the skinny brown man

critical/blunt thinking for the day..

2011-04-14T21:25:00.000-07:00

(or the SBM's lazy ass way of sharing his thoughts...)

can a man have a wonderful, civilised conversation with a beautiful woman about amazing things, for more than just 5 minutes?

is it possible for a Caucasian named Chrys Freeland to have a civilised conversation with a person named Mohamed, without anyone jumping on the table and shouting "Allahuakbar"?!

do we always have to fall prey to TV's "fresh faces, perky tits only" mentality or we actually find someone who is both funny, naturally beautiful AND worth her salt to hold her own on broadcast TV, too?

why, certainly dear Watson. ;) what a great interview, worth every bit of the time..

have a great weekend, everyone. :)

LOL!! ;)

2011-02-16T19:07:00.000-08:00

what a BRILLIANT tribute to the 80's. man i remember wearing half this stuff.

LOL!! awwwesome.. i am SO lucky my wife never saw me in those days.

The Yemeni Update

2011-02-15T00:27:00.000-08:00

two days after we wrote to advise caution on how to view America's stand on the Cairo protests, Washington officially revealed its hand in Yemen by announcing a doubling of aid to its erstwhile ally.

releasing his State budget yesterday, the President announced that aid to Yemen would increase to USD120 million to double the size of its current counter-terrorism force, from 300 to 600 personnel, under a quiet domestic program known as Section 1206. and events in Washington and abroad have conspired to now find the real First Lady warming up for another round of "How I Made the World Go Round".

handling a President's cojones

in a major concession to his former nemesis Hillary Clinton, Obama cut less than 1 percent of her department's budget, while promising to cut a lot more from everywhere else. this either signals Washington's continued focus on foreign affairs, or Hillary's got him by the pair, as he needs her support to fight the now Republican Congress.

Tel Aviv remains the biggest recipient for US aid in the Middle East, receiving USD5.6b - including $3.1 billion for the military - and Jordan, the only Arab state besides Egypt with a peace treaty with Israel, gets USD300m in military aid. Pakistan and Iraq meanwhile share about USD9b between them to keep them scary Kurds safely in 'em hills.

and if you think that's big, the fact is between 2006 and 2009, the US sold nearly USD50b of weapons to the region, and it's increased since Obama took office.

Egypt continues getting USD1.5b - including USD1.3b for the military. the aid is holistic: 24 F-16 fighter jets and Chinook helicopters for the air force, USD210m to supply and maintain the Navy's frigates and the ultra-modern M-1 Abrams tanks seen in Tahrir for the Army - arguably the most potent main battle tank today and the bane of Saddam's once feared Revolutionary Guards - which ensures they do not make a move for the throne, and maintain US interests in the region.

if only it were that tidy elsewhere.

ashes to ashes

when the dust has settled this will be a hell of a chapter in Hillary's memoirs, because in terms of potential outcome in international equilibrium, it rivals that of the Berlin in 1989, with the US now in the role of active protagonist. and for someone who's wanted to be President since she was in college it's likely she's keenly aware of, and is reacting accordingly.

throwing the first punch after Mubarak, Hillary came out today in explicit support for the hundreds of protesters in Iran, saying it was high time for dictators everywhere to listen and step down.

not a peep though, for the thousands who came out last Saturday calling for the resignation of Yemen's President Ali, who's been propped up by Washington for 30 years. nor a whimper about the thousands protesting against Prime Minister Sheikh Khalifa in Bahrain - where the US Navy's Fifth Fleet is based permanently - who's been in power since 1971, despite the fact that several protesters have already been killed.

and then there's the imaginatively named Abdelaziz Boutifleka in Algeria, who Moscow has backed for over 3o years. already, Mr Buttflika has let loose 30,ooo police on his people - no neutral Egyptian military there - and put opposition leaders under house arrest, shut down the internet and arrested dozens of journalists, thousands of protesters.

where is the fury of the free press and Google circumventing the internet shutdown a'la Egypt? is it different because Putin will broach no shit like that in Algeria? or are the Russians now allies when it comes to the Middle East?..

singling out Iran is understandable though as Tehran has been giving the middle finger to Hillary and Co. for the best part of 40 years, while Ali and al-Khalifa's been nothing but contrite. but it would be unfair to criticise Washington without considering history.

oil and the Suez aside, when they first came into the region it was the height of the Cold War, and they faced THOUSANDS of Russian tanks and millions of troops alone, as Europe was still unprepared to face Moscow on its own at the time. hence having Yemen on your side - a buffer on your south courted extensively by the Russians - was a good piece of business.

the Arab kings and leaders - nothing but the most vicious of warlords themselves - recognised the power play and established their own legacies, locking their wealth in at the expense of their people - who were not actually "their" people, given how the fiercely tribal Arabic culture tends to treat those not of their clan. and so you had every single country in the Middle East since dipping their toes with America at one point or other, regardless of the Palestinian issues.

the same fate as Sudan?

despite her best efforts tho, it does seem to be unraveling as we speak. President Ali is rapidly losing both ends of Yemen, where despite getting moola from the United States, he's been actively courting major Al-Qaeda figures like Jamal Badawi in the south, and using equipment provided by Washington to try crush Houthi (Shia) opposition in the north.

the 20-year standoff between the north and south seems to be coming to a peak now as Ali seems to have finally brought his southern (Sunni) friends to declare war on his northern foes, with the trade-off presumably if he gets to finally crush them, he'll cede Southern Yemen to Al-Qaeda.

this obviously is not in line with American aspirations, but she can't be seen to be losing control of the situation as its developing either, so we don't hear anything about a Jihad being declared by Al-Qaeda against the Houthi 2 weeks ago, and endorsed (the Jihad) by an American ally on Europe's border.

then there's always Ethiopia, where Meles Zenawi is wringing his hands watching restlessly wondering if Washington will abandon him now as well, and if he should thus court the Chinese or go back to please Russia. it may very well be a new world post-perestroika, but some toes remain not to be tread.

watch this space. it's gonna be a hell of a memoir.

seeing they see not

2011-02-12T18:58:00.000-08:00

a tumultuous start to the year indeed, and civvies are hailing the Egyptian victory over State endorsed repression, much like the ones that ended Marcos and Pinochet.

more than a touch of deja' vu actually, when i read that Obama had advised Mubarak to make a "clean and controlled exit" last week. that's exactly what the US said to Marcos when his people started rioting and throwing rocks and he called the White House (his de facto patron) for advice, being forced to flee the Philippines with his tail between his legs in 1986.

i don't mean to sound the pessimist but i wouldn't put too much credence on the POTUS' message to the Egyptian people last Thursday that "they will continue to have a friend in the United States of America" - after all, that's exactly what then Vice-President George Bush said to Marcos, just a few years before they stabbed him in the back and dumped the whole family in Hawa'ii. i.e. as far away from the mainland US as they could, without being accused of "forgetting" a loyal lap dog..

well, actually, that's not entirely accurate. what Bush actually said after Marcos rigged the elections for a FOURTH time, was:

"We love your adherence to democratic principles and to the democratic process, and we well not leave you in isolation."

Vice-President George Bush, June 1981

like they promised Cambodia too to take up arms during the Vietnam War. only to leave them high and dry and turn away while Pol Pot later took power and murdered millions of truly, innocent civilians..

not that the POTUS shouldn't take much credit for ol' Mubs' stepping down; in all likelihood a good amount of firm "thou shalt not fucketh with me" arm twisting came from the Oval Office. but chances are it was not so much the concern about the Egyptian people, but that Osama's fourth wife is actually Yemeni, and is responsible for the bearded one's rising popularity there these last few years.

and the longer Cairo was besieged, the higher chance that Yemenis and Algerians would start going the same way, toppling a few more Harold & Kumar fans.

and you know you can't let that happen, because Yemen shares a border with Turkey - the last state standing between the EU and those scary Arabs. the midget and the model would shit in their pants if that happened; there enough Algerians in gay Paree as it is.

as the EU ambassador to Kuala Lumpur tactfully said when i asked if the ECHR's inclusion in Lisbon would help or hurt Turkey's chances of entry into the EU, "i don't think that anyone in Brussels imagined having Syria and Yemen as neighbours, when they created it back in the 50s".

"oye..."

hearing they hear not

sadly as Chubby Checkers steps down, concerns are being raised that the "Islamist" Muslim Brotherhood (just to remind Americans that these Muslims practice Islam, i guess...) might thus fill the vacuum, and... err. might actually give the people what they need instead.

like when the 'extremists" Hamas winning the Palestinian elections some years back and was opposed by Washington. well. actually it was just because they were taking money from Syria instead.

literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives around the world - an overwhelming majority of that civilian and non-American - have been lost since the Monroe Doctrine was established.

installing and upholding dictators around the world with money, sex, and the absolute power to make people, families - even whole villages - disappear. while European religious and political leaders and toast to your good health. little gets to your head faster..

and like the gambler who can't stop until he's lost all his money, his livelihood - even his children's future, looking for that one magical play to "make it all right", so Washington and the very people she purports to hold dear will keep trying to "make it safe". unable to accept the only way to not lose money, is to not gamble in the first place.

think about it: the country's literally bankrupt, and in debt to ostensibly its own nemesis in the Pacific, primarily to run two unwinnable "wars" simultaneously. sometimes the simplest truths are usually the hardest to hear.

and the truth shall set you free..

in case you think i'm beating a dead horse, you're right: while Americans (rightly) make a fuss and public holidays about 2,000 of their own killed on home soil, let's never gloss over the children killed when American military planes drop their precision cluster bombs in the middle of playgrounds, and babies and children shot in their homes as Marines barge into regular people's houses looking for "intransigents".

pop quiz! what's the difference between the laser-guided cluster bombs killing children in Tirkit and a big-ass plane clumsily crashing into a building and killing people?

answer: none.

what's the difference between a satellite-guided drone killing civilians in Pakistan and a car bomb outside Kabul?

answer: none.

last one: why can the US media show pictures of a pilot shot down in Somalia, being lynched by a mob after he shot up their homes and families from the air, but not a picture of a 6-year old Iraqi being peacefully bathed for the very last time before being laid in the ground, after being killed by a cluster bomb dropped into her school yard?

answer? ..

the battle has been won and the Egyptians have earned a glorious right to reprieve. as the days come yes, a lot more remains to be done. but remember the hurdles may not necessarily be those "medieval, yard stomping Muslims" of yore. and the reasons may not even have anything to do with the proverbial Apple Pie..

LMFAO!!! ;))

2011-02-09T19:24:00.000-08:00

how many fathers (and moms!) have done this for their kids, eh?... :)

here's a thought:

in today's age where PR companies plant fake "user reviews" online for their clients etc., this could also be an easy way to not just make a client's product go viral online, but circumvent so many copyright/trademark issues with the IP holders in'it? after all, YOU can't use it for your products without paying for it, but the "public" can..

and May the Force be with you.. ;)

Gary Moore is dead. RIP

2011-02-06T18:28:00.000-08:00

whoa. what a way to start the monday. Gary Moore's passed away last night while on holiday in Costa del Sol.

here was the man who made the move from metal into blues seamlessly almost 30 years ago, and brought a generation of guitarists with him..

here was a man who didn't give a rat's ass who was the 'best guitarist' of all time and all that. quiet. unassuming. a gentleman, unlike so many in (t)his world. i know some will remember him singing Still Got the Blues; maybe The Boys Are Back in Town and even his jamming sessions with B.B. King. my memories will always begin, and end, with listening to him play Empty Rooms with my big brother, on our small little transistor, growing up in the quieter reaches of Malaysia..

Rest in Peace Mr. Moore. the world's gone a little bit quieter..

what a weird ass weekend its been..

2011-01-30T21:26:00.000-08:00

first up, i find out that my Prime Minister - the venerable Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak - is a spammer. that's right boys and girls, the Prime Minister of Malaysia is now a bona fide spammer, sending unsolicited emails to all and sundry wishing them a Happy Chinese New Year, and continuing his so far ill-advised attempts to "reach out" to his fellow Malaysians on social media.

observing first hand the govt's attempts at doing this over the last 3 years - since the ruling "elite" lost the popular vote for the first time in more than 50 years, and winning just 49.8% of total votes in 2008 - it's growing even more disappointing to see the PM take the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's advice and send out these spam mails over a cultural festival (seems the gentleman did the same a while back out of Delhi as well and vouched for its "effectiveness". however you'd measure that.)

but what really got me were actually two things: one, how he harped in the email about how his late father used to take the family out to visit all their Chinese friends over Chinese New Year and he'd get ang-pows (red packets filled with moola) and two, how in cahooties did he get my email address?!?

don't shoot, Mr. Prime Minister

re: the first one, i just wish he'd stop already continuously linking all his efforts (visit to China, decisions in BN etc.) to his late father. as a leader i wish he'd stand on his own two feet and stop digging up all the family dirt to keep his flag flying. i know quite a few people in strong positions who have had the benefit of powerful/famous fathers and family names as well, and i'm glad to say the last thing they ever want to do is stand on their father's pedestals and thump their chests. it's all rather. well.. childish. and shows how insecure you are, and that you need a big "don't mess with me" gun to feel better.

so let's come straight out: can you be a leader on your own accord - because that's what so many of the people who voted for you want - or do you need the benefit of the family legacy? when will it end?

the second i.e. our email addresses, i just don't know how he got it, unless Google as part of their deal to set up HQ here in Malaysia recently gave up our records to Putrajaya. for my dear readers who might snort at this thought, think again. more notable is that out of habit (being on the road for about 15 years) i didn't even put "malaysia" as my location when signing up for the email. which means its somehow linked through my IP.

but this also begs the question: why didn't my wife, therefore - a Malaysian who also has a Gmail account and actually DOES celebrate the Chinese New Year by birthright - get this Chinese New Year spam as well. regardless, its a small but rather discomfiting aspect of the Govt's poor attempts at on the one hand, "reaching out" via the new media, and on the other showing how they've got their fingers into so many more pies that should technically be out of bounds even to govts, but aren't.

tsk, tsk, save the rhetoric, Mr. Prime Minister, and i say shame on you, because it is MY email address, and i didn't invite you in.. and last time i checked, privacy was still supposed to be part of being a polite "Malay", given that being a Malaysian seems to count for less and less nowadays when it comes to rights..

makes you wonder what else is Google doing for the incumbent "Government", and what else can they provide from your email boxes?..

pass the bloody ha ha. :)

2011-01-30T20:36:00.000-08:00

so it seems the rather candid/outspoken British Business Secretary Vince Cable came under flak for a joke he made about bankers last week. talking at a Press Lunch last Thursday he said, "What's the difference between a dead cat on the motorway and a dead banker on the motorway? There are skid marks around the cat."

ok, ok. to be honest, it took me about half a second before it registered. maybe it's cos i was a banker for the good part of a decade... LOL! :) but it put me in a good mood so i looked up a few more and thot i'd share. adios, amigos. ;)

* * *
A guy walks into a bank and says to the teller at the window, "I want to open a fuckin' account." To which the lady replied, "I beg your pardon, what did you say?" "Listen up dammit, I said I want to open a fuckin' account right now." "Sir, I'm sorry but we do not tolerate that kind of language in this bank!"

The teller left the window and went over to the bank manager and told him about her situation. They both returned and the manager asked, "What seems to be the problem here?" "There's no damn problem," the man said, "I just won 50 million in the lottery and I want to open a fuckin' account in this damn bank!"

"I see sir," the manager said, "and this bitch is giving you a hard time?"

* * *
A rich, dying man, laid on his deathbed, requested to be joined at his bedside by his vicar, his bank manager and his lawyer. He instructed them that he wished to be buried, when he finally passed away, along with all his money. He gave each of them fifty thousand pounds and asked them to throw the money on top of his coffin, in the burial plot, when he died. A couple of days later the old man passed away and was buried within the week.

At the wake, the three men were chatting and the vicar was suddenly overcome with guilt. He confessed to the other two that he had only thrown only half of the money onto the coffin, as the church needed urgent repairs to the roof. The bank manager thought, ‘What the heck if we are having a confession,’ and told the other two men that he had also only thrown half the money in, as the ‘Credit Crunch’ was hitting hard and he needed some money for the bank to stop it going bust.

The lawyer jumped up and said to the other two, ‘I think that is a shameful act on both of you. I threw a cheque in for the full amount!”

* * *
An engineer, a chemist and a banker stop at a small inn. “I have only two rooms”, says the innkeeper, “so one of you will have to sleep in the barn”. The engineer volunteers to sleep in the barn, and the others go to bed in the hotel. Soon the engineer knocks on the hotel door, saying that there is a cow in the barn and as a Hindu he can’t sleep there.

“No problem”, says the chemist, and moves to the barn. But soon the chemist knocks on the hotel door, saying that there is a pig in the barn and as a Jew he can’t sleep there.

“No problem”, says the banker, and moves to the barn while the others sleep in the hotel. Soon there is another knock on the hotel door, even louder. The innkeeper opens the door, and sees a very upset cow and pig.

SOLID month

2010-11-29T20:56:00.000-08:00

what a solid November. Brown made its mark on some unexpected fronts (try a Blues Festival and 2 radio stations lol!), United's back on top with a 7-1 thrashing of Blackburn and speaking of thrashings, Harlequins DESTROYED Leeds 51-18 in a union match last weekend.

Dan Carter becomes the record points-scorer in Test rugby - in the last match of the Autumn Test series - and i'm now occasionally writing with the Malaysian Insider as well - awesome pawsome.

and speaking of paws, check out this clip with an amazing soundtrack - looks like the black cat had some homeys, yo! the white one does a great job of holding 'em off tho at 3:1.

did you see that instinct?!! eyes open, low low low centre of gravity and HOLD THE LINE. Mother Nature, man. beats the UFC hands down.

unless of course, its Gina Carano: 12-1-1 in Muay Thai and undefeated in the UFC until her last fight with the Cyborg. then. well..

you're pretty much screwed, aren't you?!? ;) lol! have a great week all - bust 'em balls!!

Of Lies, Statistics and the ETP

2010-11-15T06:06:00.000-08:00

so what do you do when you find the Govt’s trying to actually lie to you straight in the face? this was the thought that kept coming over and over as i read chapter after chapter of the Govt's recently revealed "Economic Transformation Programme (ETP), and had to stop after reading Chapter 5, the “Developing the Greater Klang Valley” (GKV).

what was supposed to be a comprehensive and convincing road map to steer the whole country into the promised land of developed status - and the resultant higher incomes and standards of living that come with it - turned out instead to be completely FULL of hyperbole and statistical anomalies.

take for example Chapter 5. disregard errors like citing ‘Global Insight’ instead of ‘IHS Global Insight’ as a source (a major no-no in learned articles, a given in Malaysian publications) and the obvious manipulations like showing Malaysia’s urbanisation as 5 percent higher than Japan’s, and including Russia in a chart which links growth to urbanisation (even though Russia was a centralised economy until just 20 years ago and is totally unlike the other countries on the list), because without these adjustments Malaysia would have been cast in a poorer light - and it wouldn't do to be so negative early on.

no, the real creative work starts on page 4 (or page 126 of the whole book) where Chart 5-3 cites the UK as having 13 percent rural population to argue a point, then the next page changes that to 13 percent to NEGATIVE ONE percent to make another point. that's a massive 14 percent change in the UK’s urban population in the space of just two short paragraphs - David Cameron still can't figure out how they did it.

it's like scolding the bank officer for not approving your RM200,000 loan application although you make RM10,000 a month, and then asking the tax department for a rebate because you make just RM500 and can't afford to feed the kids; you cannot just change the base of your arguments when its convenient. or can you?

the report then goes to define 'rural area GDP' as a proxy for growth in the agricultural sector, which by default makes all industrial areas ‘urban’. now, when was the last time you defined factories as ‘urban’?

it dismisses the UK’s higher agricultural GDP growth as an anomaly, citing “multiple incentive plans” as the reason, instead of acknowledging the tenfold-higher rate of mechanisation in the UK’s agricultural industry, and conveniently ignores Malaysia’s own massive “incentive plans” in agriculture, which despite being similar in proportion comes nowhere near to yielding the same results.

