Wuhan Virus - Singapore's vulnerability

SINGAPORE — Singapore’s economy will definitely be impacted by the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, with the tourism-related sectors being of immediate concern.

In a multi-ministry press conference on Monday (27 January), Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing said that this includes travel agents, as well as the food and beverage, retail and hospitality sectors.  Yahoo News

The Wuhan virus must have rung a bell in many people's head. Obviously it didn't. Singapore is still thinking it is a small matter. Well, our tourist industry will be hit and some people's jobs and business may be impacted. This kind of thinking is similar to the desire for nuclear energy, nuclear power station. It is small problem and should be ok. The Fukushima disaster, not fully disclosed and many serious consequences covered up, also did not ring a bell. If Fukushima meltdown would be to happen in Singapore, where would Singapore and Singaporeans be?

The closing down of Wuhan and several major cities in China, including Shanghai and maybe Beijing is small matter. What would happen if Singapore has to close down? Small matter, only the tourist industry be affected?

What lessons can Singapore learn from this Wuhan virus incident? Would Singapore still be happily opening up its legs wide wide and inviting everyone from all the dirty corners of the world to come here and reside and sleep and play and work with fellow Singaporeans? Not to worry, nothing bad will happen to Singapore. All the bad things can only happen in other countries, especially in China, never in Singapore. All the viruses would die after their carriers drink our shit water, oops, Newater, our cure all for everything. See, the facts have proven that Singapore is safe and clean after so many millions of potential deadly disease carriers have come and gone. No contagious disease or virus dare to attack Singapore and Singaporeans.

Can Singapore afford a slip, an unfortunate incident like the Wuhan virus or some slum virus from remote villages in some third world countries and think life will go on as usual? Anyone ever ponder what would happen if another virus or disease that spreads as easily and quickly as the Wuhan virus find its way here and Singapore has to close down?

Our health checks at our entry points have been so casual and relax, so easy to move in and out to the credit of our open leg policy. Just keep the fingers crossed and all will be well. There is nothing to worry about. It will not happen to Singapore.

What would it be like if someone with a very infectious disease travels in our very crowded trains?

Silent Cultural Revolution in Singapore

What was the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1966?

In 1966, China was engulfed with the fire of revolution with young Red Guards running wild all over the country attacking and arresting people, humiliating and punishing people branded as revisionists. The crime of the victims was mainly due to their intellect, the educated and worse foreign educated elites, the professors, engineers, academics, administrators, scientists, anyone with higher education was a target. It was destruction of everything related to knowledge, science and technology. It was the Road to Mediocrity when farmers and peasants were glorified. It was good to be poor. And China went back to Year Zero by the time the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976  with the death of Mao and the arrest of the Gang of Four.

Is Singapore also on the Road to Mediocrity? Is there a silent Cultural Revolution to frown upon excellence, to promote mediocrity, to encourage every student to be mediocre, be average is glory, top schools and top students should become unknown and unheard off? Do not mention about top schools and top students getting straight As. Popularise and glorify the average students as the good stuff, the way to be, be proud to be average and be ashamed if one is top of the class!

How long have the name Raffles Institution, Hwa Chong Institution been blanco from the media like it is a crime to mention them? When O level and A level results were released, not a whisper of the top students from the top schools? Why? Should these top talents be arrested, humiliated and send to work in the farms? Oops we don't have enough farm land to house them, maybe send them to neighbour countries? Send them for reeducation camps to tell them that to be good in their studies, to be top students, to be highly qualified graduates from the best schools and universities are bad, not to be seen, not to be heard.  Oh, we can send all our top graduates to become cab drivers and security guards as part of their reeducation stint like the intelligentsia of China during the Cultural Revolution. Can also become hawkers to learn what it is like to do manual work and to be poor.

