KPKBing in UK about how SE Asians represented

“Beats” an advocacy group for British East and South East Asians are KPKBing about a British drama set in S’pore during World War Two. They call it “harmful” and “upsetting”.

Beats called The Singapore Grip “a kick in the teeth” to those it represents.

Based on JG Farrell’s 1978 novel, the six-part drama follows a family of wealthy Britons living here. More at: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54085249

Fyi, the series was filmed in M’sia.

For the record, the term East Asians in the UK is usually an euphemism there for ethnic Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. Chinese, Malays, Koreans, Thais etc are usually excluded.

Many yrs ago I listened to a BBC World Service radio play that was trialled as an ancient Greek comedy with “an all East Asian cast”. All mamma accents. No Chink or S’porean accent. I complained but never got a reply.

Btw, I had no complaints about the actors or the play. It was good production: I was only unhappy about the racial misrepresentation,

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Xia suay! Technical recession? What technical recession?

Singapore in technical recession after GDP shrinks 41.2% in Q2 from preceding quarter due to COVID-19

Constructive, nation-building CNA

Singapore enters technical recession as GDP plunges 12.6% in Q2: Flash data

Constructive, nation-building ST

Singapore has entered a technical recession after its economy contracted 41.2 per cent in the second quarter from the previous three months, dragged down by weak external demand and Covid-19 “circuit breaker” measures.

MediaCorp’s Constructive, nation-building freesheet

Kee Chiu if you believe it’s a “technical recession”.

The term “technical recession is used when there are 2 consecutive quarters of slightly negative numbers. There is nothing “technical” about the 41% collapse after “only” a 3% fall in the previous quarter.

Kee chiu if you still believe it’s a “technical recession”.

In America, the usually post-fact society, when the GDP was likely to fall because of Covid-19, a recession was “called” even by the Fed, the world’s central bank, even before the monthly data came out.

Kee chiu if you believe we juz had a “technical recession”.

The ang moh media got it right when they reported:

Singapore enters recession after economy shrinks more than 40% quarter on quarter

CNBC

Singapore Slumps Into Recession With Record 41.2% GDP Plunge

Bloomberg

But then they are not constructive, nor nation-building. Ask Trump.

The use of the term “technical recession” by our constructive, nation-building media must have resulted from a media briefing by some xia suay Ah Beng from MTI. Kee chui chiu if you know his identity?

For the avoidance of doubt, the technocrats at MTI did not use the term: https://www.mti.gov.sg/Newsroom/Press-Releases/2020/07/Singapore-GDP-Contracted-by-12_6-Per-Cent-in-the-Second-Quarter-of-2020

Covid-19: “kung flu”

That’s the latest name Trump has called the virus causing the global pandemic.

He first called it the “China” virus, then the “Wuhan” virus and now the “kung flu”.

Very clear who he is blaming for over 2.3m Americans catching the virus and killing over 120,000 of them.

Typography of our (and global) economic recovery

So the economy is expected to shrink between 4 and 7% this year as MTI again downgraded official growth projections for 2020. If the projections are correct (remember that astrologers and other fortune tellers have better track records) we are headed for the worst-ever recession since 1965.

The estimates for non-oil domestic exports (NODX) and total merchandise trade for the year have been cut drastically.

But factory output surged by 13 per cent in April, the second straight month of a year-on-year rise, largely down to gains made by the pharma manufacturing cluster. But excluding biomedical manufacturing, overall output in April fell 3.5% due to COVID-19 related measures both locally and overseas.

So how will the recovery pan out?

Related posts:

— Investing in the time of Covid-19: Watch this index

— What goes down quickly, must go up quickly

— Covid-19 investing: Beware of a double bottom

— Markets: Easy collapse, easy rebound

— Antidote to Covid-19 and market stress

What’s so special about 2020?

But first a prosperous new year. Make money and stay healthy.

Sorry back to “What’s so special about 2020?”.

Every 60 years, a new decade according to the Western calendar* coincides with a year of the rat, the start of the 12-year cycle in the Chinese calendar. This last happened in 1960.

1990 was a relative quiet year. But in 1961, we had the Berlin Wall crisis and in 1962, we had the  Cuban missile crisis. The USA and the USSR were daring one another to go to war

Will the USA and China have their own version of the Berlin Wall crisis and Cuban Missile crisis? Perhaps centred around HK? Let’s hope not. And if they do, let’s hope they both back down without violence. But then maybe it’ll be a very serious row between N Korea and the USA with China dragged in very reluctantly

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*Conventional wisdom* says that 2020 is the start of a new decade in the Western calendar. Strictly speaking the new decade doesn’t start until January 1, 2021; the old one concluding on December 31, 2020. https://www.farmersalmanac.com/new-decade-2020-or-2021-100900

But this means this millennium began on January 1, 2001 not January 1, 2000. The previous millennium ended only on December 31, 2000, not December 31, 1999. So a lot of parting was done on the wrong date.

