Mahathir destroyed the country for generations, not just during his Premiership

 Mahathir destroyed the country for generations, not just during his Premiership. It will take another generation or two to reverse his education policy, even if they were to try to do it. It will take generations to get rid of the deep-seated corruption within the establishment. It will take decades to attract back the talents that he drove away during his premiership, mostly to the benefit of Singapore, especially the Chinese. The incentives for doing that are just not there for those who wants to return to serve the country,

I would not just blame Mahathir alone. It was already a festering disease of corruption within the racially endowed ruling establishment even before he came to power, but he was the one that made it worse with his never ending New Economic Policy that basically alienated the Chinese and Indians. Most of these non-Malay Malaysian talents were later to become of great benefit contributing to Singapore, people like Goh Keng Swee and Hon Sui Sen among others.

In Malaysia, Goh and Hon would never have been given the chance to rise in positions to serve the Malaysian Government. The pro-Malay establishment would never allow that. Meritocracy never had a chance in Malaysian politics, only cronyism and racial factors matter.

It is really ironic that Malaysia, with all the natural resources became a pale shadow of its southern neighbor that was to arouse deep jealousy and spiteful behavior from Mahathir and his cronies. Now, with UMNO in the coalition, fighting corruption is a mountain to climb for Anwar Ibrahim, if he were to try. This is the biggest problem to overcome.

Anonymous

Global South fighting to be free from American hegemony

 It is a no brainer that the US$ hegemony had been created for the rest of the world to be disadvantaged in so many ways. Why is there a need for the rest of the world wishing to trade with each other having to use their own currencies to buy US$ in order to enable their trade to go through. In the process, the USA and Western banks were able to rip them off with exchange rate conversion differentials. The same as using credit cards for purchases overseas, changing foreign currencies into US$ and then converting it back later to local currencies.

Having said that, it was no coincidence that the USA's dirty agenda were numerous, and the world had been stupid enough to agree. First was to enable Western banks to cream off the currency conversions both ways. Second, this enabled the USA to monitor the volume of transactions and the countries doing the trading and allowed the USA to plan their economic policies, such as what to plant in agriculture and how much to cater to next seasons demands. They could also monitor trade in other areas like metals, energy, raw materials and consumer products.

BRICS new system will do away with the expensive exchange loss conversion between local currencies and the USA, thus making trade between BRICS members cheaper and easier to be conducted. It also denied the USA the privilege of tracking who are involved in those trade, big or small. And the USA had no means to know how to tailor its foreign policy having to work on the blind, like in agriculture planning. The recent cancellation by China of 1.5 million tons of wheat purchases from the USA and Australia is one instance of how that is going to affect the global supply chain. The USA is not going to be playing the status of the food basket for the world. USA farmers are now at sixes and sevens trying to tailor demands, with China now sourcing cheaper food from Brazil and Russia, all done outside the US$. That is de-dollarization coming into focus globally.

Last and not least is the weaponization of the US$ hegemony working against the rest of the world. Time to put this evil out of business for good.

Anonymous

USA wants to restart manufacturing with expensive and lazy American workers

 When clowns are running the show, most of the policies are going to backfire. Clowns do not think forward, only intent on keeping the audience entertained. They care not about what happens next.

First of all, sourcing of raw materials will be one big problem for the USA trying to bring back manufacturing. China now controls most of the essential raw materials and even the refining logistics. The USA is trying to put the cart before the horse by frantically building up the factories from scratch and then trying to source for the raw materials to operate. It will not work!

Next, we have to look at the skilled manpower needs which is in short supply in the USA. Training engineers takes time, and time is not what factories can stay idle and wait. TSMC, in setting up semiconductor manufacturing in Arizona had to recruit skilled engineers and technicians from Taiwan to work in the USA. Here, TSMC encountered another big problem. The work attitudes of USA locals and imported Taiwan workers contrast like day and night. Taiwanese work long hours in Taiwan and brought with them the same work attitude to the USA, but USA workers are basically lazy bums unable to follow the TSMC work routine. Another rouse that escalated was the differential in wages paid to USA locals and Taiwanese workers.

With the wage differentials in mind alone, can products made in the USA be able to compete in the global market? With the lack of raw materials in mind, trying to source for cheap raw materials is out of the question and with more expensive inputs, can the USA hope to compete on the global market?