Singapore does not need Singaporeans as top talents. We cannot offend the parents of the average students and the pride of the average students. We must make the average students happy, their parents happy by glorifying them and shun the top students. We can import all the top talents from third world countries to fill the top positions in the industries and govt ministries. Like that all the average Singaporeans would be very happy. See, no arrogant top students and their happy parents on the main media to make the average students and their parents unhappy.

Now when did I get this idea?  I came across this article in thenewpaper on 22 Jan titled, 'MOE launches pilot study to drop selection trials for CCAs'.  In the article there were a couple of phrases that prompted me to think again. The first paragraph of the article reads, 'In its latest push to encourage children to pursue their interests and focus less on performance, the Ministry of Education(MOE) will look at dropping selection trials for co-curricular activities(CCAs).  Another comment about the National School Games for young children, 'Last year, it tweaked the National School Games(NSG) junior division (for pupils aged nine to 11) to give children, even the less skilled, a chance to compete. Among the changes were removing individual events in some sports and rewarding participation instead of finishing first.  The bold emphasis were mine.

To reward mediocrity, reward communal activities, punish individual excellence are exactly what the Cultural Revolution of China was all about. Instead of in search of excellence, this is promoting mediocrity, levelling down to please the mediocres. Is this the road forward for Singapore?  Why is the MOE peddling to the cries of the parents of the average and in a way sidelining the talented and individual pursuits for excellence?  Is this what we get from the millionaires, brilliant ideas that millionaires could come up with?

What is wrong with excellence? What is wrong with wanting to be the best? Is it shameful to be top students, top talents? Should not then that the media stop glorifying our universities as world top universities, stop crowing how good we are and hide under the cloaks of mediocrity?

What do you think?

Singapore's education conundrum- something is fake

Language aside, the general school facilities and resources in Indian government schools are not comparable to Singapore government schools, and Indian teachers and students often work and study under adverse conditions.

I have often wondered how Indian government schools, despite their inadequate and commonly antiquated education facilities and resources, can produce talents in demand by a first world country like Singapore. There must be something unique (almost magical) about the Indian government schools, their education administration and education Ministry, Ministers and their officials....

How much of the Indian talents are “real” talents that Singapore cannot survive without them? How can India produce the first world talent when Singapore cannot despite our good education facilities and model?....

Lastly, if a Third World country like India can produce First World talents which Singapore must have to survive, why can’t First World Singapore produce the talent investors require (though not in the same numbers)?
It is only when the PAP government is really taking serious actions (rather than their ‘fanciful talks’) to control the inflow of foreign talents especially from India can our well-skilled and educated Singaporeans remain in employment without fear of unfair competition.

Kok Ming Cheang

The above statements from Kok Ming Cheang's article in the TRE are something that I have been musing about and perplexing to many Singaporean PMETs that have lost their high paying jobs to foreigners especially those from India. Amusing to me is one thing, but pain and suffering to the affected PMETs and their families is another. And to those that paid lip service to the suffering of this group of Singaporeans and claiming that they understood their pains and empathise with them,with their lives while they live their lives of aplenty because of their million dollar salaries, is another.

This is very serious matter and should not be taken lightly.  The reason 'wayang' as some in the social media have said about the sudden interest in MOM to right the decades long wrong to the Singaporean PMETs and their families hopefully is not really just another wayang because election is around the corner.

Is there anything wrong with this education conundrum or something is wrong with the facts? Is it true that third world Indian education is producing all the talents that first world Singapore education is unable to produce? Or is it true that Singapore's first world education is not producing the talents that first world Singapore needs, ie failure in the Singapore education system? Something is very wrong. Something is fake, cannot be both. Either Indian education is really good and producing good talents for Singapore or it is not. Or Singapore's education is really producing duds despite its claim of being world class or it is not.

What is fake, which part is fake? Can Singapore, after spending so much money to have a world class education system is not really what it is, everything is fake, fake world class education therefore unable to produce the talents it needs?  Or India's third world education is producing fake talents that the stupids in Singapore cannot tell the difference and took them in as talents?  Which is which?


What is real and what is fake?

