Tuesday, October 30, 2012

National Conversation - what we truly need?

What is National Conversation? Have'nt we had enough talks about rule of law, democracy, justice and fairness, freedom and rights of individuals? What was the result? In “The Rise of Rogue Executive” by Leonard R. Sayles and Cynthia J. Smith, explained it thus: “Management has been changing, not always for the better. The change started with modest deviations from accepted good accounting practice, pushing the limits such as not expensing stock options. When no resistance has been forthcoming, sophisticated number games and executive self-serving became a groundswell of malfeasance. Modest dithering with accounting tipped over into fragrant fraud. For example, technically Enron had been bankrupt for years before its bankruptcy filing in December 2001." Karl Marx had rightly predicted a grave danger with capitalism long ago that undermine the basic order and stability of the world. After the collapse of communism, capitalism is seen to make a major comeback with potential to wreck yet more human problems. There are heavy prices to be paid for all such fraudulent talks. Do we need more of them in such National Conversation? Is it going to stop all our hypocrisy and self-praise that is the main vehicle of our governance? Owing to such relentless exploitations of people with fraudulent hypocrisy, of this kind, the world is plunged into all kinds of crises every now and then due to frauds, abuses and malpractices perpetrated by different devices that resulted in millions losing their livelihood. Peoples are taking to the street by millions in "occupy wall street" protests to oppose the excesses of unchecked exploitations taking place under the croak of free-market capitalism with demand for equitability and justice. Extreme capitalism leads to inequities and injustices in society. Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen have warned of the danger of using economic yardsticks such as gross domestic product (GDP) focusing on material consumption which do not include quality-of-life factors. It does not reflect, for example, the degradation of the environment, the depreciation of natural resources or declines in individuals’ quality of life. No matter what we do or who we are, we ought to win by the rules - basic honesty and integrity, ability to think simply and act effectively to motivate and interact with others for the good of all before we are being trusted to do our many things we are doing in works and lives. This is the time to change. Such a change is not a rocket science. The constant rhetoric about leadership, and talent is not going to help us. What we truly need is to change the current hypocrisy and start is to govern with honesty and integrity - cause-effect workflow processes as an integral part of personal competencies and psyche of the average "Joe" in the workforce. ................... When leaders behave selfishly, treating people as objects for exploitations with taxing, privatizing of public services for hoarding of monies and profiteering to enrich the elites as seen happening in our system, what do we expect people to do? Suck up to the leaders as if they are the god or demi-god and take part in more hypocrisies and scheming like the national conversation. Surely the Hundred Flowers blossoming of Mao Zedong is made of sterner stuff than the national conversation. Don't be deceived any more? What we need is pro-people and pro-right leader like Obama for GE2016. Let's us all unite and ask people to vote for change - We want a Obama for our leader in GE2016.

Monday, October 29, 2012

The root cause of papies' current problems

There is no need for more hypocrisy like national conversation. Just be honest and truthful in governing the country. Do not try to claim success. Let people judge. There is no need to overdo things or show off. In the past, whenever they start to show off what is called the leadership and abilities of their ministers, we shot off their own mouth all the time like the stop-at-two policy and anti-welfare policy. At the end, we end up causing our own low birth rate, over-taxing and over-privatising our public services. By talking big about the need to employ talents in the public sector, we end up overpaying our ministers and have to face the reality that their ministers simply do have have the big talents to be paid that kind of million-dollar salaries higher than that of US president. This kind of show-off attitude is the real root cause of our many problems facing us today. It is also called auto-piloting their many talk-big policies. It is sad that our talented ministers do not know what is enough. They do not have yin and yang elments in their blood to serve their people being more concerned with showing off. It is as simple as that. .................. All the arguments are wayang in such a parliament. Like approving their own million-dollar pay, no one can stop them because of their majority votes in parliament. They put up a show of inviting opposition to do their works knowing that such works no matter how brilliant will be overridden with such majority votes.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Support calls for condemnation in shooting of Malala

As world citizens, we must stand together to defend our rights and freedoms irrespective of differences in race, religions and creeds. I support calls to speak out against any form of oppressions and suppressions.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Time to review unjust laws like ISA

It is good not to remove all the important posts on subjects like this. See, for years under the one-party one-man autocratic rule government has been catching only small flies in anti-corruption laws and drug laws. The big-time offenders causing big financial and security threats to the country are not really being caught. The ignorant youths become fall guys many of whom were being tricked into carrying drugs believing the packages were gold bars or such-like objects. If a government is truly interested in being effective, it should have targeted the drug laws principally at eliminating the root cause of problems – syndicates and drug lords some of whom were even closely connected to governments. (read escape from paradise site) Though the government may not want to admit or acknowledge, netizens at TOC have been criticizing the ineffective drug laws which should have targeted at eliminating the root cause not fall guys who might be people like Yong Vui King or some others as posted. At least because of netizens’ parts the AG Chambers now appear to realize injustices in our high-handed presumptuous drug laws (read Straits Times report on deferred prosecution of offenders) and would now allow holding back of prosecution by way of deferred prosecution subject to conditons to be fulfilled where there are evidences from among caught offenders of syndicates at work. This kind of injustices appear to have gone unnoticed under the existing one-man and one-party rule as none of the MPs appear to be willing to go against the autocratic laws and policies of such nature. In the same way, injustices were being caused to many innocent people under the ISA another strong autocratic law of one-man one-party rule. AG Chambers should have awakened to the possibilities of innocent offenders being victimized as fall guys by cunning drug syndicates and use the deferred prosecution agreement to hold back and try to catch drug lords or their syndicates instead of all these youthful or even stupid kids like Yong Vui Kong.