“Black is white, white is black”: Our UK ambassador defends POFMA

Regular regulars will know that I’m no fan of POFMA (Fake news is in the eyes of the beholder) even though Alex Tan, Brad Bowels and Lim Tean deserve to kanna POFMAed (The last two talk so much cock that even if the authorities wrongly POFMa them, the courts can still find that they deserve to kannna POFMAed for other BS). As to the SDP’s POFMA, if it kanna POFMA, so should the constructive, nation-building ST.

So I had a great laugh when this appeared in the Economist’s letters section: note the implied argument that POFMA is nothing more than “right of reply”. If so why not make “Right of reply” law apply to social media etc, not juz the media? Someone talking cock, me thimks.

Free speech in Singapore

Contrary to your report (“False alarm”, December 7th), our Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act should be looked at in the same context as our belief in the right of reply, which in our view enhances rather than reduces the quality of public discourse, and strengthens and safeguards proper public accountability that must necessarily underpin democracies. Online posts that have been corrected remain available in full, but with links to the government’s response appended. Readers can see both and decide for themselves which is the truth. How does twinning factual replies to falsehoods limit free speech?

You also misrepresented the falsehoods that the government corrected. One post not only accused the government of rigging elections and conspiring to convert Singapore into a Christian theocracy, but also made false claims that it had arrested specific critics. Another did not only question the “investment nous of Singapore’s sovereign-wealth funds”, but based this on false allegations of losses that never occurred. The Economist itself recognises how serious a problem online falsehoods are, for example in “Anglichanka strikes again” (April 21st 2018). Fake stories have influenced British politics, notably in the Brexit campaign. Legislatures around the world have been grappling with this problem.

Singapore, a small English-speaking, multiracial, multi-religious city-state open to the world, is more vulnerable than most to this threat. Having observed in Britain and elsewhere the cost of doing nothing, we decided to act. Singapore’s laws are designed to meet our own context and needs. We have no ambition to set any example for other countries, but neither do we make any apologies for defending our own interests.

Foo Chi Hsia
High commissioner for Singapore
London

Ah well, having to write letters like this is the price of a cushy life funded by us tax payers.

The letter reminds me of Race is BS or “post-truth” at work?

“They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything.”
―from LORD JIM (1900) by Joseph Conrad

Ms Foo’s other attempts at comedy and post-truths:

Christmas laughs from our comic lady in London

What next? Senior civil servant saying that those who don’t vote PAP don’t wish S’pore well?

Ang mohs told secret of why PAP wins and wins

Our London ambassador on why Reformasi here is for the deluded

PAP govt speaking? No ler North Korean minister

Economist piece on Amos etc: Dark Side cousin responds

Somehow I’m reminded of

Song of the Witches from Macbeth

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and caldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the caldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,

Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and caldron bubble.

Cool it with a baboon’s blood,

Then the charm is firm and good.

Amazon fires an “international crisis”? Crisis? What crisis?

US$20m was pledged by the G7 meeting to fight the Amazon fires. Huh? So little? Remember Mr Macron’s belief that the fires amounted to an international crisis.

Money talks, BS walks. Sounds like the G7 leaders don’t believe that it’s a crisis. We know Trump doesn’t care about the environment, and doesn’t believe in climate change (“Fake”). The other leaders say they care about the environment and believe in climate change, and that it’s dangerous to the world. Obviously they really agree with Trump.

Only in Japan

Japan bans dual citizenship. But, “The law creates a duty to remove your other citizenship but failing to do so is not a crime,” FT quoted an expert as saying.

S’pore is parasite

Ong Hai Chuen posted on FB

Why is SINGAPORE the RICHEST country in ASIA? – VisualPolitik EN

Sonny Liew, yes he of The Art of Charlie Chan gave this totful response (Somewhat related post: “Bullshit is the glue that binds us as a nation” )

This analysis suffers from a common problem of failing to recognise Singapore as essentially a metropolitan area – as evinced by the presenter’s own constant switching from descriptions and comparisons using both the terms “city” and “country”.

The economic writer Joe Studwell in his intro to “How Asia Works: Success and Failure In the World’s Most Dynamic Region ” writes that his book “restricts itself to the developmental challenges facing what I would call ‘proper countries'”.

He goes on to say that he “ignores east Asia’s two main offshore financial centres – Hong Kong and Singapore”, along with the ” “micro oil state of Brunei” and “east Asia’s traditional gambling centre, Macau”, before describing comparisons of development between places like Singapore and Indonesia as a “pointless and deeply misleading debate”, since “Offshore centres are not normal states. Around the world, they compete by specialising in trade and financial services while enjoying lower structural overheads than other countries, which have larger, more dispersed populations, and agricultural sectors that drag on productivity… ”

“Offshore centre’s lower overheads mean that they also have a built-in fiscal advantage. Yet they can never exist in isolation – they are in a strict sense parasitic, because they have to have their host or hosts to feed on.”

