Kausikan’s megaphone diplomacy? Or is it Singapore’s megaphone diplomacy?

The last article by Bilahari Kausikan attacking China’s covert and overt diplomacy has stirred the hornet’s nest among Singaporeans doing business in China. Many were irked by his unnecessary hostile remarks against China in a forum of American and western audience, in his words, exposing China for influencing and manipulating the policies of govts to favour China. No matter how he slithered to claim that he was not attacking China in particular, no one is going to believe him as the intent of this article was as clear as a bright Sunday morning.
 
Many people have written to the forum pages of the ST to show their displeasure of his hostility towards China. In the ST forum page of 9 Jul, a Lim Ang Yong was equally incensed to question his intent and even suggested that it was Singapore’s megaphone diplomacy that was not good for Singapore China relations.
 
Let me quote Lim Ang Yong, “It seems unwise to shame China in a forum co hosted by American based organizations in front of an international audience. It is also true that we should educate Singaporeans, but that was not the goal of that forum, neither is it the role of a private individual. I am sure it is not the Govt’s intention to let former ambassadors be its proxy voice or lead its thinking and decision making on managing its China relations….”
 
Lim also noted that Kausikan was a former perm sec and diplomat and his knowledge of China interfering with Singapore’s policies were classified and sensitive information obtained while in office. These were privileged information protected under the Official Secrets Act that no ordinary peasant would be accessible to. All civil servants privy to official classified information are under oath to protect such information while in service or out of service and disclosing such information is an offence under the OSA. In his over zealous attempt to discredit China, has he crossed the line and divulged classified information protected under the OSA?
 
Has Kausikan’s disclosure and exposure of China’s behavior violated the Official Secrets Act as what he knew and said about China were privileged information available to him while in office?
What do you think?
 
PS. Lim Ang Yong also asked this question. “Did he get approval to speak as if he were an authority on the issue for the Singapore Govt?”

American bullies think the North Koreans are fools

In his third trip to North Korea to negotiate on the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, Pompeo continued with his arrogant American gangster style of treating the North Koreans as fools to be bullied. He went there with one objective, that the North Koreans must denuclearise under a time table set by the Americans but without offering a word about what the Americans would do to their nuclear weapons and military bases in South Korea. It was one way traffic, the North Koreans must do as dictated by the Americans. The denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula is to denuclearise North Korea only.

The North Koreans were completely pissed off by Pompeo and his thugs. They told the Americans to abide by the agreements reached in Singapore between Trump and Kim, to completely denuclearise the Korean Peninsula.  This is another case of white men speaking in fork tongues. To the Americans, the Summit agreement was meant for the North Koreans to give up their nuclear weapons, not the Americans.

Here are some quotes from Channel News Asia on the latest meeting between Pompeo and the North Koreans in an article titled, 'North Korea rejects US calls for unilateral disarmament'.

"The US is fatally mistaken if it went to the extent of regarding that the DPRK would be compelled to accept, out of its patience, demands reflecting its gangster-like mindset," the statement said, referring to North Korea by its official initials....and criticised US negotiators who "never mentioned" the subject of bringing the 1953 Korean War to a a formal end with a peace treaty....

"North Korea expected Pompeo to bring a concrete proposal for security guarantee but it was disappointed as the US side reiterated the old demand that the North should denuclearise first before the US gives it anything in return."....The North's foreign ministry took exception to Pompeo's effort to secure concrete commitments to back Kim's promise, made at a summit last month with US President Donald Trump, to work towards the "denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula".

The Americans are now going to blame the North Koreans for not abiding by the agreements of the summit when it was the Americans that were doing so, to bully the North Koreans to complete denuclearise while the Americans continue to do the same in the Korean Peninsula, with their nuclear bases and Thaad in Korea. The bullies of the world, with the biased western media, will now be pointing their fingers on the North Koreans as the ones who walked out of an agreement.

See how the Americans tried to bully OPEC and the EU....

Mahathir - Blame the stupids on major projects with China

Mahathir is crying out loud like he used to be without any real basis but his gut feel, or because he chose to depend on his own lack of intellect to understand anything more than politics. In economics, science, engineering, or even in business and finance, this man is completely lost, out of his comfort zone.

He is blaming China for all the projects signed by Najib as unfair. How were they unfair? Is Mahathir saying or confirming that all the ministers and civil servants involved in negotiating and signing projects with China were all stupid, unthinking, uneducated, unqualified dumb asses, that they did not know that the projects and agreements were unfair? And only Mahathir knew that these projects were unfair because he thought so without even reading them or understanding them? Perhaps his main thesis in the Malay Dilemma is true, or he still believes that the bumiputras are really stupid. How could these leaders and senior civil servants be so stooopid to sign projects and agreements that were unfair to Malaysia without anyone point a gun at their heads?

If indeed the projects and agreements were really unfair to Malaysia, then those signatories and leaders who approved them must be really stupid. In that case they must all be prosecuted and sent to jail for their stupidity. This is a good ground to jail the stupids for signing unfair agreements and approving unfair projects.

The saddest part of it all is that the new people he is sending to renegotiate the contracts for a fairer agreements would likely to be just as stupid and the new agreements signed would still be unfair to Malaysia, at least in the eyes of Mahathir other than for China to build the projects for free. Why is this so? Mahathir should know better. How can an education system produce intelligent people and not stupid people when admission criteria is not based on merit and academic grades?