US has always been an illegitimate rogue country run by criminals and psychopaths

     Five hundred years ago savage barbarian hordes from Europe went on a rampage to invade foreign lands far and wide and brought 500 years of curse to the whole world. Wherever they went they killed and plundered and deprived the natives of their land. Before very long the continents of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australia were brought to their knees under white barbarians control and domination. In the Americas there was almost wholesale genocide of the natives by the British, France, Spain, Portugal and Holland. It is most outrageous all these invasions, conquests, killings and genocide of the natives were carried out and justified in the name of their Christian God and based on the instructions of their holy book which claimed their God empowered them to do so.

United States and Canada were founded by the savage hordes from England. The original United States which broke away from England in 1775 consisted only of thirteen states with a territory of only about six hundred and fifty thousand square miles. However, due to its endless aggressive wars of conquests it soon expanded to over Three million six hundred and fifty-five thousand square miles within a span of about one hundred and thirty years from 1775 to 1905, and all at the expense of the native American states and Mexico.

Having conquered the whole of continental north America, the evil white Americans then proceeded to conquer across the seas, across the Pacific Ocean to conquer Hawaii, Guam and most of the islands in the Pacific Ocean.

White American savage aggression has not stopped. They think no one can or is able to stop their aggressive wars of conquests and they make their aggressive wars as ongoing and a continuing process until it conquers and dominate the whole world under its tyranny and total hegemony. It is now trying to conquer the Middle East and deprive the Arab muslims of their lands so as to acquire full control of the oil and other mineral resources in the region. In south and central America its heavy hands of damnation bully and interfere in the internal affairs of each and every country in the region. It has constantly conducted brutal regime change in many of the countries in the region.

Despite the white American never ending streaks of wanton aggression it is very confounding that most of the third world countries especially many of the ASEAN countries and Arab muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, Tunisia and Algeria never condemn the Americans but on the contrary coddled up to them. Is this indifferent attitude the result of inherent fear of the brutal military might of the evil empire of the United States. Or is it some or many of the ex-colonial countries have benefited somehow and in some ways from their ex-colonial masters. Take for example in the late 1890s  to early 1910s England had occupied tens of thousands of square miles of Chinese lands in Southern Tibet or North East Frontier as the British called it and in the North West or the Ark Sai-chin corridor and in Lakdah, Chinese territories in which the Indians inherited from the British and thus took over the mantle of British imperialism at the expense of China. Also the state of Assam which was once an independent kingdom was also incorporated into British India and in which India does similarly inherited and benefited.

Indonesia also benefited territorially from Dutch colonialism. It illegally annexed Papua New Guinea and East Timor into Indonesia though these two territories are entirely different entities from the Indonesians.

Malaya also benefited from British colonialism when it was given the huge territories of Sarawak and Sabah formerly known as British North Borneo.

So it seems it is not only extreme self-interests but also ravacious greed that they behave in such outrageous manner especially some Asean countries like the Philippines, Vietnam,Malaysia and Brunei which capitalise on the enmity between China and the United States to take advantage on China by falsely pursuing illicit claims to many of the Chinese islands and territorial seas in the South China Sea region thinking that they might have the backing and support of the Evil Empire to their unfounded wild claims.

The recent assassination of Iran's commander in chief Mr Soleimani by the United States is state terrorism. Mr Soleimani was lured to his death by the subterfuge of President Trump via CIA and the Pentagon under the dark cloak of diplomacy to discuss ways to lessen tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia with Iraq taken for a ride as an intermediary. This reminds us of The Ides of March in which Julius Caesar was lured to his death in Rome in the struggle for supreme power of the Roman Empire.  Yet Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and  none of the ASEAN countries either singly or as a group condemn the white American cowardly state terrorism. ASEAN countries and their ministers and politicians like to echo the American fake talk of following international rules, laws and regulations. The white Americans and its western allies have been committing so many countless atrocities and flouting all the international laws and rules all the time and yet ASEAN countries and some Arab muslim countries have been outrageously singularly silent without a word of condemnation against the Evil Empire. Yet the ASEAN ministers and politicians will always shamelessly echo the American agenda of demonisation of China.

