Category: Social Commentary

Pakistan and Osama


It has emerged that US Navy Seal personnel flew in from Afghanistan into Pakistan (Abbotabad) to apprehend/kill bin Laden. they flew under the radar of Pakistan, obviously not trusting the Pakistanis to deal with Osama. Some senior Pakistani military guy was at the compound of the kill, as recent as 23 April but apparently had no intelligence of Osama’s presence there. One only has to wonder what has been Pakistan’s role in protecting Osama all these years.

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Metro Moans


Over the long Easter weekend we were at a dinner party where the pre-dinner small talk was on commuting.

There were 2 who drove to work, one retired person who relayed his pleasure at taking the train into the city and yours truly, whose famously impatient traits are being tested on a daily basis.

Of the 2 who drove, one had never taken the train. Metro might as well be the Millennium Falcon to him.

The other bloke used to take the train years ago but after a number of delays, hold ups and break downs, decided to drive and hasn’t looked back since.

The retiree travelled off peak so is spared of the travails of public transport.

Yours truly was the lone sufferer. It is an ongoing persecution. It is a Pauline pain in you-know-where. The Apostle asked the Lord three times, to remove the source of his pain. I tried it and the Lord answered partially. He removed Connex. Redemption however was no where insight as Metro is no Messiah.

In fact it is positively Machiavellian to usher in Metro and raised the hopes of sojourners that we would henceforth journey to the Promised Land of reliability and punctuality. Metro as it turned out, is a massively false messiah.

My ride is via what is called a “City Loop”. As you enter the city via whichever railway line from the suburbs, you enter the city via one of several spots. The most common ones by far, are the Flinders Street and Parliament stations. They are on the opposite end of the CBD circle , with the former on the south side of the city and the latter on the north. Trains coming into the city are either “Flinders Street” or “City Loop”. If you come in via the former, Flinders Street station is the first stop, then you go through the circle and the train leaves the city after going past Parliament.

The City Loop train is the reverse. There are only 3 stations (Spencer, Flagstaff and Melbourne Central) in between so it is no biggie but the loop takes about 10 minutes to cover, and you’d be surprised how 10 minutes over 3 stops fill up the cars very quickly. We haven’t quite reached the stage where conductors need to shove passengers in but we have reached a stage where passenger proximity is such that if this was an Islamic country, we’d be looking at separate cars for men and women.

I’m almost always on the City Loop trains because my office is only a block and a half from Parliament Station. It is also the nearest to our station – Blackburn – so the ride is only about say, 25 minutes. It is the perfect leg for me, time wise.

Whatever advantage there is however, depends on punctuality and reliability. If the train arrives late the short 25 minute journey is extended. Likewise, if they muck around by switching the route, one wastes precious minutes too. So if you’re on a City Loop and the Metro decide to turn it into a Flinders Street train, you either ride the extra 10-15 minutes or you jump off at Richmond – a major exchange just outside the CBD – and wait for a City Loop. One usually arrives within a few minutes but the whole saga usually sets you back 10 minutes easy. Not much in the scheme of things, but add that to the array of other irritating non-compliance and one wonders why the State Government sacked Connex in the first place. Frequently for example, the City Loop in the evening would be cancelled and one has to take a ride to Richmond for a connecting train or wait for the next one. Either way you are again set back 15-20 minutes. Not much for sure, but again, the cumulative effect is there. It has happened so often that Metro has long turned into a joke for Melbourne commuters. To add insult to injury, Metro has just increased fare and just this morning Tress was saying the monthly has gone up to over $175 now (from about $160).

Yet, when I am frustrated I only have to remind myself of “KTM Komuter”. I remember several occasions where I waited on a platform, only for a train to arrive on the one opposite. Many would jump onto the tracks to run across to the other side, because if you don’t or don’t do a sprint of Carl Lewis proportion to run through the overhead to the other side, you run the risk of waiting for … God knows how long for the next one. Actually at the rate it is going, who knows – Metro may descend to that level… now where’s the car keys?

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Killing Us All Tweetly


Jim Wallace‘s tweet on Anzac Day is the latest proof that this tool can be wielded most unwisely. It is probably best not to use it for any purpose other than daily mundane stuff like letting your mates know where you are so they can join you if they wish. Try using it for any other purpose (such as social commentary) and you really are asking for it.

