Back to the past

The official launch of the Singapore Premier League (SPL) last Saturday (31 March 2018) at the National Stadium promised to be a new dawn for Singapore football. This was supposed to mark a resurrection from the embers of the failed S-League but alas there were echos of the past even at this embryonic stage of its young life. And I am not even talking about the football.  I am merely talking about the administration that goes into a simple match.      

On that supposedly auspicious day, as I rushed off bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to attend the season-opening Community Shield match between Albirex Nigata and Tampines Rovers, I decided to “tapow” my dinner with a view to eating it inside the stadium. Bad mistake. At the entrance, I was told that food cannot be brought into the stadium. “No problem”, I said, “I’ll just leave it outside and eat it at half-time”.  “No way”, said the authorities, “You cannot leave the stadium at half-time.  If you leave, you’ll have to buy another ticket to re-enter.  You either eat it now or you eat it after the match”.  That really put me in a fix as it was 2 minutes to the game and I had no wish to choke on my food just to make the kick-off. On the other hand, stuffing down cold food wasn’t exactly an appetizing way of crowning a night-out. At this point, a gentleman who had overheard the conversation kindly offered me a complimentary ticket to re-enter the stadium after my meal.  Thank god there are still sensible souls around!

Later I learned why food could not be brought into the stadium. There were eateries - no doubt paying ceiling-high rentals - inside the stadium and these obviously needed “help” to ensure a captive clientele. I have no issue with this. But why make it difficult for people to leave the stadium during the half-time break? Surely, 15 minutes is too short to queue, buy and consume outside food all at one go?  I came to support Singapore football but left with a sour taste in my mouth.  At a time when Singapore football is in dire need of customers, this was a bad piece of public relations. And as I said earlier, I am not even talking about the football.

     

Hundred Flowers Movement Revisited 百花运动

In 1957, Mao Zedong was so confident in the correctness of his socialist ways encouraged the people to speak out, to criticise the govt, believing that the criticism would lead to more progress and a better govt. Thus the Hundred Flowers Movement was launched with the full backing of Mao himself.  Let a hundred flowers bloom. In his own words, Mao said, "Our society cannot back down, it could only progress... criticism of the bureaucracy is pushing the government towards the better." The speech indeed was to encourage the people to speak out, vent their criticisms and frustration as long as they were constructive and not hateful and destructive.

The silent intellectuals, the frustrated intellectuals, and those that opposed  the way communism was introduced to run the China honestly believed that Mao was sincere and wanted to hear them, wanted their honest opinions on how best to run a country. They fired away in all honesty and sincerity.  Never did they think that the movement was a red herring, a test balloon. The intelligentsia got carried away and the criticisms of the govt went too far and became unbearable.

Mao ordered a crackdown that ran for several years and all those that spoke out were arrested and sent to labour camps to reflect and to correct their errorneous thoughts. Many died in the process. Many were condemned for life.

In all honesty, Mao was sincere when he launched the Movement, confident that he was right and the criticisms would lead to more progress and a better govt. He did not set a trap from the start to lure the innocent intelligentsia to speak out and exposed themselves to be arrested. He did so only when the attack became too damaging to his govt and his authority to rule.

The moral of the story is that when a dictator encouraged the masses to speak out, the masses must speak out but must also know what to speak out and what not to speak out.  Say what the dictator wants to hear, not what they want the dictator to hear. They must also know the difference between an honest campaign inviting suggestions and a test balloon to trick them stand up and give themselves away for prosecution and arrest and hard labour. The intelligentsia then were just too naive and were taken in.

People who did not know history or learn from the mistakes in history would be condemned to make the same mistakes and bury themselves only to verify that history would repeat itself with their folly.

Thank you very much for a precious but painful lesson in history.

The Singapore Syndrome - The ironies of history a consequence of human stupidity

I happened to flip the switch and watch a forum titled 'Japan and Asean Relations' in Channel News Asia with four speakers, two Japanese and two bananas. The Japanese were not hiding anything. Their main agenda were to discredit China, sowed doubts and disinformation about the BRI and the AIIB and to tell Asean countries to militarise and to support Japan's militarisation to be the leader of Asean to confront China. The two bananas wholeheartedly agreed with the Japanese proposition and praised Japan as the most peaceful and trusted nation by the stupid Asean leaders. I make a distinction between leaders, people and bananas.