It would make more sense to look at Singapore in City or Metropolitan Area terms when evaluating it’s policies and successes – so places like Hartford and San Jose would be in a similar league. These cities have small population sizes and may have comparable types of economies – Hartford’s economy is “strong in finance, especially insurance and benefits and is an important government center, as the capital of Connecticut”, while San Jose “is home to the larger part of the world’s leading technology center, suburban Silicon Valley.”

While good governance is still key to its success, failure to at least view Singapore partly through metropilitan area lenses may end up presenting a muddled picture…

Meng Seng: fake news propogator

Either that or he one super blur spastic cat. Whatever, he’s one of the PAP’s most effective weapons in it’s attempts to slime the Oppo as a bunch of nutty opportunists.

Further to Merdeka Package shows how smart scholars are, I had tot Goh Meng Seng was trying to be like Alex Tan (Mrs Chiam said he was like a son) of States Times, S’pore Herald etc etc: a purveyor of fake news. This appeared in TRE under his name (emphasis mine):

The Fall of Net Investment Return Contributions?

Back in 2018, the PAP boasted that the Net Investment Return Contribution (NIRC) has more than doubled from $7b in 2009 to $15.9b in 2018.

However, the NIRC for 2019 has dramatically dropped to $3.6b in – which is about half of 2009′s NIRC when the world was facing an unprecedented global financial crisis!

Under the rules, the government can contribute up to 50% of total investment returns to the budget. Hence, there are two possibilities here.

The first is that it may have decided to use much less than the maximum 50% just to show that there is “deficit” and this is thus an “expansionary budget”. It might even be the case of political posturing to show that the government needs to raise GST to 9% because of “deficits”!

The second possibility is that our Sovereign Wealth Funds – GIC and Temasek Holdings – and MAS had suffered unprecedented losses which resulted in this dramatic drop in the NIRC!

Either way, it does not look too good.

These are the questions my team and I will pose to the PAP government if we are elected into parliament.

Goh Meng Seng

The NIRC is $17.2bn (up 4%). So what was Meng Seng smoking in his opium pipe? Ganja? Or Grandpa Xi’s dried turds? Too poor to buy opium?

Seriously either he was faking the NIRC number or he can’t read while at the same time smoking ganja or dried turd. Whatever, do we want him and his fellow clowns in parly? Remember he said:

These are the questions my team and I will pose to the PAP government if we are elected into parliament.

To be fair to him, this later appeared:

Correction:

The Straits Time reported that there will be a “basic deficit of $7.1B” and after taking into account of NIRC, the deficit is reduced to $3.5B.

After double checking the figures, this statement is misleading.

The deficit of $3.5B is the result of taking in BOTH the NIRC and the Special Transfers (all those goodies) into account.

The actual NIRC is $17.2B(up 4%) while the Special Transfer is $15.3B (up 70%).

My apology. I should not have trusted the Straits Time fully and should counter check on the figures.

Goh Meng Seng

So either Goh Meng Seng chickened out of lying or double confirm twice over twice over that he’s a double cock. Can’t get his facts right first time and giving a gibberish excuse for not getting it right first time. Other people have read the ST report (self included) and got the correct numbers from the ST report.

Whatever, do we want him and his fellow clowns in parly? Remember he said:

These are the questions my team and I will pose to the PAP government if we are elected into parliament.

And waz he doing relying on the constructive, nation-building ST for facts? Shouldn’t he be relying on TOC, State Times, S’pore Herald and other cybernut alt news outlets? And these are free to boot, unlike ST.

With enemies like him, the PAP doesn’t need friends.

Vote wisely.

 

More on why PAP IB and anti-PAP opponents have the same genes

Further to Qiou S’poreans,

here’s more on why Jason Chua and other IB PAPpies and TOC’s bunch of Indians (actually only two) and other TOC cybernuts, and all other anti-PAP cybernuts are all related.

They don’t know how to use humour to sow doubts about and discredit the enemy.

Humour and ridicule were a key part of Moscow’s response when the UK said it was “highly likely” that Russia was behind the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury.

Russian officials and media figures have since tried to turn the English phrase “highly likely” into a mocking catchphrase that implies Russia is being blamed for everything with the flimsiest of evidence.

[ …]

Roman Dobrokhotov, whose investigative website The Insider was involved in exposing one of the two poisoning suspects, Anatoliy Chepiga, says such mockery is a form of trolling designed to “deliberately lower the level of discussion”.

They can learn from the Russians:

How the strategy works

“They cannot respond in a serious fashion and to the point, so they start to play-act. This is an attempt to mock, to reduce everything to nothing,” Mr Dobrokhotov told the BBC

Along with conspiracy theories and misleading narratives, he argues, this kind of tactic aims to sow doubt.

The result is that many will watch TV and decide there is no way of really getting to the bottom of what happened. In other words, he says: “no-one is a saint, truth does not exist”.

Internet audiences are also a key target for this technique.