Why are the presidents, prime ministers, ministers, influential politicians and elites of ASEAN countries so reticent about America's state terrorism. Why are they so blind or is it their eyes are covered with veils of wool that they cannot see all the evil deeds done by the white Americans. Yet the white Americans have been terrorising the non-white countries in the world for the last few hundred years, killing, murdering and genociding hundreds of millions of natives in North America, Central America, South America and Hawaii and as an extension of their terrorism now killing Arab muslims and Iranians in the Middle East. Further more it is trying to create another theatre of war in the South China Sea region pitting the littoral states of the region against China. Of course as usual the evil empire will use the silly South East Asian countries as pawns and proxies to fight its imperial wars against China while it profits from the war conflagration with huge monstrous profits in weapons and arms sales to the unsuspecting littoral countries of the region.

If the non-white countries do not condemn all the evils and misdeeds and wars of aggression ot the demonic white Americans and jointly oppose them they will be subjecting themselves to another 500 years curse of  American and white imperialism. 

Let's hope the third world or non-white countries of the world will be wise enough to wake up to the inherent evils of the white Americans and stop being made use of by the evil empire as pawns and proxies in their never ending perpetual wars of aggression and plunder.

Southernglory 1

Sunday, 26th January, 2020

1977 - Year 0 in China

阿丕书记：第1集 https://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzg2OTU4Njcy.html?spm=a2h0j.11185381.mdlikeshow.1~3!4~5~5~A

The above is a short serial on the transformation of a poor agrarian country to what it is today, a new metropolitan state that is on its way to surpass to the USA as the richest and most modern economy and country in the world. The serial started in 1977, a year after the end of the destructive Cultural Revolution led by the Gang of Four. The Cultural Revolution was effective in turning China into Year Zero, when all industrial activities were halted and destroyed, when all the elites and well educated professionals, mostly western graduates were branded as revisionist, either locked up in reeducation camps or sent to the countryside to work as farmers, and many did not survive the campaign.

In 1977, the horrendous impact of the Cultural Revolution was felt everywhere, when poor was glorified, when being rich was scorned and treated as enemies of the people. The luxury of the time was to be able to eat an egg, no meat, no fish. An egg was often shared by four persons. Food on the table was mainly vegetables. Individual enterprises were frowned upon, banned and a crime, small business, hawkers etc were non existence as they were not permitted. If was life in communes.

1977 was the lowest point of the Chinese Civilisation after it was reunited under the CCP. 1977, a year after the death of Mao and the execution of the Gang of Four in their primitive destructive policies, was the year when Deng Xiaoping was reinstated as the deputy head of the CCP and many other key organisations, but effectively the de facto head of China. 1977 was the beginning of the opening up and transformation of modern China, leading to the Four Modernisations and the new China today.

The serial gave an in depth and truthful depiction of the hard life of the Chinese people and how the reformed intellectuals and educated elites released from reeducation camp gingerly tiptoed around to transform the Chinese economy and the thinking of the Chinese people. Once the oppressed and restrained energy of the industrial Chinese people was released and set free, everything was on a roll, but with a lot of resistance from the old and conservative schools of communal living and poor is good cadres.

This is a history lesson for those interested to know how it all started and where it all started as many have forgotten how hard and tough life was in China in the 60s and 70s. A whole new generation of Chinese people have grown up without knowing what is poverty or hunger and bad leaders and bad govt policies. Coincidentally Wuhan, Hubei is now the centre of attraction because of the virus epidemic.

The 19 chapters retold the story of a newly released Secretary General called 阿丕, full name 陈丕显, being posted to be the number one man in Hubei and how he rebuilt this province from scratch, from Year Zero.


Happy and Prosperous Chinese New Year to everyone.