'1Malaysia Boleh'

essentially, the project aims to propel Malaysia to developed country status by 2020 by:

a. creating 1.7 million jobs in the Klang Valley by the year 2020 - or 170,000 jobs EVERY YEAR - to cater to the additional 4 million in GKV population, of which 1.5 million will be foreign ‘high-value talent’ read: expatriates (pages 129 & 136)

b. attracting 100 of the world’s most dynamic firms within priority sectors such as the services and technology sectors, and

c. increasing the standard of living by for example increasing the amount of green areas per capita from the current 12m²to the WHO’s minimum 16²standard (page 130)

which begs the questions

1. how do we attract "the world’s top companies", when our corporate tax rate is 25 times higher than Singapore, who are also vying for the same clientele?

2. can anyone in the Klang Valley today realistically say that they see 170 THOUSAND jobs being created EVERY YEAR FOR THE NEXT TEN YEARS? And if we miss one year’s target, say, just 100,000 were created in 2011, will the remaining years absorb this 70,000 shortfall by creating almost 180,000 jobs every year after that?

3. how will the surrounding Klang Valley cope with the massive influx of ‘high-value talent’ from overseas? this 'talent', presumably attracted by much higher than average local salaries, will inevitably drive up the already high cost of houses in the Klang Valley. will the anticipated rise in local salaries offset this increase – putting us back in square one in disposable income – or otherwise?

4. given a large chunk of the jobs created will go towards expatriates, who will benefit the most from the "tenfold increase in household income" in the GKV (page 126), how will Govt ensure the bulk of the money is spent in the country - benefiting the country as a whole - or will we stand helpless as it's all repatriated where they came from?

5. assuming that many of the additional 1.5 million expatriates brings a spouse, child and a maid, and the remaining Malaysians (being young) add an average 2 children by 2020, where will we build the additional schools, parks and homes for these families to live in, while building 16m²of greenery per capita from the current 12, and then maintaining it? will the expatriate children go to the same schools as locals? or will new ones continue being built at significantly higher costs?

6. given that all but ONE public protests against additional development to protect green areas in the past failed (the only one that was successfully halted was in Taman Tun Dr Ismail, where a particular person married to the then Deputy Prime Minister was involved in the protest), will this mean that the Govt is now more open to public feedback?

you could go on and on and make the fat lady cry but essentially, its a 41 page chapter that just continuously repeats the contradictory (and often, sadly, manipulated) assertions made in the first 8 pages, and neglects key concerns such as water supply (40 percent of our piped water is still leaking into the ground, and instead of fixing the problem - old pre-World War 2 pipes - we keep making new dams and killing forests), rising costs of health care, downtime lost through traffic congestion etc. and providing concrete measures to address them.

maybe it was the Minister Idris Jala’s bold declaration last June of grabbing the bull by the horns, and coming to terms with the harsh realities facing us.

i guess i really wanted to believe that after 2 years, several million ringgit and endless teh tarik sessions that the brightest minds in our country and business community (not always one and the same) had created with a solid, pragmatic plan to drive the country forward well into the 21^st century.

i guessed wrong. and don't even get me started on Chapter 6: "Powering the Economy with Oil, Gas & Energy"..

My Prayer

2010-11-12T21:50:00.001-08:00

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I cannot accept, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those I had to kill today because they got on my nerves. And help me to remember.... When I'm having a bad day and it seems that people are trying to wind me up, it takes 42 muscles to frown, 28 to smile and 4 to extend my arm and smack someone in the mouth.

And digging up holes in the ground works out my delts and trap. Amen.

Brown Man back in de' house, yo.

RIP, dear sir..

2010-09-05T21:29:00.000-07:00

takes a lot to get me to write these days - wrapping several things up at the same time. but this is definitely an exception..

KUALA LUMPUR: veteran comedian Yusof Chong, 63, passed away @ the Selayang Hospital here yesterday, after falling into a coma late last week due to health-related complications.

Yusof, who's real name is Yusop Mat Said, made a living at stand-up comedy, and was especially famous for his takes on politicians of the time. he was a rare gentleman who could combine humour with a stage presence that more than once evoked laughter from his subjects themselves, an especially tricky thing in this nowadays hyper-sensitive and politically charged environment that Malaysia finds herself in today.

what gets me is that not only was he also an amiable and generous man, but also, as few are aware, was a single parent who worked while bringing his 5 children aged 6 to 16 up single-handedly, after his wife passed in 1994. not one for wallowing in self-pity, this. in his own way an inspiration for every one of us who tends to forget his blessings (and humour) when things get tough. fitting perhaps, that he finds peace in this, the month Ramadhan..

Rest in Peace, sir. you leave a world behind richer for your laughter, and being here.

klass with a capital. uh. "k"

2010-07-02T11:22:00.000-07:00

one of the things i enjoy most about the online platform is you can pretty much source anything in terms of content - from liberal to conservative, labour to socialist and of course, Republican and Democrats. a lot of these things are circumstantial, but a large body of it too is well researched and thought out, so for me the days of mainstream media have been pretty much over since, oh... 9/11. and the conversation isn't all about politics either - a whole spectrum of issues are often tied in their beliefs as well, from women's rights to abortion, social welfare and foreign policy and of course, finance and economics.

which is why seeing ads like these - NOT a fake i assure you - does sometimes throw the uninitiated into a daze..

now, jokes aside, the simple fact that some people WILL vote for her, simply because she can handle a 70-year old Tommy gun blowback, is the real nut job. so the next time you get a upset at the "reaction" of "ordinary Americans" interviewed on TV on matters as diverse but maybe close to you e.g. religion, immigration or even a foreign invasion, just remember this clip. unfortunately, it's really pretty much a society that 's shooting itself in the foot, and a lot of it is eating away at society from the inside..

in fact going by a recent survey ahead of Independence Day (on July 4th), more than 1/4th (26%) of Americans don't know who they got their independence from. worse, forty percent of young American aged between 18-29 got it wrong. some guesses included Japan, Mexico and get this - China. the way its going i'm surprised Canada wasn't in there. oh, wait - they were allies... weren't they? then again, i should talk: Malaysians have a bunch of political 'leaders" who tend to make racist statements against those of other races and calling them "immigrants" - while conveniently forgetting that their parents and grandparents were also immigrants - just to win some votes as well. wonder they'd make out of being cut from the same cloth..

LOL!! :))

2010-06-26T10:57:00.000-07:00

is Helen Mirren emptying an MP5 on full auto?! i am SO watching this..

: Kordesky trained you?
: yeah!
: i trained Kordesky - crack! LOL!..

we now know what movie i'll be watching on me birthday.. :))

GOOOOOOOOOO, KOREA!

2010-06-26T04:26:00.000-07:00

go Korea go Korea GOOO!! :)) ok ok, so i'm a bit biased - my money's been on Argentina for this WC, but whenever an Asian team plays - even against the Argies - i root for them. because i'm Oliental baby and proud of it! :)) WOOHOOO!!

so going into the knockout rounds today after what's been a stupendous first round - not great in playing standards generally but superb when it came to upsets! :) - we got Uruguay vs. the South Koreans and, after the way Japan took Denmark apart piece by meticulous piece, everyone's looking forward to their next match as well. sadly win or lose, good game or bad some in the mainstream still - like i wrote in this post last year - continue to innocuously write us off because we're. well. Asians, i guess. i mean, check out this write up by the Associated Press, for goodness' sake - immediately assuming the US will meet Uruguay in the quarters if they beat Ghana tonight - duh??!

who would've thought Ze Germans would go through such hairy moments in Group D - losing to the SERBS and beating Ghana by just one solitary goal.

or that Italy would get an early summer, and the French would STUPENDOUSLY self-implode, leaving Domenech struggling to figure what the heck was going on.

when supermodels and anonymous fans alike would forget themselves and where they put their phones and get caught up in their teams' roller-coaster ride.

and that England would meet Germany in the second round, or as Beckenbauer put it, ""stupidly, the English have slipped up a little by finishing second in their group". LOL! :) talk about trash talking.

Mexico and Chile will be sorely tempted to do against Argentina and Brazil what Korea did against Messi & Co. i.e. play an open game and keep it beautiful, running quick balls to their fast forwards - but if they do they'll get ripped up just like Ji Sung and his boys did. but count on Chile to hold their ground as well and Mexico's 2 young strikers to beat Argentina's flat back several times, drawing a freekick or three on the edge of the box.

speaking of which, tactically there's been little to celebrate in in these Games: most teams continue to move up and down in a square block like Barca did when they demolished Man United in the Champion's League 2 years ago - only less fluidly and of course, without Messi. they're still trying to break the offside trap by playing short diagonal balls to a striker running to the edge of the box to draw keepers out and fish for a penalty or yellow card.

those new balls are proving a nightmare for goalkeepers to handle, and professional fouls - like stepping in front of your opponent when you can't reach the ball and kicking the ball away with your next step, as if your opponent just got in your way to the ball - are increasingly utilised by smaller teams as well. a key indicator that globalised football also teaches you to cheat. because if you don't the other side will, and get that freekick or penalty against you.

the clincher though has got to be the 2 perennial black horses in any tournament - Portugal and Spain - who are meeting in the last match of the second round. it seems there's a lot of baggage with Ronaldo leading his team out as captain - when the vice‑president of the Portuguese FA passed away in 2007, his dying wish was for "the kid" to be made captain; Luiz Felipe Scolari duly obliged against Brazil that February and in July 2008 Carlos Queiroz made the choice permanent.

no purist will want either team to go out so early but one has to, so i'm hoping for Spain to go through. if only because i'm heading there in a few days and i'd HATE to wanna catch the World Cup in bars or pubs and have the whole country go "what-evvver"... ;) but seriously, wouldn't it be GREAT to see them progressing while i'm there, and experience/absorb the passion and the fiesta of it all.. :)

and who knows, they might just meet Japan in the final 8 - and Korea meets the States. wouldn't that be something to write home about? WOOHOOO!!

GOOOOOOOOOOOO, KOREA!! :))

from the horse's mouth

2010-06-26T03:37:00.000-07:00

we knew about BP hiring 200 busloads more of people to 'clean up' the beaches when President Obama came for a visit, then sending them home after he left; we also laughed and knew the 'it's just 1,000 barrels a day' claim was a farce, even as it was being published. but this one - this woman's claims - just takes the cake.

Kindra Arensen, in her own words just a 32-year-old “uneducated housewife”, appeared on CNN two weeks ago when she was organising wives of the Gulf fisherman who were concerned about the safety of their husbands, working to clean up the oil.

so BP invited her to go behind “enemy lines.”, giving her full and complete security access to go into the "heart" of operations meetings in Venice, Louisiana; open door invitation to sit in crisis management meetings in the Homer Incident Command Post - which is responsible for the entire Louisiana operations and even take Coast Guard flights and boat rides over the actual blow site - everywhere that anyone could ever want to go to get an inside look at what’s really going on. a journalist's dream. :) and according to her, everyone - from the Government, EPA to obviously the oil industry - is in on the cover up, and this was said to her in person by someone from the NOAA itself.

skeptics might say that she probably misunderstood what was going on, but as a former journo, take it from me that you'd be amazed at what many people reveal "in confidence", when they think that you're impressed with what they know. AND she got to see not just the words, but the actions as well. you be the judge.

everything she thought she knew that was there to 'protect' her, is not. she initially kept quiet because her husband - like all fishermen who lost their jobs - is now getting paid by BP to help clean up the oil. but after biting her tongue for a few days she's decided to break her silence, and is pressing other wives to ask questions about the safety of their husbands working near the oil.

as you watch this please remember: this is from an untrained, non-journalist layperson, who just had the opportunity to see for herself and speaks what she sees at. what is coming out from her is the simple truth, as she's seeing her family and livelihood being torn apart, slowly, from within.

crisis management and social media - 2 things that the corporate world is still struggling to come to terms with. welcome to the internet world, yo.. ;) have a good weekend everyone and God speed!

* * *
update 2.43pm: haha! talk about censorship - somehow BP got to PBS and had them remove the clip! no drama: here's a slightly shorter version provided by Michael Panzner - now you know you've got to see it!! :) eejits.. like i said: they still don't understand social media..

hat tip Yves for the heads up! ;)

sad fact

2010-06-18T04:42:00.000-07:00

today the US oil leak is officially the largest oil spill in modern history - 5.8 MILLION barrels have escaped the oil well since April, overshadowing the 5.7 million barrels Saddam Hussein released in the Gulf to slow down the Allies chasing him across Kuwait in 1991. and TWENTY-THREE times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill, for which Alaskans are still paying the price more 20 years later (read the full article here).

leadership meanwhile continues to be guided by lawyers and PR consultants instead of getting to the matter at hand - STOP using dispersants, and collect as much of the gunk that will float on to the surface using modified-tankers (which was effectively used in the Gulf War clean-up and are readily available now), instead of chemically breaking up the oil underneath to let it float undetected and - potentially - spread throughout the world. because sometimes, the easiest solution really is the most effective.

latest - scientists have discovered that the oil from the well is unusually high in methane - more than 40%, instead of the normal 5% - meaning it gobbles up 8 times more oxygen, killing more marine life and coral reefs as it spreads around the world.

only the truth. have a good weekend everyone - and God speed..

pretty much...

2010-06-17T02:27:00.000-07:00

what kinda video gets more than four and a half million hits in just one week?..

you guys are f**ked. LOL! now that's the kind of parody i wish we could've done for the biz briefcase.. ;)

call in the chips

2010-06-16T11:19:00.000-07:00

heya guys,

i know i called a moratorium on writing about the oil leak til its plugged, but it looks like all bets are off. an ex-oil industry grunt who's been studying every single measure taken and its time-line thinks he might've finally figured it out, and says that if we've been wondering why none of the SOPs seem to be working so far, its because we've been led to look from the wrong perspective and should instead be asking what it is they're not telling us. (read the full text here).

the gist is he's saying given all the measures that's fallen short and how long it's taken to come to terms with them, he figures that BP is basically hiding the fact that the pipes are actually busted WAY FARTHER DOWN than just the riser, and that oil is actually leaking out through fissures in the cement underground. which is why they've decided to just let the taps flow openly and try to catch some of it, rather than risk building pressure up in the pipes so high that it might blow the fissures wide open, and make things a whole lot worse.

so given the fissures, he figures there's no way it will stop til the whole reservoir is dry i.e. approx. 2 to 2.5 BILLION barrels, fully released into the ocean. and i gotta say he makes a really good case - the delay in top kill failure was a clincher.

which might also explain why BP was so keen on using an essentially experimental dispersant so early - to try and minimise the visible damage on the surface and buy time and eventual deniability in legal hearings. because in a crisis, the public usually reacts to what they can see with their own eyes first, and not so much til later the unseen damage. its a tactic Exxon used to its full advantage in 1989, and later even got its fine reduced from USD5 billion to just USD500 million.

plugging the pudding

a letter sent 2 days ago by the Congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce to the BP CEO confirms the massive violations done to cut costs and time despite warnings from its own personnel and contractors. the drilling was basically way behind schedule, and BP's executives overruled its own roughnecks to get back on track. its like a movie. makes incredible reading, and corroborates the basis of the theory above - that the cement has given way (read the full letter here)

some of the more bizarre violations include using just 5 “centralizers” (to prevent channeling during the well's cementing) instead of the 21 recommended by its own engineers, because it would take 10 extra hours to install them, and using a well design with fewer barriers to gas flow and not running a cement bond log at all to evaluate the cement job as it was being done, to save 3 days and USD1.5 million in rig rental, plus contractor's fees.

this in addition to the dozens of dispensations given to BP in recent years that's been uncovered since the leak, from being allowed to submit their reports unverified by independent oversight, a lack of safety protocols from sea to shore and when they have submitted safety plans to the authorities, they were outdated by up to 20 years, hence the repeat of the incident from 1979. no wonder the whole thing caught them "by surprise". sorta like this guy. it's called a WTF Moment..

it's unfortunate that Obama got sidetracked long enough by the economy to not see this coming, or maybe had it lower down his list. one of the first things Baby Bush did under his business friendly less-government policies was downgrade the authorities monitoring Oil & Gas, cut their operating budget and manpower then appointed a former Halliburton senior executive as head of the oversight committee - the same Halliburton that Vice President Cheney used to work for, and BP's largest independent contractor.

whether he would've have done things differently is debatable, but there is no denying that the focus up to the explosion had been almost exclusively on the banking crisis, unemployment and rising state bankruptcies inherited from 8 years of de-regulation and Arabian adventures under George Jr. speaking of which, you gotta hand it to him, he still knows how to make headlines, as only he can.

attrition by ignorance

i've had a couple of replies to earlier posts saying i come on pretty strong sometimes and shouldn't i trust them to know better? and that's the problem - they do know better. its not for lack of knowing, from energy to banking its how big businesses today really work at these levels and when push comes to shove, everyone's the same - morals are the first thing out the window and if you think for one second the bottomline is less important than the "public"'s welfare then its really time to wake up, put on your sunnies and take a cold, hard look at today.

the fact is none of these emerging details contradict what we've tried to stress all along; from the diamond cutters would fail to make a clean-cut and the experimental nature of the dispersant (here) to pointing out the U.S. law's cap on liability in an oil spill at just USD75 million more than a month ago (here), for which Congress is now frantically trying to amend (the full PBS report here). it sucks sometimes to be right and i don't enjoy it, but its the only way i know how to make a stand on Business As Usual - by trying to point out the malpractices and their likely consequences while its happening, and establish a mark for future arguments.

i stand by everything i've said to date including that BP knew the sh*thole they'd dug for themselves from Day One, and everything from thereon - including isolating the survivors from being debriefed by the authorities - was a smokescreen to buy time, and eventually make their case by pleading ignorance in an "unprecedented" event in oil & gas history.

am i happy my warnings are turning real of course not - i'd rather have egg on my face than 2 billion barrels of oil (42 gallons per barrel, meaning 84 BILLION GALLONS) killing everything Mother Nature intended to keep safe. but it doesn't work that way, so i do what i can and that's write. grrrrrrr.. *sigh*. sorry.

i know that management is paid to make the hard calls and take the risks but one day, someone will write a book about all the times that management f*cked up and cost billions, just by not listening to the grunts.. and what are the odds that grunts will have to pay here too, and the suits get off scot-free?

and no richard i'm not forgetting the spill in our own backyard, but this is SO much more, bro, affect the world and sea life for decades.. make all the good work we've done so far? rhetorical. sigh. enough o this. time for a blast from the past mahn, from 1986. when we were young.. :)

ha ha!

2010-06-15T14:23:00.000-07:00

highlights of the England-USA match, ver. 2.O

why didn't they have Lego Men when i was a kid..

say what you will..

2010-06-13T04:22:00.000-07:00

but just 2 days into the World Cup, a few things are apparent:

teams have learnt from Inter Milan on how to keep Messi quiet, while giving him the same treatment they did Maradona almost 30 years ago. understandably Argentina isn't Barcelona, but if his teammates don't step up soon, he's gonna get kicked out of this World Cup. literally. :(

England simply have no pace in centreback, and with Ledley King perennially injured and the aging Carragher his replacement - he was consistently late in his tackles and outrun by the Americans - better skilled and more fluid opponents will easily slice England up from the middle, while shackling Rooney in the same place upfield.

the Lions continue searching for a safe pair of hands after Peter Shilton, while the US might just turn out the dark horses of the tournament - and Landon Donovan's stock soar as the Yanks start believing in themselves, and flex their new-found muscle.

speaking of which

i remember watching the 1995 Rugby World Cup and the euphoria that just swept the rugby world as every neutral wanted, willed the Springboks on to win it - which they did!! :)) it culminated in a victory that was so fraught with emotion in a country that just a decade before had been torn by war at its borders and apartheid. but i can't see them getting past the group matches here.