Posts on Mandatory Death Penalty laws

(An old post on the onlinecitizen by Robert Teh) It is good not to remove all the important posts on subjects like this. See, for years under the one-party one-man autocratic rule government has been catching only small flies in anti-corruption laws and drug laws. The big-time offenders causing big financial and security threats to the country are not really being caught. The ignorant youths become fall guys many of whom were being tricked into carrying drugs believing the packages were gold bars or such-like objects. If a government is truly interested in being effective, it should have targeted the drug laws principally at eliminating the root cause of problems – syndicates and drug lords some of whom were even closely connected to governments. (read escape from paradise site) Though the government may not want to admit or acknowledge, netizens at TOC have been criticizing the ineffective drug laws which should have targeted at eliminating the root cause not fall guys who might be people like Yong Vui King or some others as posted. At least because of netizens’ parts the AG Chambers now appear to realize injustices in our high-handed presumptuous drug laws (read Straits Times report on deferred prosecution of offenders) and would now allow holding back of prosecution by way of deferred prosecution subject to conditons to be fulfilled where there are evidences from among caught offenders of syndicates at work. This kind of injustices appear to have gone unnoticed under the existing one-man and one-party rule as none of the MPs appear to be willing to go against the autocratic laws and policies of such nature. In the same way, injustices were being caused to many innocent people under the ISA another strong autocratic law of one-man one-party rule. AG Chambers should have awakened to the possibilities of innocent offenders being victimized as fall guys by cunning drug syndicates and use the deferred prosecution agreement to hold back and try to catch drug lords or their syndicates instead of all these youthful or even stupid kids like Yong Vui Kong. ...... Reproduced from a post at Yahoo site: APPEAL TO PRESIDENT TONY TAN FOR CLEMENCY BY DRUG OFFENDER YONG VUI KONG Go and read the thorough debates at theonlinecitizen.com on the appeal by Yong Vui Kong. Those who insisted that Singapore should continue to hang drug traffickers have only two substantial points in their favor – drug trafficking is extremely harmful to society and death penalty will deter trafficking. Some apparently well-informed pro-death penalty have given their views both technical and from the point of view of justice and equity. In particular, they strongly pointed out there is no injustice because the whole process of prosecuting the offenders is an world-wide judiciary process where it is up to the prosecution to contend its case with the defence on the principle of adversarial argumentation with the judge giving the final verdict. Upon finally being made to realize that under the Misuse of Drug Act, the judges concerned have no leeway to decide on the mitigation aspect of people who might be in the category like Yong Vui Kong and another who might not be fully aware either due to age, or mistaken knowledge the substance carried was something else like gold bar, the two experts who might be from CNB or prosecution department agreed with me that this lack of discretionary power by the judge to consider mitigation makes the Misuse of Drug Act unfair and needs to be amended with attention focused on catching the syndicate and drug lords rather than sending peripherial cases like ignorant or stupid people to hang with the judges being unable to do anything to consider mitigation due to certain mitigating circumstances. Lately as a result probably of such inputs AG chamber has finally passed a procedure to defer prosecution against an accused where there exist from collective evidences of other prisoners of syndicate behind certain cases. For those who insisted that there should be retention of death penalty they should rest assure that their interests in safeguarding society against harm of drug trafficking is not compromised as few including myself disagree with their views. In the current form of our drug law, innocent or stupid youths are being hanged while drug syndicates and bosses are able to continue their lucrative trades unabated, The current law is not deterrent at all while young and stupid people some of whom may be any casual travellers like you and me who are careless enough with luggage left accidentally open for drug syndicates to explore for their own devious trickeries to traffic drugs. It is timely for president Tony Tan to wake up the whole government and cabinet who might not be too inclined to be fair or just by making a move towards fair prosecution of drug offenders aiming at eliminating source of drug rather than getting whoever they can catch as fall guys. .............. (as posted in facebook on 5.11.12)Apparently minister Shanmugam has decided to take all the credit for changes to the mandatory death sentences to himself by saying that the change was not brought about by the lobbyists. He should read my old posts at the onlinecitizen where as a result of pointing out that the judges had often lamented that their hands are tied because parliament has decided on mandatory death sentence that they were unable to consider the many cases of mitigations being pleaded. Following the boo-boos in certain cases, being brought up in the onlinecitizen, and replies of lobo76 and lockeliberal being rebutted into admitting the laws were unjust, AG was pressurized into granting deferral in prosecution of certain drug mules on certain conditions. Is Minister Shanmugam telling us the truth when he said that government changed these laws because of its own reviewing process. ................ (J.'s post in yahoo) hi Robert, how does one search up older posts in The Online Citizen? they used to have it by sub-topics, in a list form which is further divided into pages. the new layout limits to highlighted titles with the older 1s being "dropped off"....

Sunday, October 14, 2012

What is National Conversation?

What is National Conversation? If with REACH, RCs, CCCs, MPSs, all that has happened is more propagandas and hypocrisy, then people will not respond to the new-fangled National Conversation which will be just another change-soup-not-changing-medicine prescription.

NUS's boast about its 5th ranking of MBA graduates

NUS has boasted about its 5th ranking in the world for producing the best MBA graduates. It should tell us which one of their MBA graduates has invented an apple as Steve Jobs has done before boasting about how good their graduates are!!!

Why are people hesitating to contribute to government's sponsored charities

The S$50 billions lost on over-hasty and rash foreign investments like Shin Corps, UBS, Barclay, Merryl Lynch etc could easily be used to help the poor sections of our society who are contributing to the building of our nation but who are made poor by all kinds of taxing and profiteering and privatizing schemes of government. That is the single most important reason why people are turned off by the NKF-Durai saga. Government has to change its many wrong policies before it can morally ask people to contribute to charities.