China works on a different trajectory. China thinks long term what it wants to do and plan its move. China trained all the engineers and stem graduates that it will need for its manufacturing hub agenda decades ago. In tandem China also sourced for all the raw materials and secured them under joint ventures will friendly countries like in Africa also decades ago. China did not do all this yesterday. China had all these planned decades ago. That is why China was able to dominate global manufacturing so fast while the USA was still asleep in the believe that their days of domination will never end. 

Anonymous

BRICS is FREEDOM.... from American oppression, threats, sanctions and bullying

 BRICS is not simply an economic blog of nations to cooperate and trade among themselves. The countries of the world have been under the oppression and control of the evil American Empire, being threatened and bullied by the American terrorists and unable to fight back, unable to break free from the stranglehold of the evil Americans in everything. 

The Americans see themselves as the Empire to rule the world. They are the law makers, making rules and laws for the world to obey and live by under the mischievous so called Rules Based Order, not the international law under the UN. The Americans called the shot, interfering and meddling the affairs of every country, telling countries what to do, who are enemies, who are their enemies, who they can or cannot trade with, who they should sanction and who they should go to war with.

Any country disobeying the American edicts would be taken to task, be sanctioned, isolated, invaded and their leaders killed. That is life under the evil American Empire. There is no freedom, no democracy under the American terrorists waving the flags of freedom and democracy. There is also no human rights. The American terrorists killed whoever they want, and rule the world using their military might.

BRICS is the alternative, the saviour of all nation states, to be free from American oppression. The countries no longer need to labour to produce goods and services to exchange for a piece of paper the American issued as money of exchange. The countries of the world no longer need to feed the American terrorists or be attacked or killed by the Americans.

BRICS is FREEDOM for countries of the world, to do what they like, to be friends and trade with whoever they like, to be free to use their own currencies for trade, no longer to be slaves of the American terrorists. BRICS is like living in a new world with new rules they made for themselves in their interests, not to be living under the oppressive American Rules Based Order, to be killed or kicked around by the Americans, threatened and bullied by the Americans.

BRICS is here to set the rest of the world free from the Americans terrorists!

Singapore can easily be taken over by foreigners with its loose diarrhoea immigration policy

 The Europeans took over North America, ie USA and Canada, by mass immigration of Europeans into the continent to replace the almost extinct native Americans genocided by the European invaders. The same thing happened in Australia and New Zealand with the white men now appearing as if they were the natives. The Americans, Canadian, Australians and New Zealanders were not natives to the lands they now occupied. They were invaders, murderers, robbers, plunderers, rapists etc etc but gave themselves ownership of the land they robbed from the natives. Anyone not knowing the history of these lands could easily be blindsided to think that USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were the legal lands of the Europeans and they have every right to be there. They massacred the natives and took over their lands! They have no legal rights to be there!

The same formula is now being repeated and enacted in the Middle East. The white men forced the migration of European Jews into Palestine, giving them a small piece of the land. Then the whole story of occupation, genocide, ethnic cleansing began and now the Palestinians have lost most of their land, and the few surviving Palestinians are being trapped in hell in their homeland, either they died in the hands of the Americans or the Jews, or they died from hunger, starvation, thirst, sickness and diseases when all the basic necessities for survival are controlled and restricted by the Americans and the Jews. 

This is only the early phase in the occupation of Arab land. The whole of the Middle East is likely to end up like USA or Canada, or Australia and New Zealand when the natives would become a minority like the natives of North America, Australia and New Zealand. And after a few centuries, no one would know or remember what happened and be saying, the white men are nice guys, building up such fine countries.

The fate of Singaporeans losing out to foreigners would not be that dramatic or bloody. There is no need for an invasion of forced migration with our diarrhoea immigration policy. There is also no need for an army to defend the island. It would be done legally and no one would know when the foreigners have taken over the country and become the majority in the island. Oops, they are not foreigners, they are new Singaporeans, given citizenship by Singapore with the consent and blessing and approval of the daft Singaporeans. The transition and transformation would be clean, cool, systematic and absolutely peaceful and legal without anyone knowing what happened and when it happened.

What do you think?