South Korea meanwhile are kicking ass, and are the only ones who overcame first match jitters to score a brace and get things going. :) it was great to see them make a mockery of Greece's coach Rehhagel who said their height superiority would win them the match, and Korea showed them that football is played with their feet, as they blew them away with smart running and precision passing.

speaking of which, look at how Ji-Sung read the game and was actually already running on to the ball before the Greeks lost it - this is not a coincidence and speaks volumes of his football brain, and is why Ferguson bought him in the first place. flashier players like Ronaldo and Messi will get the headlines, but the fact is United lost their 2 Champions League matches right after they took him out, when suddenly the opponents had acres of space in the midfield without a Korean terrier cutting down spaces and giving them hell.

i'd wear this guy's name on my back. given the levels of passion so far i'm gonna try and catch the African vs. underdogs matches the most, specifically Serbia-Ghana (today), Japan-Cameroon(t'row) and the Ivory Coast-Portugal on Tuesday. can't wait for Argentina vs Korea - free-flow football on both ends? that's gonna be a blast!! :))

by then of course, the Brazilian fans will be out in force and every other newspaper will, for some inexplicable reason, be printing their pictures en-masse.

no idea why. LOL!!

football fans with sleepy eyes and knocking into tables will be the norm but what the heck - it's only the World Cup, doods! LOL! i'll be on the road so will catch the WC in different places - Belgium for the group matches, Spain in the knockouts and the UK for the finals so its gonna be awesome, watching and cringing with the local fans. ;)

so enjoy the rest of the South African World Cup y'all - and THANK HEAVENS FOR SATELLITE TV!! WOOHOOOO!!!

3 movies..

2010-06-10T15:33:00.000-07:00

for the weekend. ;)

Music From Another Room: DEFINITELY one for Saturday nights. a brilliantly quirky movie. can't really put my finger on it, but maybe.. i dunno. maybe it's because deep inside, we wish that we could one day find that something that makes us let go that easily too. well, not easily. but completely.. :) and Jesus. wow. :)

"we got nina cruising round the bario with a dishwasher named Jesus!" LOL! just brilliant. never look down on a dishwasher. cos he might just one day be the one who shows your daughter true love.. :)

Crazy Beautiful: another crappy trailer, but a wonderful afternoon watch..

"how'd you do that?"
"do what? i wasn't even there."
"yes you were. you were so there"...

and that soundtrack.. :) and to cap that Sunday night,

do you remember your first love? do you remember how if felt in your first kiss?.. :)

i know they're all on the surface about a boy meets girl, but i feel its more about redemption. its about just one day finding that someone that it all somehow makes sense. and suddenly, you find a willingness to believe in yourself. for all its worth.. one day. doesn't mean it makes sense! :) but maybe its not meant to..

have a GREAT weekend everyone and God speed ;))

sorry to be the bearer of bad news

2010-06-09T10:47:00.000-07:00

so i get an email last Monday pointing out that according to BP, the procedure i said wouldn't work is funneling up most of the leak now, and appears to be working. so - referring to my earlier article here - will i now eat my shoes and apologise? well Chee, i would, and i have to admit, it wouldn't be the first time. except... BP appears to be lying through its crooked, British teeth...

from The Times online today:

BP’s oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico may be up to four times the scale estimated by a government scientific panel, pumping out 100,000 barrels a day in what equates to the company’s “worst case scenario” and prompting new accusations that executives are stonewalling the truth.
The news — revealed by one of the members of President Obama’s Flow Rate Technical Group - runs counter to BP’s claims that it is now capturing “the majority” of the oil and channeling it into a tanker.

Dr. Ira Leifer, a researcher in the Marine Science Institute at the University of California who is a member of the technical group, said that the oil company’s operation to cut the leaking pipe and cap it with a new containment device last week may have increased the surge of oil several times over.

“How much larger I don’t know, but let’s just quote BP,” he said, referring to the 100,000 barrel rate that BP executives indicated weeks ago would be their “worst case scenario. “In the data I’ve seen, there’s nothing inconsistent with BP’s worst case scenario” stating that the previous 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day estimate had simply been the “lower bound” estimate.

you'll be glad to now that the authorities also kept quite about ANOTHER oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, maybe because, you know. they didn't want to over-stress the public or anything.. from The USA Today website:

... satellite images have revealed a 10-mile-long slick from another drilling rig, which apparently began leaking days after the Deepwater Horizon disaster began. Citing an environmental group and federal documents, the Press- Register reports that the smaller leak, from the Ocean Saratoga platform began around April 30 and was noted by federal officials May 15.

The spill was first reported by SkyTruth, which said it accidentally discovered the separate slick while scrutinizing Deepwater Horizon images. Photos taken during overflights "appear to show a large oil crew boat pumping dispersants into the water at the spill site," the Press- Register writes.

Diamond Offshore denied these reports 4 hours ago, saying it's been misinterpreted. this despite Federal officials acknowledging on May 1st that oil from the Ocean Saratoga spill might also be washing ashore in Louisiana. so who do we believe? aww, c'mon!, you know, what's a few thousand more barrels into the ocean everyday when you have 100,000 already gushing out right? i mean.. let's believe the oil companies! this is semantics. right?? sheeesh..

last crack: seems the pipe has also developed fissures on 2 spots along the pipe, raising concerns that something has happened inside (the sea bed has already dropped several feet since the rupture) that they haven't figured out yet, and might blow another 2 leaks. in which case it's hasta la vista, baby..

that's it. this is getting too depressing. i'm calling a moratorium on the leak news til its stopped definitively by relief wells in August. getting tired of all this bullshit.. i mean, it keeps happening over and over again, just like the Aussie and Canuck property markets are gonna crash, too, right after or at the same time as China's commercial district goes Boom! why??.. because no one seems to want to admit that there's a problem, and so everyone keeps printing money they don't have to pump into the system - and calling it growth.

heck, ING is actually giving loans sans principal repayment Down Under because it's so confident prices will keep on rising forever! WTF?! Rule #1 in ANY markets: if it's too good to be true, it probably is. sigh... * sorry to be the bearer of bad news, CL.. :( we've already cashed out all portfolios last March, and shifted to USD before i came over. keep safe, y'all and get set for a hell of a Q4..

breaking news

2010-06-07T15:33:00.000-07:00

LEGENDARY and distinguished White House journalist Helen Thomas, 89, has been forced to step down just 3 hours ago, and retires after a 67 year career stretching from 1943, reporting on the Second World War right up to America electing its first African American President, and everything in between.

her resignation came amidst increasing high profile calls for her to be fired, for comments made an online news site during a spontaneous sidewalk interview. herewith said interview.

i dunno about you, but when I turn 89? not only am i gonna say whatever the hell i want but also do the boogie sayin' it! which is not to say much cos i'll probably slip and break my hip again doing it LOL!

i mean, my mother just turned 70 a year ago and its like suddenly, a light bulb just went whooosh! inside her head, you know? and she's had this epiphany and goes, "WOOHOOO!! heeyyy - statistically, i'm on extra-time now, right so who cares what i say or do. right?!? HAAAA!!" seriously. can you imagine when she's EIGHTY-NINE??

and don't even get me started about my dad; it's like double lines and one-way road signs just PUFF! *disappeared* when he turned 70, and sitting in the passenger's seat while he's driving gives me white knuckles - and i used to be a test-driver!! holy ***..

so kudos to the lady. maybe she just got tired of all the PC bullsh** all these years and it finally came out. shame on team Obama for keeping quiet while high profile critics like former White House Press Sec Ari Fleischer harries for her to be fired. i mean, since when do journalists have to be neutral in our personal thoughts? objective in our work: Yes. not have an opinion? No!

otherwise we wouldn't be allowed to vote either! and God forbid we might be offended if someone had a different view. sheesh. grow a pair, already will ya? what's wrong with these people?? i mean, i hate what Washington and Tel Aviv does but have wonderful friends in both countries who are like family. i love my country but abhor the management too - i have an opinion. but doesn't mean i can't and don't give credit where it's due.

and you know the irony here, right? is that she's out because basically its anti-Semitic, her comments. when in fact the term Semite refers to both Jews AND Arabs. you don't hear much being said about people bad-mouthing and humiliating Arabs every day now in the US do you? sheeeshh..

thanks Helen. maybe it's good to leave now, anyway. it's not as if there's any quality left to report on nowadays. it's the era of the small balls and the no-balls today. polls-driven politicians.

rest easy, Padrone.

because the truth of the matter is

2010-06-07T08:19:00.000-07:00

men wouldn't do half the things we did, if it wasn't to impress women..

EVERYBODY looks..

so ladies, give your man a break. ;)

live long enough and you'll realise

hatred is everywhere

hypocrites are a dime a dozen

and sometimes, God is just messin' witcha.

so just. chill... :)

and try as you might

there will always be one in every crowd.. :)

we do judge by size

photographers will go through anything to get that shot

and some just never learn.

and so in the end

Sooty did go to bed Happily Ever After

and so does Johnny

and for some reason i actually find this pic pretty funny...

morale of the story? well I dunno.. toughen up, suck in that gut and don't cry over spilled milk? :) hope you had a good Monday everyone - have a GREAT rest of the week and remember just. chill ... ;)

this is what happens when you believe your own bull

2010-06-06T10:53:00.000-07:00

err, Mr. Prime Minister, it's not your money. it's the people's money. not to give away if and only if your (Barisan) candidate wins.

anybody can raid the Govt's coffers to pay people to vote for them. worse still, auctioning off integrity like it was some piece of meat..

if you're really the People's Prime Minister, you'd approve the money regardless of which candidate wins or doesn't. because it's the right thing to do. because they need it to stop the floods.

shitting bricks? ...

what is really sad is to hear the Barisan supporters clap and show their own true colours. but it's good to also hear that he concedes he only gave funds for a school, when the Hulu Selangor voters voted for him. so its not as if he gives a damn for our children.. and this from the former Education Minister.

in fact, when he was handing over the cheque to the school's headmistress Ng Kin Mooi, press microphones caught him actually saying, "This means I have paid my dues.".. i don't think the Prime Minister actually understands what it means to "pay your dues".

just like his baby brother claimed at a conference once that although he was the (then) Deputy Prime Minister's brother, he's earned every cent he had and was where he was through sheer hard work, and had nothing to do with his brother being then Deputy Prime Minister. LOL! yeah. i know a lot of people who work hard too, chief. they don't become the Deputy CEO of the country's second largest bank just 7 years after leaving school, and the CEO 3 years after that.

now don't get me wrong, i like what the guy's done and find him an amiable person. but imagine that.. you become the Chief Executive of the country's second largest bank - which also happens to be a Government-Linked Company (GLC) - while your brother's the Deputy PM. and it had nothing to do with who he was? now that be some good shit he smoking...

* * *
i'm no politico-trooper but talking down to your people, treating them like manure and blatantly saying we're only worth your time if we vote for you? puh-leez. nothing in this clip leads me to accept, acknowledge nor extend his authority, or give him the benefit of the doubt on anything ever again. politicians like this are the reason why so many of our talent are really leaving, and the country going down the proverbial sh**hole.

because what happens Mr. Prime Minister when you run out of money paying for Barisan's seats? the common people will have to cough up more of their own hard-earned money to keep the country running, isn't it? or maybe we'll build schools with shit bricks and cement it all with hot air.

and the real insult is? even if they had that RM3 million, its gonna go back to a Barisan contractor isn't it? enjoy it while you can, Sir. the real auditing comes when you are around no longer, and i don't mean no committee. pfthh! the People's Prime Minister.

Destiny

2010-06-05T14:16:00.000-07:00

Qada' & Qadar. Fate. Karma. whatever you wanna call it, do you believe in it?

several decades ago when i was a wee lad sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of my Quran teacher, one of the older boys brought our playground conversation to the teacher. he asked, "why should we be good if everything is Fated for us?" mind you this was when i was about 7. :)

the teacher then, in his seemingly boundless patience answered gently, "because it is actually a maze of directions in which we can either choose to MAKE it good. or make it bad. and sometimes somewhere across the map the roads will cross like junctions and you might have a second chance to make it right, but these are few and never we know where in between, so be careful about taking things for granted. that we will have a second chance to make it right.."

these words have stayed with me - haunted me sometimes - but essentially guided me through some of the most convoluted times in my life..

cos what good are Principles if you stick by them only when you don't have anything to lose. such is also Charity that demands that someone sees, and headlines made.

do you give weight only on decisions that seem big to you now, and little to those that don't? how do you measure the things that matter to you most when for the most part, we don't even know ourselves?.. and how do you know what words will stick in someone's minds decades from now and make a difference, and what does not.

ahh.. maybe i'm making too much of my thoughts. came to me when i saw this trailer.

"All I have are the choices I make"... not a bad one to look out for, huh?.. :) and it brought me back to where i was more than 30 years ago, on that floor. in that modest house. learning about life without even realising i was doing it.

think about it. how many seemingly innocuous things we let pass in the past have come back to haunt us? or how many things we thought were so important turned out to be nothing, and we let go so much in time, energy and even soul to try and make it work. even worse, hurt others.

would we really need some Adjusters to come into our lives to stress to us which ones are important, and which are not? or do we just take so many things we have now for granted, just because it seems destined to happen.. would be a shame wouldn't it..

thank you Ustaz, for helping make me into the man i am today. i'd like to think that i've taken it into account for practically every single thing i've done in my life, and where i messed up, well, that was all me.. :) because sincerely all my faults are my own, and all my knowledge and strengths come from my fathers before me..

* Rest in Peace.. *

midweek blue... :(

2010-06-01T15:27:00.000-07:00

hey y'all,

so it took about a month - on 21st May - before BP released the first footage of the Gulf leak, which immediately cast doubts over their claims of "it's only 5,000 barrels", or 21,000 gallons a day.

following fierce public and Congressional pressure they finally released live feed, so the public can follow real-time developments for what is, in effect, a very real public interest. PBS spoke to several analysts for their calculation based on the feed and came up with the counter you'll see on the right hand side of the blog. sorry i can't seem to fit the dang widget to the space so you have to add three (3) more Zeros to the counter, so if it shows 20,000 its actually 20 MILLION..

it's based on the mid (not mean or average) estimate provided by various parties, straddling the "official" 210,000 gallons and the worst case scenario of 4.2 MILLION gallons per day. 4 times the counter on the right.

NOAA | 210,000 gal/day

USGS (Added May 27) | 504,000 to 798,000 gal/day

Outside Estimates | 1,050,000 gal/day

BP (Worst Case as of May 5) | 2,520,000 gal/day

Experts' Worst Case | 4,200,000 gal/day

maybe BP's telling the truth and it really is "just" 210,000 gallons/day. at this point there's pretty much nothing left to do but think positive thoughts in'it?

oh, and storm season's coming.. (this is off Florida, remember? ;) forecasters from the Colorado State University are predicting at least 15 named storms in coming months, eight of which could be hurricane strength (at least 74mph), with the smallest winds of "just" 40mph.

the oil slicks are already reaching 16kms inland mainly through the mangrove swamps, and experts predict that the storms will push it a further 18kms more, this time through the river systems.

have a safe week, everyone and keep warm!..

class...

2010-05-31T10:40:00.000-07:00

wayyy to end a Monday.. :)) one of the last of the gen who grew up listening to Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald and B.B. King.

off to a Green Week Conference tomorrow so not much writing for a while - have a great week everyone and God speed! :))

p/s: eSBM is not responsible for the memories that come flooding back.. ;)

the CRITICAL thing to remember in a crisis

2010-05-31T06:04:00.000-07:00

is to listen to your grunts.

now this can mean a Corporal earning 2% of what you do as a General, or a clerk earning RM700 and riding a 10-year old scooter; it can mean that crappy receptionist with the funky hairdo and horrible perfume you don't like, it doesn't matter - if they are on the ground and you're not, you better listen to them. you don't have to like it, you just have to do it.

trouble is if you're a somebody earning the big bucks in a fancy limo and playing golf with the King, you're not gonna even listen to someone who's not even qualified to shine your shoes, isn't it?

exhibit one: BP announces that "Top Kill" doesn't work, and its time to try a new tactic: "BP to use undersea robots to try fix leak":

Using remote-controlled vehicles at the mile-deep well, BP plans to shear away most of the damaged pipe that once rose from the well to the Deepwater Horizon. Then it will make a more precise cut with a diamond-toothed band saw, BP Managing Director Robert Dudley said in television interviews yesterday.

That will make a clean junction for a gasket-lined cap intended to catch most of the oil and route it to the surface through a pipe, Dudley said. BP is also preparing a second blowout preventer that may be bolted on in place of the cap and used to try again to stop all leakage, he said.

sounds real cool reading this on dry land doesn't it?

the problem is, the oil is gushing out at a PRESSURE of 10,000psi - and for you divers out there? your tank gushing out that crazy stream of air at FULL BLAST is about 3,000 psi. multiply that by 3 a MILE underwater 24/7 and you can imagine the vibrations this pipe is gonna be on, right? - so even if they manage to start cutting, can you imagine the shearing force being applied to the edges of the pipe being cut away?

that oil will rip it to pieces, and then you'll have to start all over again! and again. and again until you have nothing sticking out left to cut!

and of course once you start enlarging it, that 10,000 psi's gonna push EVEN MORE sludge up through the bigger hole, so now you got a couple more thousand barrels coming out a day pushing against your robot's cutters. working in thick mud, slippery oily surface and zero visibility.

cut a "clean junction"? puh-leez. seriously? unless you've actually worked underwater in that environment? you have no idea how it is. and then IF by some miracle you get a rough junction cut, how is that diamond bit gonna hold still while you make a "cleaner" one? can you imagine how much vibrations that saw is gonna have to hold steady against at depth?!

sorry guys, this is another No-Go. i said it before and i'll say it again - there's nothing that can be done to stop this, so the best option now is to concentrate on top-side measures. which already, are not working.

these are some real-time pictures on-site:

exhibit two from The Washington Post:

A day after scientists reported finding a huge "plume" of oil extending miles east of the leaking BP well, on Friday a Louisiana scientist said his crew had located another vast plume of oily globs, miles in the opposite direction. James H. Cowan Jr., a professor at Louisiana State University, said his crew on Wednesday found a plume of oil in a section of the gulf 75 miles northwest of the leak.

Cowan said that his crew sent a remotely controlled submarine into the water, and found it full of oily globules, from the size of a thumbnail to the size of a golf ball.

Unlike the plume found east of the leak -- in which the oil was so dissolved that contaminated water appeared clear -- Cowan said the oil at this site was so thick that it covered the lights on the submarine. "It almost looks like big wet snowflakes, but they're brown and black and oily," Cowan said. The submarine returned to the surface entirely black, he said.

Cowan said that the submarine traveled about 400 feet down, close to the sea floor, and found oil all the way down. Trying to find the edges of the plume, he said the submarine traveled miles from side to side. "We really never found either end of it," he said.

This discovery seems to confirm the fears of some scientists that -- because of the depth of the leak and the heavy use of chemical "dispersants" -- this spill was behaving differently than others. Instead of floating on top of the water, it may be moving beneath it.

so basically the dispersants are doing a great job dispersing (!) the problem almost a hundred miles away on either side, so... what? so it can be fixed later when more people are affected?

and if the leak goes on til the well runs out, how much farther do you think it'll go?.. and you'll be happy to know that the dispersants themselves are actually experimental, and no one - not even the company who makes it - knows how it will effect the ecology.

from the New York Times, exhibit three: Oil Dispersant Maker Says, "We Have Nothing To Hide"

The manufacturer of the oil-dispersing chemicals being used by BP PLC in the Gulf of Mexico said today that injecting the dispersant on a still-gushing wellhead was unprecedented and should be carried out with ample testing.