One social media hashtag – #IamFromGRUToo (#ЯтожеИзГРУ in Russian) – appeared to be inspired by the #MeToo movement. Pro-Kremlin Twitter-users mocked UK allegations against Russia’s GRU (now GU) military intelligence agency.

One spoof job advert joked that the GRU was “looking for employees for its cyber-attack department, chemical weapons department and election-meddling unit. There is no need to apply – we will find you ourselves”.

Ben Nimmo, an Atlantic Council researcher on Russian disinformation, told the BBC that attempts to create funny memes were part of the strategy as “disinformation for the information age”.

[…]

“It’s not a super-serious regime, they do things with a kind of smirk and sometimes just with a smile. It’s a system that allows for a certain amount of humour, it’s not po-faced all.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46567364

Qiou S’poreans

In Hard truths about elite schools, I called cybernuts and their PAP IB cousins Qiou.

[Q]iou, a made-up character that is an amalgamation of three others: tu, qiong and chou. It is used to mean dirt-poor and ugly. Qiou is hard to write using Chinese-language software, which tends to struggle with characters not found in dictionaries—the face in our illustration incorporates the qiou character. (Even its romanisation is an invention, reflecting the word’s portmanteau origins: qiu is the conventional form for a character pronounced this way.)

https://www.economist.com/china/2018/12/22/china-picks-the-most-popular-terms-of-the-year

Think cybernuts and their PAP IB cousins. Same genetic makeup except that one group has pro-PAP genes and the other anti-PAP genes.

Boy sperm swim better but gal sperm smarter

Gal sperm outlive boy sperm.

One popular theory is that the odds of having a girl increase by having sex several days before ovulation and then abstaining so that the female sperm, which live longer, but swim more slowly than male sperm, outlast their counterparts.

Conversely, if sex happens closer to ovulation or after it, the best swimmers get to the egg first and boys are produced.

Parents may swear by these techniques, but scientists say there is little evidence they make any difference.

There is also some research which suggests parental stress could lead to the birth of more girls, while living through wars and conflicts may give rise to more male conceptions.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46597323

 

What’s gd for GM is gd for China

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr Trump said GM should stop making cars in China.

So no longer true that “What’s good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa.”? This statement was made by Charles E. Wilson while president of the General Motors Corporation, a leading United States automobile manufacturer in 1953. Wilson later became secretary of the federal Department of Defense.

The statement has frequently been misquoted as “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.”

 

When Trump is right about lying media

OK sort of.

Look at this and tell me if Trump loves polluting the atmosphere as the media alleges?. I mean he’s a lot more green that the EU and Grandpa Xi. His bark (He is sceptical about climate change and loves “beautiful, clean” coal) is worse than his bite.

Our Taliban Christians will be cheering for Trump’s VP

Mr Pence’s appeal to Christianity in Asia at the end of his Apec speech also caused many in his audience to cringe.

FT

What he really said

As an Indo-Pacific nation, the United States is proud to be a part of this great story, and we’ll continue to write new chapters, with resolve and with faith — faith in the people who call this vast expanse home, and the boundless capacity of every individual to achieve their dreams; faith in our most cherished principles, and in the vision that we share for this region of the world. And lastly, I believe that we go with faith that, as we labor for a free and open Indo-Pacific, we do not work alone.

Not far from here, in the Parliament of Papua New Guinea, I am told, sits one of this country’s national treasures — a King James Bible, more than 400 years old. (Applause.) Before it made its way here, it passed through my home state of Indiana. It calls to mind the rich and diverse traditions of culture and faith that characterize this vast region of the world. And on that foundation, I believe we can be confident that our vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific will prevail. For, as it says in that old book, “where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” (Applause.)

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-vice-president-pence-2018-apec-ceo-summit-port-moresby-papua-new-guinea/

China afraid of Black Swans and Grey Rhinos

Black swans, and grey rhinos, are likely to occur this year with adverse consequences, Fan Hengshan, vice secretary general of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), wrote in a commentary in the state-controlled newspaper, Reuters reported recently.

Black swans are unforeseen occurrences. Grey rhinos are highly obvious yet ignored threats. China’s debt problem is a huge grey rhino.

Crazy Rich Asians not falling for Ang Moh BS

EPFR Global the data-tracking firm notes:

“Funds with socially responsible (SRI) or environmental, social and governance (ESG) mandates, with the notable exception of Asia Pacific equity funds, continue to attract fresh money even when the broader geographic groups they are part of struggle.”

 

What s377A tells us

The orthodoxy of yesterday can be the the heresy of today.

And the orthodoxy of today can be the heresy of tomorrow.

As the Book of Changes says, ”Everything is in flux”.

Coming? Cyber law forbidding “anti-state purposes”?

(Or “Who said “Law should not protect the weakling but make the strong even stronger”)

A law has just been passed in Vietnam which

bans internet users in Vietnam from organising people for “anti-state purposes” and contains sweeping language under which users would not be allowed to “distort history” or “negate the nation’s revolutionary achievements”

FT

Such a law can be used lock up one PJ Thum (What Oxford really says about PJ Thum and Project Southeast Asia) and his side kick one Sonny Liew (Coldstore: Why Harry’s narrative or the highway).