I am sure many Christians frown deeply at gay marriage and Islamic extremists and they are perfectly legitimate areas of interests for the Australian Christian Lobby. Use that silly limited tool that is Tweeter and mix that with Anzac Day and the place it holds for many Australians and you’re on really thin ice. From hereon in, who’d listen to Jim Wallace the next time he has anything to say about gay marriage or Islamic extremism? People are more likely to remember his folly of tweeting on these issues on Anzac Day 2011, than anything else he may have to say on them, no matter how valid and true that may turn out to be.

He has damaged the role of the Australian Christian Lobby in 22 words in a silly tweet and it’d take so much rebuilding to restore things. This silly tool is killing us all tweetly. 😦

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US sovereign risk downgraded?


Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has done to the US what it did to AIG 2 ½ years ago. Well, sort of. Unbelievably, it effectively handed over a vote of no confidence in US political leaders to deal with the crazy deficits which have been growing on a massive scale.

Uncle Sam has been pawning to the hilt and is no longer deemed stable by the international bond market. Obama has managed to back Normandy back to the Krauts and Germany and France now rank higher than the Yanks!

I was watching the news a couple of weeks back on this issue and one of the Republican lawmakers was saying she wasn’t going to continue signing off borrowings from China to fund abortions carried out in the US.

This is just one of a range of issues creating a huge divide between the Republicans and Democrats, making approval of budgets increasingly difficult. I have not been folllowing the issues closely so I don’t know if this chasm is what’s causing S&P’s warning.

Maybe we have just witnessed the trigger to bury the greenback as a global currency and usher in the “Red Back” that is the Renminbi as its replacement. Will the Chinese now firmly stake its claim as the No 1 economic powerhouse of the world today?

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Eschewing Emails? Nooooo


Emails were the bane of my previous workplace. They would stream in throughout the day, regardless of the hour. Quite often they would come in late at night and some over-enthusiastic colleagues (including my erstwhile boss) would respond to them pronto.   In fact there was a time I too would be conscientious in responding to them regardless of the urgency. Those were the bad old days.

Nevertheless, emails can be and is still a very useful basic tool. It is the manner we use it which determines if it becomes a bane, pain or a very useful servant. While it can be a blunt tool, discarding it or even using it just sparingly can mean we are short changing ourselves and depriving ourselves of an efficient and effective communication tool.

Firstly, it is a fantastic tool for communicating data with some very quick commentary notes. Whereas I can for example send you a text with my colleague’s phone number, if I want to tell you that this colleague usually doesn’t look at his text message during work hours because he is on the road a lot and only checks his mobile for messages once every few hours and it is therefore better to give yourself at least half a day before expecting a response but if you need a quick response you may wish to call his wife who he calls every half an hour because she is very pregnant I might send you an email instead to convey all that extra bits of information.

I may also want to tell you that this colleague also has some quirks – it would helpful if you sent him that text either closer to noon or closer to the end of the day because that’s when he is most likely to check his mobile and he gets wound up if he checks his mobile and finds a message which is several hours old. Ideally however, this colleague prefers an email instead, which he checks around 6pm every day for sure and at the very least.

All of the above information may also be required by several other people. I know you will want that information straight away but Johnny only needs it later in the morning and Tom, maybe in the arvo. Instead of calling you now I’d send you an email and copy Johnny and Tom in. This way I spend one third of my time compared to if I called you, Johnny and Tom.

I can also forward that email to anyone else who may want to know the best way to contact my colleague. I can do this anytime and to as many people as I like and I can’t catch my intended recipient at a time he or she is available to speak with me – they can retrieve and read that information at their leisure and convenience.  Finally I also have a record of what sent and to whom I sent as well as when I sent them.

We can get a lot done through emails that way. At the very least we keep in touch, rope every relevant person into the loop, maintain a sense of momentum in the line of communications and stay abreast of things. Everyone in the loop share a common platform of information and everyone can expect all in the email loop, to have that common knowledge.  If we continuously provide information and commentary through that channel within that community, that community can become informed, vibrant and communicative.

