Political Struggles (Groupings) In Singapore At Present

 SSO said... Political Struggles (Groupings) In Singapore At Present


There are four races (ethnic groups) vying for control of Singapore at the present moment. They are:

1. The Pro-Western Group - that controls Singapore with dwindling power, and being challenged by the Pro-India Group.

2. The Pro-India Group - with very strong leadership and closing-in the grip on power tighter and tighter.

3. The Pro-Malaysia Group - with weak leadersheep now in hibernation and easily put into cold storage. However, when the time is ripe, this group can be a force to be reckoned with.

4. The Chinese Group - devoid of a true central leadership, very loosely linked. This is the biggest gtouping, yet pathetically disintegrated and disinterested in the struggle for power in a more coordinated and serious way. They are busy making money and do not have the time nor the appetite for political power.

Suffice for me to stop here. Going further may step on somebody's toes and things may become unpredictable and dangerous for me.

SSO

PS. I may add that the Pro India Group is leading and will likely take over control of Singapore's future. Without Hsien Loong, the Pro Western Group is like a bunch of boy scouts and girl guides, waiting to be brushed aside. 

The Pro Malaysia Group is becoming inconsequential.

The Chinese Group will end up like the Chinese in Malaysia.

These are my observations.

Redbean

Ponding management in this piece of rock, an unsolvable problem?

Photo credit to theindependent

More than 36 hours of non stop rain to start the new year 2021. In a way this is blessing in disguise, to stop people from merry making and congregating in large numbers when the Covid19 virus is in the air. Staying at home is the safest place, warm and cosy, when temperature in certain parts of the island fell to 21.1C. And we have the infamous ponding in many parts of the island.

Despite the advancement in town and estate planning, with new knowledge and technology, these predictable occurrence of rainfall is still a pain in the ass in this so called smart island, infested with super talents, home grown and the best from the third world countries. All the monies spent to buy all the talents, many being paid in the millions, could not put the island together again in terms of ponding. 

Why is there hardly any improvements in the way rain water is being managed, distributed and discharged into the canals, reservoirs and the sea? Cannot be planned, too difficult to plan, or 'misplanned'?

The island is so small, finite, the drains and canals and their capacity, and the capacity of rainfall, are all calculable numbers, not rocket science. Why is it so difficult to manage the rainfall and water flow?

What kinds of talents are we using to plan our drainage and flood control or ponding? Local talents or funny third world talents? Do these foreign funny talents really have flood management experience or came with funny degrees and funny resumes but no real knowledge or experience in flood management?

Our local talents have done a superb job in building enough reservoirs for our need. This project of building more reservoirs were executed before the flood of 'foreign talents', so I am presuming that the main idea was local in origin. What about the ideas in flood management, with clever 'foreign talents' rope rising in the air tricks or native talents that could not tame the ponding in this small piece of rock? The scale of the problem is in no way near the scale of the Ganges or Huang He or Chang Jiang.

So, will Singapore find the real talents to solve this ponding problem once and for all? Cannot, no way?

Depends on who is in charge?

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.