While our Minister for Pets and Police could have said this based on what he has said about the authorities needing more powers

Law should not protect the weakling but make the strong even stronger.

he didn’t.

This was said by Hans Frank’s Hiltler’s personal lawyer immortal words (cf. Konrad Heiden,’The Fuehrer’, p. 567).

Meaningless distinction by ST’s editor

(Alternative title “What if editor was also censor? And justifying censorship”)

Writers are “engineers of human souls”Joseph Stalin once told Soviet writers. And I’m sure our Harry would agree with him on that when it came to journalists. After all both wanted the media to be part of their constructive, nation-building endeavours.

So I can’t stop laughing when I read what Warren Fernandez (Btw, TMG’s Bertha Henson* coveted his job, something to bear in mind when reading her criticisms of ST and SPH. Where was her critical voice when she was angling for the post of ST’s editor? She was no Cherian George.) told the parliamentary Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods.

The ST editor said

that an “important distinction” needed to be made between the “exercising of judgment by editors, and censorship or self-censorship”.

“Before we publish anything, we would want to assure ourselves that the content we are putting out is not libelous, unfair or biased … it’s us exercising responsibility,” he said.

“We recognise it’s a duty, and we make judgment calls and we take constant feedback from many sources – newsmakers, readers, organisations … that’s the critical role a responsible media organisation would play.

“If you’re going to have a meaningful exchange and debate, you need informed decisions. It’s not a matter of every view being put out there, and have a slugfest, and expect sweetness and light to emerge.”

Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/no-reason-to-be-pro-government-say-singapore-mainstream-media-10070790

Well the above distinction between the role of an editor and a censor does not exist or is meaningless when the editor is chosen by a govt determined that the media be constructive, nation-building. Read Cheong Yip Seng’s, “OB Markers: My Straits Times Story” on how he became ST editor: Harry tot he “was ready” is my impression of what he was telling us. Also read how subsequent editors were choosen.

 

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*Secret Squirrel, Morocco Mole, and ST and SPH insiders say she quit ST the day when it was announced that Warren was returning to ST to be ST’s editor. So all her criticism could be sour grapes rather than the repentance of a wannabe Seth Lord.

“Free restaurant food for SMRT & ComfortDelgro”

“Abalone, geoduck, sea cucumber and sharksfin isit?”

“Only in S’pore will a PAP minister sneer at serving restaurant food for the elderly poor while the PAP administration condones welfare for public tpt cos.”

The above were my tots when I read

“However, he noted that in the PTC’s discussions with commuters, the council had found that there was an “expectation on the ground” that transport fares will be increased. He added that commuters spoken to were “quite happy to bear higher fares” as they recognise the cost of improving the transport network.”

Public Transport Council chair Richard Magnus

Err so not true that the public tpt network (i.e. infrastructure) is not getting $20bn from the surplus as said by the presumptive PM and a possible one (Lawrence Wong: a PM-in-waiting) in parliament to improve the network?

Ministers wouldn’t lie in parly because lying is “dishonourable”.

So what is this “improving the transport network” by the tpt cos? Network (i.e.infrastructure is not paid for by fares because network is under the LTA.

Welfare for the tpt cos methinks. S’poreans (Surpluses belong to S’poreans even the PAP says though many S’poreans, not juz the cybernuts, may disagree) for improving the tpt network, yet we have to pay tpt cos for these improvements via fare rises.

Welfarism the PAP way. Sad. Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham (“Rob the poor, to give to the rich”) must have been reincarnated as PAP ministers.

Where is Robin Hood when we need him? Goh Meng Seng (Silence of Goh Meng Seng) and Lim Tean (Where’s yr defamation video and jobs rally Lim Tean?) are certainly no reincarnations of Robin Hood.

As is Mad Dog.

Dr Paul? But his followers sadly still prefer to listen to their top Mad Dog. Sad.

Why Malay name for “otter” is apt

The name reminds us that otters have fangs and claws and are prepared to use them.

Yes, another tale from Udrahpore or Otterpore: Udrahpore not Singapore

This pix from OtterWatch, reminding S’poreans that otters are protective of their pups, reminded me that the Malays call an otter “anjing air”. This translates literally into “water dog”.

 

And yes, the Chinese term for “water dog” is  “sui kow”, the name of a type of Chinese dumpling.

So the original dumpling was made using otter meat?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Race is BS or “post-truth” at work?

The upcoming reserved Presidential Election is part of Singapore’s overall framework to create a strong national identity, Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said.
Read more at http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/reserved-presidential-election-part-of-framework-to-build-9199346

Does he mean that a “Malays only” presidency where the only “Malay” candidates have i/cs saying “Indian” or “Pakistani” means that the idea of different races or that the term “Malay race” are really BS?

More like “post-truth” at work methinks.