Mahathir should jolly well take the blame himself as the leaders of Malaysia today were the products of his past education policies. Remember GIGO in computer lingo? In education system, if you put in rubbish, out will come rubbish.

How many of you really believe in Mahathir that all those people that signed 'unfair' agreements were really so stoooopid that they did not know that the agreements were unfair or they did not know they were stupid?

China should simply ignore Mahathir and say it is ok to cancel all the contracts, just pay compensation as provided in the agreements like Singapore, and cut off Malaysia from the BRI.

Singapore’s problems are all self inflicted

Singapore is facing a lot of problems that would snowball into a disaster if the policies causing them are not stopped quickly. The serious problems bugging Singapore are high cost of living, high inflation, high property and rental prices, high car prices, high transportation cost, high PMET unemployment, shortage of space, shortage of water, shortage of energy etc etc. The thing is that these problems would not be there if the govt does not blow to high population balloon.
 
Think of the time of Adam and Eve. They have the whole earth to themselves. They have plentiful of everything, literally did not have to work a day with the wealth of the earth to themselves. No shortage of land and space, no food shortage, no water shortage etc etc.
 
In Singapore the situation is reverse. 6m people in a tiny piece of rock and more coming in with some jokers claiming that it is good to have 10m, 20m or more. For what I dunno. Is the purpose of a piece of land is to fill it to the brim with people so that they end up killing each other for a bit more space?
 
Singapore is a tropical island with rainfall all round the year. We used to have three tiny reservoirs in the central catchment area that have enough water for everyone. Now we have more than 15 reservoirs and each is bigger than the 3 reservoirs combined, and still not enough water. And every donkey is braying that water is precious and we need to teach people how valuable and scarce water is and people must be made to pay a high price for water. That is not the end. We even conned the people that they should be drinking shit water because we don’t have enough water. And they have to invest heavily in equipment and technology to recycle shit water for consumption when we have one of the highest rainfall in the world, a tropical island paradise that rains, no, monsoons, water pouring down from the sky like cats and dogs, except for some rare dry seasons. And we have shortage of water? How, why?
 
There is no reason for Singaporeans to be crying for more water, to pay so much for water that is free, coming down from the sky, and to be forced to drink shit water. There is no reason why we have no space for bigger homes. There is no reason why car prices are so high, and so few people can own cars as a proportion to the population of the island. In the 60s, it was so easy to own a car and so much space to drive around.
 
All our problems are self created, self inflicted and could only get worse over the years till the day we self destruct by implosion, because of bad and stupid policies of squeezing more people onto this piece of tiny rock. No one can blow a balloon incessantly without it exploding.
 
Stupidity has no cure.

Singaporeans are getting richer, not taking public transport

SMRT announced that it had made the first loss after years of profit making to the tune of $86m in FY2018. Among the reasons given for the loss were “higher maintenance staff costs, parts and material costs, depreciation of rail assets and other rail maintenance related operating expenses.” And another big item, falling ridership.
 
Operating expenses gone up from $785m to $838m or up $53m. Revenue fell from $791m to $743m or down $48m. Squaring these two items would see a loss of $101m ($53m + $48m). To end up with a net loss of $86m would mean that there were profits coming from other non train operations like rentals or extraordinary items.
 
Let’s look at the numbers again. In 2017, revenue($791m) less expenses($785m) should give a profit $6m. Similarly for 2018, revenue($743m) less expenses($838m) should give a loss of $95m. Presumably these numbers did not include other non train operations. But this is not true given the data in the above paragraph that show a difference of $15m ($101-$86m). In 2017, SMRT declared an after tax profit of $26m, thus saying the non train operation profit was $20m. Extrapolating the data, non train operation profit also fell from $20m to $15m.
 
Data can be very confusing indeed.
 
Another interesting number is that SMRT made $81m after tax profit in 2016, $26m after tax profit in 2017 and now $86m loss in 2018. What contributed to the big turnaround in numbers? Falling ridership? High maintenance expenses?
 
What is surprising is the announcement of falling ridership despite the population rising every month and moving towards the 6.9m number. Why the rise in population did not turn into more ridership? Perhaps the new citizens and immigrants were of the rich type, the millionaires or billionaires, so they did not take public transport. But his is unlikely the case given that most of the new arrivals were poor jobless third world type coming here to steal the jobs of citizens. So they were more likely to take public transport than buying private cars that cost a bomb that many Singaporeans too could not afford.
 
Then again this could be untrue and could point to the fact that Singaporeans were getting richer and so could afford private cars and thus no need to take public transport.
 
The other possibility was that the cost of private transport had gone up so much while income fell as more and more Singaporeans became unemployed or underemployed and thus could not afford to take public transport. Thus ridership of public transport like trains fell accordingly.
 
But then again, given the number of happy and contented Singaporeans posting how happy they were with their lives and incomes, I must conclude that more Singaporeans are getting richer and going back to take private transport instead of public transport.
 
Or could it be due to the pervasive influx of bicycle sharing companies that Singaporeans were taking to bicycles or Grabs and Ubers? When one becomes a Grab or Uber one actually has the privilege of owning a private car to move around.
 
What do you think?