North Korean missile test – Freedom of Navigation

While every country has the right to develop their own defense weapons to protect themselves, the American outlaw and its crony allies are saying the North Koreans cannot do so despite the daily threats of an American invasion. Now the North Koreans are testing their ICBMs in over flights over Japan and both Japan and the Americans are crying foul. Did the Americans and Japanese remember anything about freedom of navigation? Can the North Koreans exercise this right to fly over Japan peacefully? A missile test with unarmed warhead cannot be more threatening than B52s, B1s armed with nuclear weapons or American destroyers similarly armed, flying and sailing in other countries’ territorial waters and airspace.
 
What are American and Japanese satellites overflying North Korean territories daily and snooping on NK compared to the missiles flying over Japan?
 
The Americans are threatening war again. And so is Japan. Now, would it be nice for the Americans and Japanese to give the North Koreans a reason to drop a couple of nuclear bombs over Tokyo or Osaka or any big Japanese city? Can the Japanese absorb such a consequence and live with it like Hiroshima and Nagasaki? If not, then both the Americans and Japanese should tone down their war drums and be more civilized and go talk to the North Koreans. Threatening a preemptive nuclear strike is easy but the consequences of millions of casualties in Japan are no joke. Can Japan afford a nuclear bomb on one of it’s big cities?
 
The warmongers should stop their madness and use their heads for a moment and return to sanity. War is no longer an option in the Korean Peninsula except for mad men and women.
 
The more the mad men and women threaten war with North Korea, the more they would lose their credibility unless they dare to start a war. Come to think of it this is not an issue, not important. The most important part about all the ratcheting and drum beating for war is that Japan, South Korea and that Americans would have more reasons to buy more weapons. And so would little USAs that fear North Korea in their drugged non thinking leaders’ head and also want to buy more weapons. It is good for the weapon makers and arms merchants. A lot of money to be made. The American war machine makers must send a big bonus or commission to Kim Jong Un for fattening their pockets.

PS. Selamat Hari Raya Haji to all Muslim readers.

The Americans owe Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia a big apology

The embarrassing accident involving USS John McCain and an oil tanker in Singapore waters has come to a close. The 10 missing sailors have been found inside the cabin of the ship. They were not flung into the open sea as was initially thought or believed so. Only sailors on the open deck would be thrown off the ship in an accident like this.
 
What happened in this case was quite obvious. The container hit the port side of the destroyer right in the middle section and just above sea water level. The dent just caved in but no open hull. Nothing would have come out from the ship. It was pretty clear that the sailors were trapped inside the ship, sealed inside the cabin. Period.
 
Why was this information not made known to the Singapore, Malaysian and Indonesian forces that were madly scrambling around trying to be helpful, to look helpful when it was all a wild goose chase? Why made these helpful people looked like fools running around the surrounding sea and worrying that they did not do a good job to find the bodies of the sailors, or maybe a survivor?
 
Are the American so novice like the Singapore, Malaysian and Indonesian forces, not knowing what really happened and madly running around without knowing what was happening? The aimless search involving so many people and resources was totally a waste of time and money and could have been stopped from the word go. There was no need to make these kindhearted though a bit dumb people looking more dumb chasing the dragon when there was no need to.
 
The Americans owe the Singapore, Malaysian and Indonesian a big apology for allowing this fiasco to go on. They should not just stop at apologizing but to foot the bill for all the expenses incurred in the intensive search by all the parties concerned. Otherwise, not only the goodwill is lost, next time no one would want to volunteer to look like fools again when such an incident happened again.
 
Can’t imagine the Americans grinning and laughing away at the silliness in the open sea, in the sky, searching for nothing, day and night, non stop.

The Indians have it

India was and is never a great financial centre. When one talks about financial centres, it is often about New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong and even Singapore. It is never about Mumbai or some other Indian cities. Singapore is a financial centre in SE Asia and with great ambition to be a world financial centre to overtake Hong Kong or constantly in competition with Hong Kong for the prestigious position. This did not happen yesterday but for several decades even before 1965.
 
What has happened today is that there is a dearth of Singaporeans in top banking and finance positions. The handful that are still hanging around would soon be passé and with no worthy successors. Very likely some foreigners would replace them in UOB or OCBC. And very likely the foreigners replacing them would be foreign Indian talents.
 
Never without fail, daily, the media would have the faces of top Indian bankers in the news employed by banks in Singapore, both local and foreign banks. This is solid proof that the Indians are great bankers and prized catch for the banking industry. They must be very good. Long gone were the days when Singaporeans were in top positions in local and foreign banks in Singapore. Somehow, somewhere, sometime, there was an eclipse, and all the Singaporean brains were eclipsed and no longer good enough to be top bankers. At the way things are moving, in another decade at most there would be no Singaporeans helming banks in Singapore, not even local banks. This is if the daft continues with their foolish and blind meritocracy regardless of nationalities. Pure unabridged meritocracy will ruin Singapore in this case. The best from the world would simply be too good for Singaporeans. And the Indian best are already well too good to outshine every Singaporeans not only in banking and finance, but in IT, in law, in medicine and in the academia and many other industries.
 