"That's a new approach," said Erik Fyrwald, CEO of Nalco, whose dispersants are marketed under the name Corexit. "Our belief is, because it is a new approach, it needs to be done with a lot of testing to make sure there are no unfavorable impacts, and we encourage that."

Scientists have compared BP's heavy use of dispersants in the Gulf to a massive chemistry and biology experiment, saying it is an exercise in environmental trade-offs. The chemicals break up oil that would otherwise float on the surface into tiny droplets that can sink and be consumed by fish, bacteria and microorganisms.

The consensus is that the 870,000 gallons of Corexit that have been either sprayed on the Gulf's surface or injected underwater at the broken wellhead has likely spared beaches and wetlands from an even worse oil slick, while contributing to the formation of massive, difficult-to-track oil plumes underwater that could have long-term ecological consequences.

so they've basically pumped in (by today) close to a MILLION gallons of this stuff in, without any proper testing before.. you feeling warm and fuzzy yet?

so where's the Big STICK?!!

even when the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) instructed BP to find a safer, less toxic alternative, here's what BP said, courtesy of NG Oil & Gas:

BP has told the Environmental Protection Agency that it cannot find a safe, effective and available dispersant to use instead of Corexit, and will continue to use that chemical application to help break up the growing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP was responding to an EPA directive Thursday that gave BP 24 hours to identify a less toxic alternative to Corexit - and 72 hours to start using it - or provide the Coast Guard and EPA with a "detailed description of the alternative dispersants investigated, and the reason they believe those products did not meet the required standards."

BP spokesman Scott Dean said Friday that BP had replied with a letter "that outlines our findings that none of the alternative products on the EPA's National Contingency Plan Product Schedule list meets all three criteria specified in yesterday's directive for availability, toxicity and effectiveness."

He did not directly address widely broadcast news reports that more than 100,000 gallons of an alternative dispersant chemical call Sea-Brat 4 was stockpiled near Houston and available for application.

pfthh! a directive without threat of punitive action. how many is that, four?

sorry if its all too much

and now of course, scientists are also worried that another rupture might develop further along the pipe: from The Intel Hub

Last Sunday, NOAA confirmed reports of a second fissure about 5-7 miles from the original. This new fissure appears to be releasing a plume the size of Delaware and Maryland combined! He went on to state that “the plume from the riser is minor thing… the best estimate is about 120,000 barrels of oil per day”.

wooo. hooo... and to think until Saturday they were trying to pump GOLF BALLS into the pipe.. *sigh*... 10,000psi, guys, TEN THOUSAND PSIs...

i'd be ecstatic if it works, mate and i'll shove my foot in my mouth and spend ALL my mates a hearty Chilli's dinner because man, it'll be worth it. but what are the chances my wallet will stay as it is?... BP's not listening to the scientists, the academics much less the men on the ground. all that matters is what their lawyers tell them, and i'd bet my bottom dollar that their strategy now is already focused entirely on how they will cover their asses in September when ALL of this is over, and the well is dry..

update: LOL! :)) sorry i missed this. Rachel Maddow says it all.. and why, if they knew all this wouldn't work 31 years ago, they insisted to wait til today to try something new? you tell me..

kudos Rachel. ;)

LOL!! for all my boys in the building :)

2010-05-30T15:37:00.000-07:00

too funny :)

"that's what i'm asking you!" LOL!

institutionalising rot in a country (or how to shoot yourself in the foot because hey - you've got two!)

2010-05-30T06:48:00.000-07:00

what if i told you that in 2006, a year before the iPhone was launched and 3 years before the iPad, a Malaysian plc designed a GUI (Graphic User Interface) to revolutionise how people would communicate, which they aptly named *Gooey* :)

it incorporated touch screens, motion sensors made not better by hardware, but algorithms. it was foldable, thin, physically mergeable with other Gooey devices and would link retail and commercial sectors through embedded avatars (this was in 2006!) which read your social media links, and would revolutionise how people think, plan and spend their time, in work or at leisure - stuff the iPad hasn't even come close to touching.

it was a labour of love between Malaysian and Singaporean tech- preneurs and Polish programmers, and after 1 year in development needed just a little more investment to bring to market. after which Southeast Asia would take the first step to becoming a global ICT player with global OEMs.

heaven-made, right? not really. in almost a year of trying to source funds in Malaysia they were all met with three most basic replies:

sure or not? we're Malaysian la. how can we do this one?

we've already got internet

ok. i'll give you the 15 million. and i'll give you my account number and you put in 5 for my retirement ok?

befuddled and disillusioned, the tech-preneurs went through a whole year until they ran out of money, and had to go their separate ways. later that year the iPhone came out, and blew everyone's minds. and gutted the three.

but of course Malaysians don't have the monopoly on shooting themselves in the foot - its a global phenomenon.

the deadweight of dogma

in 1995 a Malaysian who'd just finished his first degree came up with how to solve the African Debt crisis through the global secondary debt market, by combining the Zero-Sum Game with Expectations theory. he was told by the University of London - at the time ranked 4th in the world - that "you can't combine a Quantitative with a Qualitative theory, young man. it doesn't work". "but i'm almost halfway through!", but London said no.

a year later in 1996, two professors from Cambridge and Columbia won the Nobel Prize winner for... "their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information" i.e. combining Qualitative and Quantitative theories. all the elements were there as well: moral hazard, auctions, asymmetric information. sometimes all you needed was someone to believe in you..

but what does this reflect, and is this a social or moral dilemma?

got 10 minutes?

as a Malaysian, the most compelling is @ 8:45 when he starts about purpose and incentive, and the things that make a person want to wake up in the morning and want to go to work. its a common enough question especially in an urban environment, but even more so in Malaysia, where you know that even with talent and skill and education and imagination, it becomes increasingly irrelevant as you up the stakes..

because if you consider the larger picture of what was built to drive Malaysia's growth i.e. the GLCs - the so-called Government Linked Companies with massive amounts of federal assistance, connections and preferential information - what was meant to be the Chaebols propelling Malaysia head-long into the 21st century, has instead,got stuck in the early 20th.

this is what he means when he says ""the profit motive has become un-moored from the purpose motive, and bad things happen.

this is the GLCs burdened by vested interests and self-perpetuating hubris. disregard the pseudo "investments" and "successful" projects in friendly OIC countries, their failure after failure and losing billions every year thru painfully obvious false tenders and Bumiputra contractors not held liable for failures in areas that really matter - what does that do to the normal people's incentive and profit motive, to wake up raring to go and kick-ass and create?

and within that we've institutionalised a system of cadre support that is beholden to one's portion at birth, so that checks and balances - from top to bottom - become unnecessary, and even frowned upon if visited.

the bare facts

we have one of the world's largest public sectors that is bleeding us dry and not as effective as it should be given the money we pour in it. why?

the country's SME sector is contributing a fraction of the GDP far from what is required as a Developed Country and the country's education system - from the so-called elite universities to schools - is flat on its face, and blaming everyone else but itself. why?

application forms for scholarships that are meant for every race are handed out by Malay teachers to only Malay students, in front of everyone in the class. what does that do to the spirit inside that child?..

spend just a short time in real Malaysia and you learn very quickly that the name of the game here is to fleece as much money from the people as quick as you can, and who'll never know better because ALL information is classified.

even the so-called incubators for higher technology don't have people qualified or knowledgable enough to recognise and evaluate the proposals - which is how for example you have three young men with a guitar getting RM50,000 with a 2 page bullshit write-up - instantly. how do we know this? because they approached us for ideas for the project after they got the money! LOL

there is no room for Directing your Self, so you end up with a spiral of incompetence and denials that inevitably kill innovation and motivation, and the country's pool of talent either goes abroad - which has grown 100 times larger than most in the last 40 years - or dies a crappy life in the country.

which brings me to a second clip, which smacks you right in the face

how much do we actually know about the young generation - 65% of our population is under the age of 25 - and how exactly does the Govt's policy for them fit their reality? what's been the main drivers of our growth and whom is it geared for - the real beneficiaries or our leaders to make them feel good.

i don't agree with the Cold/Harsh Environment theory being responsible for the West being technologically ahead, but in another life as an activist i made this point before that maybe, its because they've cut all their trees and have very few left - and see the trees' life and deaths in a four season environment - that they appreciate what we have here in Malaysia, hence their activism in "other people's country". (which then of course pisses us off royally ;)

but on the other hand we who ARE surrounded by green and rain and gorgeous white beaches every day, never really see and appreciate the cycles of life and death on a massive scale such as in winter as they do, so we do tend to take all things environmental for granted.. however.. is that a reason for our indifference to all things economic?

Singapore's just a mile south of us and closer to the Equator than we are. so why are they so far above us?

maybe it's because they knew they could be crushed like a bug if they didn't buck up, so they did. it gave them a focus, and overtook her neighbours while we all thought we could wait around for a few more minutes for our share of the cheeseburger - not even the cheese, mind you, the cheeseburger.. again. that disconnect between profit motive and purpose.

* * *

put the 2 clips together and we've managed to cream the best of our talent into jelly, squander most of our country's wealth on a little road on the Australian Gold Coast the locals call "the Malay Street" (because its full of mansions owned by Malaysian politicians) and at this time, our future is being planned by people who can only grasp the past and horrified by the damage they see they've done today, so try to make it right for tomorrow. but they really have no idea of how.

because when we DO put some young turks in charge e.g. in Pos Malaysia, they couldn't do it because one, they were still beholden to the people who put them there and two, they believed their own hype. result? that's the RM532 million loss for protecting the private company Transmile, isn't it? half a BILLION Ringgit to prop up a private company.. who's protecting who's best interests here?..

i mean, really. with all due respect, our Finance Minister for the last 7 years was the central bank's head of forex trading when it lost up to RM30 BILLION in 1993. and the list keeps going on.

no one in the Govt has any idea how the young generation works - much less thinks. i've had the priviledge of speaking with some of the highest levels of Govt, and working with the cream of the youngest now. and the fact is the generation gap is now a chasm, and one is trying to plan for the other without asking some real young turks e.g. Colin Wong who actually know what they're doing and balance it with the real world. won't happen in a million years. and we're broke in 10.

the sad reality

somewhere between the venerable D.R. Seenivasagam successfully forcing down Education Minister Abdul Rahman Talib in 1965 for corruption, when once our courts were the balance to power, to today when even the European Union's lawyers are unable to charge the Malaysian Govt with corruption re: the submarine purchase, we've disconnected the funds - the Malaysian PEOPLE's funds - and the GLCS with their original purpose to propel us forward.

we've got to disconnect the GLCs and the funds. COMPLETE accountability as if its your own funds, and not your daddy's.

in the Bumiputra Finance debacle in Hong Kong in 1982 we lost RM2 billion.* it was the largest financial sector failure in the world at that time. imagine that: tiny little Malaysia. could afford to lose RM2 BILLION in the international scene, and like in the movies even the internal auditor sent to HK to investigate was found murdered in a plantation. Bank Bumi would need to be saved a few more times for several billion Ringgit more, until the Deputy Prime Minister's brother was told to absorb it under his Bank in 1999.

25 years later in 2007 another GLC lost RM600 million in a project in an Arab country, because they had neglected the fact that the Arab locals don't do menial labour, so "after we won the contract, we had to build a whole new worker complex and bring in labour from Asia, pay their visas, medical checks, insurance out of pocket."

as the source puts it, it was a disaster. some would call it sheer incompetence. i prefer treason.

i know of at least a dozen instances where Malaysian companies have been shot down - huge successes with Japanese, Middle East and European clients, but turned down by our GLCs because "they're local".

i know a half dozen more tech-preneurs who've gone to Sydney and San Francisco - one's even a biggie at Google - and living the happy life there with their family, content because their children don't have to put up with institutionalised bigotry.

so the problem now is, figure how to keep standing on one foot while the other heals, otherwise you're never gonna walk much less run.

if we're gonna do something with the people, we gotta do something about those who handle the people's money too, and find a way to merge the old school with the real school, who'll inherit this mess from them anyway, right? because otherwise, it's really just hot air.

isn't it?

... and the wisdom to tell the difference

2010-05-29T02:24:00.000-07:00

what a brouhaha this fellow Samy Vellu is making isn't it?

6 months ago it was the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) putting their house in order all over the news (which embers, by the way, is still burning), and now some Indian community leaders have decided to finally put a very public end to the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) leader's tenure, and his policy of automatic dismissal for anyone who questions him or speaks their mind about his style of leadership.

and as Malaysians are aware the concept of face is taken to the extremes by many Malay and Indian-based parties, so even the concept of a Vote of No-Confidence, which might embarrass an elder leader, is a notion dismissed. so Samy continues to miss the point.

so what do you finally get for sacking dozens of his own comrade for the last 3 decades? your very own "Gerakan Anti-Samy" (GAS, or Anti-Samy Movement) dedicated to the beloved dictator-at-heart, headed by his fired opponents. you know you 're a star when they know you by your first name. :)

Samy's reply to all this, when fired at from all quarters, was it was his "30 years of experience in political strategising at the helm of MIC that tempered my decision".

now when you hear a colleague, elder or friend one day saying something like that, you know its the last refuge of a man who can't (or is too lazy to) back it up with anything else.

the Chinese have a retort, which goes something like "30 years doing different things, or 30 years doing the same thing over and over?"

running out of options

its a problem when Samy makes himself like a Bollywood Godfather from a pretty bad movie. it only works as long as you got the big stick.

even when he dares other leaders to step down with him he loses, they accept his challenge, even moving up the resignation date from next year to next week instead.

his own son has declared that he's only in the party as long as his daddy's there, allegedly because staying on will invite accusations of cronyism; more realistically, because he'll be so violently hated for his high-handedness in the past and his daddy won't be there to protect him anymore.

so what now, for the erstwhile Don?

* * *

samy took over the party in 1979 and turned 74 this year; while his brash debonair attitude served him well in his days fresh as a TV news reader who everybody thought knew everything about the world and loved him, it's another thing altogether when we see a man who seems to have lost his grip on reality, and surrounded by today's more aware, better able and more knowledgeable masses.

scandals that could have been swept under in the old days, longstanding and growing list charges of incompetence in his Ministry (not just national highways cracking after just a year or even newly-built schools, but the Parliament ceiling falling down!) and rumours at times, of literally assassinating opponents, today finds its way around a much more mobile and open society.

that he led his party to a sound trashing in the last election - they went from getting 80% of the votes to less than 10% four years later - is one thing. that he replied "over my dead body" when asked what were the chances of his opponent beating him, then losing by a margin of 2,000 out of 33,000 voters (more significant, this was a seat he had won by 8,000 - 10,000 seats for the last 30 years) is telling.

suddenly he recognises his "old friends" who he hadn't cared for in years and is going around shaking everybody's hands (or trying to shake everybody's hands) when he walks into a building nowadays - its embarrassing. that he's a multi-millionaire (perhaps even billionaire) but can't even get proper hair plugs is another..

samy: hey there pretty lady, wanna feel my plugs? they're real! go on, go on, touch them, touch them, come on! pretty lady: errr...

the question here is, why is it of all the parties we see in Malaysia today, only the Chinese MCA (not even the DAP mind you, because Lim Kit Siang and Karpal are still there long after their nemesis Mahathir's gone) have shown the cojones to try practice a more democratic system of leadership.

why?

cccccc cccc Ong: eh, Samy, you still here ahh?..
cccc cccccc Samy: anne', i will be here until my kambings come home, and den some more!
ccccc ccccc Chua: errr..

the fear of being a nobody

maybe its a much simpler thing: maybe like Sir Alex Ferguson, he just doesn't see himself (in Sir Alex's own words) "what am i going to do, retire and spend the whole day looking at the missus?"

even when former Prime Minister Mahathir - that stalwart who served as PM for 22 years - called for MIC members to vote for Samy's opponent, he wouldn't take the hint.

his former allies and right-hand men are getting tired of seeing him, and like a drunken uncle at the family Christmas party who insists his jokes are funny and doesn't wanna hear anything about it, the party's getting old rapidly with him.

he reminds me of the Romanian TV host last year who was hosting a quiz on live TV, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting some more for phone calls from viewers but no one called.

after a few minutes she threw a tantrum and scolded the viewers for not calling, and threw down the phone and stamped on it before walking out the stage.

she of course lost her job (i mean, what show's she gonna host next, right?) and the TV station got fined by the Govt for being rude, but really, is it going to have to come to that for Samy to leave?..

maybe i shouldn't be commenting on this because i'm ADHD anyway and never stayed anywhere long enough to get bored. ahhh.. maybe that's what they should do - vote only ADHD leaders in and then every Tom, Dick and Hairy will claim they're ADHD, and we won't get stigmatised by society.

but i hope that if, maybe one day i find myself somewhere when it's my turn to step down and i don't, that i'll have my trusted old friends and family to smack me up the head really hard and tell me what an idiot i'm making of myself.

either that or Richard, when i start foaming at the mouth just take me out back and shoot the old goat mate.

one to watch

2010-05-28T15:06:00.000-07:00

has any one of you seen the movie "Unthinkable" yet? i can't seem to find any details of release in the US, and the only date so far is set for the Netherlands in June 2010.

watch it, man.. i know you might say "oh, its Samuel L. Jackson" or "aw man, another one about Islam and those 'crazy' terrorists in America?!" so you'll give it a pass? but don't. seriously don't.

the movie starts off so benign, but will end up kicking your ass. the whole movie's actually a reflection of your own character, and how you would actually see things or want to feel.

the really cool thing is, you realise that in the end there's really no such thing as the hero and bad guys.. :) so give it a go - and when you do, watch it in one sitting, ok? force yourself to keep watching, because the acting is just incredible. g'night everyone. ;)

p/s: it will NEVER make it to Malaysian theatres, so find it on DVD. and definitely not one for the kids.

a rose by any other name

2010-05-27T23:45:00.000-07:00

by now every Malaysian will have had the bejeezus scared out of them by reading the headlines: Malaysia might be bankrupt by 2019 and will be everyone's talking for the weekend.

in a public forum in Kuala Lumpur the Minister affirmed that unless measures were taken now, Malaysia could very well go the way of Greece in less than 9 years.

“You may be angry today. You and I do not like this. Nobody will be dancing on the streets to celebrate this, but we must do it for our future generation. If we vote not to do this (cut subsidies), our children in later years will condemn us for not taking the right decision,” said the Minister Idris Jala.

he also called the move to cut subsidies as “the most unpopular decision the Government has made since Independence”.

