Singapore Malaysia HSR is off - This is the final fate of this project

'SINGAPORE: The Kuala Lumpur-Singapore High-Speed Rail (HSR) project will be discontinued after the HSR agreement lapsed on Dec 31, 2020, the Prime Ministers of both countries said in a joint statement on Friday morning (Jan 1).

Both Singapore and Malaysia will now proceed with the "necessary actions".

In the statement, Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said: "The Government of Malaysia and the Government of Singapore wish to provide an update on the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore HSR Project in view of the expiry of the suspension period of the HSR Project on Dec 31, 2020. ...

"Malaysia has since allowed the HSR Bilateral Agreement to be terminated, and has to compensate Singapore for costs already incurred by Singapore in fulfilling its obligations under the HSR BA in accordance with the Parties’ agreement," MOT said.' CNA

Why is Malaysia so happy to call this off and willing to pay compensation to the tune of $50m or more? Johore UMNO is not happy as it would affect business in the state. To reconnect Johore to Singapore through other means when the HSR would do the job more effectively raise queries as to the logic behind this move.

HSR could be the link to BRI, meaning goods from Singapore could tack along and benefit from the rail connection to Asia, China and Europe. Without this link, Singapore is left out in the cold. Singapore's key advantage as a transportation hub is connectivity. The cancelling of HSR to Singapore is basically to disconnect Singapore. This is a strategic move by Malaysia to cut off Singapore from the land bridge of BRI and Singapore has no answer to it.

If China and Malaysia were to jointly develop the ports in Klang or Malacca, the strategic role played by Singapore in sea transportation would be greatly undermined. With Gwadar and ports in Myanmar and Sri Lanka growing in importance, the bits and pieces in this maritime chess board are going to take away a lot of business from Singapore. 

Singapore's strategic thinking or outdated strategic plans to plug on to the American power play is turning precarious and likely to turn bad as China continue to rise in economic power. The Americans also have no answer to this Chinese challenge as their only card left to play is military might, not economic. While the Americans continue with their destabilising the world strategy of creating wars everywhere to make nation states becoming dysfunctional, they totally neglected in developing their economic power and allowed China to rule in this area. 

As long as the Americans are unable to start a military war with China or Russia, American military might and hardware are going to be very expensive and costly waste products in this competition for world dominance. China is going to call the shot with its manufacturing power and huge consumer market and its control of marine and land transportation in Asia, Europe, Africa and SE Asia. The Americans have no chips left to play and can only hope to create wars to upset the Chinese economic bandwagon. 

Singapore has very little time to change its economic strategy, maybe it is already too late.  The die has been cast and Singapore has been fixed for good.

Weres My Money?

 

Photo credit to CNA

'LOUISVILLE: Vandals lashed out at the leaders of the US House and Senate over the holiday weekend, blighting their homes with graffiti and in one case a pig's head as Congress failed to approve an increase in the amount of money being sent to individuals to help cope with the coronavirus pandemic.

Spray paint on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's door in Kentucky on Saturday read, “WERES MY MONEY". “MITCH KILLS THE POOR" was scrawled over a window. A profanity directed at the Republican senator was painted under the mailbox.

At House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's home in San Francisco, someone spray-painted graffiti and left a pig’s head and fake blood on New Year’s Day, police said. The vandalism was reported at around 2am on Friday, a police statement said, and a special investigations unit is trying to determine who did it.'  CNA

The poor Americans are really angry, but with the wrong people, or half wrong. The Democrats from the beginning wanted to give more to them but this was shot down by the Republicans. And this is likely under instruction from the clown Trump. The Republicans could not go to the negotiating table without a number approved by Trump. So the $600 was what Trump approved to fix the Democrats when he then objected to it and asked for $2,000, making himself looked good. If Trump had agreed to this number from the start, the $2,000 cheque would have gone to the poor Americans long before Christmas.

It was all dirty politics by clown Trump. To be fair to the Democrats, they would not mind giving the people $2,000, after all it was only a matter of printing more money. And when Trump asked for it, they called Trump's bluff by quickly getting it voted and passed, only to be rejected by the Republicans again in the Senate.

So the poor Americans are asking, 'Weres My Money'. Never mind the spelling, poor Americans are mostly illiterates or semi literates. This is how bad politicians can screw up the lives of the poor by stealing their money, oops, by not giving them a few dollars when the poor needed them badly, while they played golf and partied.

Trump pardoned butchers of innocent Iraqi civilians

 

Face of an unrepentent American butcher of Iraqi civilians. Photo credit to Al Jazeera

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press news agency, his first since being released from the prison, Evan Shawn Liberty said “I feel like I acted correctly” during the deadly shooting in Baghdad’s Nisour Square.