Japan is the most trusted country according to a survey conducted by one of the bananas among his peers. I must agree with him as the survey would be just another echoing chamber of like minded bananas. But it is not as simple as that. I thought about it and found a common thread among the South East Asian countries that believed in Japan as the most trusted country. All these countries were invaded, plundered and conquered by Japan during the invasion of Asia and SE Asia by the Japanese Imperial Armies. All were part of the Japanese Empire, their treasuries raided, countries looted, their people massacred, women raped, children bayoneted.

This link to love your conquerors is not unique just to Japan or to SE Asia. The Taiwanese also loved the Japanese after being conquered and ruled for more than 50 years, much longer than all the SE Asian countries but did not suffered as much as the SE Asian countries. The point is this, the more vicious and ruthless the invaders, the more loved and trusted they would be by the conquered leaders of the SE Asian countries. The people would be different as they were the ones that bore the brunt of the cruelties and atrocities of the Japanese/invaders, not the elite or leaders.

Take the same line of thinking to Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan. They were victims of the worst destructive forces of the American military might. The Philippines were conquered and ruled by the Americans for several decades, with many massacres. The Vietnamese almost went that way, suffered the most devastating bombings in human history, second to the atomic bombs in Japan.  The fact is that they all loved their conquerors/invaders, the Americans. The Indonesians are also very fond of the Dutch, their colonial masters. No need to say more about the Malaysians and Singaporeans. they often reminisced about the good times under their colonial masters.

There is another common thread here. Besides being loved and trusted by the victims of invasion, the opposite is that countries that did not invade, plunder, loot, rape or massacre people of other countries would be distrusted and even hated by the countries they did not invade or conquer. China is a perfect example of this love hate relationship. China did not invade or conquer any of the SE Asian countries but is hated and distrusted by them.

My conclusion, China would have been loved and trusted by the SE Asian countries if it had invaded them, conquered and ruled them, conducted atrocities against these little weak countries. Maybe China should learn from the Americans and the European powers, and Japan, invade and conquer all these silly countries if it wants to be loved and trusted by them, like Japan and the USA. This is the failure of China for not harbouring the thought of colonising these countries.

This theory is quite similar to the Stockholm Syndrome where the victims fell in love with their captors that held them hostage. Maybe I shall called this the Singapore Syndrome or SE Asia Syndrome. I thought about calling it the Asean Syndrome or the Banana Syndrome. After thinking it over, the Singapore Syndrome is most appropriate as the greatest admirers of Japan, the brutal invaders, are from Singapore.

Come to think of it, the choice of Syonan as the name to remember fondly of the Japanese Invasion was not surprising. If that idea was not stopped, the next thing would be the demolishing of the War Memorial to remember the hundreds of thousands massacred by the Japanese during the Occupation, and probably another shrine to be built in its place to remember the heroic Japanese Imperial Army and the Kempeitai. They loved them and trusted them dearly. You have the most pristine display of the Singapore Syndrome here in this island.

Singaporeans need the protection of stringent laws against fake news

Yes, you read me correctly, Singapore must pass more stringent and even draconian laws to protect the daft and hapless Singaporeans from fake news. Fake news is not only dangerous but becomes much more dangerous in the Singapore context because daft Singaporeans cannot tell the difference between fake news and real news.


How could that be? Didn’t Singapore have the best education system and with some of the top universities in the world taught by the best ang mohs and third world best professors? Didn’t this world best education system and the world best professors that money could buy teach the Singaporeans to think, to be discerning, to know simple things like fakes and truths? The education system in Singapore is so expensive not for no reasons. It is quality education measured by how much is being paid to get educated in this world best education system. How could it produce duds? Is there a contradiction?
 
Can anyone see the contradiction or something wrong with this world best education system that produced daft and unthinking Singaporeans that need to be protected from fake news? I see no difference because Singaporeans are by nature daft and no amount of good and expensive education can help them to be just a bit smarter to protect themselves from fake news. Papa is right and doing the right thing.
 
Didn’t they build a first world city from the third world? Yah hor, how could that happened to a daft people? How could they build a world class city if they are or were daft? The only reason I can think of is that Singaporeans were not daft then but the new Singaporeans are. How come?
 