* * *

kudos to Idris who takes the Malaysian Govt back to our glory years when we had strong ministers who did their homework and made decisions based on fact, and had the cojones to announce it personally to everyone himself. GREAT idea to use the current EU crisis to bring everyone into focus.

and grateful i am that he places his priorities right: we are doing it for our children and no one else.

i actually wrote about this horror scene 2 years ago (read it here) when then Prime Minister Pak Lah proposed allowing the people to decrease their EPF contributions to offset higher living costs, so let's get straight to brass balls, ya?

he's done his homework so i won't touch on the subsidies. i'd recommend tho, mending some larger issues as well so the cuts can have a larger ripple effect, and not just be a band-aid that will drop off in 10 years' time.

time to put the house back in order

i've said this before but it bears saying again - every country's biggest burden is its social security and the pension scheme, because it promises money it doesn't have and taxes its children in perpetuity, PLUS inflation and forgone interest. we don't have social security so your biggest hurdle will be CUEPACS.

so spend 12 months coming up with a comprehensive blueprint to bring the pubic sector into the 21st century - complete with opinions from international companies such as PWC and Ernst & Young - and announce full implementation in 3 years. why?

i'll hazard a guess and say its going to recommend a) shave 20% off all manpower, b) revamp the structure into flatter, less bureaucratic regimes and c) harmonise all Information & Communication Technology (ICT) ala' Singapore, this is why you need to have a comprehensive, apolitical, internationally accredited study up and ready to rumble.

if you weed out the deadbeats before they qualify for a full pension and the new ones come into an efficient, fully integrated, automated system, think of how much we'll save. the banking sector did it in 2 years; international banks e.g. HSBC and Citi took just 12 months.

if you don't have a negotiator, gimme a call. i'll handle it.*

harmonise the schools, revamp the Universities and mandate a Pass in English

because Malaysia will never get near the developed with high-income earning status (read: more quality tax) without a solid education. and a good start is surprisingly easy. don't believe me? do this first:

1. abolish "Matriculation" and make STPM the standard entry exam to ALL universities, so potential undergraduates can either take STPM, or the A-Levels if they can afford it - that's their money.

make it effective in 2 years so the current batches can flow through the system, then full implementation. universities will have more space and money for their undergrads, all schools have to do is extend their teaching years.

not enough space in schools? don't worry, because not everyone who passes SPM can get a place in STPM; only the top 30% can get into the level, and even then, they need this:

2. a Mandatory Credit in English (C and above) in SPM, without which you can't take the STPM. make this a binding, non-negotiable change to be affected in 3 years. why? because like it or not Malay just doesn't cut it in higher education anymore - we simply don't have the textbooks, the research body, even the terminologies now are taken from English - why don't we just do it in English in the first place?!

did you read the article written by Tan Sri Hasmy Agam last Tuesday, which revealed an "open" secret - that even Malaysia's DIPLOMATS OVERSEAS can't speak English properly and are a disgrace to the country. besides wondering how the heck they got appointed in the first place, shouldn't we get over this misplaced "pride" already?

even in Brussels where I am now, and the people are proudly Francophone and Flemish, PhD students insist on using English because they admit there are just not enough French books and research at this level to perform otherwise!

so let's cut the bull - i'm not suggesting teaching everything in English. just make the current subject a compulsory Pass if you want to go to uni - it'll kick the kids' butts in gear, and provide a steady platform for providing universities students who will already be proficient in English.

and Idris Jala is the PERFECT person to do this. why? because he's a Kelabit from one of the most isolated villages in Sarawak, and growing up he was really one of those who had to hike through miles of jungle just to get to school, and didn't even have a pair of shoes until he was older. so all those clowns who will complain they are at a disadvantage, it's insensitive to rural community and an insult to the Malays etc. , cut it. zzzzip it!

we've accepted mediocrity for too long, and its the children who have suffered. from building them up to what they are not, and then seeing them crash and burn in the real world and go through all that anger and disillusionment. then spend more money trying to build them back up again.

if we can institutionalise and focus the curriculum into a solid, cohesive provider to the universities before they get there, the entire labour market as a whole will benefit, bringing Malaysia's labour force into the 21st century. oh, and

3. officially make the STPM a Diploma level qualification, so they can compete out there if they don't get into Universities. what, you thought everyone taking the STPM was gonna make it to the Unis? its not matriculation.

that is what makes it so competitive and will push the standards higher, meaning don't dilute the STPM until 30% can score straight As. the point is to identify the best, not give the mediocre a pat on the back and a misplaced feeling good about themselves. we've been doing this for 3 decades and look where it got us?

4. all University lecturers now have to publish or perish.

no more satisfying publication requirements by writing papers for each others' conferences. every Associate Professor upwards has to publish at least one original article in an ISSN Journal every 2 years in addition to their teaching and research activities, and make it a target for all public universities target a Top 100 ranking in Asia by 2015. or face a 20% cut in budget allocation.

those that make it to the Top 50 will get a 20% increase in annual budget, and public university graduates who become teachers will receive an additional monthly stipend of RM500 to make it attractive for mid-range graduates to consider teaching - bringing up the overall standards and providing additional manpower for the expanded STPM.

that extra RM500 will be worth every sen if we can ensure it goes to improving the overall quality of the teaching force with it. and hopefully force other teachers to up their game as well, creating a longer-term winning solution.

and how do we ensure perfect QC within the education industry?

5. GUARANTEE THAT ALL MALAYSIAN MINISTERS' CHILDREN ALSO ATTEND AND GRADUATE FROM MALAYSIAN SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES, FROM START TO FINISH, with no special treatment. and no overseas stints except for specialist or post-graduate programs, where you need the interaction and expertise.

otherwise this whole line about "for our children" will be exactly that: a line, and that's not good enough. for the first time, "vested interest" will take on a positive tome..

bullet points

announce the total repeal of taxes on imported cars in 3 years, while allowing fuel prices to float, and all toll subsidies to decrease by 20% per annum until full repeal in 5 years.

with toll rates at market rates operators will not be able to inflate their costs to the govt either - cutting several hundred million in subsidies right there - and forced to better manage costs in future. it will take a couple of years but commercial and residential developments along these arteries will coalesce along these demands, forcing better planning as well, with public transport linkages a premium.

and if PLUS and company make too much noise set the Auditor & Attorney Generals loose on their bank syndication documents from 1990s. that'll shut them up.

how much does the Govt lose in revenue from the imports? not relevant, because the money will now be in consumer's pockets to offset the rise in cost of goods how they like - sometimes the only way for kids to learn is to let them have the wheel - and the flak off Putrajaya.

Proton will have to buck up or ship out (how many billions do we spend propping up that klunk every year? again - enough of the misplaced "pride" already), and there will be less pollution because people can afford cars with better emissions.

further revenue requirements will require a higher personal income tax proposed in the annual budget, enabling a straight Q&A from the Rakyat of where the money will go and for what purpose, rather than the "invisible" revenue stream that goes directly to the coffers now. way to win the people and flesh out matching revenue and costing practices eh? ;)..

stop all scholarships by individual Govt bodies like MARA, JPA etc. and centralise all disbursements into one place, making it accountable, traceable and "sueable" for dereliction of duty or incompetence. and create an SPV to take all the outstanding Non-Performing Study Loans to recover and rehabilitate all accounts in 2 years. sue their asses and seize their passports - that'll wake them up.

oh, and follow up from my earlier article - you're right, Alan, linking it to the Income Tax might be too ma fan. so let's link all road issue summons including by the Police, municipal councils etc direct to the JPJ instead, who can then not renew your Road Tax if you don't pay ALL your summons, regardless of who issued them.

summons will be tied to Road Tax details too so if you drive a bigger car, you get a bigger fine - takes care of all the High & Mightys who laugh at the RM100 summons - can't afford the bill? don't break the law!

NEVER underestimate the revenue from miscreants! ;) and if they still don't pay after 2 years just revoke their licenses until they do PLUS a lump-sum non-negotiable penalty of maybe 5 times the initial amount for all the trouble. all you need is a firm hand over a period of time, and suddenly you'll find a lot more efficient collection system, and a lot better behaviours on the road, too.

and for goodness sakes let's get our policemen the portable, automatic summons issuing machine that all municipal councils use! faster, less paperwork and it'll cut all the accusations of leakage. no money? well, stop buying all those Mitsubishi Evos!! :)

i've got a dozen other things in me head from commercialising local R&D to cutting complimentary the alcohol allocation to royal families but i'd say we covered a fair bit, don't you? ;) helluva lot of changes, but that's the beauty of a crisis - it crystalises priorities and you can suddenly pass a lot of things you'd have had trouble with in the past.

just don't abuse that public trust and make sure the things you do will actually help build, and not burrow.

speaking of which

and this is where i put my money where my mouth is..

what happens if Idris reads this and says "put up or shut up", then i'll call him on that - i'll even take a pay cut - but he's got to give me the authority to do what i have to do, or it won't work - 100% authority for 100% accountability, mate. nandayo!!

enough of this grumpy shit - it's the weekend people!! from one of the best albums in the late '90s... have a good weekend everyone.. :)

stressed out

2010-05-27T12:40:00.001-07:00

need to grab some air..

*sigh*...

No Greater Joy

2010-05-27T06:47:00.000-07:00

what the...

from Paradise Post, California:

Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz face one count of murder, one count of torture and one count of child abuse.

The torture count alleges that the parents beat their 11-year-old adopted daughter so severely she ended up in the hospital with kidney failure. The child abuse charge is for bruising authorities reportedly found on the couple's 10-year-old biological son.
The Schatzes are parents to six biological children and three they adopted from Liberia about three years ago. Seven-year-old adopted daughter Lydia died of blunt force trauma in February. According to authorities, she was beaten for several hours with a quarter-inch plumbing supply line as her parents took turns holding her down and using the instrument.
The blows reportedly cause Rhabdomyolysis, which is a breakdown of muscle tissue which fatally damaged her vital organs. The 11-year-old was allegedly beaten in a similar manner the previous night.

According to Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey, the parents appeared to be following the methods of Michael and Debi Pearl, founders of a controversial fundamentalist religious group, No Greater Joy Ministries.

and what did the kid do to deserve this hell?

According to local authorities, Lydia's "biblical chastisement" leading to her death may have been for mispronouncing a word during a home-school reading lesson.

here's the official No Greater Joy link.

Michael and Debi Pearl, who founded the Ministry, also wrote a book called, "To Train Up a Child." in it, they "encourage parents to use a quarter-inch plumbing supply line (or other items like rulers, paddles or tree branches) as a "rod" to "train up" their children. Though they tell parents not to injure their children, they also encourage constant "switching" or "licks" for not only disobedience but also for things like spilling nuts or being foolish."

"Additional "licks" are recommended when the child cries out."

sad to say but reading this i couldn't help while feeling sad for the little ones, appreciate that the article points out the religious (if skewed) aspect of this, because i was really getting tired of reading the accounts of "Muslims" and "Hindus" beating their daughters or burning themselves etc. it's got nothing to do with religion dood. when you're messed up you're messed up, whether you're an atheist or otherwise.

it's really time we either decide to punish people for who they are and shut up about religion already, or make it a standard procedure to highlight their beliefs. and would it feel better if these people didn't believe in a God? that's what you call Catch-22. see the hole we've dug ourselves in, by playing the religion card?..

i'm sure the Churches really appreciate the PR. cos, you know. all Christians are the same. and Americans too. right??

of bankruptcy psychology, inadequate social planning and pure mob mentality

2010-05-27T02:02:00.000-07:00

i happened to have a very lively and pleasant dinner with a guy called Dr. Vanhaeverbeke last week, who happened to be the ex-secgen of a small body called TESPA in Brussels, and we were talking about the psychological impacts of the debt crisis when he pointed out the unique way the Americans handled bankruptcy actually puts them more prone to being a bankrupt, for the in the end rather caustic, but pragmatic way Chapter 11 allows them to move on.

i found this interesting because from a personal standpoint, i had faced the threat of bankruptcy - for various reasons from family loyalty to pure idiocy - twice in my life, and was familiar with the strains and stresses from the (implied) social stigma, the impending inability to travel thus work for a living where the work might be and of course the legal repercussions of being blacklisted on how you can or can't build your family and life after. all these things: Wushh!.. down the drain with Chapter 11, so you can pick yourself up and start anew, chase that American Dream. that would, in effect, really make a difference in how a person handles the vagaries of life, doesn't it?..

extend that to those governing larger entities like cities and of course countries, the mentality that goes into negotiating long term conditions and the caveats required and you suddenly realise the gravity of the situation, and why the Americans until today, 3 years later, still don't get it about the hole they're in and what they're gonna need to get out of it.

consider this headline today from the NBC: Miami Budget Begging For Bankruptcy:

The city of Miami is in such financial dire straits that commissioner Marc Sarnoff is using the "B" word, bankruptcy. "We are not the only city, municipality to be going through this. It looks like Los Angeles sometime next week or the week after will be going bankrupt."

"It looks like there will be 30 more cities following suit." Increases in public worker salaries is one of the main reasons why the budget is so tight. The average salary for a Miami city employee is $76,000. The average salary for a Miami city resident is $29,000.

Employee pensions are choking the budget too. In 2000, pension payouts cost taxpayers $16 million. In 2009 that number spiked up to $70 million. Should the city go into bankruptcy, the commissioners and their politics would no longer be in charge of city finances, the judge would be.

[Sarnoff] "You no longer have 5 people making political solutions. You now have one person who is looking after the best interest of the taxpayer of the city of Miami, without any politics getting into his or her way." The Judge could order union contracts be renegotiated.

* * *

i wrote to the New Europe last week about how ironically the unions, who are supposed to be the protector of the common people by their mass, will be the downfall of them. the US enshrined this in the '60s when John F. Kennedy pushed the Bill through for the Irish and Italian patrons that won him the election, and the Socialists have been on this case in Europe since the 1870 parties of Tsarist Russia.

the irony of course is where organised labour, who is supposed to protect the common man against the vagaries of the capitalist market, ends up pulling them over the edge when the market collapses, by refusing to negotiate a freeze, much less a wage cut that would help everyone (which is what many in the public sector are there for in the first place).
but reez, why should they have to pay for what others did wrong? well, it's like fighting for the last oar on the Titanic when all the lifeboats are gone, and you're sinking anyway. coincidentally i also wrote about the unions in the previous post; in the case of Miami, they get not only full pension and benefits, but 150% more in salary than the average private sector worker! what's wrong with this picture?..

abuse is also rife throughout the unionised world. in New York, for example, retiring employees rack up overtime for the last 6 months before they leave, so when pensions are calculated they take into account your salary + the average OT for the last 6 months and voila! you've got a pension that's sometimes 3 TIMES your last drawn salary!

its complicit throughout the ranks because everyone will want to do the same when its their turn, so everyone turns a blind eye, which is why now they have 1,000 retirees alone drawing USD350 million a year in pensions - not to mention the medical benefits - with almost a third of these retirees under the age of 55.

in essence while the theory of mass representation is great (hey, i've been a union member myself!), in practice you're basically legalising a mob. and in mob thinking, there is no logic.

the basics of crisis negotiation

i'm not an expert or anything, but hear me out.

when i was in a bank that was getting the s**t thrown at it in '97, i was transferred to a dept. that was going to write off RM109 million in the closing financial year, and said nothing could be done about it.

i asked why not, and they said its the law. have you spoken to these people? we've tried. have you offered to restructure these loans? we have no more time. dood, when you're going to lose RM109 MILLION? you MAKE time.

so i gathered all my staff, who were absolutely shattered because they had all heard about it and knew when results were made official, they would be the first to lose their jobs. already there were rumblings of lawsuits taken out. i said guys, we got a shit deal and we're stuck with ourselves. either you can help me out and make a fight of this or we can lie down and lose our jobs. whose with me? and surprise surprise, EVERYONE was. from the 55 year old tea-lady to the fresh-faced 18 year old school leaver.

so we hunkered down, worked 7 DAYS A WEEK, up to 15 hours a day and by the end of the 4 months, we had improved recovery from a measly seventeen percent to SIXTYFOUR percent, and saved about RM90 million. the key? wasn't a stroke of genius or anything.

the simple fact is

when it's the good times, it seems like it'll never end. same thing when you're in the street, cold and miserable: you wonder how you'll get through today, and forget that there WILL be a tomorrow.

Irony.

not many Oxford or London grads who manned these desks knows how it feels to sleep under a bridge. the bank had panicked and wanted to recover their money now, and forgotten that they, and these customers, would be there when the good times were back. and the customers would remember who was there for whom.

so i created a call centre the first of its kind in Malaysia at the time, manned it with all my eldest staff (above 45) who were kindly, gentle voiced and compassionate in their words, and got them to call these customers.

when they called them, my instructions were simple: keep your tone conciliatory, because one or more in this family will have lost their jobs, and they're struggling to get food on the table. last thing they want is get a call from a bank asking for their money.

talk to them as friends, understand their situation and write that down in their files so the next person who calls them (i rotated the files so the customer wouldn't get too close to my kind-hearted staff and try emotional blackmail - you've got to remain objective) can understand the situation right away and pick up where you left off.

get them to bank in just 2 weeks out of the 3 month arrears it will keep their necks above water (i'd helped build the system, so i also knew how to help them), and if all comes to hell and they still can't make that, get them to see me the next day. i PERSONALLY GUARANTEED my staff that if they told a customer i'd see them, then i'd see them by hook or by crook. i never let them down, and they showed they never let me down, either.

and when the customers came - and this is crucial - if they wanted to cry beg or plead i NEVER let them, because a man's/ person's pride is always the last that's left of them. i immediately tell them i'm sorry for your problems. i know its been hard, so here's what i'm gonna do: tell me how much you can afford to pay, for the next 6 months.

when they did - even if it was not 50% of their monthly - i'd tell them ok. you'll have to pay the bank this much every month for the next 2 years, after which things will be hopefully better, and then we're going to revert to your previous payment for another year. after that we'll see where we are and renegotiate your loan, and include all the previous months you haven't been able to pay ok? you'll still have to pay it, but later when things settle down. is that ok?

some would hee and haw and a few would whinge but most jumped at it, and in the end everyone saw it for what it was - a lifeline, and they took it. can you do that? they'd ask. i'd took out an A4 paper right away, wrote everything down, signed and stamped my name to the print and get my crew to immediately load it on the system right in front of them.

the LOOK on their faces when they found out i had solved it for them was priceless. i would always remind them that they COULD NOT renege on this last deal because that was it, i couldn't do any more, but they would always be beaming and shaking my hand and sometimes crying they'd just nod and i wondered if they could actually hear me. well, they did.

despite the crisis dragging on for another 2 years default on those restructured loans were less than 2%, and the crew all got to keep their jobs. felt pretty good i gotta tell ya.

the morale of the story? simple. as Jerry once told me, "This too, shall pass". everyone needs to chill out, sit back at the table, and if you need to give up some things give it up. because then you got leverage to negotiate something better when the good times come back. and everyone's the better for it.

now how can you do that when you got mob mentality? on all sides?

Bodoh buat cara bodoh, miskin buat cara miskin

2010-05-26T03:25:00.000-07:00

so i got a text this morning asking "if PEMANDU (the agency leading the structural change in the country) plans to reduce subsidies, when do you think they should do it? a) immediately, b) in 1 year, or c) in 5 years", or something like that. i forget. it was 5a.m., i was still in Lalaland.. :) did you get one, too?

anyway let's start by saying of all the Ministers in the current Cabinet, it is Idris Jala - who is leading PEMANDU - and Amirsham whom i respect the most; maybe it's because they're not politicians, but were appointed from the private sector. maybe it's because they're both no-shitters who either really know their stuff, or how to get the job done without a care if you're black, white or navy blue.

i'm also aware of the man's real background and i have nothing but respect for the man, maybe that's why i'm writing this. it's not exhaustive, it's not all on his turf (but some of it is in Amirsham's) but hey - what's to lose, right? and i'll explain everything as we go - we have royalty, rich kids, eco-terrorists and politicians, what's not to love ;) - so here goes.

the key here is if you're going to tell a group member they're going to get pain, you better make sure they know that everyone in the group is going to share the pain, or there is going to be justifiable resistance. (to be clear: non-justifiable resistance is the kind you want so you can turn around and dare them to prove you wrong, win public debates and elections. justifiable resistance is what gets you flat on your back - of the non-erotic persuasion.)

announce the measures as a series of measures, and announce them all at the same time.

a) the students

all recipients of public sector study loans who have finished their studies and have still not commenced repayment are to begin repayments within 6 months, or face legal action as with any other adult of eligible age undertaking a debt.

why study loans? because there is over RM3 BILLION in these loans that is owed to Govt agencies, over the last 20 years. if you're going to tell the common people they're going to have to endure pain to give the Govt. money to run the country then you've got to tell them that ungrateful/irresponsible recipients of their own tax Ringgit before are going to be held accountable too.

why 6 months? because that's the point where legal action against regular every day loans are initiated. why should we go after the hardworking entrepreneurs, honest hard-working men and women who happen to be in hard times, but not the supposedly smarter ones who should know better?

if you ask: shouldn't we go easy on these students because they're just starting work, have families etc.? no: because they already have interest free loans, that came with clear legal obligations and crucially, many of these loans are already more than 5 years behind the original repayment schedule.

more of these, please.

by not repaying these loans, it also means there is no money to send today's brilliant kids off to get a decent education as well, so they're depriving the country of future generations of educated and constructive manpower. if that's not a sin against the country then what is?

we didn't give them loans to buy a house and set up families - a lot of other young people have families and are just starting out, too. we gave them loans to get a good education befitting their previous hard work, so they can work for their future.* so get on with it.