Liberty and three other former Blackwater employees – Nicholas Slatten, Paul Alvin Slough, and Dustin Laurent Heard – were convicted for their roles in the massacre after a protracted, years-long legal process in the US.

“I regret any innocent loss of life, but I’m just confident in how I acted and I can basically feel peace with that,” Liberty told AP.

The case sparked renewed criticism of the use of US contractors in conflict zones and Trump’s December 22 pardon of the four men has drawn widespread criticism from human rights advocates, lawyers and others in the US and Iraq.

US prosecutors have long maintained that the Blackwater employees, who were contracted by the US State Department in Iraq, launched an unprovoked attack on civilians involving sniper fire, machine guns and grenade launchers.

In a New York Times letter to the editor published on Friday, John Patarinithe, the FBI agent who led the investigation into the incident, said he “spent many hours with the innocent Iraqi victims who are permanently maimed and crippled because of the actions of these Blackwater guards, and the heartbroken family members of those killed”.

“I am embarrassed for our country,” he wrote. “I believe we will pay a heavy price in our relationships with other countries as a result of these pardons.”

For their part, the convicted contractors have said they were acting in self-defence and their lawyers have said the shooting began only after a white sedan broke from traffic and approached the convoy in what appeared to be a threatening way.

The sedan actually held a medical student and his mother. 

Prosecutors have said one of the former contractors, Slatten, “was the first to fire, without provocation”. He was sentenced in 2019 to life in prison without parole for the murder of Ahmed Haithem Ahmed al-Rubia’y, the medical student who was driving his mother to an appointment.  Al Jazeera

4 hired American killers, conveniently called contractors, contract to kill, gunned down innocent Iraqi civilians and lying in court that they were killing them in self defence. Can anyone believe in this white lie?

Think of how many levels of command were involved in making this order to kill Iraqi civilians. Was Trump involved in the decision making that he had to pardon these murderers of Arabs? And to think that these hired killers got the cheek to claim that they fired in self defence and feeling good about it, not a trace or remorse and repentence, and the racist American President Trump pardoned them. And this is the evil country that shout for human rights and freedom! 

Do the Iraqi civilians have any human rights, and freedom to move around freely in the streets of Baghdad and not be killed in broad daylight by American hired killers? Or to theAmericans the Iraqis/Arabs are subhuman beans, free to be killed at will by the white Americans, and no crime committed when the white American President set them free?

How evil can the white Americans be? Look at the face of the murderer, butcher above? His face said he did not care a damn about the innocent lives he took. He could sleep peacefully, no sense of guilt, no wrongs?

And no condemnation from the supposedly 'morally high' western media and the worshipers and believers of the white evil American Empire.

2020 - The year Americans proved to the world, beyond any reasonable doubt, it is a nation of liars

Pro-Trump Lawyer Mocked For Claiming Mike Pence Guilty Of Treason

David Moye
·Reporter, HuffPost
Sat, 2 January 2021, 6:23 am SGT


A lawyer who has failed in his attempts to overturn the election of President-elect Joe Biden was mocked on New Year’s Day after arguing that Vice President Mike Pence would be executed for treason.

L. Lin Wood made the prediction in a post Friday on Twitter, part of a bizarre series of tweets falsely claiming that high-ranking Republicans such as Pence, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Chief Justice John Roberts conspired to deny Trump a second term.

In his fact-free tweets, Wood predicted that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would “save the election” and Pence would be jailed for treason and later “sing like a bird” to avoid execution.

RawStory pointed out that Wood never actually explained why he thinks Pence is guilty of treason.

The wacko tweets were on brand for Wood, who earlier in the week falsely claimed that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is still alive despite his death in custody.

Many Twitter users mocked Wood for bringing the cray-cray.

The above HuffPost article is one among the bountiful prints in American media, in social media, twitters, facebooks, blogs etc etc telling outright lies by Americans, including its President Donald Trump, the man occupying the highest office, down to the average Americans. And this kind of white lies are being repeated daily all over by Americans and more than half the Americans believe in these lies.

The Americans are not only good in telling lies, it is their second nature, and to some, like liar Pompeo, it is also their profession. And the Americans love the lies and choose to believe the lies as long as they are what they want to believe in.

This is how great the Americans have evolved, from the undisputed super power to a nation of liars, telling lies, fabricating and manufacturing lies, believing in their lies and demanding the world to believe in their lies.

Many Americans still believe the Covid19 is also a lie. And they believe it is not true, the 20m Americans infected is not true, the more than 350,000 Americans dead because of Covid19 is not true.

In a way this is a blessing. As the Americans continue to live in their lies, refusing to stare at the virus in the eyes and continue to live their wayward lives, the Covid19 virus would not lie and would keep doing the necessary, to rid the world of all the liars and their white lies.

The native Americans may have a chance to pick up the pieces and take back their land when this pandemic is over. 