“Post-truth” is a word that has come to prominence as the Western liberal elites are angsting and spinning about their defeats in Brexit and the US presidential election.

The Oxford Dictionary declared ‘post-truth’ its word of the year 2016. FT added “A less verbose way to describe the same phenomenon would be to say it was the year in which emotion trumped fact. Or cruder still, it was the year of the lie.”

The Economist (the PAP’s bible) got emotional about “post-truth”:

Mr Trump is the leading exponent of “post-truth” politics—a reliance on assertions that “feel true” but have no basis in fact. His brazenness is not punished, but taken as evidence of his willingness to stand up to elite power.

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21706525-politicians-have-always-lied-does-it-matter-if-they-leave-truth-behind-entirely-art

And

tempting to dismiss the idea of “post-truth” political discourse—the term was first used by David Roberts, then a blogger on an environmentalist website, Grist—as a modish myth invented by de-haut-en-bas liberals and sore losers ignorant of how dirty a business politics has always been. But that would be complacent. There is a strong case that, in America and elsewhere, there is a shift towards a politics in which feelings trump facts more freely and with less resistance than used to be the case. Helped by new technology, a deluge of facts and a public much less given to trust than once it was, some politicians are getting away with a new depth and pervasiveness of falsehood. If this continues, the power of truth as a tool for solving society’s problems could be lastingly reduced.

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21706498-dishonesty-politics-nothing-new-manner-which-some-politicians-now-lie-and

Even Goldman Sachs talked about “misinformation, half-truths, and political spin”, despite having its alumni in the White House.

Well the ideas and concepts behind “post-truth” have been around at least 1900

“They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything.”
―from LORD JIM (1900) by Joseph Conrad

A ship’s crew abandons their human cargo of pilgrims, breaking all naval traditions. A young junior British officer Jim is one of them. At a court of inquiry he is questioned in great detail over what happened and in partucular his own actions; the other members of the crew having run way again. He is publicly censured for his actions, and stripped of his qualifications.

The above quotes reflect the narratot’s view of his state of mind at the inquiry.

*LORD JIM is a classic story of one man’s tragic failure and eventual redemption, told under the circumstances of high adventure at the margins of the known world which made Conrad’s work so immediately popular. But it is also the book in which its author, through a brilliant adaptation of his stylistic apparatus to his obsessive moral, psychological and political concerns, laid the groundwork for the modern novel as we know it. With An Introduction By Norman Sherry. READ an excerpt here:http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/30813/lord-jim/

 

Don’t make typo mistakes

U could lose serious money.

Cyberthieves who targeted Bangladesh’s central bank tried to get away with $1bn (£700m), reports Reuters.

…

However, said Reuters, the sheer number of transactions and a spelling mistake helped alert bank staff to the theft.

The spelling mistake in the name of one recipient of funds led Deutsche Bank, which was helping route the cash, to ask for clarification from the central bank, which then stopped the transaction.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35773061

Keeping your head while all around you are losing theirs

What does a rational man do when mkts are in free fall?

Here’s a very interesting tot from an FT reader.

The FT here takes seriously rather than trashing the line ‘rational people lose rationality in fast moving markets’. On the contrary rational people are hyper-rational in such situations. If the herd is running and you stand still, it is you the wolves will catch. There is a rationality to herding, and any multi-agent model will predict it. It is only the time-and-again discredited practice of peering obsessively at bell curves which is irrational.
The point of the game is not to lose money, not to have the cleverest portfolio if prices move as your models show they are supposed to do. If prices show that your portfolio is no good, then you are the irrational one!
Complexity theory has shown that market movements do not correlate to simple narratives, I know it is the pink sheets’ journos job to peddle such simple narratives, but it is nothing less than BS 99% of the time.

Coming back to the headline, keeping yr head means losing money if you are leveraged. But wait, keeping yr head means selling.

 

PAPpies keep trying trick that’s obsolescent

The internet, new media and social media makes the trick ever easier to detect. Yet they persist in treating this trick as a Hard Truth, even though when caught out it makes them look like Phey Yew Kok and friends. Why do they persist? That stupid and complacent isit? Why liddat?

The above were my tots when GIC’s ex-chief economist (now with the Institute of Policy Studies) highlighted this bit in SunT’s report on an environment assessment report which said the effect of soil testing works on animals and plants in the Central Catchment Nature Reserve could be kept to “moderate” levels if measures to reduce impact are strictly implemented when building MRT tracks in the area.

What does “moderate” mean? The roughly 1,000-page report, seen by The Sunday Times, said a moderate impact “falls somewhere in the range from a threshold below which the impact is minor, up to a level that might be just short of breaching a legal limit”.

Assistant Professor Chian Siau Chen of the civil and environmental engineering department at the National University of Singapore said there are usually five categories under the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) framework: Major, moderate, minor, negligible and beneficial.