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Malaysia’s Ever Growing Cesspool


Just caught up with some Malaysian news and frankly, I am embarrassed by it all. I thought Gillard and Abbot were disappointing but the make-up, the mentality, the tools, the whole cesspool of a pig sty in which Malaysian politics dwell is revolting. The press – what is it doing by playing along? It should just pull up stumps and focus its pages and airwaves on anything but politics. Is there no hope for Malaysia?



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Inapt Words from “Prayercentral.net”


Choosing the right words to say at the right time is a virtue encouraged and praised by the Scriptures (Prov 25:11, 15:23). The converse is also true. We need to consider or have a basis for, what we say especially in the present age where both the spoken or written word can be recorded, broadcast and disseminated widely and quickly.

Which brings me to the below prayer notes, which someone kindly forwarded to me this morning. Tress and I have been watching the news of the Japan earthquake through the long weekend, on several channels – Sky, CNN, BBC, Fox and of course our very own Nine and Seven. I was on my laptop quite a bit yesterday and I intermittently jumped on BBC, New York Times and our own Herald Sun, The Age and The Australian websites. I also checked on Malaysiakini site now and then, which also had pretty up-to-date coverage of the quake, tsunami and nuclear plant tragedies in Japan.

Not one of the above sources mentioned anything about breakdown in authority and security, or about injustice or corruption. Japan is a first world/developed country. Corruption and social unrest attributable to political upheavals or despotic behaviour are traits you almost never associate with Japan. In fact the contrary is true and the images I see on the media are of an orderly – unbelievably orderly – management of the crises. Many experts are differentiating Chernobyl from Fukushima in the way each dealt/is dealing with the nuclear plant crisis. Fukushima is almost an embodiment of preparedness, discipline and orderly execution of emergency measures. The early administration of iodine to minimise the effect of radiation is a case in point. The damage we see is due largely to the tsunami and not the earthquakes as Japanese construction is probably leading the world in earthquake-proof features.

So what is it that “prayercentral.net” knows which many of us don’t, which made it write the way it did? If the basis of this writing is unsubstantiated waffle it is very likely based on prejudice – that just because this is an Asian disaster, the elements of injustice, corruption, breakdown in authority and security all abound. If this is the case, then “prayercentral.net” needs prayer itself. Lots of it.

What the Japanese need now is prayer, no one doubts that. What they also need are apt words which show mercy, compassion and love. Not rebuke and warnings. I hope “prayercentral.net” either explains itself or amend this piece.

Here’s the link and the text of what’s there now:

http://prayers.prayercentral.net/?page_id=5&target=Japanese+brothers+and+sisters&pronoun=group&cat=86

Break the Power of Corruption in Japanese brothers and sisters

Scripture: Woe to those who enact evil statutes, And to those who constantly record unjust decisions, so as to deprive the needy of justice, And rob the poor of My people of their rights… -Isaiah 10:1

Prayer: Lord, You are the great judge over all the earth, watching the wicked and the good. You see the deeds and the intentions of the heart. Only You, Lord are worthy to sit on the throne of judgment.

Lord, in every crisis there is a breakdown of authority, and security. I know You hate injustice and corruption, so I bring to Your attention the corruption in Japanese brothers and sisters during this crisis, and I ask Lord, that You would hear the cries of the weak and powerless, and break the power of corruption in this place.

Lord, for the good of the people, I ask that You would swiftly judge acts of corruption today. Give no place for the wicked to think they have escaped. Leave no room for looters and others to steal away what has been provided for the needy. Make an example today Lord of someone, so that others may see and fear.

Vindicate the weak and the poor, and break the power of wickedness that oppresses them. In Jesus name, amen.

Let us know you prayed…

Regards,Ian

Sent from my iPigeon

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NUS and Uni Malaya


The National University of Singapore was once University Malaya. It now ranks No. 4 in Asia and No. 34 in the world. University Malaya on the other hand is buried somewhere deep under the pile. Many of its graduates can’t even speak English properly. So who had it right? UMNO and the pro-Malay policies will only continue to go down the gurgler.

See the Times Higher Education university ranking here:  http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/top-200.html

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Ziggy Switkowski on the Carbon Tax


Ziggy Switkowski was once the head honcho of Telstra. It was before the days of the Sol Trojullio – the “Mexican” who came to reign Telstra in a tumultuous period and carted away a tidy pot of gold for himself.