* and by the way, many many of these people are driving BMWs with RM5,000 sports rims and going to Disneyland for vacations. start with them.

p/s: and set up a student loan recovery call-centre to chase these loans, and clear the backlog within 2 years. why? because at RM3 billion, you can spare a few hundred thousand for the call-centre man-hours. that is a KPI.

b) the public sector

2 years ago Pak Lah announced plans to take in a further 70,000 policemen to help the country. if it had been approved, it would have made us the country with the highest number of policemen per capita in the world. now that's something to write home about ..

why this obsession with numbers? more critically, many don't realise that when you take on more public servants, you also take on the additional pensions and medical for up to 50 years after they retire, placing an even bigger burden on future generations. it is the same with the police force. so what do we do? take advantage of technology.

cap the force at where it is now, for the next 20 years, because Malaysia's growth population is not going to pop out exponentially anyway and take you by surprise. then you can plan your pension budgets, if the old(er) more experienced personnel are not going out fast enough to bring in enough young(er) more robust men, then that serves as motivation to find ways to either kick the ones in the middle into shape and eek more out of them - as any fully competitive organisation should - or kick them out and make space for new ones, who would be deprived of their lackadaisical aptitudes, too. again, KPIs.

future equipment requisitions will take into account this limited manpower against a (slow but consistently) growing population, and be forced to maximise efficiency. just as the 1998 crisis forced the banks into automation and M&As. sorry boys and girls - the country's running dry. we're all going to have to pull our socks up.

not enough clout? well there is always the Royal Commission Report that was never implemented.

last i checked a lot of Malaysians, notably the ones the political elite tends to pander to are up in arms whenever the sanctity of the royal institution is challenged. why doesn't anyone lambast the Police force for thumbing their nose at the Royal (read: the KING's) Commission?

if the Police doesn't want to listen to what his commission has to say, then shouldn't he just rescind the "Royal" status he gave them as in, the "Royal" Malaysian Police, remember? does the current PM have the political will to assert this 3 years late? like i said, you might not like my questions, don't blame me for asking. i'm just following your rules.

on the same note: tell CUEPACS to get its priorities right: you can't argue for the public sector to get pensions, AND comparable pay with the public sector. sorry.

you get a pension and free medical for the rest of your life, including your family. the trade-off is monthly salary when you're in the market. why? because the private sector needs to invest for their retirement, and pay for their own medical.

no fair? that's the rules.

if the Govt. sets this out clearly maybe we WILL see more people either stay to keep their pensions - and risk being kicked out if they don't perform because hey, the Govt's not a free-loading vehicle - or take their chances in the private sector, and contribute to the country's wealth generating. again, cap the size and set the KPIs. let Nature take its course.

c) the private sector

LOWER the corporate tax to 10% next year, and 5% by 2015. what this does is give an immediate injection to the sector but more critically, give our international image a massive jolt. we can still get that extra 5% for the next 4 years and the goodwill generated means that quite a few will not even wait for 2015 to come in, they'll come in now and start early.

yes that will mean a short-run loss in Govt. revenue. what do we do?

i) centralise all departments and change the laws to impose fines according to income or market e.g. if you are caught speeding, then the fine goes to the Income Tax department, who then imposes an additional 10% on your tax-payable amount for every fine. too much? not really.

if you make about RM100,000 a year your tax is going to be about, what, RM8,000? so a mid-level executive earning roughly RM8,000 a year is going to get fined RM800 for every speeding ticket. that's REALLY going to hit his pocket that he's not gonna do it anymore, but not going to affect his livelihood to the extent that he can't eat.

it also avoids any "detours" en route to paying your fine, the Govt actually gets a lot more money coming in from consistent collection and doesn't have to change the laws to keep making it relevant/effective as years go by. and the bigger your car, the higher your summons.

don't pay your fines? well since it goes through the Income Tax dept, there goes your passport and "Hellooo, court action!!". too hard to implement? not with technology* , bubba.

* it will also force all Govt departments to harmonise all IT protocols and making for a more efficient solution. how much does it cost the Govt to "re-modernise" every 5 years? approximately RM245 million.

ii) for companies caught polluting rivers, land etc., impose the TOTAL COST OF COMPLETE CLEAN -UP and restitution to all those affected, and on top of it 50% of their last 3 years' profit (which is basically ill-gotten/doesn't include actual cost of proper dumping) and a compulsory 10 years minimum hard-labour if they can't pay all this or were making a loss. why? because no director wants to do hard-labour.

harsh? yup. but guess what? no. more. dumping... except the Big Boys. which will make a helluva headline.

iii) enough with the Class B and Class F contractors already. 40 years and what do we do? invest in India and the Arab countries. why? because let's face it: we can't cut it in the OECD countries. due diligence and standards are also much lower there and political patronage makes it happen. so how long do we keep subsidising them for shoddy jobs in the country, and then pay them more to repair their own shoddy job 2 years later?

institute automatic 20 year warranty against build-defects for any projects above RM100 million TOTAL (so they can't split it up into packets and slip under the radar). 10 years for projects more than RM50 million and a suspension of any new Govt. contract for 3 years should these occur. harsh? welcome to the real world of no-free rides.

ad-infinitum
of course there's a lot more we could do: designate ALL study aid as loans, and only those who get First Class degrees will get it converted to scholarships; the 2:1s get 50% retained as loans and the rest full repayment expected in 15 years. hard? of course! but they're supposed to be the cream of the crop who can achieve this, and we're supposed to be giving them incentive to work harder and fulfill their potential - not go overseas and party and get pissed on public money every time the cheque comes in.

why are we punishing say the Forestry Dept staff if the Auditor General finds that RM200 million hasn't been collected last year, instead of a) asking WHY were there so many infringements that RM200 million worth in fines were actually issued - opening up more effective structures of manpower planning and deployment - and SUING their loggerasses for all their worth - plus interest!

create a bio-diversity incubator in the heart of Pahang or Sarawak's jungles in a 50:50 tax-free for 20 years JV with the three global pharmaceutical companies who submit the most attractive proposal, and by attractive i mean for the country's future. perte d'argent, no?

we can talk til the cows come home but the bottom line, the Govt has to be run as a company. the Govt cannot be beholden to public servants. revenue has to equal or exceed expenses where possible,and all investment MUST be geared to the maximum multiplier for future returns. don't sound convinced?

of course there will be a lot of people suffering in the short run - and that's why the absolute poor have to be helped. but when we get to advanced status, guess how much more money we'll have to implement social services?..

we have to accept competition and admit we can't compete with Singapore - that is why Iskandariah is not working. instead of going toe-to-toe with a competitor who has higher credibility and a proven track-record, be humble and re-design Iskandariah to complement Singapore as Shenzen does to Hong Kong.

like it or not, the Lion is trumping the Tigers..

blasphemy? well a full Iskandariah that contributes to your country while building our credibility is better than a practically empty shell bleeding your tax-dollars for the last 3 years. as my late grandmother used to say, "Bodoh buat cara bodoh, miskin buat cara miskin". a very generous translation being: when you're poor don't act like you're rich, when you don't know don't pretend that you do - ask."

i don't make the rules, i don't call the shots. it's time to ask ourselves who the real enemy is, and figure how to deal with it.

i find your lack of faith... disturbing.

2010-05-22T15:28:00.000-07:00

wow.. was it really 30 years ago Vader said that, and launched the best movie of the Star Wars trilogies so far?! :)

seems yesterday marked the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back from the Star Wars saga, triggering a flood of memories for so many around the world, who grew up watching this saga, and dreamt of becoming Luke Skywalker or Princess Leia... :) *

*strongly recommend you click this youtube as you read the post below. ;

John Williams did the impossible and created a music score that bettered the first and would be cool even 20 years later, as the Empire kicked everyone's ass on interstellar celluloid - from the harsh winters of Hoth to the city in the clouds, Darth Vader and his merry men took revenge for the Rebels blowing up their best toy in Star Wars, and were a step ahead of everyone every single time..

it was the scene for one of the most famous "kiss that never was"...

and Luke came agonisingly close to doing his own sister

which probably explains why she needed therapy for some time.

it was one of the last movies to use the "stop motion" technique, which, although limiting, is still more realistic than some of the stuff we see today

Luke found out who his daddy was

for the first time talking like a dyslexic reading a script became cool

check out Yoda's snuff bag. ;)

and Yoda teaches that size really doesn't matter, as Luke makes the transition from whiny self-obsessed kid to a Jedi in the making, learning how to be a Man the hard way...

Leia of course got bored and made out with her shag rag and Han's best friend. again.

just kidding. ;) and The Empire introduced a whole new range of baddies, incl that chat-show favourite, Boba Fett...

setting the stage for Episode VI; more on this later... ;)

fast forward past the Degobah system..

Luke's one-man take-down of an At-At Walker (how am i recalling all these names?!! LOL!) served as inspiration on how-to-kill-huge-unstoppable-things-killing-all-your-men in a whole bunch of movies later, incl. Starship Troopers and Legolas the Wonder Elf in LOTR

George Lucas earned so much money that by the time Return of the Jedi came, he didn't need to use old World War 2 pistols and 1950s machine guns anymore

the hand guns were German World War 2 Lugers with plastic caps

and blasters were old Sterling machine guns with their ammo clips cut in half...

and of course ended with Luke in diapers and a new hand, and Chewie and Lando searching for Han Solo in the Millennium Falcon - setting the stage for one of the sexiest rescue scenes in sci-fi history EVER

spawning a glut of metal bikinis at sci-fi expos

competitions for the Best Metal Bikinis from Sydney to San Francisco

giving happy fan boys all over the world more eye candy than ever before :)

and fulfilling all their childhood fantasies in one convenient location.

et tu, Leia?
so in the end, did it mean George Lucas finally gave in to feminists and empowered women to be both sexy yet fully capable of being a hero - no longer hanging on to their men?

errr, Nope. i guess Mr. Lucas had his own fantasies LOL!

Luke: "Sis, have you put on some w..."

Leia: "Oh, shut it and just jump, already will ya?!!"

ahh the good times... :) now if i can only get this stupid song outta my head and get back to sleep!!! speaking of which, the REAL ending to the almost kiss... :)

sweet dreams, everyone and May the Force be with you!! ... :))

he said, she said..

2010-05-21T08:04:00.000-07:00

for those who think that the clashes in Thailand are a straightforward fight between the poor Red Shirts fighting for a democratic system, with Thaksin the Force of Good behind them vs. the "evil" Abhisit and his Army, consider these three short points:

1) when 10,000 people - about 12,000 if you count the illegal Myanmar immigrants - died in Khao Lak during the 2004 tsunami (the single largest number killed in Thailand as a result of the disaster) not a single person from the Government or the rescue services was there for almost 6 months. why?

because they were ALL POOR, and had nothing to give him. and so Thaksin and cabinet were all hamming it up in Phuket and Phi-Phi, where the international TV cameras were and millions of US dollars in aid were flowing in. not a single cent of either Govt or international aid was channeled to Khao Lak, despite the fact that it had 5 times more dead than the rest of Thailand put together.

what's that they say: you can tell a person's sincerity by what he gives when he gets nothing back in return?..

DOZENS of dead bodies lay on the beach as the local mafia actually took the opportunity to seal off the beach area with barbed wire to lay claim to the land, while parents of children cried and pleaded with them to let them find their children but to no avail. where were the Police? you tell me..

when Thaksin finally came 6 months later, it was only for a quick visit, and to scoff at the poor people who said they had seen ghosts, and asked for Govt help. this is first hand knowledge.

2) when he came to power the army had already brought the southern Thailand situation under control for 2 years, through shared trust and work. he replaced the entire army detachment with the police - led by his ex-schoolmates from the police academy * - who proceeded to mess everything up again by taking the high ground against locals, treating them like dirt and flaring up the unrest again within months. again, first hand knowledge..

* which is also why the Cabinet had to send in the Army - who are not trained in civilian crowd control - against the Red Shirts, instead of the Police force, who have all the gear, training and experience. talk about a Police force who are beholden to Thaksin instead of their own people and the King. who whether you like or not is the Constitutional monarch of Thailand, so even if you don't respect him, respect the wishes of those who do - the Thai people.

3) and of the 55 land grab cases in Thailand (where the rich shove the poor out of their ancestral homes with either the mafia or court orders) in 2005, 51 were done by one single person: an old Thaksin schoolmate and a fellow Cabinet member. second hand knowledge..

at least 2,000 people were murdered in extra-judicial killings with Amnesty International suspecting heavy Police involvement, during the Thaksin era "crackdown on drugs"; and the list goes on and on...

i'm not saying that one person is more crooked than the other; it's just that as so often in your own lives, there's always two sides to a story. which is why it is so important to give the other side a chance to speak their piece.

unfortunately nowadays you often get news that's written by journos who're too lazy or chickenshit to do their work properly, or trust one source too completely - making them beholden to a go-to guy with vested interests. a cardinal No-No.

so my hats-off to Purakhanda and Christopher East, for putting this clip together and getting it out, and to My Man Hilton who puts many a man with all limbs to shame for the heads up. ironic that when Thaksin made his fortune in telco, he forgets that it can work both ways..

stay safe, everyone - God speed.

pic copyright www.andaman.org

gajah sama gajah bergaduh, pelanduk mati ditengah-tengah..

2010-05-19T06:49:00.000-07:00

roughly translated it means that when two elephants fight, the deer stuck in the middle gets killed..

it's an old Malay proverb, and i can't think of a better simile for the situation in Bangkok now. while many so-called leaders of the Red Shirts surrendered earlier today, many in the ranks dissatisfied with the stand-down have gone on a rampage, and as of 9.45pm now (GMT+8) large buildings in the city centre are being burned down including banks, shopping malls, City Hall and the Bangkok Stock Exchange.

the city is in curfew, and rumours are circulating that "Black Squads" from renegade army regiments will descend tonight.

i can't write much as i'm in the midst of something; i don't want to write much because i'm too close to the matter, but i just wanted to write and tell my Thai friends that my thoughts and prayers are with you as you go through this horror of rage and uncertainty, when reason and communal love and joy is shredded apart as if nothing was there to begin with...

i ask all my readers and friends who might read this and have spent some wonderful times and memories of Thailand too, to please spare a prayer with me. and lend them strength in spirit and in our thoughts... *sigh*... why we continue killing each other. ...

do you believe in acoustics?... :)

2010-05-18T04:11:00.000-07:00

:) the clip that started it all 3 years ago

and this one's for my girl; week 5. 9 weeks to dinner, by the Bosphorus Sea ... :)

that's it. our kids are gonna learn to play the frikkin' piano! LOL! ;)

wo hen xiang ni bao bei. wo ye ai ni. zai jian, lao po.. :)**

quick (s)wipes

2010-05-17T23:47:00.000-07:00

the new Chief Secretary , David Laws is supremely pissed off, saying outgoing Chief Secretary left him a one-sentence note on his table, saying ’Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left’.

Outgone Chief Secretary Liam Byrne confirmed he had written the letter, saying that it was a joke, and said, “I do hope David Laws’ sense of humour wasn’t another casualty of the coalition deal.”

what a stupid, tasteless joke, even if it was meant to be private. and his retort smacks of a sore loser. this after putting the country in near bankruptcy, having run up the UK's debt from GBP350 billion when they took power in 1997 to GBP870 billion today; the UK sovereign debt is now at 90% - the highest since World War 2.

Italy overtook the UK as Europe's 5th largest economy earlier this year, and the EU estimates that by year-end the UK will be in the worse state of any EU country - including the favourite punching bag-of-the-day, Greece.

in other words, growth for the last 10 years has been all about borrowing money. Nick Clegg is wondering what he signed up for.

i helped save Chrysler and they took my darn tee shirt, too!!

AP writer Martin Krutsinger reports that US taxpayers will lose USD1.6 billion from the Govt's loan to Chrysler in 2009, after the car-maker's Chapter 11 process was complete.

The Treasury Department said Monday it will lose $1.6 billion on a loan made to Chrysler in early 2009. Taxpayer losses from bailing out Chrysler and General Motors are expected to rise as high as $34 billion, congressional auditors have said.

Treasury said Monday that Chrysler repaid $1.9 billion of a $4 billion loan, which was extended before the company filed for Chapter 11. The government hopes to get another $500 million from the company that emerged from bankruptcy, Chrysler Group LLC.

It also acknowledged another $1.9 billion in potential losses from a separate loan that had been made to the company that went through bankruptcy proceedings. It indicated slim hopes of recouping much if anything from that separate $1.9 billion loan.

erm. wait a minute. 4-1.9=2.1, so how did they get 1.6? Oh! they added the 500m from the "might recover" section. hey hold on, that's a reverse proviso - is that legal? and what's with that "separate loan" that's a complete write off??

the original USD4 billion loan to Chrysler was part of a total USD85 billion package to car-makers last January, when the Bush administration was scrambling to rescue the automakers before they left office. Congress estimates it will have to write-off USD34 billion of the total package, or a loss of 40%.

well, it's definitely B.O., but it ain't no Bail Out.

pinching from the prudent

back to the UK the new Govt wants to increase Capital Gains Tax (CGT) from 18% to up to 50%, and lower the threshold from GBP10,100 to GBP2,000.

this will effectively quadruple its CGT base to more than one million families who have two homes or more, and there is now heated debate as to why the Tories didn't include this in their Election Manifesto.

duhh! you know what else has quadrupled? the US' Racial Wealth Gap

this new graph just released by The Institute on Assets and Social Policy last Monday (thanks Yves!) is striking, because you don't need any math to see it. its not even a play of ratios: African American income has gone down even as middle income Caucasian income has more than tripled. and check out the Uptown boys..

sadly, this chart doesn't include damage since the crisis started, which saw disproportionately more African Americans lose their homes than their fairer brethren.

irony in the Middle East

and speaking of getting your ass kicked, you know some blokes who've been lording it over some poor sods while Big Brother looks over?

from the Jewish newspaper Haaretz in Tel Aviv, May 18, 2010:

On the Web site of Moriah ... one can find descriptions of various projects in which the company is involved. Among them is the Museum of Tolerance: “The Simon Wiesenthal Center, the entrepreneur for the construction of the Museum of Tolerance in central Jerusalem, asked Moriah to carry out preparatory and infrastructure work for the project,” says the site.
Immediately afterward, under the heading “Objective,” it says: “Carrying out infrastructure work, removal of nuisances in the area of the project ...” What the site calls “nuisances” are in fact skeletons, bones and skulls. Hundreds of skeletons that were buried in Jerusalem’s central Muslim cemetery over a period of some 1,000 years.
A Haaretz investigation indicates that the “nuisances” were cleared away from the site swiftly and clandestinely during five grueling months of nonstop work.
Testimonies of participants who worked at the site, which were recently obtained by Haaretz, indicate that the skeletons were removed as quickly as possible to enable the start of construction on the museum. “That wasn’t archaeology, it was contract work,” claimed one of the workers.
The Ma’am Allah cemetery ‏(the name would eventually be distorted to “Mamilla” and expanded in meaning to describe the entire area‏) originated in medieval Jerusalem, at the start of the last millennium. Burial at the site continued until the early 20th century.
Muslim tradition has it that Prophet Mohammed’s companions were also buried here. Another tradition mentions the burial of 70,000 of Saladin’s soldiers in the same place. At its peak the cemetery covered an area of about 200 dunams ‏(some 50 acres‏), so that in effect today large parts of downtown Jerusalem are built over graves.

pictured here Ahnold Schwarzenegger at the ground breaking ceremony in 2004 (read the full story here). what would Da Terminator have done if he'd known it desecrated a cemetery so disrespectfully - even if it's not Christian? (Arnold's wife is Roman Catholic). while the rest of the world goes about its business, and the world's Muslims argue over cartoons, a mainstream Jewish paper based in the heart of Israel - that 'orrible of 'orrible regimes that allegedly all Muslims "hate" - fights for Muslims' loss of dignity.

and you wonder why the Palestinians feel so betrayed?