My FB avatar posted

Thanks for highlighting the scale. So Moderate comes after Major ((((( Reminds me of what Financial Times wrote: “The practice of “reservation” — giving answers that are technically accurate but tactically misleading — was honed by medieval Jesuits ….

‘There is a problem with Jesuitical equivocation, as select committee hearings may show. It makes exponents look shifty if they are rumbled.” In the age of the internet the PAP govt should be learning new tricks, not try to use old tricks that no longer work.giving answers that are technically accurate but tactically misleading

(Emphasis mine)

This reminded me about another recent incident where the literal truth misled and S’pore Technologies was made to look shifty.

Remember the story that we we had PRC parachute riggers?

The u/m appeared on a senior lawyer’s wall

“The SAF continues to fully employ its Riggers, particularly for key operations and training. In order to optimise our resources, we have outsourced the parachute-packing function to Singapore Technologies (ST)”.

Question : If the parachute-packing is outsourced to ST, what do the riggers do?

Answer : Dunno. Answer is (probably intentionally) obscure. One possibility is that the riggers check the parachutes – but the SAF’s answer is far from being a model of clarity.

Question : Has the outsourcing of packing to ST reduced the SAF’s need for riggers?

Answer : Almost certainly.

Question : Are there PRC nationals employed by ST to pack parachutes.

Answer : SAF doesn’t say. Who knows.

Question : Do ST packers have to jump with a chute they’ve packed themselves?

Answer : SAF didn’t say.

And

A very direct allegation (that parachute packing is now being done by PRC nationals) was made, and the answer was vague, and did not contain a denial…… Hmmmm.

Why didn’t the SAF simply state that no foreign nationals are employed to pack parachutes? I hope it’s ineptness in public relations rather than clumsy 1MDB style non-denials.

The rather sad thing is that the newspapers pick up on the SAF response and repeat it verbatim as news, without asking any follow up questions trying to understand what it really means in simple terms.

This is the ‘uncritical’ media culture we have … In today’s day and age, where Singapore is trying to promote risk taking and value creation, the newsmedia culture is somewhat outmoded ,,,

My FB avatar chirped:

Someone in another group informed of a deleted comment. It could explain why SAF aswered the way it did./// “I checked into this. Here’s what I was told:
“There are a couple of PRC Riggers who are under IWF (Integrated Work Force) and work for ST. These Riggers are US certified and will be certified again by the SAF if they have met the requirements and standards. Their pack jobs are certified by SAF Riggers who approve that the parachutes are ready and good for jump. They are only basic trained and perform their job according to their level.””///

The internet, new media and social media make giving answers that are technically accurate but tactically misleading easier to catch and this makes exponents look shifty if they are rumbled. In the age of the internet, the PAP administration should be learning new tricks (like telling the tral truth, not just the literal truth), not try to use old tricks that no longer work like giving answers that are technically accurate but are misleading.

 

 

The “right” info

About 100 grassroots leaders and community partners across Sembawang GRC Took part in a Crisis Response Exercise on Saturday (Dec 12).

This is part of the Government’s efforts to test and train the readiness of the community during an emergency.

They debated and role-played various scenarios, such as how accurate information can be disseminated online in times of uncertainty.

Each constituency has an operation centre where key personnel will convene in an emergency. There will be five cells – the secretariat, operations, resources, logistics and media.

(CNA)

Somehow I think “accuracy” is not the right word. It’s the “right” info.

PM talks cock about “private” sector

The private sector-led, Government backed Guangzhou Knowledge City (GKC)* is a good model for future Singapore-China projects, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Friday (Sep 12).

… Mr Lee said he was happy with the progress, six years after he first discussed the project with provincial leaders … the private sector-led GKC is a different model that Singapore is “trying out” after the Suzhou Industrial Park and Tianjin Eco-city, both government-to-government projects. (CNA on Friday)

Funnily the private sector leadership is provided by Temasek-owned company Singbridge who is in a j/v and the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.  Singbridge is 100% owned by Temasek, 100% owned by the Minister for Finance. Not even the fig-leaf of a SGX-listed TLC like Keppel or SIA.

And PM went to Catholic High and NJC? But then Yaacon was from RI (see tom)

—-

*”The hurdle for government-to-government projects like Suzhou and Tianjin will be higher in future, so I think this (GKC) is a good model that we should explore going forward,”

“But there has to be a balance between private sector leadership and government support, and there has to be market demand for what’s being offered by the project” …

Located 35 kilometres from Guangzhou city centre, work is underway to turn the Guangzhou Knowledge City, currently a 123 square-kilometre site into a future magnet for industries like pharmaceuticals and info-comm technology, part of local authorities push for so-called high end industry.

 

HPL: More than “fair and reasonable”?

The second revised buyout offer for Hotel Properties Limited (HPL) is considered to be “fair and reasonable” by the independent financial adviser to HPL. 68 Holdings, a consortium led by tycoon Ong Beng Seng and Wheelock Properties, had raised its bid a second time to $4.05 per share last month.

