the returns are worth it. A better panel to pay for would be membership to the illuminati if money can buy membership to this cloak and dagger mysterious organization.

Has Singapore become a better and economically more sound in the management of its economy and hundreds of billions of dollars of investments? Or Singapore is still throwing money at anything that moves? How many of the failed bankers and financial professionals made redundant after the subprime and world financial crisis have landed here and given lucrative jobs, with Singapore being the Santa Claus in another form? The number of academics flooding the academic and non academic institutions in Singapore and the money paid to them is no small change. What is the return or benefit to Singapore for spending so much of the public’s money on such academics? Are they worth the money spent? Or they are just like hobbies to be collected to boost one’s ego, that we have so many trophies to wave around?

Would be good if this is discussed in Parliament, to conduct an audit and to assess if it is money well spent? Does Singapore have a bottomless pit of gold that we can just keep sharing with the rest of the world just to feel good?

Singapore is getting to become a very exciting fine city

Parking fees going up in December or HDB will lose $100m yearly despite a report that the two agencies, URA and HDB ‘earning a total of $667 million from their carparks in their latest financials for 2014/15. This piece of information is in the mypaper on 5 Jul.

Now why the fear mongering that HDB is going to lose $100m yearly? Maybe the $667m were mostly made by URA and not HDB. Maybe HDB’s share of the $667 was negligible or miserable and easily wiped out by the increasing cost of managing and maintaining carparks.  Actually HDB’s share was $595m and URA’s was $62m, total added up $657m, $10m missing from the $667m.

The report also said HDB’s operating cost was $700m. Can it then be concluded that the total revenue for carpark operation was $700m + $595m or $1,295m? And HDB claimed that it would lose $100m if the fees or revenue did not go up. What does this mean? Operating cost will increase so much to wipe out the revenue of $1,295m and ended with a loss of $100m? So the total operating cost will be $1,395m, tiok boh? I not accountant or finance expert, can only make simple deduction.

HDB operates 2,000 carparks and recently installed electronic pricing equipment and system that cost $150,000 each to save on manpower cost and to be more efficient in collecting more money. This works out to $300 m in initial capital expenditure. Then the savings from carpark attendance walking the car parks would be transferred to hiring more technicians and software engineers to maintain the $300m system. Not sure the savings from terminating all the carpark attendants would be enough to pay for the technicians and engineers. Very likely not that is why HDB is talking about losing $100m a year with the new equipment and system.

And who should pay for this capital expenditure and new hires, the carpark users? Did the carpark users have a say whether to invest in this costly equipment that would raise the cost of carpark management? No, the HDB decides what is good for them (or for the HDB?) and how much they should pay for the equipment. Great thinking and great philosophy!

And this is not enough. There is a forum writer, a Francis Cheng Choon Fei, who wrote to the Today paper that increasing carpark fees without increasing parking fines is not an efficient way to manage car population. I am not going to ask if he is a car owner with a deep pocket or someone that could not afford to own a car, so increasing fines does not affect his pocket, but I think many Singaporeans would agree with him. Singaporeans just love to pay fines and the bigger the fines the finer would be their lives.

I hope the govt would accept this ground up suggestion and raise all kinds of parking fines and car related fines to make this a finer city. We not only have to pay for the most expensive cars, but car related fines. Our parking fees are still not high enough compare to the price of car ownership. Let’s go for it, increase all the carpark fees and fines.

My eye balls are rolling because this kind of suggestions is music to the ears of the people that believe in nothing wrong with collecting more money.

PS. Happy Hari Raya Aidilfitri to our Muslim citizens. Or is it Happy Hari Raya Puasa? I saw that in Channel News Asia.

Productivity of the Ang Mo Kio TB cluster

Results from the screening of 225 people living in the same block of the 6 TB patients in Ang Mo Kio have produced 2 possible active TB cases and 45 with latent TB. These work out to be a 1 percent positive and 22 percent latent hits. The latent cases are reported to be not infectious and would not spread the disease until they turn positive. The Ministry also reported that normally 90 per cent of latent TB, ie 45, would not develop TB in their life time. So only 4 would likely contact TB eventually. All are now being treated for positive and latent TB.

The causes on how they contacted the TB have not been determined but likely, and must be due to some contact with the TB patients. All have been reported to have no direct contact with the 6. Then how could they possibly get into close contact or proximity with the 6? One likely possibility must be the lifts, in instances when one of the 6 was using the lift and the unaware went in after them.

The other higher possibility areas must be the trains or the offices they were working in. But these are unlikely the case for those screened positive in this exercise. But this does not rule out the 2 positive cases spreading in the trains or in their offices, or the 6 that may have travelled in trains and their work areas.

So far never heard of screenings in the work areas of the affected TB patients. It is almost impossible to screen commuters who happened to take the same trains.  Would the Ministry attempt to screen those working in the same offices, using the same toilet cubicles or pantry?

This is not the end of the Ang Mo Kio cluster and the people that may be affected or infected through other means of contact could be out there. We are so lucky that there is no widespread of TB in the island when the jam packed trains are so conducive contraptions for the spread of communicable diseases like TB and what else.