* pics copyright news wires, last pic Moshe Milner/GPO

B.S.

2010-05-17T03:31:00.000-07:00

that's my reaction as i read the headlines today: BP says "Some success removing oil" (WSJ May 17, 2010)..

the simple facts are these:

1) this is the largest oil spill since we started digging dinosaurs out of their graves, and there is absolutely no way to stop the three leaks. that's right: there are THREE leaks (no, you didn't think they'd spend millions to go out there just to drill the one, did you? ;), and efforts to plug the smallest one last week failed miserably. so what do you think are the chances for plugging up all three, ONE MILE under water?

2) even if they plug it up today, the amount of crude released is already several times larger than Exxon Valdez, which was the biggest farce til today

3) more importantly, like Iraq, Afghanistan, Greece, the sub-prime market and just about every single FUBAR we've done, the power that be are REFUSING to accept the extent of the damage being done, which breaks the First Rule of Troubleshooting: be honest about what kinda shit you're up against, or you're not gonna be able to figure out what you need to fix it.

it also means that after this is all over - which in my analysis will only be when the whole well is dried up i.e. they won't be able to fix it* - they can start defending themselves against lawsuits from Day One, and fight every legal action every step of the way, because they didn't admit the full extent of their knowledge => hence they can say they took every "reasonable" action to fight it => limit their culpability. am i being naive? let's let time be the judge of that.

read on if you want to know more.

points one, two & three

when the pipes burst they said it was bad, and 5,000 barrels per day was leaking out.

they lied: according to NASA pictures taken days after the leak, estimated more than 50 THOUSAND barrels per day was gushing out - 10 times more than they admitted - and it was spreading out of control.

BP replied there was no real way of telling how much is actually gushing - they lied again. in fact, Steven Wereley, a mechanical engineering professor at Purdue University, analysed BP's own footage of the leak using a technique called Particle Image Velocimetry - a computer programme that tracks how fast particles move and calculated up to 84 THOUSAND barrels were coming out a day.

that's 3 MILLION GALLONS of oil a day. Exxon Valdez total was just 12 million. it's been 27 days since the explosion. you do the math.

why is this important? because if you think that the thief that stole your purse is running on foot, you're gonna make a barricade a mile wide. if he's riding a motorcycle, you make it 5 miles wide, and fast.

but you need to know how fast the oil is spewing to be able to a) gauge how fast it is spreading, b) what gear you're gonna need to contain it - cos its no use getting to the 5 mile roadblock and finding out you have to stop an 18-wheeler with 2 planks of wood! - and c) what you'll really need to do to stop the leak! not rocket science, right? :)

instead BP's response, when scientists pleaded for direct access to the well to gauge how much oil is gushing out, said:

“The answer is no to that,” said BP spokesman Tom Mueller. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”

let's examine those comments a bit: Thomas Mueller actually said, "we are not going to take any extra effort to calculate the flow... it's NOT RELEVANT to the response effort."...

points four and five

BP has now claimed that their alternative measures have worked, and the oil coming to the surface seems to have slowed down.

EEEEEP!! guess what? well they're not lying; they're telling you like, half a truth. they're saying that because the amount of oil coming up to the surface has slowed down since they pumped millions of gallons of dispersant unto the oil stream. thing is, the dispersant doesn't cure the oil spill. it just, disperses it.. to where?

from NYT 15 May, 2010: Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Under Gulf

according to the article, scientists have found "enormous oil plumes" 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and up to 300 feet thick, suspended in between 2,300 feet to 4,200 feet of water.

“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf".

the oil plumes, made up of tiny droplets of oil too small to rise up to the surface, seem to have congregated at the depths where their water density holds them in stasis fits them - and have so far depleted almost 30% of the oxygen content in the water, as oil-eating bacteria go nuts trying to break down the plume, using up more and more oxygen. The team says, further,

"While the oxygen depletion so far is not enough to kill off sea life, the possibility looms that oxygen levels could fall so low as to create large dead zones, especially at the seafloor. “That’s the big worry,” said Ray Highsmith, head of the Mississippi center that sponsored the mission, known as the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology."

so basically out of sight, out of mind. and BP can tell the media their measures are working, and buy more time.

the problem is..

the thing is, aside from killing every living thing under water off Florida pretty soon, what happens when the oil plumes get so big they start drifting with thermoclines and the North Atlantic Gyre (currents) underwater - to places that satellites can't see yet - and pop up in Europe and the North of Britain?..

what happens if the oil, mixed up with half-eaten dispersants meets up with one of the world's biggest garbage patches in the Atlantic Ocean, which scientists estimate to be several hundred kilometres in size - twice the size of Texas - and a careless cigarette butt or electrical storm triggers a proverbial Sea of Fire, melting the non-bio degradable plastic and releasing even more toxins and fumes into the air and into the world's oceans?

am i being too caustic? cynical? here is the garbage patch off the east coast of Japan: it's several times SMALLER than the one we're talking about, and so huge you can even see it from space.

when the Iraqi Army realised that they were going to lose the war they intentionally spilled up to 336 million gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf, to slow the invasion down. TWENTY years later, 3 MILLION cubic feet of oil still remains over 800km of the Saudi coast.

an EIA study in 2003 report found that up to 90% of the Saudi marshes and 70% of its mud flats were dead, and there was no way to revive it.

"It was amazing to stand there and look across what used to be a salt marsh and it was all dead—not even a live crab, "said Miles Hayes, co-founder of the science-and-technology consulting firm Research Planning, Inc., based in South Carolina.

the fact is we have no way of knowing how to fix this. it's just too big.

so what's Obama gonna do?

well, actually he was the one who announced the start of offshore drilling last March: from the LA Times 31 March, 2010: Obama to unveil offshore drilling plans for oil.

sad, because in his Presidential campaign 2 years ago, this is what he said. soundbites start at 1:10..

we called his bluff when he was elected in 2008, saying there was no way he could keep his word and ignore his biggest campaign donors... which included oil (BP was his largest campaign contributor) and energy sectors. so you know, that bit last week where i asked if Cameron would keep his word now that he's elected?... say it with me quietly: *b.s! ..*

in fact, the Washington Post revealed that Obama's administration actually approved a whole list of exemptions for BP ad-verbatim last year, which means it took all of BP's requests at face value and gave it whatever it wanted in the Gulf of Mexico - including completely throwing away the requirement for a compulsory Environmental Impact Assessment before any activity can be done.

and how much would the offshore drilling - which has now blown up in their faces and threatens a global ecological disaster like never before - have done for them and domestic fuel prices?

oh, not much, actually...

see the simple fact is you just can't believe everything you read in the papers. cliche, i know, but true. it's even true of many in Western media who claim to be neutral. that's why according to one statistic, 30% of all bloggers are media practitioners. many write what they can't in their day jobs.

the trick is to separate the wheat from the chaff. this is what eSBM tries to be. because the sad fact is, if they can't stop this then an estimated 2 BILLION gallons of oil will flow into the ocean. how much is that? approximately 160 Exxon Valdez disasters.

* * *
update - 0016hrs, 18 May 2010: i've just found out that the US Oil Pollution Act of 1990(Sec. 1004) actually has a legal limit on liability for polluters!! so after all said and done, BP’s liability for causing the largest oil spill in the history of Stupid Man comes up to a maximum of just USD75 million! WOOOHOOO! *sigh*.. i feel like throwing up..

Sec. 1004:

LIMITS ON LIABILITY

(a) GENERAL RULE.—Except as otherwise provided in this section, the total of the liability of a responsible party under section 1002 and any removal costs incurred by, or on behalf of, the responsible party, with respect to each incident shall not exceed—

(3) for an offshore facility except a deepwater port, the total of all removal costs plus $75,000,000;

my stupid question of the day

2010-05-16T06:39:00.001-07:00

if the Catholic Church admits to violations that justify a priest being transferred i.e. sexual abuse of underage parish members - equaling child abuse - and follow up with public apologies, assurances to the public that it will not happen again etc., doesn't that mean then that there is a case, and why doesn't the Public Prosecutor follow up with an investigation and where necessary, file criminal charges and try the bastard(s)?

i'm sorry, but if we can call other child abusers bastards, why can't we call a priest who does the same? does the collar dignify him above being denigrated bastard?

does the Catholic Church perhaps through the Vatican have immunity over criminal prosecution; is this just in North America, or worldwide as per diplomatic immunity enjoyed by the foreign services?..

don't mean to cause any offence. just wondering..

if (and when, God willing) we have kids..

2010-05-15T03:02:00.000-07:00

i keep telling my wife that if and when, God willing, we have kids, i'd like to move out to a landed place instead of the 19th floor apartment we have now.

don't get me wrong, i LOVE the place we have - it's 1,250sq. ft of corner space with a view to kill of KL (incl. the twin towers and even Genting), full wood floors, huge master bedroom, wrap-around French windows and 5min walk from the train station etc., and i've fixed pretty much everything up myself.

but... having a landed property would mean the kids have a place to run, without having to worry if they're gonna BASE jump out the windows. without their chutes on. wayyy better on my stress levels.

look, Ma - no hands!!! :):)

i can build a tree house, have a proper work bench with my tools, heck i can build a climbing gym in the basement or something, instead of telling my guests to "don't look up" when they take a tour of the place. LOL!

but most of all for the kids. it'd be nice to have a place where they can play and fall and roll around unworried. and have a cat or two that my wife loves.

maybe even build a slide... i call this "A mother's work is never done".

hmmm... maybe a slide ain't such a good idea for cats..

as the world collapses around me

2010-05-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

3 movies i'm really looking forward to this summer.. :)

for the unique but still strangely, not so hard-to-connect with concept; Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins) and Leonardo Dicaprio, who can actually act really really well, until Titanic hijacked his acting.

for bringing me back to my childhood, bringing me back to my childhood and... you guessed it - bringing me back to my childhood! LOL!

can't drop a battle tank out of a plane on parachutes? who cares - this is the A-TEAM!!! :)) oh, yeah - and Jennifer Biel.. ;)) and 3,

for its very, very familiar themes, but taking us back to the days of The Fly, the original genetic mutation movie and the best creeper movie. ever. :)

awww ya, it's gonna be GOOD summer... :) coz hey, you know what they say: when life gives you lemons,

one for the weekend.. :)

2010-05-13T02:55:00.000-07:00

sigh... the Chinese markets are tumbling, Canada's property bubble's gonna burst soon and Illinois, New Your and California-yay's gonna slip into ICU right after; corporate bond yields are way down and remember - USD7 trillion in subprime exposure's still being kept off balance sheets until someone gives them up, or the FASB gets cold feet and cries wolf.

sometimes i feel we could always learn more from our children. or maybe it's just cos they remind us so much of how we once were. before that spark died. i mean, really. what should we be doing with our lives?.. and i don't just mean in our love lives..

someone's gonna hit the "Reset" button soon. touche' everybody, and rest up over the weekend - we're gonna need it. ;)

Word!

and the winner is...

2010-05-12T12:38:00.000-07:00

so by now everyone and his pet cat knows that David Cameron is the new Prime Minister of the UK, init? :)

the youngest Prime Minister since 1812, and the first Old Etonian to enter No.10, Downing Street since 1960, which tells you that a whole bunch of other old boys are gonna lose their jobs.

but what exactly can we look forward to? i mean, i was there in 1997 when Blair won and you could practically taste the excitement in the air and cut through it with a butter knife; after decades of Conservative rule and Thatcherism, people were *aching* for change, and were urging Blair on.

he made a great first 6 months, appointing more women to the Cabinet than ever before, announcing new measures to revitalise the economy, and then... it all started going 'orribly wrong. without going over the donkey's barn again, Blair and Gordon Brown went back on every single word they'd made in the run-up to the elections, even unashamedly taking the same stances that they had criticised the Conservatives for when in shadow cabinet previously, and took the UK down to where it is now. and don't you believe it when they say the recession's over and they're now climbing out of the woods, either.

so what's in it with Britain's new blue-eyed boy? well, this is his Ted Talk delivered earlier this year:

very charming. VERY young and energetic. and a very, very candid, ambitious vision for the country. reminds me very much of Tony Blair in 1997.

and reminds me of this guy before he was elected, too. some of you might remember him. George... somethin' or other. check out what he was selling before he became President... (fun starts @ 0:25 ;)

so tell me, will the reality be exactly the first 3 lines of David Cameron's Ted Talk, or will it be something else? i sincerely hope so, for the sake of friends there. i hope Clegg will help keep him in line, and they'll be able to take the UK out of this mess. because if London can recover just a bit of the magic that was there just a few years ago, Europe will then have 2 financial powerhouses to try pull her up, and might just stand a chance.

my bet tho is, don't hold your breath. cos in the end, they're all the same. *siiggghh...*

* * *
oh, btw - yo PR! remember our chat last month?

"Beijing Home Prices Plunge 31.4%".. ;)

sorry to burst your bubble bro. i hope you're alright. be safe, everyone..

p/s: i'm gonna wait for just ooone more G-20 country to collapse (after China), then wait a few months and slowly come back into the markets. don't rush, tho, because once this falls, its gonna take YEARS to come back again... ;)

time for some funky luuuurve.. ;)

2010-05-11T08:44:00.000-07:00

what REALLY concerns me...

2010-05-11T08:30:00.001-07:00

is why nobody is giving a hoot about China's continually building property bubble (April's CPI were up 2.8% year-on-year, and property inflations hit 12.8%), and how with the Euro crisis, everyone seems to have forgotten that the subprime crisis still hasn't been resolved yet..

right now China's industrial output grew 17.8% last month (WTF?!?), while retail sales went up 18.5% as well, pushing GDP to 11.9%.

11.9%. while the rest of the world is in a funk... so where is all this consumption coming from? well, China's very own USD585 billion stimulus package, and some intense sales driven by much easier consumer credit..

but i mean, just how many refrigerators and plasma TVs can a household actually get??

what will happen if China implodes, and her State-backed companies and economic tools with it? remember: 6 Chinese national banks went public in the last 3 years, with 4 of them now in the World's Top 10 biggest banks. will the State then take the banks back to private? what will that do to China's fiscal rating that Beijing has struggled to nurture for so long (remember, it was so much harder for China, a Communist economy to gain credibility than a free market)?

what'll happen if when that happens, someone shouts, "oh, shoot!! 30% of their books is in CDS!" and suddenly Japan's exposure gets revealed as well. remember, the FASB can't go on indefinitely and keep it off Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs' balance sheets in perpetuity.

what'll happen then? well we can all kiss that big fat paycheque goodbye next year and go fly some pretty kites..

all those funky designer bags ain't gonna put no food on your table either, lady... Pavan, i hate to say it but man, i t**d you so...

poker face: round 2... (or where i say i told you so)

2010-05-11T06:33:00.000-07:00

so it's done: the EU and its leaders met last Sunday and decided to kick some serious trader booty, and created a EUR720 billion - or USD1 trillion - emergency fund for the financial crisis in Europe, including if Spain or any of the other PIIGS countries get hit in the future.

the ECB is now authorised to buy into sovereign debt - and it's gonna sterilise the purchases (selling on the paper), hence diluting the monetary risks in the credit element - and non-Eurozone countries (countries which do not use the Euro) will only need contribute only up to 10%, minimising the political backlash in those home countries.

great. the problem is.. where is the money gonna come from?

merkel: zis is all your fault. YOUR fault, you ztupid, ztupid frogs! i lost in se Bundesrat bekoz of zis! sarkozy: mon dieu, merkel, calm down! zidn't you zee ze moviee "kick azz"??

in truth, the whole Europe is now reliant on German industrial and fiscal strength now for credibility. the Germans know this, and it pisses the people off that they're being bled dry to save other countries when cities in Germany are running on empty as well - 2/3 of the public polled last weekend said Germany should revert to the Deutschmark - dropping out of the Eurozone - and 1/3 said they should leave the EU.

the chances of Germany leaving the EU is slim at best, but like it or not Merkel is going to have to listen to these grouses unless she wants to loose more than the Bundesrat.

bond yields in the EU are already up 3 times over before the Greek meltdown, ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet is unable to answer any questions over how much of the bonds will be neutralised and by what mechanism and best of all, guess where they're gonna park this?

in a Special Purpose Vehicle. just like we said last week...

but. err.. wasn't that supposed to be a good thing?..

the problem is, instead of using the SPV as a means to isolate the issue and move on, the humongous amount the EU is putting down means they're playing poker with the traders..

do they really have the money? or do they don't.. are they bluffing? who will blink first?..

if the traders think Germany is serious - and who in their right minds would argue with Angela Merkel - then the traders will keep quiet for now.

but if they smell one hint of any of the EU leaders buckling, then Merkel or no they will slaughter the Euro for all its worth. the EU won't have anymore cards to play, and might just take the Euro down to pre-2003 days, trading substantially beneath the USD.

the problem is there is no obvious leader in a very unpopular fight: Germany is facing an election, the UK is hung to dry; France and the Netherlands both didn't agree to the TCE in 2007 which was basically watered down to become the current Lisbon Treaty (which is now facing a Constitutional challenge in Germany) and the European Central Bank which in theory should be in charge of this financial mess doesn't have the power to do so.

and the man they elected the EU President last year Mr. van Rompuy isn't a crisis-manager, he's a diplomat - great when you want to bring together 27 disparate countries, not so great when there's blood on the streets..

and the one tiny flicker of light you might have hoped for in July - a changed rotating Presidency from the unpredictable Spanish to the logical Belgians - is in the drains, because the Belgians don't even have a Prime Minister now, after the Flemish partners in Govt walked out 2 weeks ago...

so what now, Brutus?..

already this morning the markets have practically reversed ALL the Euro gains last Monday, and no one is picking up the calls in Brussels. my take is, Angela is gonna follow thru with this, because she and Germany would look foolish if they don't. but it's gonna be the last thing they do for the EU; their debt for European support for German integration in 1990 is paid now, and in full to boot.

then she's going to make sure the sterilisation is done pronto so that it's out of the way by the time the national elections hit.

they'll empower the ECB by year-end but it will be too late.

Spain might or might not get hit, but the Euro will definitely suffer to at least parity with the US dollar by end-2010, if even. if Spain gets hit then look for that to happen by end of Q3. the Eurozone won't collapse, but the EU will be glad that they deferred the Qualified Majority Voting system to 2014.

national Governments will look inward now, their immediate job for the "greater EU" is done. three sitting Govts - not including the UK's today - will fall by 2012, with Germany a certainty to at least juggle its present coalition.

now aren't you glad the World Cup's gonna be here soon, and we can all forget about this mess for a while?.. :))

blast from the frikkin' past...

2010-05-06T13:35:00.000-07:00

back in the days were the rock gods were young, and we wore tight hipster pants and Dio belt buckles and shirts unbuttoned or three... remember that? no? well, some of us do... :)

so had a blast from the past today when i found, totally by accident, that a young new friend i just made in the UK actually knows one of my oldest schoolmates, who went from a guitar bashing rock god in the 1980s to a well-respected, highly regarded professor of molecular biology or somethin', all in the space of, what, 20-odd years?? LOL!

man that brought back memories. :) so here's to you, Syahril. you De Man!! i still remember sitting on the floor in your house, listening to you jam on the first electric guitar your dad bought you (it was white!) for RM500. those were the days.. ;)

i'm guessing she didn't know he used to headbang with tight pants on.. :) thanks for the memories bro. peace out, everyone and have a blissful weekend. my brain's fried... :P

when clarity hits you..