The proof is everywhere. There are more than 2m foreigners here, many from the third world with fake or funny degrees that are employed to replace them. If this is not enough proof that they are daft, I can go on. Singapore is a banking and financial centre but got no banking and financial talents. The top bankers are almost entirely recruited from the third world where they got backward financial and banking industry. Funny isn’t it? Let me make it funnier. Singapore is supposed to be a modern cosmopolitan city, a smart city, but got no IT talent. Almost all its IT talents came from the third world countries, and more are being recruited, more are coming by the plane loads. You know why? Exactly, to replace the daft and no talent Singaporeans of course. Want me to go on?
 
Singapore is a tropical country, but all the talents managing the tropical gardens in Singapore are foreigners from temperate land. This has been happening since the independence of Singapore. They could not find a Singaporean with enough local and tropical knowledge to run these gardens. How come locals, oops, I should not use this bastard word, how come Singaporeans brought up in a tropical island cannot manage tropical gardens but foreigners that never lived in the tropical region know better? Daft question.
 
We don’t even have talents to study and implement solar energy system here despite being under the sun all year round but need foreigners from cold temperate countries to teach us how to do it.
 
OK, ok, let me not go too far to say we have no talent. We have talents doing research about the Artic and Antarctic regions. For what I don’t know. We are no good and know nothing about our tropical region but got experts studying about the cold north and south poles. See, we got talents.
 
Oops, I digress from the fake news and stringent laws to protect daft and unthinking Singaporeans. How many of you would now agree with me that daft Singaporeans need more stringent and draconian laws to protect them?
 
My reasoning very cheem and very correct right? To introduce such draconian and stringent laws is an acknowledgement that our education system, the schools, polytechnics, the universities, have failed to educate the people to think. If they have done their job to educate the daft, then there will be no need to protect them from simple things like knowing what is true or fake news. I rest my case.

How the white Americans cheat the world to get rich

They were enterprising, yes, but they would not have been that enterprising without cheating the rest of the world to get a jump start to wealth and glory. The wealth of the white Americans are built on cheats and deceits, on plunders, violations of human rights and laws, and wars. Let me put it in very plain terms for all to understand.
 
First they came and conquered, killing the native Americans and stole all their land, for free and termination of a civilization of people. They got free land from the native Americans, a whole continent of it. That is why they called America the Land of the Free!
 
Next, they built their farms and agriculture on free labour. Yes, they had free labour from the African continents. They treated the Africans as beasts of burden, as slaves, to work for free for the white farmers. Now you know why America is called the land of the free, free labour, pleasures from the African womenfolks included.
 
This is not enough, they got free labour from the Chinamen to build railroads. The Chinamen were treated not much different from the slaves from Africa. See, everything is free in the Land of the Free, to the white men.
 
After stealing land and exploiting free labour, another remembers anything about human rights, they got free money from the rest of the world. How did they do it?
 
It’s elementary Watson! The rest of the world have to give free money to the Americans to spend lavishly on themselves. Still dunno how they did it? Petrol dollar! Let me give you a simple analogy. If India or Indonesia or Japan needs to buy petrol, they must buy US dollars first. They need to go to an American bank and exchange their rupees, rupiahs and yen for American dollars to buy oil from the Arabs. The Arabs gave away their oil, lost their oil to get American dollars. The Indians, Indonesians, Japanese, the rest of their world, lost their currencies to get the oil. The Americans did nothing but collected all the monies from the rest of the world. All they did was to print American dollars without a sweat for the billions, trillions, quadrillions, the rest of the world voluntarily gave to them in exchange for the papers they printed.
 
Now you understand how the Americans got so rich without having to work? Now you understand why petrol dollar is so important to the Americans, to make them so rich without having to work a day? In the Land of the Free, they get free money from the rest of the world to spend. The biggest and most lucrative product of the USA is the American dollar.
 
With all the wealth they accumulated from free land, free labour and free money, they could invest in R and D, in education, in the finer things in life. But they did more. They continue to exploit the rest of the world by starting wars, starting fires every where. Then they sell them weapons to fight more wars. And as the rest of the world are madly engaging in wars, they forget that they have to build their countries, develop their countries and build a better life for their people.
 
The rest of the world are so lost in fighting wars, preparing for wars, engaged in arm race, to buy more weapons for wars. And the American military war complex keeps producing more weapons for the rest of the world to indulge in wars while the Americans continue to live in peace in homeland America, Land of the Free.
 
The Americans don’t just export weapons, they export wars. This is how the Americans destabilised countries, kept them busy fighting and buying weapons and forgot about developing their countries and economies.
 
Thank you very much.