Another dangerous lie is to fabricate an excuse to start a war with China reported by theindependent.

'The Trump administration recently received unconfirmed reports that China paid non-state actors to strike American soldiers in Afghanistan, and was declassifying the information.

According to two senior administration officials who spoke to Axios, the US president was briefed on 17 December with the reports.

It was not clear when the plans were dated, or who was behind the intelligence.

If they are confirmed, it could drastically alter the United States’ already strained relations with China, which has so far played a limited role in the conflict.

American intelligence agencies have since been working to confirm the intelligence, which was provided over the phone to Axios on Wednesday.

Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, said on Thursday the allegations were “completely nonsense and completely fake news”.

"China supports the process of peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan, and does not get involved in the internal conflicts in Afghanistan," he added.'

 

PS.  Liar Mike Pompeo tweeted out a series of upbeat posts on Friday about how America is full of “swagger” since he’s been top diplomat, furthering speculation he’s eyeing a run for president in 2024.

“We’re so much safer today than four years ago,” secretary Pompeo began. “Over the coming days, I’m going to lay out the mission set, the huge wins, personal stories, and a lot more. Just me, Mike.”

With 20m infected with Covid19, 350,000 dead, and the number going exponential, this piece of lard is claiming he did a very good job to make Americans safer! This liar would be more dangerous than clown Trump.  Yahoo News

Remember Julian Assange? Fear of American atrocities and brutalities.

John Shipton does not mince his words.

The father of Julian Assange says he believes the US wants to extradite his son and “break him” in revenge for having helped expose what he says were war crimes.

If he is sent to the US and convicted of computer hacking and espionage, he faces a sentence of up to 175 years imprisonment in a high security jail in Colorado, likely held in a single cell for 23 hours a day under so-called Special Administrative Measures.  Independent

The True And Ugly Political System Of USA

 

SSO said...

The True And Ugly Political System Of USA

The political system of the Unlawful States of America (USA) is basically a two-party system (Democrats and Republicans) that take turns to hold power as each of their members ascend to the Presidency and sits in the White House in Washington DC. It is more like a child's play of the game called "Musical Chair" - whenever the music stops, the one who is caught not sitting down becomes the chosen one, i.e. the Puppet (President).

In every election (at national and state levels) in the USA, there will be political campaigns. These political campaigns are opportunities created by the political system to enrich the political hacks, masquerading as "do-good-for-the-people" pseudo politicians. They raise donations through these campaigns. Donations come from common men and women in the streets as well as big donors such as the Multi-National Corporations, the Media tycoons, the Wolves of Wall Street, Bankers, Oil traders, weapons and drugs manufacturers and middle-men. Through these donations they can raise hundreds of $million during each campaign. How these money are spent, no one knows vividly for sure.

The whole US political and administrative system is nothing but a facet put up for the rich and powerful to reap benefits from the country at the expense of the masses. Over the years, it has been polished to an art of telling lies, of cheating, of stealing, of false flags and of assassinations and killings.

There is actually no Democracy and no Human Rights, the two tenets that the US leaders have been pushing against other countries to conform and follow. Yet, they themselves do not follow. "Do what I say, not what I do" is their modus operandi.

There are, in fact, countless undemocratic happenings every year and countless violations of human rights everyday in the US.

Lobbying has become the norm for US businesses and other influential conglomerates to buy favours from the US politicians holding key and important positions in the US government. The most significant of whom is the US President.

Lobbying is a legalised direct form of corruption through giving of donations to political campaigns in exchange for favours, such as huge lucrative business contracts or an ambassador post in a cushy country where not much work is done throughout the year. Or, even to become the favoured news media, like Fox News for example.

All the US political parties and political leaders are beholden in one way or another to some big corporations and money-spinners, or filthy rich individuals, in one form or another.

The whole US political system is a legalised corruption system. Even President-Exit Donald Trump keep claiming that the US Elections System is corrupted and fraud with cheating in his numerous tweets, speeches and press interviews, and the numerous law suits his campaign has been putting forth to the various courts in the USA.

Year in and year out, throughout the 247 years of the short US history, the politics of the US has been the politics of coercion, corruption, intimidation, assassination and violence. This is in the nature of the characters in play. This has been in the blood of most of the American people. The numerous wars and invasions the US Armed Forces have conducted around the world over the last one hundred years are testimonies to this fact.

The US was created through invasions, massive destruction, pillage, violence, murders and massacres . As such, it continues these evil habitual behaviours and actions of invasion, destruction, pillage, violence, murder and massacre within its own territories as well as across the whole world.

A nation born of bloodshed, lives in bloodshed and ends in bloodshed. This was, is and will be the fate of the Unlawful States of America, the Evil Empire that terrorises the whole world with impunity.

Let's hope the end of USA is near!

Happy New Year!


SSO - 1st January, 2021