2010-05-03T03:51:00.000-07:00

there's something to be said about those who do work in His name..

you'll falter but never fail. you'll trip but always get up. you'll fumble but always be safe..

and you never have to let anyone know you're doing His work, because He knows you're doing it...

there are so many ways we can do it. even in the littlest things.

so why don't we do more?...

to my wife 10,312.8kms away... or around 6,400 miles ;)

2010-05-01T16:40:00.000-07:00

because i miss you. i love you. i 'heart' you... :)

and yes, because real guys do go to bed last after making sure that everything's safe, and so they're allowed to wear their caps backwards if they want to. and keep ALL their old clothes you'd rather throw out as well... ;)

i *love* you.. :))

where the skinny brown man makes an "obvious" suggestion...

2010-04-29T07:38:00.000-07:00

(warning: economic geek content. only for bored analysts or euro buffs.. )

ok i'm gonna be pretty quick coz i'm running out of time. by now anyone who reads this blog knows i'm pretty much against the grain, so i suggest things either so simple or so convoluted you go WTF?!!... pretttty much not the middle ground guy. big deal: sorryyy... LOL!

so as much as i'd hate to say this, i'm afraid i've got another banger for you. call me the harbinger of skint news: the EU "bailout" of Greece - if it keeps to the current form - is going to fail.

and there's gonna be a whole lotta trouble.

arguments in the national and EU parliaments, massive strikes all over Portugal, socialist Spain (yes, there will be a fallout from Greece's failure) and even Germany, before the dust settles.

cut a long story short the EU now has 3 main problems:

1) it has no idea how much Athens really needs because the books have been fudged up since 2004 by 3 different governments, and accountability (unless you want to jail half the Greek congress) is out the window. sorta like when i wrote why the troop surge in Afghanistan was gonna fail.

you can't solve a problem until you know how deep the hole is.

but the bigger problem is unlike say, Portugal, the debt is public debt i.e. owed by the Government. basically there was a huge gap between public spending (social security, pension plans, insurance payments and expenses) and the taxes collected so Greece borrowed money using the Eurozone's lower interest rates to its advantage. remember this: it will be the key to resolving the issue.

2) the traders buying and selling EU futures expect you to fail. why?

because all the PIIGS countries in trouble have a predominantly people-friendly govt in place, and the social upheavals to taking the necessary cuts and right the ship will be massive, and the politicians in power today know this will easily mean the end of them. which is why they're all so quiet, praying that the Greece problem will be solved soon and the focus won't fall on them, hoping that the problem will go away. but it won't.

3) the bailout package is being challenged in the German courts as unconstitutional **

and the plaintiffs are demanding that the court rule first, before any payment is made to Greece as part of the larger EU package; polls show 62% of Germans would rather throw out Greece from the Eurozone than bail them out.

* the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 explicitly prohibits any bail-out of countries in the Eurozone

the problem is the Lisbon Treaty proudly signed by all 27 EU countries last December specifically prohibits Greece leaving the Eurozone (the 16 countries using the Euro as currency) unless it leaves the EU as well - which would actually make the problem much much harder for debtors, and here's why:

even if Greece leaves the EU and in effect the Eurozone, it doesn't make the debt go away.

instead what will happen is Greece converts back to its Drachma, but with the country basically going down the drain (remember, S&P has already downgraded its ratings to junk, so how much lower can it go?). all its debts are still denominated in Euros, but after conversion to practically useless Drachmas, the burden on Greece and her people will actually be a dozen times worse than if it stayed and Brussels had not kicked her out in the first place.

people will go hungry, companies will crash, and governments will fall. massive unrest.. basically everything that happened to Indonesia in 1997. only Indonesia only had itself to drag down. Greece will drag down Portugal and Spain - the EU's 4th largest economy - with it.

plus France and Germany hold 58% of total Greek papers, so let's all agree that we'd like to avoid that. ;)

so what's the solution? one, simple, binding move that will solve all 3 issues and kill all speculation:

create a Special Purpose Vehicle with a defined financial mandate

the problem

the EU is waffling like a jackass in heat and like a tiger sensing blood, the traders know it; that is why they keep shorting Greece, and driving the margins up by 700 points!

why couldn't the EU have just been decisive (which is what you need in a crisis) and said from the very beginning "the EU is giving EUR90 billion to cover Greece's debt!" and assuage fears in the market? is it possible because there is a Washington factor twisting someone's arms somewhere?

but the fact is Greece probably does need closer to EUR300 billion in the next 3 years, and the sooner it starts figuring out how to pay that the better.

the problem is, that the EU can't afford that, because it's already had to borrow EUR110 billion from foreign markets in Q1 2010 to bail out its banks. so unless they specifically draw the line somewhere, the traders are gonna keep shorting and shorting and shorting until the PIIGs collapse, like Asia in the late 90's.

the solution
et voila! enter the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV): the EU announces a EUR100 billion - and EUR100b only! - SPV to cover Greece's short term debt, and make it very clear that it's meant to cover the whole debt, so no debtor has to worry about how much of a haircut they'll have to take, and the markets stay off your back - at least for a while (solved problem #2)

so how long does EUR100b buy you? well, that's where the EU has to grow a pair.

it has to say "we're giving you EUR100b, now you have to open your accounts to the ECB and Eurostat for them to look at EVERYTHING, and determine how long it gives us; then you can honestly work out how much longer you'll have, and work out the rest of the exposure with the banks, who'll need to negotiate a haircut. but at least with time before the debt is due, bankers who doubt can leave and take 35 cents to the dollar, and those who stay can hold out for, maybe, 60 at best, 30 at worse, it's your call. but you make it transparent, and the markets know what's going on. (solved problem #1)

of course Greece is HOOO!! and HAAAA!! because they lose control of all decisions on how to manage their country (which they've already shown they can't do very well, but that's not the point). but all the EU has to say is take it or leave it. you can pack your bags and leave the EU now and take your Drachmas wit you, we don't care.

what's Greece gonna do?...

making it work

the SPV also means that by taking the debt and putting it in a Special Vehicle that is off balance sheet - that's the beauty of SPVs... ;) - it's not going to be (arguably) challenge-able in court: no one's giving Athens any money; they're buying up debt just like any buyer would.

that also means the EU now in a position to say "we now hold all your external debt, so Athens, you now have to give us absolute control of your financial strategies to ensure your inflows in future will cover these gigantore outflows of ours" (which is what SPVs do: they take over the operations of any given entity's debt parked in the SPV, to ensure maximum possibility of getting their money back...)

this is already allowed for under Article 21 of the Lisbon Treaty; all the EU has to do is make a strong case for it. et voila! (solved problem #3)

the rest is up for Greece to decide and resolve, and at least the EU has bought it some time and a LOT of leeway. if it still fails to show improvement after a year and defaults on her remaining debt, its her fault, and she'll have no one else to blame.

but reez aren't SPVs usually used for private than public debt, and entail some form of loss to the debtor?

well yes, but it's not unknown for Govts to set up sovereign SPVs e.g. Germany is setting one up right now that's actually Constitutionally "suspect": it's borrowing EUR40 billion from capital markets this year to pay for its social security deficit in the future; so it runs a massive deficit this year (under the auspices of "handling the crisis") but will be able to categorically maintain that it's deficits in the future is within the EU's 3% requirement. smart huh? ;)

politicians and analysts such as Olli Rehn and Wolfgang Munchau have addressed one or the other factors highlighted here but none have suggested how to resolve everything in one simple solution. the SPV is one.

arguable? yes. constitutionality awkward? definitely. but no other alternative considers all three factors which are the salient reasons behind a meltdown. i'm not super-smart or something, just been in both worlds and can see the differences. and maybe how to bridge the gap..

the problem - as it was in all crisis before - is that no one wants to admit that at the end of the day, as long as markets are open the power really is in all the fund managers' hands. it's also why politicians shouldn't teach math, economists do better in schools and everyone should leave the fight to the real world. its where the blood is shed and unless you're willing to give up something, don't expect your neighbour to give up everything.

that's a harsh summary, but sometimes the simplest solutions really are the most elegant.

ok doke.

2010-04-09T02:02:00.002-07:00

enough heavy stuff for this week. time to go back and scare the bejeezus offa the missus..

mission accomplished. ;) happy weekends everyone and God speed.

the facts are...

2010-04-09T01:48:00.000-07:00

no matter how good you are, you will fuck up sometimes..

no matter how mad you are, you will experience moments of clarity.

and no matter how messed up you get, you will always step up when a mate needs you. always.

Breaking News

2010-04-07T20:36:00.000-07:00

ever wondered how companies like Blackwater - who murder women, children and old people in foreign lands, among many other quiet things they do - advertise themselves? this verbatim from a Press Release i received today.

PRESS RELEASE (April 7th, 2010)

General (Ret.) Wesley K. Clark and Stephen R. Bova Announce the Formation of Clark Bova Group, LLC -- New global management consulting firm

Media Contacts:
Steve Bova
(501) 907-0633
sbova@clarkbova.com

Sara Lunsford
(870) 329-7136
slunsford@clarkbova.com
www.clarkbova.com

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. April 7, 2010 -- General (Ret.) Wesley K. Clark and partner Stephen R. Bova today announce the formation of the Clark Bova Group, LLC (CBG). CBG will provide management consulting services to businesses and government agencies worldwide, helping clients to successfully navigate change, drive growth and foster innovation.

CBG connects clients with proven leadership, cross-functional expertise and strategic relations to help them uncover and effectively address their most significant challenges and opportunities. Focusing their expertise in core business disciplines, CBG combines knowledge and experience with their network of relationships across the globe to deliver functional expertise in the areas of strategy, operations, organization, corporate finance and support services.

"Whether you are a local business or a global enterprise, CBG can connect you with strategic relationships that will help you grow in size and strength," said Clark. "Our network of experienced, sought-after resources can extend your management team's capabilities, helping you to improve your operating plan, accelerate the execution of your vision, and accomplish your objectives."

With headquarters in Little Rock, Ark., CBG will include a virtual network of experts comprised of highly accomplished executives and professionals in each functional practice area from across the country and abroad.

CBG is a global management consulting firm that delivers discerning, experienced insight to clients and accelerates the execution of their strategic vision. For more information, call (501) 907-0633 or visit www.clarkbova.com.

About General (Ret.) Wesley K. Clark

Wesley Clark is a partner in Clark Bova Group. He is active as a businessman, educator, writer and commentator.

Clark retired a four star general after 38 years in the United States Army. He graduated first in his class at West Point and completed degrees in philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University (B.A. and M.A.) as a Rhodes Scholar. While serving in Vietnam, he commanded an infantry company in
combat. He later commanded at the battalion, brigade and division level, and served in a number of significant staff positions, including service as the Director Strategic Plans and Policy. In his last assignment as Supreme Allied Commander Europe he led NATO forces to victory in Operation Allied Force, saving 1.5 million Albanians from ethnic cleansing.

His awards include the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Defense Distinguished Service Medal (five awards), silver star, bronze star, purple heart, honorary knighthoods from the British and Dutch governments, and numerous other awards from other governments, including award of Commander of the Legion of Honor (France).

General Clark serves as Chairman of investment bank Rodman & Renshaw and as a director of several other public and private companies in Europe and North America. His commitment to national and global institutions and associations includes being Co-Chairman of Growth Energy; a senior fellow at UCLA's Burkle Center for International Relations; a Director of International Crisis Group; a member of the Clinton Global Initiative's Energy & Climate Change Advisory Board, and a member of the American Council on Renewable Energy Advisory Board. In his community he serves as Chairman of City Year Little Rock. General Clark has authored three books and is a frequent television commentator and news contributor on a variety of business and geopolitical issues.

impressive, huh? "cross-functional expertise and strategic relationships"; "accelerate the execution of your strategic vision". i'll bet.. LOL!

so who's General Clark? well known for his "gung-ho" approach, responsible for the Waco farce that killed.. wait for it.. women and children. nearly started a war with the Soviets in the early 2000s, and referred lovingly by many in NATO as "The Supreme Being". nemesis to Colin Powell and, oh, just the man who led America headlong into Iraq.

see the problem is he plays for the crowd - will tell you anything you want to hear. very big on PR while stabbing you in the back. perfect for this kinda work..

gives great TV interviews, and often tells the Press first before his own troops.

good politician. flip flops on his own and has thought about running for President quote, "every single day", and can run on either Democrat or Republican tickets, who'll both welcome the yob because they're all, well, politicians..

and so covert intelligence and corporate espionage are big business now, oov. and with a satellite network and full on encryption at their disposal, global is virtual, baby. every single word up there is a double tap. i'm so sick of it..

just be glad he's not running for President anymore, he'd run the world to the ground. oh, does he do autographs too? you betcha! ;)

many innocent non-Americans are gonna suffer for this.. sad.

Mission (Almost) Accomplished

2010-04-06T21:10:00.000-07:00

ok doke. somehow, somewhere, God, Mother Nature, whatever gets your goat, took a shade to me and has helped me achieve one of my biggest goals: finish my Masters by the time i'm 40. looks like i'm fairly sorted that way now. Thank You ... :)

now let's see if i can do my second and third big aims: learn to surf - and surf well - and bring some lil' ones into this earth wid the missus. wouldn't it be sweet if i can bring the kids up with the surf and swells... :))

bring up my back too paddling out like that all the time. schweeeeeet! ;)... peace, y'all. :)

you got 20 mins?...

2010-04-06T02:33:00.000-07:00

what can you do with 20 minutes?... you can

make sweet love to your partner/spouse and tell them you love them..

get in line in a movie theatre to watch Avatar for the 3rd time and go "Coooool..."

spend 18 minutes watching this video here (warning: violent content). go straight to the video or read the background first while it downloads, doesn't matter. (click on the bottom right to enlarge)

background (from various sources)

in 2007, two Reuters employees — photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh — were killed by a U.S. helicopter strike in Baghdad.

the U.S. military’s official response said the attack occurred after security forces came under fire from men accompanying the reporters, and that the rules of engagement were followed in returning fire.

skeptical of the military's response, Reuters filed a request under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting for a video of the killings, but was unable to obtain the video from the military.

2 years later, Wikileaks - a "non-profit organization funded by human rights campaigners, investigative journalists, technologists and the general public", and winner of the 2009 Amnesty International New Media Award - obtained the video from an unnamed military source, and released it this morning.

the video is shot from an Apache helicopter gunsight - including the tap zoom-in zoom out function, and shows, first, the absolutely unprovoked killing of seven, possibly eight people - two of them the Reuter's photographer and driver - and later as a van with a good samaritan and his two kids come up to help them, the Apache helicopters gunned them down as well.

reporters working for WikiLeaks determined that the driver of the van was on his way to take his small children to a tutoring session, when he saw the wounded men and stopped to help. he was killed and his two children were badly injured.

red mist

in the video, crew members can be heard celebrating their kills.

"Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards," says one crewman after shooting multiple rounds from his 30mm cannon, leaving a dozen bodies on the street.

another crewman actually begs for permission to open fire on the van and its occupants, saying "Come on, let us shoot!" even though all it did was stop to help the wounded. it was not firing at the choppers, no one took out guns and started brandishing them threateningly. it did nothing but stop to help.

two crewmen actually share a laugh when a Bradley fighting vehicle runs over one of the corpses.

after soldiers on the ground find two small children shot and bleeding in the van, one crewman can be heard saying: "Well, it's their fault bringing their kids to a battle."

but the simple facts are...

the chopper pilots mistook Namir's camera for an RPG. how in heaven's name you mistake a DSLR with a 400mm lens for an RPG is beyond me.

true, one of the eight men was carrying an AK-47, but he was just carrying it casually in his hands. in the warzone that is Baghdad, security and bodyguards carrying AKs are not uncommon. he might even have been a local policeman, looking at how a professional wire photographer works - we'll never know.

the video makes it clear: the military’s official response to the events is inaccurate, to say the least, and that it has been lying through its shiny, white carbamide peroxide teeth when it claims that the Apache attack “occurred after security forces came under fire."

also clear is the fact that the Apache pilots in question violated the 2007 U.S. Rules of Engagement for Iraq, which permit the use of “deadly force” only against individuals who “pose a threat to Coalition Forces by committing a hostile act or demonstrating hostile intent.”

whether these eejits will actually come up for court justice is another matter..

it's also not a one-off event - still happens all the time in Afghanistan.

this is why we have ground troops - you get positive ID before calling in the fire. even that has risks, but you're a soldier, and its your job to take those risks. doesn't matter if you signed up or were drafted - you're a soldier. not civilians.

so the next time you see on TV about how "sophisticated and conscionable" the US Army is and everyone else is a terrorist; how with satellite technology they can pinpoint anyone in the middle of nowhere and kill you etc., remember its all a bunch of bullshit. you can have the load of hi-tech you want but if the men (and women) manning it is full of shit, then you're shit.

and don't tell me i don't know the hard it is on the ground, or had to be there to understand. that's why most of us who's worked with cowboys would rather not again. personally? if i had to have a stranger - and that a BIG if - i'd rather a NATO git - Brit, even German, doesn't matter - have my back. harder work, no pizzas, but i sleep with a clear conscience. end of story.

this is also why you can build all the playgrounds you want, but if you keep killing their father and mother, you're not gonna win anyone's hearts. from Vietnam to now, you never learn..

takes a lot to have me writing nowadays. hope this was worth your while..

(thanks ken for the heads up!)

and while we're on the subject...

2010-01-22T04:52:00.000-08:00

have a GOOD weekend everyone, and God speed... :))

what's the difference between evangelists and extremists?...

2010-01-22T03:51:00.000-08:00

not much apparently. this is a piece that came out last week on Fox News (national TV) in the US...

for those of you without broadbands... :

PAT ROBERTSON (guest): And, you know, Kristi, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever.

And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, "We will serve you if you will get us free from the French." True story. And so, the devil said, "OK, it's a deal."

And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other. Desperately poor.

That island of Hispaniola is one island. It's cut down the middle. On the one side is Haiti; on the other side is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, et cetera. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island.

They need to have and we need to pray for them a great turning to God. And out of this tragedy, I'm optimistic something good may come. But right now, we're helping the suffering people, and the suffering is unimaginable.

KRISTI WATTS (co-host): Absolutely, Pat.

WTF?!!

so basically if you're a Christian country and a natural tragedy happens, it's God's wrath. but it's OK - you're still one of His children.

but if you're NOT a Christian well then Gawd ain't there for you, buddy boyyy, and it's AAAAAAWLLL the devil's fault. Mmm hmm! ain't NO helping dem people out, cuz dey all be devil-worshippers anyway!

LOL!

now of course many an American don't hold this view, and Fox News isn't exactly known for objective and constructive content anyway. like Artee Em in Malaysia...

but the point is, still many Americans DO believe this train of thought left over from the colonial days, when the "Rest of the World" were a "White Man's Burden", and if they enslaved you it was God's will, and if you rebelled then you were the Devil Incarnate.

the fact of the matter is this: there will always be extremists (in action OR thought) on both sides of the divide, who by all other measures are good, non-senile people. they were just... brought up to see one side of the story permanently.

either we accept this fact and try to understand this so we can engage each other constructively in the long run, for our children and grandchildren's children, or continue to live and die in blissful if occasionally pithy ignorance of the other. the question is, what when you don't have a choice and stuck under the same roof?

pretty soon you're gonna realise that all farts smell the same - whether you like them or not - and you can either learn and find some way to live with and enjoy each other's company, or start sharpening sticks and stones.

what YOU choose to achieve for your children, is up to you...

Oooo!!

2010-01-15T20:15:00.000-08:00

i've got a blog follower! i've never had a "follower" before. maybe i can start a cult.

we'll call it.. no, no. let's not go there.