CIMB’s opinion on the offer is unchanged from its earlier report issued after the consortium first raised its offer price from $3.50 a share to $4. The updated report by CIMB was released in a supplementary letter to shareholders by HPL’s board of directors yesterday.

On the second revised offer of $4.05 a share, CIMB’s recommendations to HPL shareholders are also unchanged. (BT last Fri)

Given that the first offer was already “fair and reasonable”, shouldn’t this be an offer that is “more than fair and reasonable”?

Or the first one should have been “neither fair nor reasonable”? It was a low ball bid?

In 2002, the independent adviser to the board of Optus had come out with the opinion that far from paying too much, the offer is actually “unfair”.Independent adviser, Grant Samuel said the SingTel offer was “unfair”, but recommended the offer and said “while it is not fair, it is reasonable”. As a result, the directors of Optus recommended the deal to shareholders.

The M&A boutique said the deal was unfair based on valuation techniques, but said it was  reasonable because if there wasn’t an offer, Optus’ share price would be trading at lower levels: “In assessing the fairness of the offer, Grant Samuel indicates that its judgement of fairness is at the margin, and that while the Singtel offer is not fair, it’s only just not fair.”

Well, many S’poreans tot, at the time, that that the price paid was unfair and unreasonable to SingTel investors (self included). Turns out we are right even today, it seem. If it wants to float Optus today, there would be a small gap of a bn or so A$ between its purchase p-rice and valuation of Optus today: small change leh.

Coming back to the HPL offer, CNA reported last week in relation to another takeover offer, “Minority shareholders are becoming increasingly disillusioned with boilerplate advice from independent financial advisers (IFAs) and are questioning their usefulness, the head of the Securities Investors Association of Singapore (SIAS) said on Friday (June 6).”*

To which the retort from bidders and IFAs would be, “They would say that wouldn’t they? They want unfair and unreasonable prices to be paid for their shares.”

—

*Cont’d

The remarks by SIAS President & CEO David Gerald came in a statement noting the dissatisfaction on the part of minority shareholders over a buyout offer for LCD Global, a hospitality and investment company, at S$0.17 a share.

“SIAS notes that while the IFA report has indicated that the offer is fair, based on a historical perspective, the offer does represent a discount to NAV at S$0.27,” …

 

“Xenophobia”, “your money” and Humpty Dumpty

In response to questions by the media of the possibility of sounding xenophobic due to the use of the words in the party’s name, “Singaporeans First”, Mr Tan Jee Say said that the words were not meant to disservice foreigners or put locals at the forefront. Rather, it was meant to signify the intention to treat all Singaporeans as equal and to bring back their dignity and self-esteem.

http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2014/05/new-political-party-sfp-made-up-of-mainly-former-civil-servants/

So SPH and MediaCorp journalists think that “S’poreans First” carries tones of “xenophobia”.? So do they think that the “P” in the SPF, PAP and PM stands for “Pinoy”, something the Pinoy Pride organisers seemed to have assumed wrongly. The hacks should like MoM Tan, Amy Khor and other PAPpies realise that people who raise concerns about immigration are not always prejudiced, let alone “xenophobia.

But then to be fair they are not alone in looking down on ordinary S’poreans. So too do middle class and elite kay pohs like Kirsten Han and Constance Singham http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2014/05/civil-society-statement-on-racism-and-xenophobia/, who likewise equate concern about immigration with “xenophobia. And then go on to blame the PAP govt. But then they are in the main anti-PAP paper warriors (with some anti-PAP real-world warriors). And being upper crusts are used to having their cake and eating it.

Calling S’poreans concerned about immigration names just shows that the govt, media and these upper crust kay pohs fail to understand S’poreans’ (self included even though the pro FT policies are gd for me, by keeping inflation in check) concerns on the issue.

Let me be clear, there are some extremists and real loonies on the issue of FTs, but most of those concerned about immigration are juz normal S’poreans who happen not to agree with AWARE (who diss NS and NSmen), Kirsten Han, Mom Tan, Constance Singham, Amy Khor etc.

(BTW great riposte to these FT loving upper crust kay pohs http://www.theonlinecitizen.com/2014/05/racism-xenophobia-statement-by-civil-society-groups-disappointing/ from a professor no less)

Money in your CPF account is your money

This is what MoM Tan, a paper general, blogged, inter alia, recently.

Best riposte I’ve come across.

 

http://singaporedaily.net/2014/05/26/daily-sg-26-may-2014/

Come on Baey, surely you can help him come up with better lines? https://atans1.wordpress.com/2011/05/28/pap-needs-a-public-communications-swat-team/. Or maybe you can’t? You no longer the CEO of an int’l PR firm’s S’pore office.

The use of  “xenophobia”and “your money” reminds me of, “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
    “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
    “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.” *

Have a gd weekend.

————————————————–

*“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’ ” Alice said.
    Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’ ”
    “But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.
    “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
    “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
    “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”    Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. “They’ve a temper, some of them—particularly verbs, they’re the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!”(Thru the Looking-Glass)