Ziggy has just written a piece in the Business Spectator about how futile the Australia’s attempt to reduce emission can be, when our contribution to the problem is miniscule. He has of course written in a much more convincing manner, setting out the economic and technological aspects of the issue and how green house gas emissions is really an economic and technological problem for now, not quite yet an environmental one. So for the Bob Brown and Christine Milne and the Greens to push this agenda and for Julia Gillard to be capitulating to their interest so easily appears a bit out of whack.

That was the approach taken by the Howard Government – the economic angle – and it is now the defence piece of useless rhetoric for people like Wayne Swan in attempting to defend the carbon tax. What a shameless manipulation of facts. But then again these – other than Ziggy – are all politicians, they do that for a living.

Ziggy’e piece is hot fresh off the oven – google it.

Regards,Ian

Sent from my iPigeon

Malaysia – World Class Corruption (USD300billion left illegally)


Ask any man on the streets in Malaysia and to a man, you will hear this is all down to corrupt Ministers and their business cronies.

Ministers of all ranks have stolen from the people for years and years, and the business cronies they enriched have also taken money out – money earned purely as a result of who they know and who they grease. Revolting.

See this incredible story:

http://malaysiakini.com/news/154487

Close to USD300 billion left the country illegally

While the government has said Bank Negara is invstigating the massive illicit financial outflows, some analysts believe the probe should involve a larger number of agencies.

This is because the figures of a whopping RM889 billion (US$291 billion). said to be lost between 2000 and 2008, raises too many questions that involve many different aspects of governance, they said.

The large outflow would amount to a lot of “finger pointing”, Centre for Policy Initiatives chief economist Lim Teck Ghee said in a statement.

Therefore, an independent probe in the form of a royal commission of inquiry would be more appropriate.

“There can be no dispute that a major part of this outflow is due to financial gains accumulated through corruption, kickbacks and other illegal means.

“How much can be disputed, and can only be determined by a thorough investigation, such as through the establishment of a royal commission to determine the extent of and the reasons for the outflow,” he said.

NONELim said without an independent panel with access to banking and other financial data, “there will be needless speculation as to who are the parties implicated in these outflows”.

Last week Malaysiakini reported that Washington-based financial watchdog Global Financial Integrity released a study, which placed Malaysia fifth on the list of nations with the largest amount of illicit capital outflow.

The report defines illicit capital as that “illegally earned, transferred or utilised”, but could also include legally-earned money which was transferred out to avoid taxes.

Legitimate investment could be affected

Interestingly, while announcing the Bank Negara probe yesterday, Deputy Finance Minister Donald Lim questioned the veracity of the figures, asking why the US watchdog had not raised the alarm earlier despite having monitored the situation since 2000.

dr yeah kim lengMeanwhile, Ratings Agency Malaysia chief economist Yeah Kim Leng also called for a multi-agency probe, but led by the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu).

This is because the agency is in charge of monitoring the implementation of the Najib Razak administration’s transformation programmes and reducing the level of corruption has been identified as one of the National Key Results Areas.

“However, to tackle the illicit financial outflows effectively, it will need the cooperation of frontline agencies such as the central bank, Ministry of Trade and Industry, Customs and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission, among others,” Yeah said.

He added that the failure to take the report seriously could have an impact on Malaysia’s legitimate foreign direct investment, which is on the mend after suffering terribly in the 2009 global financial crisis.

“Endemic corruption remains a concern and any improvement in governance will certainly boost Malaysia’s attractiveness to foreign investors who have been slowly but steadily lured back by the government’s transformation programme,” he said.

Poor governance, pervasive corruption

NONEWhile the report, which was written by GFI economists Karly Curcio and Dev Kar, could not pinpoint the exact reasons for Malaysia’s illicit capital flight without further studies, it mentioned poor governance, increased inequality and pervasive corruption as likely factors.

Pakatan Rakyat leaders have also called for an inquiry on the matter, highlighting the fact that losing RM300,000 for every Malaysian between 2000-2008 through illegal means would put Malaysia on top of the infamy list.

This is greater than China, which lost US$2.8 trillion (RM8.55 trillion) in the same period but has a larger population as a well as higher gross domestic product.

Malaysia, which had a gross domestic product of RM679.69 billion in 2009, is the 30th largest economy in the world.