During the time of Goh Keng Swee, there was a deliberate and conscious effort to put Singaporeans in top positions in banks operating here. Unless such an affirmative policy is implemented again, Singapore as a top financial centre will be a financial centre without Singaporeans except newly printed Singaporeans.
 
Would the govt think there is a need to act on this trend? Would the govt think it is a strategic interest to want to have Singaporeans to helm local banks and even foreign banks setting up business here? If this is important, strategic, then the govt must act now and quickly. Oops, I remember someone in govt once said, the process has been set in place and in 50 years time we would have our top bankers, top Singaporean bankers in charge. In 50 years time you know what would happen to the banking and finance industry?
 
Let’s not con ourselves. If the govt is serious, it must go back to the policies of Goh Keng Swee and do something positive. For a start, Singaporeans must be assigned to be trained under the Indians running the banks in Singapore and with an open and declared official policy to have Singaporeans as top bankers and running banks operating here. If not, more and more top foreign Indian bankers would find themselves taking over the top positions of banks here simply because they are the best banking talents. Daft Singaporeans have no answer to this and Singapore will bankrupt its pool of Singaporean talent in the banking and finance industry just like in the IT industry and soon the academia. Then it will be a case of by default all top banking positions would be filled by foreigners as there are no Singaporeans with the talent and experience to fill them.
 
Is this a serious problem? It depends on who you are and what you think is important and not important. If the top are only thinking about water taxes and sugar taxes and who is a Malay, you can bet this is not a strategic problem to be worth spending time on.

Reserved EP for Malays – A status report

So far from all that we know, 3 candidates, Halimah Yacob, Salleh Marican and Farid Khan, are the likely candidates for the EP. And if I am not mistaken, all 3 candidates are likely to have ‘Indian’ recorded in their BCs or ICs as their race. I may be wrong, but does it matter if this is the case?
 
We are going to have a reserved EP specially created just to elect a Malay to be the President. Isn’t this the case? In this instance the 3 candidates are legally Indians if I am right and. I admit I did not have the privilege to look at their ICs or BCs. If I am right in this, would it mean that 3 Indians, legally speaking, are standing for election as Malay candidates for the EP reserved for Malays?
 
Would the candidates put on record what is their official race by showing to the people their ICs and BCs? Be transparent! This is the time for transparency. Or would it be like what Lawrence Wong said, ‘Our policy is not transparency for transparency sake. Our approach is that transparency leads to good governance’? In this case is transparency necessary or not, or does this EP not lead to good governance?
 
If the 3 candidates are legally Indians and standing as Malays in an election specially provided to elect a Malay, is there anything wrong? Is the legal identity of a person important in this case?
 
Don’t ask me for an answer. My view is not important on this matter.

Too many American warships in Asian waters

The spade of accidents involving American warships in Asian waters is rising simply because there are just too many American warships in the region to guard the American Empire and to conduct silly Freedom of Navigation patrols. Why should there be so many American warships in the region when the USA is thousands of miles away? Or is the region an American swimming pool, a lake owned by the American Empire?
 
The accident involving USS John McCain and an oil tanker, Alnic MC in the overlapping sea of Singapore and Malaysia is raising many eyebrows. It is another case of too many American warships in the surrounding sea, and a sea route with many heavy commercial ships plying and transiting the narrow stretch of sea.
 
What has been highlighted as contributing factor to the incident is that the American warship was not detected by the Singapore Port Authority’s Vessel Traffic Information System unlike the Alnic. Thus the Port Authority could not forewarn the ships of an impending collision. Why? It is compulsory for all commercial ships in the area to switch on their AIS for identification purpose. But the American destroyer did not have to unless they chose to. How could this be allowed in an area with heavy shipping traffic is questionable. Why the exception and increasing the risk of accidents? This is Singapore’s territorial waters and all ships must follow and obey the rules and practices of Singapore’s Maritime Authority with no exceptions.
 
The American warships must be ordered to switch on their AIS when in our waters. Not switching on AIS is definitely unacceptable practice and pose a danger to all the commercial shipping in the area. Unbelievable that such a thing is allowed. American Exceptionalism or angmoh tua kee? Why put the safety of commercial ships at risk because of foreign military ships here that should not be here in the first place? And with their stealth technology and coating, most of the time these military ships are invisible to the commercial ships’ radar. Only the Americans can see the commercial ships and not the other way. And if they slept on the job, the risk of accident is lagi high.
 
There will be no such incidents if the American warships are not here in the first place.
 
KNN.